This thread is dedicated to fellow blogger Carlo because, well he’ll understand.
Oh also to My Fellow Americans, Happy Bday.
Decima Research groups has come out with another poll:
The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey suggests that 60 per cent of Canadians believe God had either a direct or indirect role in creating mankind, shattering the myth that Canadians had long ago put their faith strictly behind the scientific explanation for creation.
(Amen)
Now economists will tell you that polls are only as good as the price you’ll pay. In other words while 91% of Canadians have been told to believe that Global Warming is the next Global Disaster and that money should be spent doing something about it, when it comes down to it not many people are actually willing to pay anything out of their pockets. Which means they don’t really believe it. Polls really just measure what people would like, not what they are willing to do or would do.
(Noah, like St. Al Goreacle saved the world)
However what I just loved from this poll is this pricey comment:
Conservatives were more likely than Liberals to say that God had no part in the process, and Alberta, regarded as the birthplace of social conservatism, had one of the lowest levels of beliefs for strict creationism at 22 per cent.
As has been well documented, this is because conservatives are more intellectual, often basing their actions on evidence rather than liberals who tend to base their actions on how much they can steal for themselves.
But as I have always said, their just isn’t much difference between Americans and Canadians, except most Canadians have an irrational hatred of Americans and most Americans think Canada is funny. Sometimes just saying “Canada” in the US makes people laugh. Likely because of what these guys started:
(Canadian Humour When it was Funny)
Unfortunately, but predictably in this nation of government institutionalized divisiveness and labelling (so much so that we have an apartheid system of separating people into reserves) another poll finds that most Canadians don’t even feel like they are Canadian.
But seriously, in the month of June, when “Two Nations of a Common Mother” celebrate their respective birthdays, is one much richer, successful and flamboyant brother heading into bankruptcy while the other brother living a simpler life is dulling his brain on the BBQ of mediocrity?
When I heard this woman: Andrea Mandel-Campbell on CBC, none-the-less, state that “Maude Barlow is part of the problem.” I almost fell out of the shower. For the first time in a long time, someone has actually said it like it is. The Emperor has no clothes. And the stupid interviewer on CBC was speechless.
Mandel-Campbell just published her book, “Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson”. It was a good read. This should be required reading in all high schools, rather than Al Goreacle’s movie. Her thesis, after interviewing multiple Canadian business leaders and politicians, is that Canada is mediocre because of Subsidies to business, Protectionism of our industries, and a failure to enter the Multinational stage. It has bred a generation of mediocre businessmen who cannot compete in the world market. And a government (namely Chretien’s) that made us with out “Team Canada” expeditions a laughing stock amongst players in the world market.
This is not a remarkable. Back in the old days the Reform Party used to often mention to the reception of glazed stares and dull interviewers, the fact that Canada has a productivity problem. Scott Brison, a Liberal who often seems out of place since he really isn’t a Liberal, mentioned this in his speech or debate (I cannot remember, the whole 48 hours was a blur to me at most times) at the past Liberal convention and was also met with dull stares. Stephen Harper has said it multiple times in his past but no longer says it now because he’d be labelled as hating Canada again.
The Conference Board of Canada, using OECD data, rates Canada as mediocre with extremely poor ratings in the areas of innovation. Report Card is here. (Now I have some issues with the Report Card, especially on the use of certain markers such as infant mortality as benchmarks for health.)
The problem is serious. It is much more serious than any other of the so-called problems because this problem will actually affect our ability to pay for the things we like. Such as jobs.
But no-one cares.
Or do they? The Harper government has been secretly making several free trade deals with other countries. This is something Mandel-Campbell points out as one of Canada’s failures on the world stage and the inept nature of previous governments - so much so that businessmen from other countries are actually laughing when they hear “Canada”. But not because we export humor.
A while ago I put up a graph demonstrating why Danny me b’y Williams needs to STFU regarding this whole whine about Newfoundland and Labrador not getting enough moolah from the Federal Government. Since this time the other premiers of the Atlantic Provinces have started whining long and loud so that they get as much of the pie as they can when Stephen Harper realizes he’ll get no seats in the Atlantic area in the next election and caves into their demands.
As usual the Mainstream Media (CTV CBC) have done a bang-up job of not explaining what the issue is about. Harper isn’t helping either because he’s been saying nothing about it on air. This leaves pug-dog yappers like Stephane Dion and Jack Layton to make all kinds of promises they could not keep.
