Moonbox

Godwin's Law. Well done wyly. Of course we can count on you for that...

I'd prefer that. I'd even be okay with the taxes being raised if they meant all the extra money went to tackling our debt. A little pain now for vastly better books in the future sounds alright to me.

Hudak has no guts period. He has no political instincts either, just like John Tory or Michael Ignatieff. McGuinty's record is so bad you could have put anyone out there with decent public speaking skills and they could have beat him. There literally could not have been an easier opportunity for the PC's to take this election, but Hudak and his advisors are just clowns. From the amateurish attack ads, the stick-to-the-script public speaking and the cowardly platform etc, I don't think they could have done a worse job.

Yeah Topaz...it was a conspiracy to be able to muzzle and jail protestors. Look out. You're surely next.

Who cares who takes the market share? The market wouldn't exist if not for massive government subsidies. Whether US or Canadian governments want to piss taxpayer money away on local manufacturers or Chinese manufacturers matters little. The money is still completely pissed away. For all the economic sense it makes, we might as well be paying people to generate electricity on bicycles. The benefits would be enormous. We'd have a healthier, leaner population, less methane (smaller farts), and we'd be producing clean energy. Nevermind that it would be prohibitively expensive and inefficient, like solar. Money doesn't matter! That's a small price to pay for a cleaner (and better looking) North America!

Just a simple question. We know the government of Ontario is subsidizing solar power in Canada to the extreme. Farmers are getting a guaranteed return on investment in solar panels and Ontarians are paying ridiculous premiums on the energy they produce. I always wonder why we're doing this. The solar panels aren't anywhere CLOSE to being cost efficient right now and at the rate things are going they won't be for another 20 years. Why are we paying big $$$ right now for instrastructure investments in inefficient and immature technology that costs everyone a fortune compared to the alternatives? Wouldn't it be better to invest in the research and improvement of the actual technology istelf? I'd prefer the technology at least be reliable and effective before we start throwing billions at it. The cost of solar power /kwh has halved over the last 10-15 years, so it's clearly feasible, but we need to be spending money helping MAKE it feasible, not wasting it on crap technology right now.

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding his martyrdom.

Well one things for certain, the clown show that is US politics has far more things to talk about than the Canadian political bore-fest, especially in the summer!

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Well I'm certainly not a member of any American political forums. Why are you here again? Seems you've taken an interest.... It seems 6/10 Americans COULDN'T find either on a map. As for how Canadians 'hitched' a ride to Afghanistan, I'm not sure what that has to do with how little the Americans know of the world at large. Did confirmation of general American ignorance, from an American source, sting? Did making fun of our military equipment somehow vindicate you? Whatever floats your boat. With the help of Canadian engineers, some of whom headed their departments within the Apollo program. That must be galling!

I was referring to: My comment on US travel habits, however exaggerated, was meant to highlight how it's not just Canada Americans don't care about. They don't seem to know or care much about the world in general, or even their own country for that matter. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foundation/pdf/NGSRoper2006Report.pdf Highlights: 50% of Americans 18-24 can't locate New York State on a map 50% can't locate Mississipi 30% don't know where Lousiana is 40% of the same don't know the Amazon is in South America 30% can't locate China on a map marked with clear borders (only the country name is missing) 20% can't locate the Pacific Ocean??? 10% can't locate the US on a map??? 33% of them think the US population is between 1 to 2 billion people.... Anyways, there are all sorts of interesting facts in the study but I won't highlight any more of them. Personally, I think if you'd ever travelled much or taken even a basic interest in the affairs of the world, some of this stuff would come naturally...but whatever.

I think you should avoid bringing logical fallacy up in your argument... 2) Weather IS incredibly complex. You can predict all you want, but we STILL haven't been able to predict the weather, be it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or long term, with anything even approaching reasonable accuracy. The fact that you can draw two lines on a graph is irrelevant. You should be embarrassed you even wrote that. 3) "Science" IS wrong all the time, especially when the science in question has to account for 1000000 variables that nobody can control. This is another brutal example of YOUR logical fallacy. What the heck are you even trying to say? That for every lousy scientific conclusion there's probably a good one out there somewhere? Okay sure, but what does that tell us about climate science? Nothing?!?

I was merely responding to bush's condescension. Last I checked it was about +50% for Canada. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the discussion so I'll drop it.

The majority of Americans never leave the country, even once, for their whole lives. In fact, a good number of them never even leave their home counties. What does that tell you?

Not just the federal government. It's all the governments. I have a friend who just lost her job working for the province in water testing etc. You can tell from her Facebook updates just how little work she's doing.

Guys the whole Barbados thing is a giant red herring. It was a cute little anecdote and has absolutely no bearing on the topic at all really. Props to M.Dancer for getting you guys to bite so hard on it.

You're right. Tyranny by the many is not really any better than tyranny by the few. One is no better than the other though. How about 10% of the population controlling over 90% of the wealth and factors of production, which in turn only worsens the problem. It's the black and white outlook that people have that ruins the whole debate. Placing controls on the super wealthy to prevent them from manipulating the system and screwing over everyone else doesn't magically all of the sudden mean we find ourselves in 1920's Russia. Take out the top 3% percentile and you'd likely find that we've been getting steadily poorer.

