Moonbox

I'm not sure how much of a student of history you are but they're incredibly different. Nationalism has, more or less, existed in Europe for hundreds of years. An Englishman has been an Englishman, a Frenchman a Frenchman, a Spaniard a Spaniard and a German a German for centuries. Borders have been re-written more based on marriage than anything, and wars fought more over which member of the family was entitled to what than anything else. By the 11th-12th century most of Europe had stablized under ethnic and cultural boundaries we still see today. The 'wars' fought over that period in Europe were relatively minor squabbles between members of a feudal class who were trained to do nothing but fight and were just plain bored. Famous battles like Agincourt were merely squabbles compared to the giant civilization destroying Seljuk, Cruader or Mongol invasions of the Mid-East. Those wars wiped the slate clean and often COMPLETELY changed everything. Nationalism in the Mid-East is maybe 100 years old now, and poorly defined at that. See above. Mine are based on a passing knowledge and intense interest in the last 2000 years of history. I'm not sure what yours is based on.

There's too much oil in the Middle East to leave it alone. If they had no oil we would ignore them and they could fight each other for their sand. The sad reality is that our lifestyles depend on oil being as cheap as possible. The whole region is insanely unstable on its own without our interference and there's about 4000 years of history confirming that. That history is highlighted by long periods of peace under whatever brand of imperialism is in vogue (Persian, Greek, Roman, Kwharzm, Ummayid, Mamluks, Ottomans, British etc) with a mess of war and strife in between. The region doesn't have the same sort of identity that Western or East Asian countries do and the different tribes and religious sects are at each other's throats as much as anyone's. American flag burning and a dislike of poorly-acted movies are about the only thing these groups have in common.

You fail to realize that most of us want nothing to do with the Canada you desire, and much prefer the other version. Sorry.

If we REALLY wanted to, we could probably throw a primitive one together in a matter of weeks.

*yawn* Can't really say much in response to that. You're clearly either not interested in a discussion, or you're so out to lunch that you're not worth the effort. You don't have to like the current government, but comparing them to a jihadist? That's such a weak and unreasonable argument I just feel sorry for you. It's pathetic really.

How many Islamic embassies have been stormed over the last few years? How many Canadian or American mosques have had suicide bombers? When was the last time one of these elected officials caught launching RPG's at Islamic dignitaries? Yeah. I thought so. Our frothing Bible-Thumpers have nowhere near the conviction, nor the support, to be considered in anyway NEAR the same league as the type of person who straps a shrapnel bomb to himself and murders 50 people. If some red neck in Calgary did something like that, he'd be reviled as a villain of the worst kind. His family would be shamed and the media would flay him. In parts of the middle east, that same moron would be revered as a martyr. If you can't see the difference then you need to get your head checked because that's scary.

You're right, but there's a fairly large productivity gap between Canada and even just the USA, which has only been accelerating. Since the 80's at least, we've used our currency advantage as an artificial crutch, and now that this has disappeared, we need to improve productivity. I can't think of many reasons why the USA has such a large productivity advantage over us, especially considering how tightly integrated our economies are and our vast natural resources. Upon looking it up, I think the information may be dated. It goes back to when Flaherty and McGuinty were bickering about the Ontario economy during the recession. One of Flaherty's criticisms was how high Ontario's taxes were on new business investment. The government phased out the capital tax in 2010 it appears, however, so it doesn't look like I had that quite straight. Regardless, the main point still stands. I'm not sure what part of the NDP's platform, specifically corporate tax increases, would be considered investing in productivity. Equally puzzling is how making EI more available and more generous would help. As you know, I'm not arguing that oil money hasn't hurt Ontario manufacturing. I'm arguing that it's not the catastrophe that people like Mulcair are proposing it is. We shouldn't be competing artificially based only on the weakness of the dollar. We should be competing based on productivity and all this money pouring into the economy should allow us to make this transition. The federal and provincial governments need to make sure the extra tax revenue goes towards things that can actually make us more competitive. There also needs to be stronger incentives to keep corporations from hoarding their cash. Pay it back in dividends to people who will use it or invest in the business, particularly on the manufacturing side. Carney was fairly explicit on the topic of Dutch Disease as well. He may be right, he may be wrong, but I'd be FAR more inclined to side with one of the world's most respected economists than with Thomas Mulcair, whose economic credentials are pretty dubious. Carney calls oil 'unambiguously good' for Canada

The only thing that Mulcair was right about is that oil exports increase the value of the dollar which erodes the crutch Ontario's manufacturing industry has relied on for decades. I'm not sure who was arguing against that...

