Moonbox

Some of the climate scientists and doctors (particularly the vaccine specialists) on this forum are pre-eminent in their fields. Did you not read the 84+ page thread on how deadly the COVID vaccines turned out to be? HELLO!???

I'm not? I'm referencing a very recent, but far larger, refugee crisis in the region where we Canada only took in ~42k, while you're drawing up scenarios were a million Gazans come to Canada. "real talk".

Why would it be? Aleppo had roughly the same population as Gaza back in 2015, and we've only taken in ~42,000 refugees from all of Syria since 2015. "real talk". 🙄

Calling it "real talk" doesn't make what you're saying less nonsensical. There are only 2M Palestinians in Gaza. Blackbird is worried about half of them being relocated to Canada? What's the "proper amount of reverence" for jews?

What's that "growth" worth if it's only achieved by exploding our population upwards? That "growth" is coming with the extra costs and expenses of all of those new bodies, so as a measure of prosperity and overall well-being it's close to useless. There's a lot more to it than *clap* *clap* "number go UP!"

They're not. They're just reporting the data. The poor conclusions that people draw from that data have nothing to do with them.

Sometimes they do, especially if they're talking about standard of living, equality, affordability or the polarization of wealth. For this topic and this discussion, it's not relevant. Your claim that GDP per capita is deceptive is misguided. No economic measurement is deceptive on its own, but rather in its presentation, framing and context. The IMF reporting that Canada's economic growth will be the highest in the G7 isn't misleading, but anyone trying to attribute that number to economic performance would be. When adjusted for our rapidly expanding population, our economic growth lands us well below the G7 average.

The IMF has already weighed in on this: "The IMF projects 2024 GDP per capita growth of 1.4 per cent for Canada compared to 2.1 per cent for the United States. Canada is set to lag behind the U.S., yet again, by more than 30 per cent. Alarm bells should be sounding — Canada’s productivity crisis is set to get worse not better over the next year." https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/canada-has-a-productivity-crisis-heres-how-we-can-get-back-on-track-jon-hartley-in-the-toronto-star/#:~:text=The IMF projects 2024 GDP,better over the next year. The Bank of Canada has also raised the issue: "Senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers gave a speech in Halifax on Tuesday in which she sounded the alarm on Canada’s lagging productivity rates." Who's "they"? Not the IMF, as far as I can tell.

This was "just an opinion": 🙄 ??? Calling it "your opinion" doesn't magically make it less of an insult. It also came out of nowhere. Insulting people when they disagree with you rather than addressing their argument is textbook Fox. It's also exactly what you did here. If you don't want to be compared to "the most objectional person on this forum", then don't behave like him. What do you fancy your respect was ever worth, if I can't even disagree with you without you going straight for the throat with insults? Boo-hoo for me....I guess? What a tragedy. 🥱

I was honestly trying to debate and disagree with you civilly. That set you off for some reason, and you came back swinging with insults. Considering how often you've criticized Fox for this sort of behavior, it's interesting how you give yourself a free pass when you're doing the same. When you can show me what I said to provoke insults out of you, maybe then we can talk about dignity. Until then, you're the one holding hands with Fox in this thread, and you own the fact that you couldn't handle someone disagreeing with you without getting personal. 🙃

Riiight. Just like Fox, you're foiled by the quotation function. You're doing terrific here. 🙄

Nobody here said they should, did they? This seems like a red herring (a Fox specialty). There's a long list of alternatives between doing nothing, and what you're talking about. I'm not sure why you keep bringing it up. and yet even on this topic, solutions and suggestions have been provided/cited (in this thread, and in others), but rather than discuss those, you've defaulted to ad hominem and hyperbole (also like Fox, LOL). Excuse me for not being convinced, considering how quickly you went for the insults. 🤷‍♂️

Except your "opinion" was immediate ad-hominem as soon as someone disagreed with you, with no attempt to debate the points presented...so just like Fox. Right...I'm the one who does nothing but complain about the government, while you complain about the government in this thread and present goofy, hyperbolic scenarios about potential interventions or changes to policy. That makes so much sense. Something about this topic makes you really, really touchy. I won't presume to know why, like you do. 🙄

This is such a useless post, when I read it I assumed it was Fox. 🙄 I guess he's rubbed off on you.

