Chumbawilliams

Just in case anyone out there is still, like Wade Locke, coming to grips with the fiscal legacy of seven years of unfettered Williams Effect, let it not be said that you weren't already warned, and that you didn't get that warning straight from the top.

As Danny Williams-Government told Fred Hutton of NTV in his 2008 year-end interview, which aired early in January 2009:

As you pay down the debt it also gives you the ability then to bring it back up. It’s no different than if you paid down your line of credit at the bank or pay off your car loan, it gives you the ability to go borrow a little more, take a little more if you need it. So, that money will be used, for example, that, that surplus that’s actually going on the debt, though, will also be used to fund, you know, the settlements with the unions. I think the public sector settlements are going to cost us in the range of a half-billion dollars a year forever. So, that money will sort of go, go towards the public sector workers, which is, which is good, though, from an economic perspective because now we have this whole new infusion of eight percent and then four, four, and four into the economy and that’ll help drive our own economy, as well.

You read that right.

You pay debt down. Then rack it up again. You're never gonna pay it down. You pay debt down. Then rack it up again. You're never gonna pay it down. You pay debt down. Then rack it up again. You're never gonna pay it down. You pay debt down. Then rack it up again. You're never gonna pay it down.

And that "half-billion dollars a year forever"?

Between now and 2031, the Great Economist laid out a scenario last night that would see the provincial debt balloon to $37-billion — with a b. That's about $72,500 for every person currently living in the province... and, contrary to popular perception, the provincial population has started to decline again.

"Half-billion dollars a year forever", over the twenty years to come between now and 2031, accounts for ten of those thirty-seven billions.

And that's just in the first twenty years of "forever".