blueblood

No, no, no. Govt debt is a huge moral hazard because there is no time limit to pay it off and it opens the door for fiscal stupidity. Blowing money on social assistance when times are bad hurts society in the long term. People are going to have to realize that the gov't can't save people even if it wanted to. Blowing money on temporary ei devalues Tyne dollar and makes products more expensive, resulting in people still being poor.

Wrong, by china pegging their currency they are subsidizing our consumption. I am wondering if the usa isn't using reverse psychology on them. If that yuan goes up, one billion people suddenly have more purchasing power than ever, that means chinese demand will skyrocket and commodities will go through the roof, which would put you easterners over a barrell. If you slap on tariffs, that steel becomes more expensive and the canadian consumer gets stuck with the bill. Its a two way street. We are in an adjustment period and there isn't sweet f all one can do about it. Why not take the wests example and ride the wave.

Taxing and spending also means the govt is doing a lot which requires money, part of it is creating regulations that inhibit growth. Its gotten to the point where eastern canada can't compete with asia. That's correct wages will fall if more workers flood into alberta, if your a franchise owner or a small business guy, that's a good thing. Wages will fall when the amt of workers exceeds the amt of work to do. That hasn't happened yet. Lower wages aren't necessarily a bad thing, it helps out small business with costs and keeps inflation in check. Corporations have been around for a long time in the usa, since the whaling days. They had money then and money now. The only difference is the size of govt.

It is easier to pay debt off in good times, however that debt shouldn't have been racked up in the first place. Instead of doing infrastructure we had to pay for trudeau and mulroney's bender. The best way to deal with bad times is to swallow your medicine and cut spending until the fundamentals turn positive again.

Taxing and spending caused ontario to become uncompetitive. Alberta can't move its primary industry to china, ontario can. Wages only rise when there is fewer workers to do the availible jobs, if you make the same wage and at the same time products become cheaper because of economies of scale does your standard of living not go up? Timmies jobs can get jobs roughnecking quite easily because its not much skill to do. It pays well so in order for timmies to get workers instead of the rigs, they have to pay. There's a limited amount of workers in western canada because there is lots of work and not enough people to do it. Hence oil companies popping up billboards with job offers on the trans canada highway. As for you next post, there was ip, science was vastly improving as it is today, maybe even faster then, just about every thing was privately done then and there was massive growth. Without massive govt regulations as there are today, there was less barrier to entry. The problem is that we have to get back to that, but the intellectuals and those who benefit from big govt will be kicking and screaming the entire way.

No because you go into debt and instead of infrastructure spending in good times, your paying off debt. Your better off letting the economy correct itself and capping spending because the next recession will be worse because of the debt still needing to be paid, as is happening now. If infrastructure is crumbling, that's a misallocation of govt funds. For example 1.1 billion to the cbc and we have bridges falling apart, really?

If you would watch his other interviews, he advocates for massive stimulus. He's still wrong. That kind of stimulus would make as much sense as prepping for an alien invasion.

Yet he is the one saying the stimulus wasn't big enough. Sounds like a keynesian to me...

How many do you have? Friedman has one yet he doesn't advocate going into debt to prepare for an alien invasion to stimulate the economy. Oh let's throw in nobel prize winner freidrich hayek in there as well.

Zing!!! I don't care who you are that's funny right there.

Shhh! Adults are talking. Go play in the sandbox.

Bingo, people who are smart with their credit cards heavily benefit from those who aren't. I put all the farms expenses on the visa and zero the visa every month. With that I get free bookkeeping, and I get to occupy a cruise ship before christmas. Thank you visa!!!

What was income tax at the time of the invention of the airplane? Did the wright bros. Receive govt funding so they could invent the airplane? Do you know how many products were invented during that time period? Hmmm, who's being outrageous?

Wow krugman and his let's save the economy by preparing for an alien invasion plan!!!

Winnipeg has to sell out every single game, if not, they have a problem. Second, how can hockey in canada grow, everybody is a hockey fan, how much more merchandise can they possibly buy without cutting in to the revenues of other teams. Not only that, every game in the nhl is televised, that means any canadian who wants to watch hockey can and is watching. The only growth is from gate revenues which don't even come close to covering expenses. If you put in a team in toronto, that's another team in a saturated market. Toronto, ottawa, buffalo, and detroit. Why would those teams give a green light to another franchise that will take away their revenues? The cities can beg all they want, the billionaires who own the teams in the nhl and who give bettman his marching orders know where the growth is. One other thing, in cities where both the nba and nhl is located, there is very comparable fan attendance and more often than not, the nhl does better as far as a percentage of attendance. The 2010 olympics gold medal hockey game was one of the highest rated sporting Events outside of the super bowl and the winter classic played by usa teams is comparable to the college bowl games they compete against. Hockey is growing down there, whether canadians want it to or not, which is good because if hockey stayed just in canada, it would be a joke like the cfl.