I anticipated you'd say that. That's straight out of the "Irrational Sensationalist" handbook. You need to include neo-con, fascist and some mention of corporate croney-ism to score full points though. A Lex Luther reference earns bonus points.

The article you posted has NOTHING to do with Dutch Disease. In the link quoted even shows: So you're stating that an article discussing JULY'S large trade deficit, which was accompanied by a huge drop in oil exports is somehow proof that Mulcair isn't completely clueless about the economy? The part about the currency being affected by the flood of foreign money into Canada for its perceived safehaven status has nothing to do with it? The mention of the auto-industry's 21% increase y.o.y. is also being ignored? Doesn't the article also explain that a high dollar should be taken advantage of to invest in productive assets (equipment etc)? Isn't Ontario's capital investment tax one of the highest in the world, which discourages these investments? Yep! Isn't the NDP completely against cutting these taxes? Sure is! Didn't Mark Carney, Canada's #1 economist, only just recently COMPLETELY debunk Thomas Mulcair's statements? Absolutely. It doesn't look like you actually read the article. You just took the article title and maybe the first couple sentences and tried to use it to prove a hack opinion.

While using terms like 'zionism' is something I generally can't respect, I do have to agree with wyly that this award earns a big "Who cares?" It's not particularly suprising that an organization founded by a Jewish rabbi takes the time to recognize Israel's most staunch supporter in the Middle East.

We marginalize our religious fanatics. Iran actively supports and promotes them to violence.

Sure I did. I also wrote that both parties are to blame, but like the troll you are you took the one sentence you thought you could score points on, quoted it, and left the rest out. Comments like the one above are clear indications that all you're trying to do here is troll. Reported. I feel like a big man too now. Learn something about what is being discussed and actually contribute to the discussion and maybe you'll encounter less hostility here. As it is all you seem interested in doing is stirring the pot.

As I already mentioned, you've posted nothing but garbage. We have patent submissions from 1972, the prospect of trenchless thermal drilling in difficult terrain, something about electron guns and (my favorite) the feasability of boreholes on the moon. Nowhere is there any mention of the technology you're proposing (a nuclear powered thermal drilling machine) existing, nor have you been able to provide any idea of what that sort of technology would cost. A 3000km conventional pipeline (no drilling involved) is proposed to cost between $5-6B. You've proposed, however, that we can somehow go 1000km underground (much of that through solid rock) for less than the cost of an F-35....which on the high end would maybe cost $150M. How much more out of touch can you get?

Well said. That was funny. 10/10

Nobody is arguing that stone can't be melted. We've all seen a volcano. People are arguing that it would be impossibly expensive to do what you're saying. We're also not having a science debate here. This isn't a science forum. Stop posting irrelevant technical data. What people are saying here is that your proposed solution would cost so much money that it would't be viable. You posting patent designs and basic energy formulas etc doesn't prove otherwise.

Holy crap man. Links? My post was an enormously simplified production cost equation. All it was trying to show you was how a company with double the labour costs of its competitor CANNOT compete on the value side. The figures for labour costs of the Big Three vs foreign competitors was common knowledge. You can still look that up. The numbers are different depending on where you're getting the info from but the non-union auto companies paid a total of ~$40-45 an hour vs $73 for GM. Since you need a link for EVERYTHING before you're willing to discuss it, here's one: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/industry/4292379 Hey, I'm sorry. You're right. You really need to start thinking before talking though, and that ought to be a forum rule too. Looking back through this thread, we have you here nattering about everything, quoting everyone and throwing back glib, trolling remarks without knowing a thing about what you're talking about. Here's a response to one of Bill's comments: Bill shows very clearly that you don't have a freaking clue about the auto industry's history and what led up to its collapse, and your response is basically that "How was I supposed to know?" Not only do you make it obvious that you don't know crap about what we're discussing, you also can't accept that fact with good grace. You go on to call BILL ignorant when he clearly knows WAY more than you about this. Here's the deal. It's YOUR responsibility to know something about what you're discussing. We're not going to hold your hand. If you can't speak intelligently on the topic, stay out of it. If all you're here for is to get people riled up with 'gotchas', that's trolling, and we don't have to go far in your posting history to see a ton of that going on. It's a question that doesn't need to be asked. Labour problems are both parties' fault. Nobody should feel bad for CAW/UAW workers. They brought it on themselves. The companies are equally to blame, but nobody feels bad for a corporation and nobody is defending them anyways. I made that very clear in my first post responding to WWWTT. He chose to take one sentence out of context from my statement and post it here to try and score points or something.

