blueblood

Exactly, the business of wasting tax dollars to produce food at lower than cost of production has been a serious problem. It has put many farmers out of business because they can't compete with countries dumping excess production. The world is a better place with the despots starting to disappear due to higher commodity prices. Its a shame that there is an arrogance regarding the ag sector as a profession. The employment rates of university grads specializing in ag is close to 100 percent. The western producer has 3 pages in the classified section looking for jobs with a variety of education and skill sets. Young people with university ag degrees are having a good laugh at those with liberal arts degrees who would poo-poo them because they were hicks. High prices cure high prices. There is an enormous amount of money being poured into the ag sector through investors. My guess is twenty years down the road look at some skyscrapers being retrofitted to house agricultural production, the money and returns are now here to do that. As for ethanol, its simply this - the usa cannot afford to pay massive subsidies to farmers to produce cheap corn and at the same time import vast amounts of oil. Oil imports are projected to be down from above 60 percent of oil usage down to 45 percent. Not only that, the usa as the worlds largest ag exporter gets a much added boost to its battered economy through higher priced exports. The european model for agriculture is an epic failure. Africa is a basketcase and europe is literally broker than the usa. When prices of energy and ag get high enough that results in investments for improvement, desalinization plants in the usa are most likely on the way. The rate of tech advancement in the ag sector these days rivals advances in computers. The world has become richer and more and more people can afford to buy things, the heyday of north america's high living standards with cheap inputs are over. For those opposed to the direection of modern ag policy, ask yourselves is what you want worth giving up your standard of living? We in the west should learn to accept high commodity prices and learn how we can benefit from them.

These blasted smartphones make posting difficult so bear with me... To disect the jist of your post ill try and shorten your points. Your point about water in the future is a non starter, you underestimate the human capacity to innovate, quite possibly desalinization and pipeline networks are the future. As for infertile land, that's where our friend fertilizer comes in. There are gps guided autopilot machinery and remote controlled machinery components which were unheard of 15 years ago, technology has a knack for solving problems. Volatile weather has been around since the advent of agriculture and will be around for a long time. That's why we have crop insurance. In spite of volatile weather, there is still some production and prices will rise to ration demand. Ethanol is as much a waste of oil resources as growing corn and giving it away to poor people and put them out of business. Cnn.com has an oil dependancy article and suggests that forein oil imports will drop in the future due in large part to ethanol production. The only fallacy is that ethanol production will increase oil use when in fact oil use is projected to decrease. As for the african farmers being put out of business by large corporations, who do you think works for those companies? Could they be africans perhaps? And why would those companies take a bath shipping products out of africa due to freight charges when there are numerous buyers in african govts? No, when you have subsidized food from idiot europeans that is sold for less than it costs to produce in africa, you got an unsustainable situation - a broke europe and a 3rd world africa. Foreign govts from the middle east are investing to plow up the serrenghetti which will mean employment, stability, and a better economy.

Its too bad for the liberals they don't have a layton type leader. I don't agree with him but I have to give props to his leadership capabilities. Had he been leading the liberals it would be a horse race.

Ask the liberals and ndp why we are in a deficit. You do remember the coalition? The libs wanted stimulus, they got it in spades!

You are forgeting that those companies are very rarely privately owned. Shareholders are the owners and there has to be consensus amongst the majority of shares. That's a check. Also the market is a check, if demand is high enough and the returns are there, there results bitter competition. If the labor becomes too great an expense, the firm relocates somewhere more profitable because of the obligation the company has to provide returns to shareholders. Imo, labour is a part of the market that keeps companies in check, not the check. If the company doesn't fairly compensate workers, the bottom line suffers, and that fair compensation is the optimum balance between employee and employer satisfaction. Fair compensation is a two way street, failure to see this results in lost productivity, revenues, and jobs.

And from where I'm standing gerrard got smoked because uncle kevin made him snap. If you think kevin not stooping down to gerrard's level is winning than have at it. Just as I view unions are a race to the boTtom. How would gerrard feel about ripping off retired people who invest in the company because he wants to raid the retained earnings? How would the teachers union feel if they caused a tax increase and service cuts to pay for their demands which are these days unaffordable? It cuts both ways... Everybody understands that people better off are a good thing. However, from what I see unions and their supporters aren't seeing the forest for the trees, they're thinking small picture instead of big picture. What this says is that there is a fundamental problem in the education system and that steps should be taken to remedy that.

