2024 Canadian Political Thread
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I guess some god died and made you arbiter of the universe and we should all just listen to what you proclaim because your mom told you you're a very special smart boy? HOW DARE we have opinions that differ from the crap you spew.
Folks like you will insist thats it econmic law, the only way, the most sense. Its like watching babies regurgitate pablum repeatedly because they're so deep up their own othordoxy cult as they read it somewhere or wanted their professors love. Almost as bad as Trumpists.
Don't like Keynes, how about Krugmam or Riech? If you're successful in pushing too many of your class dividing ideas, youll need to really know Marx/Mao/Ho Cho Minh. Or you could just stick to Chicago, a provincial in a far away province.
Your opinions are not the issue. It's the fact that you attempt to justify your opinions with double-talk and/or using "evidence" that consists of complete and utter misunderstanding of concepts that you claim for the basis of your "evidence."
No. I have never posited/stated "economic law" (which doesn't even exist). You make such a nonsensical claim because I simply pointed out your lack of understanding, whether it be what productivity actually entails, how you conflate that (i.e. misunderstand the very concept) concept. And you do so, because you either a) want to be argumentative, b) cannot handle being called out on your lack of understanding or knowledge on a particular concept and/or c) cannot handle the reality that it is actually your orthodoxy that is being questioned simply because I pointed your lack of understanding/knowledge. Hate to break it to you, for all the Trump comparisons you like to trot out in various threads, you are the one that act likes a Trump. You speak falsehoods because of your lack of knowledge on any number of subjects. You whine when faced with your own inaccuracies/lack of knowledge and then accuse others of having orthodoxy.
LOL! I've never stated any like or dislike of Keynes or any other economist. You on the other hand are again showing how you love talking out of both sides of your mouth. You literally claimed economics as the "dismal science" and now you want to name drop economists? LOL Saying nothing for the fact that me, pointing out that you don't know anything about certain economic concepts, is not an example of me "pushing...class dividing ideas."
They're references to economic schools of thought. A certain member on this board likes to repeatly tell me that they know all and i know nothing. They top it off with telling me to shut up because I don't beleive what they do. Last i checked its a free country.
I've accused them of not actually thinking about the issues, but instead only restating a particular school of though as if it were the only way to do/think about things, and basically being a country bumpkin who cant change or learn anything new.
I've also put out that if the economoc class warfare continues and the wealth divides get worse, then we'd most likely see the predictions of Marx and subsequent communists come to pass. But who am i kidding the rich will most likely shoot the poor with robots before that happens.
Hope this helps.
"The rich will most likely shoot the poor with robots".
Not before the poor seize the means of production.
And the meek shall inherit the earth.
It's all pretty predictable really.
I'm dead serious (maybe)
I actually havent seen you provide a single counter argument to anything Ive posted, only some wierd control freak having a meltdown attempt to control the narrative and pillory my view by telling me i know nothing or everything i post is wrong.'Subject matter experts' who try to crush dissenting views come off as scared that someone will see behind the curtain of the false prophets.
You've posted a ( singular ) defintion of productivity but not the only one. You need to broaden your horizon.
If you're trying to tell me that reduced energy consumption isnt counted as reduced GDP in almost every classical economic school, you're being disingenous. Sure efficiency might go up, but GDP metrics are riddled with these inconsistencies where a societal good is considered an economic harm and thus reduces your measure of productivity. Preverse incentives and unacounted for externalities abound in most economics ive read about.
When you say something to the affect of "GDP is flawed because it goes down when prices decrease" - I don't need provide a "counter argument". GDP is not flawed, because that opinion of yours is based on flawed logic or lack of understanding. As explained before, if price decreases, many things can happen such that GDP may decrease or increase or stay the same. You are actually not making a point, you are stating your opinion (i.e. "GDP is flawed") and providing your evidence ("because when price goes down, GDP decreases"). I am stating your evidence is incorrect - i.e it is false to say with certainty that when a price falls, that that definitely means GDP decreases. I don't care about your opinion. I am making a statement about your evidence - which is wrong. I am not making a statement about my own opinion, simply commenting on your evidence NOT your opinion. You, erroneously, believe that challenging your evidence is somehow me lacking or not providing my own "counter argument" (i.e. my own opinion). I do not need to state my own opinion as it is irrelevant/not germane to critiquing your evidence. That is what you cannot seem to understand. I'm guessing, because you do not enjoy being called out for your incorrect statement that forms the basis of your evidence about your opinion on "GDP being flawed."