If credit cards hurt small businesses so much, why do almost all of them have credit card acceptance? Bad accounts hurt small businesses much more than credit cards, also credit cards are the most secure way small businesses can clear the most of their inventory. Those small businesses willingly pay that 4 percent for a piece of mind, heck that 4 percent is factored into their pricing strategies.

You mean they just catch the shark and chop the fin off? That's wasteful, at least butcher the whole shark and sell the meat at discount. There would be lots of people looking for cheap meat.

It is saturated, pretty near all Canadians are hockey fans and buy merchandise in one way or another. Popping up another team in Canada takes revenues from another. Gate sales are a fraction of what a teams revenue is. Heck gate sales can only pay the payroll of only two NHL rosters, e habs and leafs. By expanding into the USA, that's where the new customers and growth of the sport is, but what do billionaires know. Bettmans job is to make money, the players and coaches put the product on the ice,

It was that extremely low tax, low regulation environment that resulted in airplanes being invented in the first place. The USA in the 1880s had extremely cheap private health care, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, yet it was one of the richest countries in the world at that time and becoming richer. Try again. Uh us rich people are doing favors. The big companies buy my grain, sell me crop inputs, machinery, and many other products. Seems like a fair trade to me. Your economic idiocy of high taxes and high regulations are killing small businesses before they get started, so stop right there. By the way do you know who benefits most from high taxes and high regulations, why that's the uber corporations that you hate, why? They can afford to pay those taxes and regulations and wipe out the competition. You also know what, those companies investing overseas is creating a middle class over there to buy our products and make us richer. Perhaps we in Canada should be making what they want and at a competitive price, that might mean you easterners will have to get off your high horse and take a pay cut. Another thing, if the middle class in Canada is being bled dry as you say, wouldn't prices have to fall because those manufacturers will need to get rid of inventory. Low prices cure low prices. Those countries have fewer taxes and regulations, as a result are reaping the benefits. Oh here we go Germany and Sweden... The canadian dairy farmers of Europe. Lets have a captive market and ban imports while we at the same time get to sell our goods at an inflated cost. Oh and how did that recent German bond sale go? Uh, cuz all the jobs are already currently fleeing the USA, but lets jack up taxes on the people who produce things and are the backbone of our economy because poor timmy will starve in the street if we don't. Save your sob stories for someone who cares.

What you had in he 20th century was a house of cards, when one place is the only game in town that's when wages can rise. Alberta has extremely low taxes, yet it is the most prosperous place on the continent. Hmmm. What has happened is at the tax and spend crowd shot themselves in the foot and became uncompetitive. The growth in Asia is. Because they can do things at a lower cost than we can. The prosperity came about the same way it did in Alberta, economic reality. When there is a limited amount of workers businesses have to compete with each other for labour. Timmies workers in Alberta get 20 bucks an hour because those franchise owners know damn well those workers can get a job roughnecking. Not because Alberta times workers demanded 20 npbucks an hour.

Oh stop the madness!!! 4% is a small price to pay to have your bad accounts part of your balance sheet slashed to almost next to nothing. By having a credit card payment, that business is guaranteed payment and the deadbeat problem becomes the credit card company's issue, not the stores. Do you want to go back to the days of Bounced cheques? Small businesses had a heck of a harder time dealing with bad accounts, heck some even sunk some businesses. Smallc is a small business owner, ask him if he would rather pay 4% for credit card transactions or have to suck up the losses of deadbeats not paying for merchandise/bouncing cheques.

Except it wouldn't collapse, it would go through severe withdrawal, but not collapse. We are going through the early stages of withdrawal right now. Taking out a massive amount of debt did diddly squat and exacerbated the problem.

Oh please, this is embarrassing. The Canadian hockey market is saturated, anyone wanting to grow something goes to where new customers are, and where would that be? The Phoenix metro area is one of the largest markets in the USA. The NHL had to go there. But hey, what do a bunch of billionaires know about business. Bergman is just a figure head, the board of governors has the final say on all major decisions such as a team staying in Phoenix or not. Oh and Bettman is one of the reasons why NHL revenue has soared since he took over and why the NHL is chipping away market share from the NBA. Bettman isn't going anywhere, and to hate him is flat out ignorant.

We can't afford it because there isn't enough production. We have had crashes in the 1800s when there was little to no gov't spending and the market still rebalanced itself. Things rebalance when prices drop to a point where they get cheap enough for people to buy them. The best cure for low prices is low prices. Rich nations don't provide people with a living, people provide people with a living. Nations just provide the environment,

Your right countries doing better is not a motivation for trade, it's a result. And we've stopped believing the mantra of tax and spend because we can't afford it. The mantra of cut taxes and spending was in place for 25 years and it had to be put in place in Canada because we maxed out the credit card and the bills had to be paid with interest. After the next crash, the market will rebalance itself like it's done many many times in the past. Sometimes medicine tastes bad, but you have to swallow it.