King Ralph

Cosh:

From 1993 to 1999, cruel axe-wielding Ralph I shrank overall government expenditures slightly in nominal dollars. But revenues were growing only at a rate of 1.6% per year. Spending grew at a 3.4% pace under Ralph II (1999-2006), but with revenues growing at 4.4% a year, this was still a species of stewardship that would have provided for tax stability, and even more rate cuts, in the long run. Again one perceives a distinct contrast with his successor, who blew a tire and went arse-over-teakettle trying to ride Alberta’s fiscal cycle.

I will not try to improve on Colby Cosh's brilliant obituary.  I will, however, note that Ralph Klein was a high school drop out. It would be utterly impossible for another Ralph Klein, with a similarly limited schooling, today to even get a job at a newspaper. Modern Canada today is flooded with increasingly meaningless credentials that keep the clever, though impatient, out of entry level positions. Instead they encourage the time server, the ass kisser and the hoop-jumper. Ralph Klein would never have been Ralph Klein had he wasted four years of his life taking a political science degree. Or even a business degree. There are people for whom their only real school is, or ever should be, life.

Comments

[John Chittick]

Indeed. In my world, there would be no "right to practice" legislation granting monopoly status to so-called professions. Guild socialism is alive and well- just another paving stone on the road back to serfdom.