I don't need to provide you with additional measures of productivity, when you don't even grasp/understand the most common measure of productivity. What is the point of giving you additional measures of productivity, when you don't understand the most common measure (i.e. GDP per hour worked). Seriously mate, you (as I stated previously) conflated the concept of productivity with output (evidence that you don't understand the measure to begin with). So no, when I point out to you that absolute output is NOT the same thing as GDP per hour worked (i.e. measure of productivity) that does NOT mean I have to "broaden my horizons" - it's that you don't understand GDP per hour worked. My point was you don't understand that measure, the point is not what other measures of productivity exists.
I never made any comment about "reduced energy consumption." This is a classic example of your nonsensical drivel. You are trying to attribute to me, something I never stated (with statements like, "so you're basically saying...." or "so what you mean is....). You (people like you) do such a thing (i.e. attempt to attribute to me a position that I never took) so that you can try to make some other claim completely unrelated or germane to the topic at hand - call it shifting the narrative or moving the goal posts, whatever. At the end of the day, it's nonsensical drivel. Nonsensical drivel, I'm guessing, driven by the fact that you don't like to be called out when you are shown to be incorrect.
Yes, I do understand the quantifiable, measurable stat. But like any person who was educated in what stats mean rather than just rote repetition of their existence, I am challenging the stat on the basis that perhaps it is the wrong stat, or at least not providing the complete picture all by itself. Do you get that?
You are right "GDP per hour worked" is the basic stat. Break it down. Have they reduced or gained that stat based on technological/innovative multipliers, or just found a way to pound more work out of workers for the same pay, or falling pay ?
"One worker now doing the work of many" has been the productivity gain in many industries, just look at fishing, or lumber, where they literally produce more with less people thanks to machinery improvements. Human workers get the axe, the "worked hours" go down, even if the economic activity stays the same or increases. Technically, that is increased productivity.
GDP per hours worked is not going to mean a whole lot in the age of AI & automation, if you count human hours worked as the basis of the stat.
You could just as easily say "GDP produced per joules of mW/H of energy expended", because for a factory making microprocessors, or a computing array doing blockchain processing, the power costs will greatly exceed the human ones; you could look at Canada's economy and ask how much GDP we create per units of energy expended to create it. It's a weird productivity stat, but a valid one, considering how a nation's ability to supply its own energy (especially power grid energy) or import it might affect their economy as much as the wages of its workers.
That's not even beginning to dip a toe into whether "GDP" is itself even the right component to measure an economy's actual production. Economists do not even consider that debate settled, so that's half the productivity measurement right there.
There's nothing wrong with skepticism over something like a complex issue being "explained" by a simple, very reductive, stat. I can pull a textbook off my shelf that explains all this and more, in technical terms, but
Well, it has been exacerbated that "chase the dividend" mentality, definitely (look at Boeing - they chased it over a cliff). But it was also made worse by western countries' fetish for seeking overseas production and calling it "free trade", and - let's be honest - consumers here seeking the lowest prices. They will always choose more money for themselves "right now" over long-term objectives, and if the "west" has failed to keep their advantages compared to the "east", it is in that realm. As a society, we lack the leaders with iron discipline necessary to coordinate an economy with long term strategic thinking. Everything is a get rich quick scheme, and logic gets kicked to the curb when people have dollar signs in their eyes. For those with no power, they might have no choice but to prioritize the here-and-now choices based on personal survival, but what's appalling is how those with all the money and power and therefore an abundance of choice, are always choosing wrong, and betraying their own countries if given a chance to. I'm not just talking about that "borderless world" concept people are talking up at gatherings like Davos. I mean - at least in Canada - that we are a 1st world country with a 3rd world elite; the builders have all been replaced by whiny sellouts and grifters, only interested in perpetuating the grand scam and feeding their own egos.
There has always been this element in Canada, this cohort of people, who have tried to steer this country towards being nothing more than an obedient supplier of raw materials to foreign powers, who hate investing in Canadian production, technology, education, and even culture. The higher up you go in the Canadian business community, the more of these types you find. Their mentality is that we are meant to be the servants and never the masters, and their politics runs the same way. Then they act like we can just rub some genie lamp and productivity will magically appear, without them having to invest (or be taxed) a dime in order to build & support it.
Not that nations of "the east" are not up to their eyeballs in corruption now too. Once the lean times ended there thanks to more advanced development, the scammers got in there and now places like China have something of a zombie economy going (a bubble always ready to burst of money flowing from us to their industries did not keep it inflated). The scammers, embezzlers, and skimmers then have to send their money overseas to launder (billions every month), and what's their favourite way to do that? Real estate, specifically OUR real estate. (And that's the real reason why we have a housing crisis despite construction going at a breakneck pace for 3 straight decades, with developers almost always getting what they wanted. Canadian working stiffs have to compete with that.)