I can see your frustration and I empathize. I believe this particular debate I have to argue on personal experience. On one side we have some people who argue on the labor side from personal experience. On the other there is myself who is a small business owner who gives the other and sometimes provocative position. It gives you the 360 degree view that you like. if someone thinks I'm bluffing, I will respond in kind.

To note -> just watched AC 360 on CNN and Anderson has just tore a strip off of a spokesman for the gadhafi regime. If you can find the video online I recommend seeing it, tis gold!

And what would you do to "push back"? Make uncle sam Say uncle on the softwood or we have fun with oil and other resources? There is a lack of capital concerning canadian resources and its a good thing we are providing as friendly of an environment as possible. Softwood lumber negotiations are a part of that.

No big deal china is now our number 1 lumber destination. Softwood lumber is chump change in terms of importance of things going south. I'd rather have a friendly usa that will put capital to developing our other more valuable resources.

That will be a doozy to campaign against. I think liberal brass is moving to give ignatieff the heave ho by letting him get smoked in the alleged election

Being as I have stated numerous times I own a commodity production business, your reading comprehension needs some work. And judging by your response a better school than you. Does your school give refunds? Oh we rednecks can be such a pain sometimes!!

Let's look at things objectively for a moment. There is no doubt that there are nutbars that have embraced the tea party movement. The one who got punted out for his racist rermarks is an example of that. But there are nuytbars on the other side as well, we can see some examples in the union protests and some extreme cases in opposition to GW Bush. I'd say the tea party leaders are very intelligent people as well as democrats. The tea party brass has managed to fight a branding nightmare with the whole racism thing by throwing the perpetrator under the bus, and have the african american brass of the tea party take the naacp to task over the issue. No, the tea party aren't idiots, they attract idiots, just like the other guys.

The funniest was when the MSM tried to label the tea party as racists and had the whole naacp vs tea party situation. The tea party made a lot of people look like fools.

Once again gerrard throwing a hissy fit, resorting to a personal attack ("you don't know what your talking about"), and having a pity party isn't eviscerating anyone. Uncle kevin as a tv host prefered to let the shop steward make an ass out of himself. GDP numbers and higher standards of living are proof positive that those who compete are those who benefit. Because the americans won't compete, they will be mired in 10 percent umemployment until they either smarten up or the emerging markets umemployment plummets and there is a workforce shortage resulting in too high of wages to justify the ocean freight. Let's look at tim hortons for example, non unionized yet a worker in alberta outearns the worker in ontario. Why is that, could that be free market economics? People employed in china and brazil and making money whatever their salary is a good thing because being in the commodity business, the more paying customers the better. The bigger the fools are in the manufacturing belt of usa and canada, the more capital goes to emerging markets employing potential customers.

A potential tory majority would in the end be a good thing for the liberals. By the time the majority played out, canadians would be looking at change as it could potentially be 10 years of harper in office. I'd say the liberals have been caught bluffing. A part of me thinks liberal brass is wanting to blow the party up and go for a total rebuild.

How is that being had? If basically snapping and resorting to personal attacks is winning the argument, then I guess he won. O'leary made him snap and look like a fool to his audience, which is investors. That and kevin has to deal with time constraints and looking somewhat. professional. The wage and benefit package is irrelevant. In the end the brazilian workers can do the job at a lower cost to the company than in canada. As a result, they have jobs and aren't reduced to sitting around poor. I sppose leo didn't take into account that their salary has more purchasing power in brazil than it would in canada. At the end of the day the quality of life for brazilians constantly gets better while north america has flattened out. Would you rather see the chinese and brazilians poor for perpetuity? The world has become a big place and money follows the path of least resistance, someone else will always do it better for less. I will ask you to google dragons den vs. Hargrove. Cbc has conveniently removed it from youtube...

The world is a far richer place than it was twenty years ago. The income gap between emerging markets and the rest of the world has shrunk dramatically. Because overseas workers are willing to work, they are the new fast emerging middle class which is a large contributing factor to sky high gdp growth in bric countries. Free market economics is not a race to the bottom, its the most efficient way of getting better off. Unfortunately for north american wage earners they screwed themselves. If people in north america are too dumb to get in the commodity business or price themselves out of work, they deserve what happens

Russia has a lot of land that hasn't been even used yet. Not only that, they're technologically behind us. Gmo foods have the best yields and are priced competitively with conventional crops in terms of cost of production, so that myth of being held hostage is busted. Plus farmers can invest in said companies and get dividend cheques. I do wish terminator seeds existed, it would help out with weed control. There's plenty of corn to go around which is putting a lid on US oil dependancy. Sounds like enough corn to keep the US standard of living as high as it is.

