Xref: utzoo can.general:1035 can.politics:1885
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@csri.toronto.edu (Tim Horton)
Subject: Debts and Deficits
Message-ID: <8811240727.AA18395@bloor.csri.toronto.edu>
Keywords: debt, deficit
Organization: University of Toronto, Dept Computer Science
Distribution: can
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 88 02:27:33 EST

trivia@watcsc.UUCP (Dave Nuttall) writes:
>One thing that people should look at, in my opinion, is that Canada has an
>annual deficit of about 30 million ...

                         36 billion (1987)
                         33 billion (1988 projected)

>while the States pick up over 1 billion dollars of additional debt last year.

                             155 billion (1988 projected)

>Canada has around 25 million people while the USA comes up with 250 million
>people.  Therefore, the states with 10 times the people, has over 30 times the
>annual debt.

Per person, we'd be going into debt at a little more than twice the rate the
Americans are.

My figures are likely off on the second decimal place, ie. give or take 5 per
cent, but quite a bit closer I think -- they certainly contain a little less
than 100000% error.

The accumulated deficit at the federal level (alone) should be somewhere in
the neighborhood of $250 Billion in Canada (growing all the time), consuming
somewhere between 30% and 35% of the annual budget in debt service costs.
The largest slices of the remaining pie go to each of health, education, and
social security sorts of expenditures, in that order.  For instance, UIC
"contributions" were only covering about half of the 11 Billion dollar UIC
outlay a few years ago.

(It's interesting to note that personal income tax accounts for only 44% of
federal income, whereas sales and excise taxes generate an impressive 21%.)