hitops

A bad idea. Another bad idea. And another even worse one.

His speech was the usual puppies and sunshine and rainbows, with nothing actually being said.

The NDP has also historically not won elections. Agree! I would love Chong. Also agree never going to happen.

Probably marginal changes mainly for public psychological consumption, which will not actually do anything Yes go ahead. A non-issue. Who knows what this means. I don't even think Justin does. Whether something like that is needed or not depends on the kinds of immigrants we take. It's good the CRA to be able to investigate fraud. Correct they should be able to.

Surely, neither the bad-sweater-wearing suburban dad nor the creepy bearded uncle you see at family reunions will run again. So who's up next?

Could not agree more. It is psychologically destructive for people to live like that, it diminishes them as people. But people in those situations never realize it, they just think the answer is getting more and more from everyone else. Large sections of the native population are the ultimate example of that.

Ya I should have done that.

If you are willing, how did you vote? I voted CPC, in futility. Ralphie never loses. Basically the CPC seems to be full of clowns, but I do not see better from the alternative. Was pleased to find no lineups around 9:30-ish.

Those costs are incredibly low compared to what you get in return. Because the additional costs to purchase energy from those sources outweigh the savings of not having to transport them, by orders of magnitude. If that occurs, it will be a political decision. They would have to raise the cost of burning fossil fuels by an incredibly large amount to make using oil a bad economic decision. That story has been told before. 'Peak Oil' comes to mind. Remember how it was all going downhill after the 70's? It was so obvious, the scientists, the economists and the ivory tower told us so. Now there is more oil than anyone knows what to do with.

You are only considering how much % power generation comes from different sources. You are not considering how expensive it is to create and access those sources. It is far more expensive to create power by non-oil means. Some evaluations are not even sure if it breaks even. It may actually make oil cost more to use wind and solar, because of the inputs of oil-derived energy that you need to build, maintain and subsidize the wind and solar operations. If want to get to a real world, realistic view of the feasibility of different sources, the percentages should be tabulated in the form of cost vs output per unit of energy per source. That 12% power from W/S is not the same as if the 12% came from oil, in terms of value to the economy, because the initial cost to the economy for the W/S power is far higher. It is not simply the large capital costs of manufacturing, installing and maintaining a panel or wind turbine. It is the very expensive and complex additional infrastructure needed to store and distribute the energy, and switching/bleeding mechanisms and retooling that needs to be done to the grid infrastructure to accommodate unpredictable, uncontrollable variations in output from those sources. Oil does not have those needs, you just burn it when you need it. If it is really windy, you have to allow more loss to friction (can't let turbines spin to fast for technical reasons) or simply do not collect the full potential of the turbine which is lost potential energy. If you have too much oil, you don't have to allow the pump to spill oil until you need it - you just stop pumping and save for later, or you collect it in storage. You can't save the windy day for later, nor can you store the wind until you need it. You can try to store the energy from the wind, but it is really inefficient. That is why although we have understood you can use nature to generate power from wind or water for hundreds of years, and we have had batteries for 50 or more, oil is still totally dominant. Like Elon Musk said "the problem with batteries......is that they suck"

While not free, it is orders of magnitude more efficient to extract and use compared to alternatives. You get something like 30-40 units of energy for every 1 unit you have to put in to extract and refine it. Nothing else comes remotely close at this time. Most do not break even on the energy in vs out scale.

Why would this affect who you vote for? Canada's politicians do not control world commodity supply and demand. In fact almost no countries can claim do to that. Even OPEC has lost its previous influence.

Exactly, but seeing that long time view is beyond the will (and perhaps capability in some cases) of those favoring protectionism. Protectionism only makes us weaker, less relevant, less competitive and decrease economic opportunities for Canadians in the long run. We hurt ourselves in the long run. The left will always favor tons of guarantees and worker benefits for manufacturing for example, failing to understand that this is precisely why most manufacturing has left the western world. They will never quite register the fact that insisting in various benefits is not helpful when it causes your pay to go to 0$ after your job leaves or is replaced by a robot.

You're splitting hairs. You can never 100% know. Welcome to life. Government doesn't fix this. We still get e.coli and listeria from time to time with gov monitoring. You just made my point. With government playing that role those things still went on. People can bribe government, just like they can bribe private testers. They can fool government, just like they can fool private testers. But the big difference, is that with private, I get many choices. If a tester is bribed, they will have higher rates of problems and people will avoid them and trust other ones instead. With private, I get 100 choices, with government I get one, and if it sucks, too bad. When private, bad testers, lazy testers who are easily fooled, get filtered out and go away, and good ones stay. With gov, an awful, incompetent department can hang around forever and there is nothing you can do about it. Chinese moms could do nothing when nestle had lead in infant formula and resulted in deaths.

You're just talking about transaction costs, and it is extremely rare that the government ever reduces those costs. It nearly always increases them. Certain things can only be government - emergency response, police, fire, courts, military, and environment issues around tragedy of the commons. But that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about the massively expanded role of government today far, far beyond those things. Even meat inspection - there are obvious private solutions. We would do what we do now with a thousand other things - buy based on reputation. If they poison enough people, they risk huge market share losses as people avoid them. Can't prove it? Private companies can obviously test and testify for you. Better yet - other companies would rise up for independent testing - and certain meat producers would do all their stuff through them so they can market that extra safety. You could choose to buy from only those producers, etc etc. There are a thousand solutions to most problems in the market, most of which we don't even know about until they are needed. People like the idea of organic meats, less chemicals, friendly to animals etc - better get government to force stores to go organic right? Not at all. A million stores sell organic meat, certified as you like. The market meets demand for niche, or for safety, or for status, or whatever feature you are looking for. See socialists never ask "what would I do", when considering if something would work. I know what I would do, with a wife and 2 small kids who I care about. I would only buy meat from a reliable company, who tests 100% through a company I know to be reliable. I don't need the government to do that. My guess is that, just like in other industries when comparing government vs private services, they would greatly lower my risk of being poisoned, along with lowering the cost to me for that increased safety, compared to now. But this is just me humouring you for those things that yes, would be part of the transaction costs anyway. But that's not the issue. The issue is the billions that the government spends on things that are complete waste, that would not otherwise be part of the economy. The classic example is the job which had a role 50 years ago, but is now obsolete, but which is it absolutely impossible to fire the employee from, because it is government.

