Moonbox

They all had crises to deal with. The Canada that Chretien took over was on the verge of a debt crisis and a currency collapse. He did what he had to in order to restore confidence. He is and he will continue to be reflected on positively for the difficult, unpopular and necessary decisions he made, contrasted with the instant gratification and populism of those that came after. Well if you have a solution to get the average voter interested in and informing themselves on politics and government finances, I'd love to hear it.

Except they have? So do the Russians. Look up the Rusich Group. 🙄 Which the Russian invasion has guaranteed. Great job, Vlad! 🤣👌 So was the Russian Federation. So was Belarus. If they're real countries, then so is Ukraine. 🙃 Maybe they can't. What they have done, however, is defeated the Russian invasion, humiliated the Russian military and forced them to rely on witless peasant conscripts hiding like rats behind minefields and in trenches, just to hang on what little territory they've gained. How many Russian soldiers lives is a square meter of Ukrainian dirt worth? (It's a trick question. Russian soldiers' lives have no value, as far as Mad Vlad is concerned).

That's a very facile argument, and implies that we can't judge anyone's record unless it's somehow spotless, no matter how much worse they leave things than when they started or how bad their policy is. Inextricably related, with the "long-term issues" relying on the resources that will be available to tackle them. Yes, here we are, talking circles around concrete issues while referring ambiguously to long-term "Problems" and a cryptic "lack of vision".

Goalpost-shift? That's all you've done here. The humiliating failed blitz on Kiev, the retreat from Kherson and Kharkiv (with its large ethnic Russian population), the bologna talk about removing Naziism in Ukraine, halting NATO expansion, that Ukraine isn't a real country and that it's actually part of Russia etc etc...These have all been discarded and forgotten in favor of the revised goals Putin's made up to save face. Now your cope is that a small land corridor to Crimea and roughly 10% of Ukraine's territory in the east is a successful outcome for 2 years of war, hundreds of thousands of dead/wounded Russian soldiers, the humiliation of their supposedly powerful military and the loss of their largest export market. Riiiiight. 🤣 Nope. Try and find me saying anything of the sort.

The answer is self-evidently no, since we've been running large deficits for the last 15 years, have rapidly expanded them since 2015, and have been financing our public spending for most of the last 50 years. If anything, budget health is what's constantly taking the back-burner, with voters content to ignore it and allow governments to kick the can down the road for future generations to pay. The debt is ultimately the number that matters, and it's what we pay interest on. The deficits are a just telling us how much better or worse it's going to get. If we account for the different level of governments that Canada has (but others don't) Canada's 9th worst, measuring up against fiscal basket-cases like Spain and Portugal. https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm Okay, but that's vague and subjective, and doesn't give us much to discuss, does it?

That's the magic of your delusional clownworld reality. Even when you're WRONG, as long as you can find a guy on youtube or Redacted saying otherwise, that's enough to convince you that you're RIGHT. 🤡

Anyone not living in a deluded clownworld does. Common sense and events tell us that Russia tried and failed miserably to blitz the Ukrainian capital. Common sense and events tell us that Russia lost so many troops that it had to initiate conscription. Common sense and events tell us that they've lost so much equipment that they're dredging up T-62a tanks (built in the 50's) and having to rely on Iranian garbage-tech to keep their army supplied with ordnance. The only part of Ukraine that was mostly ethnic Russian was Crimean, fool, and that's only because they murdered and deported most of the population ~90 years ago. Donetsk and Luhansk were both over 50% ethnic Ukrainian and under 40% Russian. Listening to someone as deluded and uninformed as you talk about "intelligence" is a grand joke. 🤣

Isn't that a bit of a catfish question? The answer is no, obviously, but since it was the wrong question it doesn't tell us much. I'm not saying that you don't care about the budget. I'm saying that most of the comparisons understate the problem, and for various reasons. I've already mentioned CPP being included in the net debt calculation, which is a farce but other things that skew the comparison are things like not including health care or education related debt, which other G7 and OECD countries have on their national (rather than provincial balance sheets. That seems a uncharacteristically rhetorical.

Of course it was, but that was also the point. Badly mishandling the budget makes everything harder. Okay, but what numbers are those, and what do they really tell us? If it's net-debt to GDP, that comparison is extremely misleading. Who do you imagine is saying we do nothing?