I'll agree with that in a sense, but could we also not agree that the 20th century has proven that unregulated economies have lead to numerous collapses that have, as a result, required social and economic intervention from the government? It seems that some grey area is required, and that the people who occupy the black and white areas on the peripherals are the ones who really get things screwed up.

I would stay away from discussing the intricacies of economics if I were you. I don't mean any real offense, but it seemed like you got that out of your ECON 101 textbook and now you've decided you're an expert. Sure, the data could interpreted to present a correlation between the dropping of gold standard and income disparity, but that would only be if you're naive enough to assume that the dropping of trade tarrifs, world trade and a host of other variables (which are more to blame) don't have anything to do with it.

What the hell does that even mean? The misuse of buzz words like 'tyranny' and 'liberty' is the kind of stupidity and ignorance that people need saving from. The way they're used today is completely vapid. Bringing the words 'tyranny' into a discussion about Canadian or American politics is the sort of slippery-slop straw man arguments that have been dumbing down politics for decades. Look up the definition of 'tyranny' for us, come back here, and then tell us what the word actually means and then tell us how, in any way, it applies to this discussion.

That's a worthless statistic. I mean no offense, but the number of women in the workplace has skyrocketed over the last 40 years, which effectively comes close to doubling the number of workers in any given family. Umm...we should definetly worry about such a world. When one man/woman can hoard the equivalent of an entire country of 30M's GDP for a year, that harkens back to the days of Louis XVI. There's no reason for anyone to be that rich unless the system is encouraging it. Which would suggest we should do more to get hard working families out of dumpy apartments where they can raise their kids to be proud of themselves. It's the parroting of empty axioms like this that keep people stupid. You can't really argue with Friedman's quote, but it ignores the fact that unregulated capitalism provides 'freedom' for the rich, and much less so for the poor and middle class. When you're living paycheque to paycheque to feed your family, your freedom is practically non-existant. Providing safeguards to ensure a viable middle class is the best way to encourage the economy. It doesn't mean raising corporate tax rates and screwing your wealth producers, but it does perhaps mean raising income taxes on the rich and crushing the monopolies, oligopolies and protected industries that are constantly screwing us. I'm honestly disappointed in you August because you're normally a lot smarter than this. Bringing the Soviet Union into the argument is the biggest straw man you could have possibly attempted. Sure, the Soviet Union failed, but that really has nothing to do with what we're talking about. That was communism, or crushingly stifling government intervention. It was incompetent and misguided and corrupt and that's why it failed. Similarly, unrestrained capitalism is equally incompetent and misguided. It's human nature that certain people will exploit the system wherever and however they can, and we have countless examples of failures in the capitalist system. I find it galling/hilarious that people in the US, for example, are still bitching and moaning about any sort of government intervention when the US economy almost collapsed as was saved, ironically, by government intervention. I think the analogy of the government playing 'parent' to society is apt. If the parent is too laissez-faire and uninterested you're likely to end up with rotten kids. If you're too strict and overbearing, they'll grow up equally screwed up.

I'm by no means an advocate of heavy social spending (quite the opposite actually), but I'm certainly not pleased about the income disparity as it's probably the biggest contributor to the increased need for social spending. I don't think Canada's governments, either provincially or federally, do anything to protect consumers and ensure fair wages. We get absolutely robbed by our utility/telecom companies, as well as our banks and insurers, and all of this money goes into the pockets of the rich. At the same time, the average wages of Canadians have not increased for 30 years and inflation has just made them poorer and poorer. It's the same all over North America. The situation appears worse in the US. Until the ignore cows that fill the electorate actually take a few minutes out of their busy days of watching American Idol and Lost to understand wtf is going on in their world, they're going to just keep voting for people who are hell-bent on screwing them. Another thing that could help is an actually sensible left wing (ie. not the NDP) that could provide an actually valid and reasonable alternative to the crooks in the CPC and LPC. Jack Layton and the other morons in his party does the cause more harm than good.

Hold on a second...Are you trying to say you work in the film industry? Was this before or after you married a rich heiress and proceded to live in the lap of luxury and not work? Was this also before or after your apparent days on the streets that you told us about years ago? Oleg, you have indeed lived a fanciful life...fanciful in that you make it all up and every day it seems like you have a new life story. For the record, a lot of deadbeats actually DO 'work' for 18 hour stretches on 'fine art'. Most of the 'working', however, is usually the naps these artistes take after lighting up on the public dollar.

I wasn't saying insanity. I was saying inanity. Look up "Inane" and then call me. I'm trying to say your posts are emptyheaded and worthless. You generally blab for entire paragraphs without actually presenting a coherent or relevant statement, and while I might wonder about your 'sanity', I certainly have no doubt as to how inane your posting generally is.

Wow Oleg. You're taking inanity to a whole new level.