How does even that affect our productivity? Well when our workers are forced into ever longer commutes just to get from living space to workplace, because they're priced out of their own communities, pouring a greater portion of their wages into housing costs than is even possible. So that half hour commute becomes 2 hours, that workday basically becomes 3 hours longer, and they do not get paid any more for that part. The supply chains get longer and leaner, there's no locality in the supply and no resiliency when something gets disrupted, so prices for goods skyrocket too.
The only supply chain that never seems to break down, despite every effort made to kill it off, is hard drugs. In economic terms, it's like a cancer devouring everything else. (Only a golden age for the manufacturers of Naloxone and the providers of funeral services, really.) Absolute productivity destroyer, and massive wealth redistributor (upwards), from society at large into the hands of a few scumbags.
If you're too much of a coward to look it up and face the truth, then that's your own fault.
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Sure, no doubt we are an intellectual bunch, like the Vienna cafe culture, only hornier.
Actually scratch that - a lot of those guys were fuck fiends.
Honestly, the debt issue is lent very little credibility except as a drum for the right in Canada to beat when in opposition.
Harper cut the GST by 2%, cut other taxes for the higher end of society too, but it is not like he did that only after debts were all paid off. Really the purpose was the cut the federal government's ability to pay for services like health care, but it also impacted other things like the military.
Like a lot of other things he inherited from Harper, Trudeau also never reversed that decision by raising it back up. Due to political optics? Well, probably, considering people hate the GST/HST, but it's a consumption tax, so given the choices, it's very different than providing tax relief on things people earn.
Cons want to reduce taxes in ways that benefit the wealthier, and given the choice between that and killing off the debt, they chose the tax cuts.
NDPers want to provide more services especially to the poorer, and given a choice between that and killing off the debt, they choose services.
The Libs are like the average of these two positions. They like to do what's expedient and has good optics, but sometimes they have to discipline to deal with the long term debt boogeyman for real. At least under Chretien, they did the unpopular thing and taxed while reducing spending, but for all the improvement of Canada's debt situation, it was not without repercussions that people still resent today.
These are tendencies though, not absolute certainties. Sometimes right wing governments spend big and unwisely, and sometimes leftish governments turn into cheapskates when it comes to services.
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Yeah it is pretty terrible. "Socilalists supposed to be planners" is not the story. This project goes back to the days of Christy Clark and earlier, it's a plan in the works for 20 years or more (and anyway, it's a Metro Vancouver project, and Metro is basically under the Mayors' council). That's actually fast, though, compared to Victoria's - they were debating having sewage treatment at all for decades, just dumping shit (literally) into the ocean for ages.
It's been a nightmare though - the province and feds helped a bit, but now that the scammy Accoina bullshit has multiplied the cost, they are leaving the north shore to its own devices. That's a dirty trick, considering part of the overrun was thanks to the sewage / water / fisheries evolving from just secondary to tertiary treatment as the standard. Another part was that they did not secure enough land for the site, but the site is wedged between where the Capilano Reserve is, and where a Seaspan shipyard is (building things for the military & Coast Guard). Not easy to get waterfront land, but let's just say they had other options for the land area, and did not consider it fully.
(BTW, the current plant is on Capilano rez land, under the Lions gate Bridge, at the mouth of the Capilano river, so people were eager to see that site no longer be the place where the entire North Shore shit system comes to its concluson.)
Really, the province and feds need to recognize the north shore communities do not have the means to pay for this fuckup alone. All of BC paid for the Site C dam, and all of Canada for the accurse TMX pipeline, so why not this which is absolutely needed? Now is not the time for them to be cheapskates.
Yeah, what the absolute fuck. Maybe the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing?
Or is it that among the movers and shakers, they adhere to the idea "it's just business, not personal" ?
Personally, they should take a lesson from what happened to Boeing. They has basically won the contract to supply the RCAF with Super Hornets to replace all the legacy Hornets. Then they decided to sue the government over some other bullshit that was none of their business, and by biting the hand that fed them, lost a contract worth tends of billions of dollars. Telling them to fuck off was probably worth it, as a basic lesson in customer service.
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Indeed, they have spent more money fighting against these changes than they would have had to spend to make these changes themselves.
An "energy" industry that ignores all forms of energy except that which they can rip out of the ground and burn - not smart. The main area they innovate in is lame excuses.
But the wars you speak of are caused as much by Washington as anyone else. The chain of global conflict has been forged link by link, and every opportunity to break that chain, they turned down, because conflict and chaos is in their interest too, no matter what bullshit they feed the public about their own virtue.
Yeah, easy to talk about "no waiting lists" when people down there just die for lack of resources to stay alive. When you see a parent go through something like cancer treatment, or a child through anything major, you'll know the "let them pay or die in the gutter" approach is not the better alternative.
That is basically what the lawsuit will come down to.