I’m going to place into layman’s terms what the whining is all about right now. In this example the Corvette represents Natural Resourses such as oil:
Basically you have a room-mate friend who makes less money than you. So you agree to subsidize his rent a bit. You pay $350 per month and he pays $250. (You’re paying $50 in transfer payments to your room-mate). One day your room-mate inherits a Corvette from his dead uncle. Your room-mate needs cash so he sells the Corvette for $5000.
So you approach your room-mate and say, “Hey buddy, like, can you pay $300 a month now because you have $5000 in the bank?”
And he says, “No way man, that was a one time sale. I’m going to need that to pay my tuition debt, buy a gym membership, a TV and some CDs.”
So you tell your friend to fuck off, and everyone else takes his side.
These guys who wrote the AIMS Report basically use a convulted bit of accounting to explain why your friend is right not to help you out with the rent. They are saying that the Corvette is a financial asset which is still an asset when converted into money.
What it really comes down to is this. Either you believe that:
A) Subsidies should prop up poorer provinces. Poorer provinces shouldn’t have to balance their books, they should just be able to tap into the rest of our wallets to do it.
B) Poorer provinces should balance their books. If there are no jobs people should move to places where there are jobs and quit relying on government pogey.
The right answer that leads to economic prosperity is B even though it is a hard road for those people. But I had to move for work too so I have sympathy and understanding - but that’s life.
I have always maintained that instead of these crazy transfers and subsidies the government instead should give people money to move. In fact that is precisely why people went to Canada. Also it is why many Newfoundlanders are flying to Alberta to work on rigs. Responsible people know that they shouldn’t rely on the rest of us when they can do things for themselves as hard as it is.
What is often left conveniently out of any CTV or CBC report is that the experts agree and applaud the Harper government for enacting the clean and well thought out process for determining transfer payments. Not that I agree with this subsidy, of course.
What they should do is this. But then the world would be perfect.
(In Eden No One paid taxes and everything but apples were free)
Well well well. It hasn’t been more than five minutes since the Conservatives released their new budget for Newfoundland and Labrador (or more specifically Danny Williams) to start whining again and again. (See my previous post on whining and complaining and why transfer payments are a bad idea in general).
(Hercules knew what to do with greedy people)
Let me be clear, first I am an honorary Newf, being married to one, and having been screeched in and “puffin-ed”, and having been and driven to the Rock more than one time too many. But it never feels like enough.
This time Danny b’y you just need to STFU because oh me nerves, dey got me drove [crazy]. NFLD has been raking it in for years. It sure doesn’t look like it is going to stop any time soon either, me lover.
From Stats Can, Total government transfers to provinces per capita. Well a piccie is worth 10,000 bucks any day:
Note: Clicking the Links is important to understand my rambling)
The New Government of Canada released its federal budget this week with much fanfare and progressive words like “achieving our country’s full potential“™ and other such big word terminology.
(Why are they smiling? Conservatives are so green they’re now hitch-hiking.)
The ides of March rolled on, and Imperator Harper managed to wriggle away from the steely knives and duck his way out of something nobody wanted at the moment: a repeat of the 2006 civil war. Many libertarian conservatives watching their blood-money swirl clockwise down the toilet are left thinking Et Tu Brute? But libertarians will always feel that way (more on this later) since from the beginning of time we’ve always been bullied by what enterprising politicians manage to call “What Society Wants”.
(Tower of Babel: What Society Wanted)
Canada’s conscience, CTV newsmedia, seemed to be so bored with this complicated budget that, like a college student sweeping dirt under the couch in preparation for his girlfriend’s visit, they quickly swept it off into a hard to find area on their web page (I challenge you to find it). Then they filled the section with a variety of opinion from people who are usually totally against everything in general. The only memorial moment in CTV’s reporting is from the old weasel, Craig Oliver who is so stunned by the copiousity (word I made up to describe silliness) of the shiny presents that he must have had a hallucination that he was living in the glory days of P.E.T. again and randomly challenged anyone to find anything wrong with the big bonanza (paraphrase).
When respondents were asked what they thought to be the most important issue for the budget to address, social programs were the clear favourite:
Increasing spending on social programs: 50 per cent
Cutting taxes: 19 per cent
Transferring funds to the provinces for their use: 15 per cent
Reducing debt: 13 per cent.
