Toro

Okay, here are some statistics from the article The Fraser Institute has found it takes an average of 17.9 weeks between the time a patient makes an appointment to see a general practitioner and when he can then see a specialist. He will then be treated by a system that ranks 13th out of 22 advanced countries in access to MRI technology; 17th out of 21 in access to CT scanners and seventh out of 22 in access to radiation machines. When adjusted for the age of its population, Canada vies with Iceland and Switzerland as the highest spender on health care among the 28 most developed nations with universal systems. Dr. David Gratzer, a Toronto physician affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, calculates that a Canadian earning $35,000 a year pays a stunning $7,350 in health-care taxes. Canada is the only country other than Cuba and North Korea to ban private insurance and private care

That's a good article mirror. Here's another. Something like 2-3 million barrels a day are being traded by hedge funds. Total daily demand is 85 MM bbl/d

Thanks for telling me. I'll inform him.

Deleted. Sorry. Paid content. Thanks August.

I'd rather not shop at WalMart, but that's because its too crowded. There are legitimate criticisms, as there are with any huge organization, but Wal-Mart has had an enormous influence on retailing in America. Besides being a fabulously run company - unlike most retailers - remember what they do - they focus on getting costs down as much as possible. Who does this benefit? The rich? Hardly. The demographics of the people who shop at Wal-Mart run from the middle to lower classes. The lower socioeconomic classes spend proporationally more of their paycheque at Wal-Mart than any other income strata. It is they who benefit the most from Wal-Mart (apart from the Walton family!)

What's really happened over the past 20 years is that the gap between monetarism and Keynesianism has closed. There's no question that government spending plays in important role in the economy. What Keynes wrote back in the 1930s - and he was correct - is that government can have a tremendous effect on the economy when aggregate demand collapses, as it did during the depression. But it has also become pretty clear that when aggregate demand is healthy, government spending is inflationary (if its not checked with tightening monetary policy as someone pointed out earlier). That is the core of monetarist fiscal thought. The two aren't incongruous. I truly doubt that if Keynes had been alive today, he would have been saying to increase government spending in the 1990s. In fact, what Keynes argued was that government should expand spending during recessions and cut back during expansions. The problem with how fiscal policy was conducted from the 1970s into the 1990s was that governments made little or no effort to balance the budget let alone go into surplus as Keynes argued. Instead, it was spend, spend, spend. Eureka, what monetarism argues is that wealth cannot be created artificially by inflating the money supply in the long-run. It only creates inflation. But that doesn't mean you cannot use monetary policy to grease the economy in the short-run. Milton Friedman has argued that the 1929-1933 Depression was mainly caused by exceedingly tight monetary policy (and the Smoot-Hawley trade tariffs). He said rather than tightening monetary policy, the Fed should have eased. He's correct. Where Keynes and Friedman differ philosophically is that Keynes argued that government should increase aggregate spending while Friedman said that spending wasn't necessary and that interest rate cuts would have done the trick. They are both correct. Fast forward to today and you'll see that both have been the policy of George W. Bush. As for you link on the British economy, in the 1970s the UK was bailed out by the IMF and was grinding to a standstill when Thatcher was elected in 1979. That was not because of any lack of natural resources (Japan has no natural resources BTW) but rather because the bloated government was throwing monkey wrenches into the gears of the market economy. Britain has been the most dynamic economy of the big European economies (France, Germany, Italy) over the past 20 years because in part of the reforms undertaken by Thatcher - which are drastically needed in Germany and France today. With any restructuring, its always going to be painful, as it was under Thatcher.

moderateamericain I too, live in the South, and I share your sentiments. Also, its not just black people who are friendlier. White people are also more hospitable in the South. I've lectured at a predominately black university and have hired many black Americans. They tell me that the racism in the South is no worse than elsewhere in America. 60 Minutes did a piece a couple of years ago about the large black migration back into the South over the past decade numbering in the hundreds of thousands over the past decade.

Dude, I've worked in financial markets for over a decade. Oil closed at $67 on Friday. Whether or not its inflated is irrelevant today. Its all about supply and demand. THAT'S how markets work. Oh, and again, its ridiculous to give people a subsidy for energy when you're already taxing the hell out of it. The solution is pretty simple if what you want is to lower energy costs. Simply lower the energy taxes that are currently imposed.

What a ridiculous double-standard from the brain-dead PC crowd. Let the Gay Queen or whomever go to Nathan Phillips Square, and let Miss Universe do so too. And quit with the Tolerance Nazism and be proud that Miss Universe is Canadian.