No Germany got bonked just like everyone in the crisis, with real GDP falling from +3.3% in 2007 to -5.1% in 2009, along with declines in hours worked and productivity per hour when all previous years were increases. Canada had real GDP fall from +2% to -2.7% in those same years. Both Germany and Canada bounced back in 2010. However although they got bonked, they still looked good relative to their neighbours. The reason German looks good in the eurozone is because of the common currency. Normally lesser performing countries will have their currency fall and become more competitive, but when you share a currency obviously that doesn't happen. So Germany exports do not become more expensive as they normally would for their neighbours, and their exporting therefore remains high. Without that artificial advantage, they would have suffered more, as Argus says above. The fact that as you say, Germany is holding Europe up, is actually a bad thing because the main effect is holding the Euro up, making it more difficult for other euro countries to recover.

Not better than 'the rest'. Obviously nations catching up in development like China and India are going to have better performance on growth, but compared to the US and Europe, ya we did quite well, very near or at the best. The whole developed world has sucked during this time, we just sucked somewhat less. Obviously Harper cannot do anything about the housing and then liquidity crisis from the US to the rest of the world, nor falling oil prices recently. Given the various trials over the last decade, he was in general quite competent. By far the most harmful thing he did is never mentioned - in 2007 allowing people to get no money down, 40 years mortgages with CMHC insurance. It was the spark that lit the housing bubble, by far the biggest threat to our economy currently. A very stupid, very un-conservative move.

Of course it matters. A private person uses labour to create wealth. The government uses wealth of others (taxes) to create labour, to create wealth. Since they had to use wealth to create wealth, nothing is really created. Money was simply moved around, and much lost to waste along the journey. But it's not just that government doesn't create any wealth by creating labour, it's that one it creates the labour, it it exceptionally difficult to get rid of it if it is no longer needed. Then it is pure waste, no longer breaking even. The private person stops the labour once it is useless, returning to no loss, no gain.

UCCB: I fully support abolishing UCCB. I don't see why everybody else has to give me $320 per month when they had no choice in whether we had kids. I'll pay for my own kids, I chose to have them. Here's a plan for schools: Every kid gets a voucher for school, parent can pick where they go. It can only be used for schools. Except if you don't have kids, then your voucher is equivalent to whatever the voucher would be for the average of kids/family is in Canada, and you can use it against your taxes. Pediatrics/medicare: Everybody should pay 5% of their care to a max of $1000 (or whatever number). This would almost overnight adapt our system to demand and properly fund that demand. Usage would decrease and quality would increase. Taking responsibility for yourself and your own choices is not greed. The welfare state is not a virtue, is a destroyer of people. That's a common pathway for socialists who gain some knowledge and experience. I did the same in my youth, also moved on to libertarianism, but have settled on being less libertarian due to lack of historical example of successful libertarian societies. There is a reason that the younger you are, the less you have had to test your ideas against real life, the more likely you vote left. It's not greedy (it is a massive money-sink without exception) but it is a personal choice, not some kind of national service. Otherwise well said. I have 2 kids but fully support eliminating the UCCB. I'd boot the CMHC, child tax credit, home buyers credit and home renovation credit (soon to come) along with it.

It isn't winner take all in the states either. The electoral college is for each state, not the whole country. Not all states give all their electoral college votes to the winner of that state. The house, senate and executive are not usually all the same party. Even within parties they do not always agree. Unlike here where it is pretty much 100% expected lockstep vote with the leader, in the US there is very often differences in votes within the same party. In that sense they are far more democratic than we are.

The fact that wants to get boring and give the numbers and wonk about the minutia, is a feature not a bug. Harper says more than any of the other leaders of terms of real life, regular boring reality. Mulcair also tried to hit a lot of firm, fact-based points. Nobody can touch Trudeau when it comes to saying nothing. Ya, that's true for almost the whole developed world, with Canada performing at or near the best of the bunch. The only country who is turning things around of the OECD is the US, after spending a trillion dollars per year in additional debt. Ya, if we spend $100 billion per year more than revenue, we can make things seem better to. That doesn't make it a good idea, since in the end you pay for it.

I don't get it, cbc is reporting that most people felt Trudeau won? WTF? I can understand if it was unclear who won, but I know for sure Trudeau was the worst of the 3. What are people thinking?

Your points do seem to sail off somewhere.... Being impulsive in sexual decisions or negligent in using contraception is still a choice. It's like saying you should be taxed because I bought a BMW. I didn't decide to, I just couldn't help it. Now you should pay for me. The people that need to hear this will never understand it. Society that works that way collapses, just as it has when tried historically.

I'd like to know more about this. I'm currently doing the same thing, leaving a portion of money in the corp and taking all my income in dividends while avoiding paying CPP. Myself and my accountant both conclude this is better in the long run. My tax rate is 12% on the corp, and then the dividend rate for myself. I also income split with wife as 50% shareholder. Am I missing something?

Quite true, you are quite smart to do that.....I'm confused.....guessing your name is tongue in cheek? Socialists are not normally bright enough to know that stuff.