I believe that Russia has lost, because they launched a full-scale invasion against a much smaller, much weaker and much poorer opponent, and in two years have only gained 10% of its territory. In exchange, Russia's army has been humiliated, its standing in the world is greatly diminished, and they've lost hundreds of thousands of their young men. What a victory. 🤣

What analogy is that? I really don't think Canada should be following the US's example, and not just because we don't have the luxury of sheltering behind the USD's reserve status.

How many of these big problems would you say aren't directly tied back to or constrained by the budget? The sad part is that is not hyperbole, or exaggerated. Trudeau has doubled our federal debt in 8 years, expanded program spending by an average of 7% per year over that span, and less than half of that can be attributed to COVID. As for our relative status vs the G7, it's grossly misrepresented by the net-debt calculations that the Trudeau Liberals keep waving around. TLDR on that is that it inflates Canada's net balance by the $700B in assets held within CPP and QPP, while not accounting for the associated pension liabilities. It's a peculiarity in Canada's pension system relative to the G7, but a useful obfuscation for the Liberals. No, I do not disagree that we have structural problems. One thing is for certain, however: Massive deficits and rapidly growing federal indebtedness make present and future structural problems harder to solve.

Some of it is, but some of it isn't. There are objective measurements that can be used. None of them are perfect or comprehensive on their own, but they can pull away the veneer of "subjectivity" when studied together. Both. CERB was needed and justified, but not at the level it was provided, nor for as long as it was. The amount of excess savings that Canadians built up while receiving CERB benefits is one of those objective measurements we can use, and it's something that the economists have commented on extensively. Evidently it is, because our ballooning public debt is barely a topic worth mentioning today.

I'm not speaking past you. I just think your reasoning appears vague and aimless. Our ballooning public deficits aren't caused by mysterious or esoteric forces. They're a function of unprecedented spending increases that have not generated even remotely commensurate increases in revenue. Yes, and we're definitely not getting it. The bar is set so low for "doing better" that I think your pessimism in that regard is unwarranted. If we're looking at value for the dollar, the worst course of action is borrow and throw more money at the things that haven't been providing it.

I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that household debt is managed the same way as public/government debt. The comparison is drawn as a simple heuristic to bring one simple reality home: Money spent on things you want today, must be repaid in the future. If the thing you want today provides no future benefit, you've impoverished future-you for the sake of today-you.

Except in a lot of ways it is. Frivolous spending is still frivolous spending, whether it's financed by government or household debt. In some contexts yes, in others no. Michael brings up a good example about financing a bridge that will provide value to its community for generations. The same can't be said the non-productive expansion of our public service and bureaucracy or for wasteful subsidies/handouts.

Do you see all of the white parts? That's where Russia has "lost". 🙃

With all due respect, I think this is poor reasoning. The erosion of our public finances is an issue of poor stewardship and incompetent management. This is becoming a crisis that's already imposing an actual structural burden on Canadians for decades to come. As for vision, or what's going to help us, the first step is to remove the decision makers who are doubling down on policy that's guaranteeing the problem gets worse.

The solution to wasting money frivolously is to stop doing it. It doesn't have to be rainbows. He just has to stop punching holes in the hull of our ship. It will most assuredly not be sunshine and rainbows for all of the public sector workers that we'll need to dump, but it still needs to happen to not sink the boat.

Try, if you can, to remember this post before the next time you want to call me a Trudeau fanboy.

To go with your trollbait copypasta? Salted tears??? Did that come off your Rolodex, grandpa, or did some Reddit Andy use it and you thought it was a zinger? 🤣

Here's the thing though: Trudeau has done such an abysmal job that Poilievre wouldn't even have to be mediocre to shine in comparison. As much time as Pierre has spent harping on conservative social issues, Trudeau has spent as much or more on cringe-level virtue signaling. The one file that actually matters the most is the one Trudeau has catastrophically botched, which is economy and the fiscal balance sheet. As much as I dislike Pierre and shake my head that this is the best the Conservatives could come up with, for the things that matter most, it's inconceivable that he'd be as bad or worse than Trudeau.

So you start with easily debunked nonsense claims, fall back on juvenile insults, and now resort to spelling corrections, of all things. 🤣 You should try turning your gaze inward. "Simply walking in your footsteps" is kindergarten babyshit, but par for the course coming from you. 👌

Pretty lies and simple-minded slogans made for simple-minded people are, at best a lousy indicator for a politician is going to do in office. For me, I am cautiously optimistic that a lot of the dumber stuff PP has said was just for the dumber parts of the Conservative base, and especially for Mad Max's delusional supporters.

So what does that say about you, as you fall back on puerile insults as soon as your balogna arguments get debunked? This is how you like it, I guess? 🙄