I think that is open to interpretation. I, for one, am capable. And though I may need to use government assistance in the future if I am unemployed, there is no way I should decide that I never want to work again and collect a paycheque from the taxpayers for the rest of my life.

As for what the Tories should have done, if you are saying they should have dealt with the deficit, the Tories should have cut deep but the public hollered when they tried. The Canadian public wasn't ready to deal with the deficit in the 1980s. The Canadian Left screamed well into the late 1990s that deficit reduction was part of the "Right-wing, Corporate Agenda." Martin closed the deficit in part to fairly significant spending cuts. In that sense, Chretien was "more right-wing" than the Tories. As for "monetarism", what are you saying? The core theory of monetarism is that the money supply should not grow faster than the real economy over a business cycle. In monetarism, "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." That's pretty now accepted, with variations, as standard economic thought today

Geoffery You sound like you are a capable, able-bodied, intelligent individual. You may never need government assistance. Unfortunately, due to circumstance or ability, not everyone is in the same position. That's why I have no problem with government assistance programs that help those who truly need it. But I do not believe that people have a "right" to an income. That's the problem I have with the GAI. I can see supporting handicap people for long periods of time, but not someone who is capable. Government support programs should be more difficult to get the longer one is on the program, or if one continuously uses it. Otherwise, there is no incentive to get off the program and take low-paid entry level jobs to re-enter the workforce.

If you invest, you are accorded legal protection as a limited liability corporation. So, if a corporation goes bankrupt, creditors cannot lay claim to any more than the capital supplied into the legal entity. (As opposed to a partnership such as Lloyds of London where you are liable for all legal claims.) This legal protection is a critical element in the the wealth we've created in the modern economy. Its true that unions are monopolies within a workplace, but workers can de-certify or choose other unions. Also, its much more difficult to form a union. Ask the workers of Wal-Mart.

I have no problems with the concept of unions. If capital is allowed to organize and accorded legal protection, i.e. within a corporation, why not labour?

M2, MZM. No question that the ability to create money is easier now, but I doubt you would have seen the explosion of asset values around the world if monetary aggregates were growing 5% a year. The relationship may not be linear, but its there. Excess liquidity has filtered into the bond, real estate and commodity market as opposed to the labour market. And thus, I support what you say about the independence of central banking. That's been the argument against technological improvement for 200 years. It is technology that is a great creator of wealth. Technology increases wealth because it lowers cost curves and offers products at lower prices. There are always dislocations with new technologies, but if technology wasn't a big creater of wealth, then the most productive societies would be the poorest and vice-versa. The history of economic development of the planet is technological innovation.

I think this is a pretty good forum. There is little mean-spiritedness compared to a few other Canadian forums I have been on. Flame wars CAN be fun, but only if its in a good-natured way. When it consistently gets personal, it gets old fast. So, being relatively new here, I don't know what it was like six months ago, but its better than others.

I konked right out after I posted those.

Why? If corporations and unions both act in their own self-interest, why is one good and not the other?

I saw an interview with Trudeau on CBC many years ago saying that the debt he created was a mistake, but it was also what most other nations in the world were doing at the time, and thought to be correct.

I consider it an insult if you do not refer to me as "Toro, Omniscient Lord of Being." Sorry. Back to the discussion.

Whoa. That's a very un-Canadian thing to say.

Shoop's got it.

Hey, its gotten me far. Yet, the Canadian economy has continued to prosper as oil has gone from $20 to $65, copper from $0.70 to $1.50, nat gas from $2 to $7, nickel from $3 to $7, zinc from $0.35 to $0.60, etc., etc., etc. Ah, mercantilism! Imports do not drain money from the economy! Imports add to the economy because they give more choices to the consumer - which increases the quality our life - and lowers costs as it increases competition. Besides, foreign earnings aren't worth anything if you can't exchange those foreign earnings for anything! A focus on exports is hardly a recipe for growth. Germany and Japan run trade surpluses with America - and have for the past 20+ years - while the American economy has run chronic trade deficits, yet America has had a much healthier economy. America has unique characteristics, mainly because the dollar is the prime reserve currency, but the trade surpluses in Germany and Japan have not lead to high growth. But it hasn't. The CRB has doubled over the past 3-4 years and there is no inflation, at least no price inflation. I don't disagree that interest rates are tied to American rates, but they aren't in lock-step either. If capital is flowing into Canada, that lowers the cost of capital to all Canadians. That is what is happening right now. There is no reason why Canadian bonds can't yield less than American bonds.

Unions are in their own interest. No different than corporations.