CPCFTW

Tear it all down, the system sucks. 1. Hire thousands more police officers and convert prison security and correctional officers into police officers. 2. Place gps tracking implants in all non-violent offenders (with serious crimes) and release them all them under house arrest with extreme supervision (all phones and internet connections tapped and monitored, video cameras installed in house to monitor susicious activity). Wages are garnished to pay a settlement to victims, and offenders have no rights to social assistance. 3. Non-violent offenders of less serious crimes simply have no access to social assistance and have wages garnished to pay for any damages to victims or as a penalty. 4. Construct factories in rural areas with on-site housing, libraries, etc. Fence the facility in and have guards stationed around the proximity and within. Sort of like a mini city that is fenced in. Keep all violent offenders into the prison city to manufacture goods. The offenders will be paid a very low wage and have their wages garnished to pay victims. The produced goods will be sold at a competitive price in world markets (even if at a loss), to pay some of the costs of the correctional system. 5. Rent out our now empty prisons to the US for extra revenues.

Highest revenues of any government in Canadian history!! Or is it only ok to speak in absolutes when discussing expenditures in lefty la-la land? Considering they have continued to cut taxes and offer tax credits while the world is mired in a recession, but have managed to increase tax revenues, I think all non-partisan hacks can agree that they've done a great job at maintaining the government's fiscal capacity. Could it be that tax cuts stimulate economic activity that actually increases tax revenue!?! Who would have thought?

Yeah they should have just looked into the prime ministerial crystal ball... then slashed spending with a minority government... silly conservatives!

Probably by not taxing at 40-50%, plus a 25% sales tax. Oslo is the most expensive city in the world to live in. Norway also doesn't have to pay Quebec billions per year.

I understand your point, but I was just questioning your seemingly blind faith in democratically elected politicians not bankrupting our country. Cuts are necessary now because we already overspent on "investments" for the past 5 decades. Canada does not exactly have a history of paying off debts or cutting spending while in an economic "boom". In fact, in the past 50 years, we only briefly ran surpluses after our credit rating was downgraded in 1995. We were fortunate that this occurred during an economic boom rather than a bust, or we may have been another Greece (but without an ECB to bail us out). I don't see how you can reconcile this history with your argument.

Can you clarify what you mean by "fiscal expansions"? The only way to pay off debt that I am aware of is to take in more money than you spend. Saying that we paid off our debts through "fiscal expansions" is quite vague. Businesses do often use debt to expand and grow, but businesses also often go bankrupt. If many businesses go bankrupt by taking on too much debt, why would we trust our government (whose fiscal policy is managed by politicians seeking re-election) to not bankrupt itself? Would you trust a business manager to not bankrupt your company if the manager was compensated by how popular he is with his employees? There's a clear agency problem between the interests of democratically elected politicians, and the long-term interests of a country. The long-term interests of the country do not necessarily align with the short-term interests of the politician seeking election/re-election. Until that agency problem is resolved, I don't see how you can trust politicians with borrowing to "invest" in the economy.

US is actually closer to 45% if you include state and municipal spending iirc.

The problem with your perspective is that you seem to think those economic indicators are as controllable as debt/deficits. The government can't just say "we're gonna grow at 10% this year and have 2% unemployment". Those are economic indicators of the results of fiscal/monetary policies. The government can only control fiscal/monetary policy and we have already stimulated through monetary policy. You're trying to establish a positive linear relationship between government spending and unemployment/gdp growth when one does not exist. We can't just employ the 7% of unemployed to dig ditches to reduce unemployment to 0%. The costs of printing money (inflation), borrowing money (interest), and taxing the private sector would likely just result in even more people becoming unemployed by the private sector (or a reduction in real incomes from inflation). You cited borrowing costs as being low at this time, however, as I pointed out to you earlier, we are constantly rolling over debt. If taking on more debt now leads to higher yields in the future due to a weakening fiscal position, then when we roll over the bonds that we issued 2,5,10 yrs ago, we will have to pay more interest (effectively). In fact, our strong fiscal position at this time is already allowing us to roll over debt at much lower yields, and will lower interest costs in the future as long as we maintain that strong fiscal position. Furthermore, the great depression line is getting a little played don't you think? We all know that the causes of the great depression are still subject to much debate, yet you keep pointing to it as a Keynesian success story. It's getting a little tiresome.

