Who is Hudak’s team of advisors? They should all be fired because anyone who lets a politician publicly state that they want to cut 100,000 jobs deserves to lose theirs. I don’t even want to comment on whether or not it’s actually a good idea for Ontario (I’d argue it’s not), but let’s examine how dumb a political move it is.

For context, Hudak has suggested that he will create 1,000,000 jobs and part of this plan involves cutting 100,000. Let’s ignore the fact that in Ontario there are only 560,000 people unemployed, so I’m not sure what or who the other 300,000 to 400,000 jobs are for. Let’s just talk strategy.

There are 650,000 public sector works in Ontario. That means that while 560,000 people might be motivated to vote for Tim Hudak, there are 650,000 motivated not to. Sure only about 1/6 will lose their jobs, but who’d take their chance? And Right there, we’re at a net loss of 90,000, and some multiplier more, if we also assume that close friends and relatives will have similar motivations.

Further, people have a tendency to prefer avoiding losses than they are to acquiring gains, which is exacerbated by the awareness that cuts are easy, creating jobs are hard. This leaves the motivation, one-sided. While many may be eager to have a more fiscally responsible government,, public service jobs serve the public (it’s right in the name). People typically don’t want to give up their firefighters, police, teachers, nurses, etc. Remember that loss-aversion problem!

Wynne has also done a good job exploiting that, citing cuts have consequences in response to Walkerton. Although, one might argue that it’s a little disingenuous, as much of the fault lies with 2 managers, the Walkerton report explicitly lays out that lax regulatory oversight as a function of cuts was also a huge factor attributable in large part to the hasty budget cutbacks of the early Harris administration. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe people are really motivated to save that 2% and are persuaded by the fact that it will somehow help balance the books. Rob Ford got elected on stopping that gravy train!