AND
When respondents were asked whether they thought the claim of a so-called fiscal imbalance was believable, the majority said yes:
Very believable: 31 per cent
Somewhat believable: 43 per cent
Total believable: 74 per cent
Not too believable: 11 per cent
Not believable at all: 6 per cent
Total not believable: 17 per cent
So the CTF just reiterates this truth: “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.” - Alexander Tytler
(I smell sulfur and it ain’t GW Bush)
Anyhow there are quite a few analysis out there on the budget and I’ll get to my point in a minute. First though I have to say that one thing the Conservatives have been doing that the Liberals seem to have a pretty crappy track record on is funding disabled people. However this is something conservatives generally favor strongly. Moreover the Status of Women has its funding back, but it appears that the Conservatives are actually trying to fund real things like shelters rather than silly university professors and other wastes of money.
So anyhow back to my point.
Stephen Harper is probably the most intelligent politician we have had in Canadian politics since P.E.T. and also likely one of the most elegant schemers we have had for a long time. (I do think he is a decent guy with a genuine personality). I guess that basically Harper looked at the way the country was feeling (look up at those polls) and he also pondered on the new Religion of the Kyoto:
And Harper knew that he had to “head em off at the pass”, to borrow a stereotypical Western phrase (from Westerns not Western Canada).
And so we have a budget that basically fixes the fiscal imbalance, whatever that is, as well as handing out a bunch of money to mystical feel good targets such as the Holy Grail of Global Warming and other fuzzy stuff. Once again the Conservative party of Canada does the real environmental work that the Liberals are always talking about.
(The Greenest Chin Ever: The Leprachaun who laughs last, laughs…
and gets the pot of our gold)
Enraged they are, the Liberals. Deep down inside that particular and peculiar socialist waste of space, Stephane Dion, wishes he could have come out with the exact same budget except with more spending (from where the pot is dry?) and perhaps a lower rate tax cut of 0.5%. However they are so angry that they cannot get any play that they just decide they ain’t playing at all and bail out without even reading the budget.
Guys like Dion plagued the halls of every university I went to, wasting both taxpayer money and tonnes of CO2 credits along their way to social justice - whatever that is… Because for these guys equality of opportunity isn’t the classical meaning, but rather the equality of some being more equal than others. Its equality of outcome they are after. In other words no matter how much evidence that the unintended consequences of their actions are hurtful, or how BS their schemes they will decide who gets what and how; they are going to make us all pay for it. You’ll see what I mean when I write next about the minimum wage Ontario is considering. However the rats are jumping the ship, because if there really is one thing American that Harper brought to Canadian politics it is the ability to buy out and collude with the other side. And so Cormuzzi (Lib) drawn to the musky odor of the well cooked golden pork promise, burns out like a fly in one of those electic patio zappers as Dion punts him from caucus.
Because Harper knows that for some reason his party cannot break the 40 percent mark that makes a majority in these parts. Conservatives of all stripes have wandered in the wilderness for so long now that it seems they just aren’t willing to wander in the wilderness anymore. They’ve watched the Liberals feasting in Sodom forever, perched on their high place and enjoying the fat of the land while the Conservatives have had to quench their thirst by beating their heads against the stone of balanced budgets and tax cuts taking whatever scraps that fell from the sky from a stupid media that wouldn’t know the difference between basic economics from NeverNeverLand.
And so they re-forged that old idol, the Paternalistic fatted milk-cow god of Conservative old and towed it out in front of the people to see if perhaps the foolish ones would eat it.
(Party like it’s 1999 B.C.)
But think about it. Can you blame Harper? Lets pretend he came out with a sensible prudent budget. It would be like injecting the Liberals with amphetamines and bringing them a Timmies strong caf. to boot.
Because right now there is so much freaking largesse everyone wants a place at the table or they’ll shriek so loud that Hades will seem like just your average day dull roar.
(There’s enough pork for everyone!)
Stephen Taylor at Blogging Tories, himself an independent journalist, has a series of interviews with several groups, many of whom are not happy with their slice of the pork.
The interesting thing is that the pork got ate all up and still no one is happy. Obviously the alternative would have been to bleed us serfs dryer than Liberal money at the laundromat.