Why bother? It's a really dumb question. The kind of logic you're implying with the question doesn't hold water. Party A is blameless because Party B couldn't check them? Nope. That doesn't work anywhere, except maybe if you're dealing with children. A greedy union insisting on unsustainable wages/benefits isn't blameless because the company they're dealing with can't negotiate concessions.

Did you read my post or did you just snip that one sentence out of it? Yeah. That's what I thought. The UAW and CAW made it IMPOSSIBLE to compete on value and quality. Through the 70's and early 80's management didn't give a shit about quality, and they can be fully blamed for that. Once the market opened up, however, and Honda/Toyota entered the game, the UAW auto makers were unable to adapt. The writing was on the wall that the companies weren't competitive anymore and the labour cost numbers were debated endlessly, but what it all boiled down to was Toyota could assemble a car with an average labour cost per hour of $33. It was $73 for GM and the UAW fought tooth and nail all through the late 90's up to 2008 against any sort of concessions to their pay and benefits. What a shocker when the companies finally folded. The only reason Ford survived is that the UAW/CAW finally woke up when they saw GM and Chrysler flop. I claim that you're ignorant about a great many things. A great, great great many things. On top of that you debate like a moron. My previous post showed, by the numbers, how uncompetitive the UAW and CAW made the Big Three. The best response you could come up with was take one sentence I wrote out of context and say "gotcha". Well done.

You're so full of BS it hurts. Digging a 1000 km tunnel through solid rock would cost billions upon billions. That's the sort of project only a government can undertake.

I'm looking out the window right now downtown Guelph and I can see about 20-30 people who'd be perfect candidates for this sort of work. Good suggestion!

The comments are well-deserved and the CAW has no credibility. Very few tears were shed when the CAW workers, earning $30/labour hour more than their well-paid Toyota counterparts, started losing jobs. The wages were completely unjustifiable, especially considering how lousy the cars were that they made. Saying things like the quality of the cars is management's responsibility shows, once again, how ignorant you are on the subject of running a business. Here you are again, however, flapping your mouth and gabbing about things you don't understand. Let's do some simple math okay? Suppose you have two companies making nearly identical cars. Suppose also the equation for the cost of making a car is: Labour + Raw Materials = Cost One company's costs are $1000 (for labour) + 1000 (for raw materials) = $2000 The other company's are: $2000 (for labour) + 1000 (for raw materials) = $3000 When both of these cars end up in dealerships, which do you think is going to do better? The first company can sell the same car for $2700 and earn a $700 profit and a 35% margin. The second company would have to sell for $3700 to earn the same profit but only realize a 23% margin. The second company is in a position that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for them to compete in terms of value. Part of this IS management's fault for allowing it to go on as long as it did and not recognizing the market was getting fed up with their overpriced cars and overpaid employees, but the militant CAW forced them into the corner and refused to make concessions when their greed came back and bit them in the ass. Lucky for them that the government came in to help, because I would have let their pension plans vanish. The hundreds of millions the UAW spent on Obama's campaign really paid off for them, and the CAW rode that wave.

It's also possible to load your garbage into rockets and send them into the sun. Problem is it's kind of expensive. I'll leave you on the point and maybe you can follow the logic through.

I'm not sure what's going on here. I was agreeing with Argus' point, but it seems like we're all agreeing now or something...