Zeitgeist

It’s this kind of arrogance the world sees.

Time will tell. There was very little US-China trade in the 70’s.

He seemed worried about Trudeau’s remarks after the G7 Conference. Trump’s remarks on trade with Canada this week illustrate that he cares very much about the US’s biggest export market.

I think the US fed gov is taking a big gamble on this.

If Trump follow through with his threats, the tariffs and counter tariffs will damage exports for both countries, especially as the US exports more cars to Canada than Canada exports to the US. He will have more workers, companies and countries blaming him. There will be implications at the midterms and the next presidential election. Trump’s last press conference remarks on trade are more fodder for anti-Trump forces. He’s really unifying Canadians against him and giving Trudeau the next election.

I wonder if the big dump by China of US debt is coming. They may soon decide it’s worth illustrating that there’s a limit to how much trade abuse they will take.

We had a lot of gov-funded research chairs. Harper had cut these back, however. We have many private-public partnerships. I definitely think that there's too much reliance on government to take care of this kind of work in Canada.

It needs to be higher. Recommendations?

Actually accepting legitimate refugees is a good thing to do as long as the country can afford it, which it can. So can America.

Oh, so you’re acknowledging that progress is a group effort requiring the brightest minds from around the world, not just one country. How global of you. We have Yanks in our IT sector too. It’s ridiculous to compare numbers of patents and Nobel prizes with a country one tenth the size of the US. It’s apples and oranges. As I’ve said before, the US benefits from economy of scale, as you end up with large centres for industries, such as Silicon Valley. Our centres are smaller. However you also have big country problems in terms of safety, security, environmental impacts, etc. There are advantages and disadvantages of the large and the small, but the UN Human Development Index consistently ranks small countries at the top of its list, such as the Scandinavian countries.

The devil is almost always in the details. You can't just seize on the details that support your argument and ignore others. I know that's the norm. You have to look at sectors. R & D is a nagging problem, but it's not like there's little R & D. The problem we've found is that it doesn't seem to matter how much you lower taxes for businesses or give them other breaks, they tend to hoard profits rather than reinvest. You'd be surprised how carefully policy has been drafted to prevent this, but business likes to turn all risk over to government. Sound familiar? Think of your massive government bailouts of big business in the US after the Great Recession.

There is truth to what you're saying, but there is a very real risk that we may lose organized labour, which on the whole leads to further shrinkage of the middle class.

Au contraire. I'm all about the facts, not bombastic exaggerations or false equivalency.

More exaggerations and fear-mongering. Take a page from your prez: Fake news, folks!

You obviously have no idea how vast and diverse Canada’s IT sector is.

No. Certain more drastic measures, war measures, are necessary during war, like food rations in Britain. That doesn’t make a country fascist. Stop equating that which is better with that which is worse.

It’s just exaggerated. A big challenge in Canada is keeping our IT startups once they become bigger players, because they tend to be bought up. Also our productivity, though high in some sectors, is brought down by more traditional sectors like forestry and extraction. Also some companies don’t reinvest enough in R & D, leaving government to do the job.

Don’t equate Japanese internment camps in the US to Nazi death camps. That’s highly disrespectful to the millions of Jews who lost family in the Holocaust.

But they dare not due to social and political pressure.

The US was hit much harder in the last recession, so I’m not surprised benefits were extended for Americans. When you look at CPP, you also have to look at all the amazing regional support for seniors: meals on wheels, subsidized transportation, long term care. It’s substantial in Canada. Those might be the order of top destinations for Canadians who emigrate, but emigration from Canada is a nonissue. We are more contented than Americans. The 2017 World Happiness Report ranks Canada 9th and the US 18th.

90 million seems reasonable actually. I think it’s worth it. We have some good naval ships and infantry vehicles. We already blew it with subs. Let’s get top flight gear for the Air Force, which is doing most of the combat these days.

It’s not cross border. We have a massive Amazon warehouse in the city next to us. Most of the stuff is from outside of North America.

Canada has a strong IT sector that rises and falls, but market share will naturally drop for western developed economies as other countries develop their IT, such as BRIC countries. It’s not a bad thing because global competition is the highest level of human production. You’re benefiting from a vast sharing of ideas. That’s why protectionism on the whole is foolish. There will almost always be some exceptions though.

I question whether you understand the purpose of government, which is a nonprofit entity whose purpose is to meet the needs of society at large, not only the interests of the few. We have a postal service and train system that reach unprofitable, distant and small communities because that is what comes with the social organization and the agreement of being part of a country. We understand that there are essential services: schools, fire departments, police, hospitals. We understand that we are investing in communities over the long haul. We also understand that certain industries are essential to the viability of an economy: steel production, roads, defence. We can argue that some of this should not be in government hands, but in a small country like Canada, for many years only government could insure and fund major infrastructure like the national railway. Countries build things like The St. Lawrence Seaway canal system or the Confederation Bridge because they serve multiple interests of citizens. Otherwise what’s the point of having government? Private companies seldom make that level of social investment, yet you also need private companies in competition. You need both, government and business.

So is Britain fascist? Canada is left of Britain in some ways. The problem with your false equivalency is that it’s nihilistic. It makes everything qualitatively the same, puts death camps and Disney on the same moral ground. That’s the kind of thinking that, over time, enables seriously inhuman acts, because everything is relative. It’s the same Post- modern moral relativism that Jordan Pederson calls out. You’re not the only one. Even evangelicals are demonstrating it. When there is no moral standard, everything is justified.