And at last this brings me to my point. No matter what they’ll complain and complain and complain…
Tim Robbins made a low budget movie a while ago called Bob Roberts. For those of you who have not seen it, you should. Basically it is about this right wing guy running as a Senator who rewrites all the folk music protest songs of the 60’s in a sort of counter-culture reversal. All of the songs are clever in that they do have an ounce of truth to them. According to Wikipedia, Robbins’ intentions for the film seem to be less partisan, and more about the political system in general (Roberge 1992).
One of the songs:
Complain
Some people will have / Some simply will not / But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Some people will work / Some never will / But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Like this: / It’s society’s fault I don’t have a job / It’s society’s fault I’m a slob / I’m a drunk, I don’t have a brain / Give me a pamphlet while I complain / Hey pal you’re living in the land of the free No-one’s gonna hand you opportunity.
Except in this case, the people complaining are the ones who are getting grants to fund their complaining.
I’ll examine one part of the budget, the equalization strategy part. Equalization payments are like a mini-cosmos economic study as to why subsidies don’t work. We’ve been funding Quebec for years and they don’t seem to be getting any more equal, in fact it appears they just get less equal all the time - sucking up money like a sponge.
Right now everyone has their nuts in a knot about the next round of equalization payments. Here’s a summary:
Following are the 2007-08 per-capita equalization payments for the receiving provinces with the 2006-07 payments in brackets. (All figures in millions):
N.L.: $477 ($632)
P.E.I.: $294 ($291)
N.S.: $1,308 (1,386)
N.B.: $1,477 ($1,451)
Que.: $7,160 ($5,539)
Man.: $1,826 ($1,709)
Sask.: $226 ($13)
B.C.: N/A ($260)
Basically the formula is meant to bring those up to the 10 province average. Danny Williams is as pissed as ever because he doesn’t get to write off 100% of natural resources, and here Guinty is pissed because Danny Williams gets to write off 50%. Saskatchewan is pissed because basically they’re getting more money.
Anyhow this convoluted mess proves one thing. When it comes to “equalization” or social transfers or basically robbing one guy to pay another, you end up pissing everyone off.
Here’s how it should work: No equalization payments. Let people move to where the jobs are. Equalization payments just prop up failure, like any other subsidy. Its been that way since the beginning of time and no one has ever made it work without hurting someone else and enabling people to do unsuccessful things. No one.
In fact what subsidies do is prop up the very people socialists hate: rich fat influential businessmen - because it props up their business.
For example the other day that Jack Layton guy railed on CHRA radio about how we should be both forcing and paying North American car companies to produce efficient cars instead of those crappy heaps they make now.
Excuse me? We should give taxpayer money to Detroit to prop up their failing businesses because they’re too stupid to make cars people want? And the Unions who are too stupid to realize the realities of global trade? (Anyone who wants to learn the theory of how subsidies always result in negative outcomes click here and scroll down to the Impact of Subsidy.)
And you can be sure that Stephen Harper, a trained economist, believes in subsidies about as much as Stockwell Day believes in fossils.
So then what would have been the ideal budget for those budding libertarians?
Andrew Coyne has a great summary of this which has been discussed amongst those who both:
a) care about what happens to people and,
b) are educated in economic theory
I mean would you trust your health to some guy at a store or would you trust a trained doctor more? Why are people so eager to trust politicians who have never read a simple macro/microeconomic theory text? Maybe for the same reason a certain bunch of moonbats only trust witch doctors and quacks.
With half of all the money spent in the last two budgets (11 billion), you could reduce all the income tax rates to 20%. In other words two rates, 15.5% and 20%. Also you could increase the bottom allowable deductable so that poor people aren’t taxed on money they don’t really have.
Yes folks, now ask me, what does more? Letting people spend their own money or having the government do it for them?
To Those Moonbats who are worried that the Government isn’t spending enough:
(StatsCan, compiled by langmann)
(One good thing about the conservative budget is the working income supplement or a “negative tax”which was originally proposed by the genius, Milton Friedman and which I may discuss in greater detail at some point later.)
Update:
(Like I said)
And even after all this, “poll numbers show the majority (55 per cent) of Canadians thought Quebec benefited most from the transfer of funds under equalization, a majority of Quebecers (51 per cent) believe they received less than their fair share.”
Hmmm. Remember what I said about equalization payments? Sure you do.