Did the contractor fuck them over, or was the contractor being handed an ever-changing project that caused the costs to multiply.
I think it is actually both at the same time. It is possible for both of them to be in the wrong. We're the ones who get fucked by either result, not them.
Time is a good constant, "equivalent man-hours" better than "hours worked" as a term, anyways.
And I do agree, Canada needs more legit productivity. We have been too lax in R&D for a long time, too lax in utilizing protecting the economic gains we have made generating our own R&D / academic research, and I would also point out completely woeful when it comes to training (I mean on the job training, not just academic credentialism). Many employers come in with the attitude that training workers is not their burden, and even if it boosts their productivity over the long term, in the short term getting them to invest in it is like squeezing blood from a stone. Part of their generally servile attitude, IMHO.
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debt issue isn't just a right wing issue, it's everyone's issue
the GST won't even cover the interest payments the Turd has created in 8 short yrs
interest is higher than the Healthcare Transfers to Provinces, more than Military spending
specially the young, who will be paying for it, we, the main group here, have been still paying for the first POS Trudeau's stupidity of starting the debt spiral in the 60's
and the GST even at 7% wasn't high enough to fund the military or healthcare the way that would be needed to be proper
and it isn't just a consumption tax, it's a tax on productivity, it's a tax on a tax, fuel for one example
exponentially harmful, if it was only on the final product at the retail level, then sure, a consumption tax, it's not
and our approach isn't the better alternative either
there are plenty of examples of a hybrid system, mostly in Europe that get far better results than we do, for less
and our system isn't free, it's fully funded by taxes, which are pretty much 50% of all provincial budgets now
all of which are heavily in debt, deficit every yr, decade after decade, AB was the only one for a brief period, technically
you pay one way or another, die in the gutter from another issue you can't afford, same shit different pile
all of which is due to gov't
their lack of ethics, character, laziness, policies
that allow it to continue, no competition, monopolies, tax credits, moronic immigration policies/lack of them
funding edumaction that doesn't produce anything, research too, training, forcing, encouraging employers to increase it themselves
we've went for slave labour, not in the right fields we need, but what will increase taxes, so they can keep wasting it
like this, just one example of the last 8 yrs of complete waste
The announcement came via a video appearance of Trudeau at the annual Summit for Democracy in South Korea.
If that sounds a little suspect, just wait for the details. As part of the package, Trudeau said: “Today I’m announcing that Canada is investing $8.4 million on research across the global south to better understand how climate change interacts with democratic decline.”
Something called the International Development Research Centre is getting $4.6 million to “create an equitable, feminist and inclusive digital sphere.” Fabulous.
our gov't is now 25% roughly of our economy, the biggest problem
all that money had to come from the other 40% who actually create, pay the taxes
roughly 15% are young, 15% are retired, another 10% students, don't work, can't work
when you have the gov't that large, that kills any competitiveness
economically it still is 2015, we've gone backwards
we're back alright
"the GST won't even cover the interest payments the Turd has created in 8 short yrs"
Actually, two Conservative Prime Ministers,, Harper and Mulroney, were responsible for more than $600 billion of our ~$1 trillion of federal debt. Harper created structural deficits with a 2 point cut to the GST and huge corporate tax cuts.
So "Turd" had a lot of help from a couple of fiscally responsible conservative shits. Harper being possibly the biggest shit ever.
"our gov't is now 25% roughly of our economy, the biggest problem"
Our government size compared to GDP is about the same as the US, and much lower than European nations.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/government-size-by-country
Actually, two Conservative Prime Ministers,, Harper and Mulroney, were responsible for more than $600 billion of our ~$1 trillion of federal debt. Harper created structural deficits with a 2 point cut to the GST and huge corporate tax cuts.
So "Turd" had a lot of help from a couple of fiscally responsible conservative shits. Harper being possibly the biggest shit ever.
"our gov't is now 25% roughly of our economy, the biggest problem"
Our government size compared to GDP is about the same as the US, and much lower than European nations.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/government-size-by-country
And JT is on pace to do the same amount of debt, all by himself, and in half the time. You keep repeating Mulroney plus Harper, why is it that JT doing the same amount (by themselves) in half the time is somehow not worse? JT is at $520 billion in combined deficits, not including fiscal 2024 for which the audited financials are not yet available AND the projected $40 billion deficit for fiscal 2025. So, actually, JT is the deficit king. At the rate JT has (is still) accumulating deficits - you can take any two PM's in Canadian history, and they still will not equal (even Mulroney + Harper) as to what one single JT did all on his own. When you have to take 2 PM's accumulated debt to somehow try and convince (apparently) yourself that that is worse than 1 PM's accumulated debt, that's some hard coping you are doing.
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