It was the only option you presented. Because apparently, if the government invests in housing, all of the sudden we're talking about it becoming Canada's largest landlord, and private investment becoming unprofitable? Why? Pretty sure we've had this discussion before, and I've already referred you to pieces like this: https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/the-great-rebuild-seven-ways-to-fix-canadas-housing-shortage/ The capacity to build is the present-day problem. Bad projections, combined with poor planning and no contingencies, is what led us here. Canada built 273,000 units in 1976. Are we supposed to believe that with almost double the population, today, we couldn't have matched that?

Your point is all over the place, and it doesn't seem like you're really sure what you're trying to say. Your source was a summary of the Battle of Moscow. There were quite a few factors involved in the Soviet victory there, only one of which was "continuous counterattacks". Somehow, in your mind, that supports the effectiveness of attritional human wave assaults, despite never mentioning anything of the sort. 🤔 The penal battalions were a propaganda tool and a way to deliver death sentences and enforce discipline. If you want to argue that sending political prisoners and deserters to trample minefields was an effective war tactic, I'd love to hear you try. Think apples and oranges. The way the Soviets fought back the Germans is literally the exact opposite of what they're trying to do against the Ukrainians. In the WW2, they executed a defense-in-depth by ceding territory (+1000km deep, across a 3000km front) and then struck back against an over-extended and exhausted opponent. In Ukraine, they're smashing their faces into fortified positions and losing ~30000/month to achieve marginal advances that we have trouble seeing on a map. They are nothing alike.

I'm not sure why you automatically went to that as the only option. Again, this is a strange and binary line of reasoning, supposing that the only option the government has is to be come the nations largest rental agency, and that getting involved is going to somehow make private sector investment automatically unprofitable. There's not much to work with here for forming a response. 😐

That's a pretty odd thing to say, considering all the money that people have been making on housing over the last 14 years. Nothing is ever just supply or just demand-driven. Our housing issue is a +10 year old problem that started getting ugly before Trudeau even became PM. It was a failure of projecting and planning properly, and what Trudeau is guilty of is making it much worse, not causing it in the first place. Is that so? 🤔

Yep, sounds like a real tax-and-spend Liberal. 🙄

Maybe you can find some examples of his tax-and-spend liberal tendencies? Environmentally conscious, perhaps, but tax-and-spend liberal, after what he said about the 2024 budget? Yeah god forbid we aim for competence and credentials. Three-word slogans are all we need for politics. Axe...the...Tax!

Link's a paywall, but point taken. I looked it up and I think it was 10 countries by the end of 2020: In 2014, when allies agreed that all members should meet NATO’s 2% spending level by 2024, only the U.S., Greece and the United Kingdom were in compliance. Now, NATO data shows Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, France and Norway meeting the target. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/ten-nato-members-now-meet-2-defense-spending-benchmark-but-not-germany-1.649349 Even so, many of these countries had already embarked on massive military expansion long before Trump even came to office (particularly Poland and the Baltic States), and likely as a result of Russia's annexing Crimea. Some of the stuff he says I'm fully on-board with. It's just...there's so much other...shit.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “ – Mark Twain What's very clear to you is very "not real". The Red Army's use of human waves were disastrous mistakes, that did not yield results. Their worst recorded use was against the Finns in 1939-1940, culminating in miserable failure in Karelia. They happened here and there against the Germans as well, mostly in the early, desperate stages of Barbarossa, but achieved nothing. As for what needs to be explained to you, are you really going to play that dumb? You've already talked about how more dangerous offensive war is than defense, so perhaps you can connect the dots...perhaps the Soviets had more motivation to fight protecting their homes and families from extermination, and perhaps their generals employed defense-in-depth and ceded territory in the face of German advances, stretching their supply lines 1500+ kilometers to breaking...before counterattacking at places like Moscow, Stalingrad etc in the Winter. Ever heard of General Winter? Hello?

He certainly didn't like Trudeau's 2024 budget. I get the impression that it's less that he likes what Trudeau is doing, and more that he really doesn't like what PP is offering.

I really shouldn't have to explain how bad a comparison this is. An existential defensive battle for survival against a genocidal opponent is by its nature very different than a aggressive war of choice for the sake of a crooked leader's vanity. Even so, the Soviet Union's human wave tactics were not war-winning or effective. They were clumsy mistakes in the early stages of the war, committed by bad/inexperienced officers that wasted finite manpower and resources, and accomplished little.

I see. So logic works backwards for you. Rather than citation being used to help establish the accuracy of the claim, you do it in reverse. You decide whether the claim is accurate first, and the "sources" that support it are thereby validated, regardless of how little credibility they have. What a comfy worldview that must be. 🙄