Compared to their counterparts in emerging markets, the working class in USA became entitled and too expensive. Same goes with Europe. At the end of the day, simple economics is saying that work can be done cheaper elsewhere and the american economy is adjusting to that reality. In canada we can get away with it because we produce commodities that are in high demand from those places with cheap labor. However, canada does imort overseas workers that work cheaper than canadians. This isn't the 1950s anymore, the rest of the world wants our way of life and are sacrificing in order to get it The question in manufacturing is how bad do you want a job?

Looks like the party is over in the USA. It happened with manufacturing with too high of wages due to economic conditions before the recession partly caused by union influence. Now with states in financial difficulty costs need to be cut and this is a step in doing so. The working class in the USA took too much and now the gap between the US and china has resulted in outsourcing. Its just simple economics at work. What I find amusing is that 2 dictators fell in the middle east by just using facebook and 0 dollars, yet unions and their cohorts feel they need to soak taxpayers, customers and shareholders in order to run their organizations and feel they must force workers to join them or it goes to pot. What's even more funny is unions complaining about their constititional rights, yet they won't respect the right of people who might not want to join them at the workplace.

At least give the poor blokes a chance. I think those protestors certainly have eaned the right to determine what kind of country they want. It may or may not be "west friendly", and that is their prerogative whether the west likes it or not. However what these protests show is that ordinary people can change a govt. It all depends if whatever govt comes in can offer a better quality of life than before. I think China can get away with it because of their red hot economy and improving quality of life. I'd be surprised to see a situation in Kuwait

Oh moses smell the roses!!! For north americans to be complaining about a food crisis is chicken little to the extreme. North America is the largest food exporting region on the planet. High food prices are a good thing. There is a saying in the grain industry "high prices cure high prices". There is a massive amount of land in Russia and Africa ready for production. Enough so to drop prices significantly. For those smart enough to invest in the ag sector, the returns have been fantastic. I have 65% more revenue than last year and all of us farmers are on a shopping spree. Oil use in the USA is projected to DECREASE due to the use of corn ethanol which otherwise would be sitting in a pile. Not only that 2 dictators have been punted with another on the way. The north american ag economy has been on fire and with high prices there is incentive to start up ag production in africa which will provide them a base in which to start their economy. This business of ultra low priced subsidized food from europe is a disaster. Europe is now broke and african farmers were put out of business, thank goodness that's over. Finally, with all the capital in ag, emerging market farmers will be able to catch up to the western world.

Given the political power of the lower middle class which happens to be the sweet spot all parties gun for, I don't think we'll see much of Libertarianism in society. To talk about your point on pure capitalism and the industrial era, one of Adam Smith's conclusions is that of the invisible hand. During the industrial era, workers were paid as little as possible because factory owners were able to get away with it. However, since the workers were not being paid they were not motivated to work, which in turn caused labour unrest, which in turn caused lower productivity and a lower bottom line. The owners therefore had to increase wages in order to satisfy the workers in order to get them to work again. However, gov't which was influenced by this working class helped that along. IMO, that is the invisible hand at work right there, resulting in some sort of equilibrium lasting until the later part of the 20th century. What happened in the later part of the 20th century is that the pendulum has swung too far the other way, resulting in outsourcing - the invisible hand striking again. To Dre: Seriously? If I had a herd of dairy cattle in Quebec I would have to concur, but the Canadian grain sector is far from propped up by the gov't. If you are a grain producer turning a profit, the gov't does zero as it should. I cannot get gov't "assistance" because I turn a profit. So that little myth is busted. The Canadian grain sector is far from protected from foreign competition. Next to New Zealand, the Canadian grain sector has the least gov't involved compared to any country in the world.

It's wishful thinking, but I hope Toews gets punted to the back bench and out of caucus eventually. I don't like people like him who have the potential to poison a brand. He's cancer and the party would be better off with him punted. Harper has enough power in the party to dump clowns like this and not risk a caucus revolt. Toews time is up and the sooner he goes the better. The CEO of HP got canned for less.