"Hook" I don't want to admit that? Thanks for speaking for me. Yes we were in a good fiscal position due to the liberal govt and a relatively stable period of strong economic growth. We have maintained that good fiscal position through this recession thanks to the Harper government (which you refuse to admit because you're too busy drinking the anti-Harper Koolaid). What does this have to do with punked's theory that we should start running larger deficits to stimulate the economy?

The link you provided doesn't support your argument. It just seemed like a strange link to use to "call out" Tim. We already did provide stimulus, hence the record low interest rates.

FWIW I think more food carts would be great. They should offer lower food prices for consumers and force the brick and mortar restaurants to compete or die. Good old capitalism. But, in the interest of maintaining municipal revenues, the licensing fees food carts pay should be carefully designed (or we can just shut down some damn libraries and swimming pools!)

I'm sorry but wtf does this article have to do with your comment? You do realize countries are constantly rolling over debt with these bond sales right? Did you even read the article? It specifically mentions Canada's strong fiscal fundamentals as a reason for the success of the bond auction. Furthermore, every "safe haven" country had great recent bond auctions. It has been Canada's fiscal prudence that has led to it becoming a safe haven for investors.

No problem. Then we just raise taxes even more, buy some carbon credits from some 3rd world tyrannies, declare ourselves carbon neutral, and hold hands singing kumbaya.

What does this have to do with what I posted? I didn't say anything about the environment. Fact is that refineries are expensive and you want the government to step in and build them for the oil co's, since the oil co's determined that it was not profitable to do so. Building expensive refineries costs taxpayers money. And who will pay for the pipelines to the refineries if oil co's determine that it is still more profitable to refine in Texas than to build a network or pipelines to oil refineries in Canada? This shows just how economically incompetent Mulcair is. He claims Canada has dutch disease and then wants to dump taxpayer dollars into the same industry. Just another lawyer who will argue anything for a dollar. He'd probably defend Magnotta if it would get him more money than being PM. The real question is if he can sleep at night when he's knowingly manipulating simple leftists minds for money and power.

I thought the ndp didn't believe in subsidizing the "dirty" oil industry. I guess it's only ok if they can nationalize the industry and create taxpayer-funded unionized refinery jobs. Silly conservatives want to ship our jobs to Texas instead of raising taxes to pay for public sector refinery jobs! Why stop there? Let's raise taxes even more and build some national chip manufacturers to employ more public unionized labour! Why are we shipping our jobs to south korea!?!

Yeah I always get a good chuckle out of it... It's like they have their own made up pseudo-economics which they pieced together from wikipedia, youtube videos, and ferngully. It would be more comical if the opposition-in-waiting didn't subscribe to the same school of "economics".

I don't know what you do for a living, but presumably you pay for all that stuff by being employed. If you're employed in the private sector then the wages private enterprise pays you pays for those things. If you are employed by the public sector, then the taxes paid by private enterprise and private sector employees pays you for your labour to pay for all that. If you are self-employed then you pay for it all yourself, but you are in the minority. Pretty simple.

Pretty much yeah.. It's much easier for employers to lay off than to jump through the hoops required to fire employees. It also would make being laid off far more palatable to employees, who will likely be less productive since they won't care if they are laid off. It would be the left's "survival of the most unfit" dream come true.

I'm on my phone, so I haven't had a chance to read the report, but I'm pretty sure the report doesn't say anything about "raising ei payouts", as Canuckistani implied. For example, if you raised ei payouts to 120% of annual income, everyone and their grandmothers would be asking for a layoff. Borrowing from China to give the unemployed more money and create false demand is not a solution. It is the problem.

cite?

This attitude is the problem.. Businesses ARE the taxpayer. They pay wages which are taxed as employment income, they pay corporate taxes, and shareholders/owners of business pay taxes on private business growth and profits. The only other true taxpayers are the small minority who are self-employed. Tax breaks to business is not "spending taxpayer money", it is letting taxpayers keep more of their money. Anyway, France's socialist govt just hiked taxes on big business and the 1%.. I guess we'll see how that is working out for them in a few years.

The PM later remarked "I'm starving.. Let's get a bite to eat". Is this classless given the amount of children who actually are starving in Africa? Should the PM of our country have more class? I think an RCMP investigation is in order.

no...

Most unions are in the public sector now, so this doesn't really make any sense.

Thousands of federal govt workers just got selected for layoffs this week. GDP grew 0.3% in April (released today), while the public sector shrunk. More details are available on the statscan website. I'm looking forward to a balanced budget just in time for Harper to be re-elected.