ReeferMadness

I'm convinced you have a point in there somewhere - but don't worry, nobody will ever guess what it is.

I don't recall being in lockdown.

Yeah - fighting Nazis was "exactly" the same as invading someone else's homeland in the 3rd world. That's really reaching. :lol: Ohhh. Were you in 'Nam, BC? That would have definitely had to suck. Well, thanks for helping me feel better about our historical aggression.

And you need to find a billion dollars somewhere for your campaign.

Really? You're really going to compare fighting the Nazis in WWII to your imperial campaign against the people of Vietnam? You're really desperate for anything that will make you feel better about American aggression against third world countries. Maybe it's the fact that the US is regularly found to be the greatest threat to world peace in worldwide polling.

That would be a perfectly valid comparison if only Canadian actions in WWII consisted of propping up a tinpot dictator against a popular uprising, dropping toxic carcinogens all over someone else's jungle and dropping napalm on kids.

Because it's his lies and fiscal mismanagement that have resulted in us being in the mess we're in. His economic policies intended to create Canada as an 'energy superpower' have hollowed out the manufacturing sector, leaving us more dependent on energy commodities. Which have no tanked. His ideologically motivated tax cuts have left us with a structural deficit. And, in case you didn't notice, the title of this thread is Tory Fiscal Stewardship (which is of course an oxymoron). There is no way of measuring whether a given set of policies have "put the interests of the country first". Instead, we need to focus on transparency and honest reporting so that citizens can determine whether the policies have been successful.

Because, unlike Harper, Martin had some basic integrity when it came to reporting surpluses? And every business's primary concern is money. The customer comes second. Or third. Everyone put their own interests first. The trick to a system functioning well is to ensure that you have way of aligning interests. In the case of government, it starts with transparency and honest reporting. Like Harper promised, remember?

You wouldn't think so. And yet, there are corporate vultures that make huge profits buying businesses and selling them for spare parts.

Apparently, intelligence is no guarantee that you'll have a firm grasp of reality.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Did Harper inherit the type of mess that he's left Trudeau? Did Martlin lie about having a surplus and leave Harper with a structural deficit? I don't think so.

I'm not feeling sorry for the Liberals - I'm more concerned about the country. Politics is supposed to be about the country, not about the politicians.

So, that's your excuse for Harper creating a structural deficit? The Liberals should have guessed that he would mismanage the fiscal situation so it's their fault?

And we'll be paying for Harper long after I'm gone.

Funny cuz everyone I know does.

There's no such thing as "domestic" anything anymore. Every country has its specialization in their service to economics. Countries that haven't yet been completely exploited supply raw materials. Countries with educated people do design. Countries with desperate people (and little in the way of labor/environmental standards) do the manufacturing. Countries with money do the merchandising. And countries with no corporate taxes launder the profits. All in the service of the economy. Keep the hamster wheel rolling. Ah, the golden age of specialization.

Yup. Let's sign on because it's disaster if we don't. It can't be sold on its merits so it will be sold on the basis of fear.

And are these advantages real or theoretical? After our free trade agreement with Korea, imports went up and exports actually went down. After a single case of BSE was found, Korea refused to import our beef. Yay, free trade. And the way the dollar is headed, those cheaper cars won't be cheaper at all, even after we've exported the jobs. Good for economics. But not necessarily good for people. Economists are good at making the GDP go up but an increased GDP isn't necessarily good for all the people or even a majority of the people. What about if we stop obsessing over what's good for the economy and started paying attention to what is good for people. Every time someone starts to lecture me about the "good things about trade", I know I'm in for a rehash of Economics 101 (again). Spare me. Based on what you've just said, it doesn't appear that you understand economics any better than I do. And based on the lack of specifics coming from anyone on this wretched deal, I'm wondering whether there are very many people at all who understand it well. Rather than being cheerleaders, I would like the government to conduct and publish a cogent analysis of the deal and give a realistic assessment of the winners and the losers. I expect that, as with most of the globalization deals, it's mostly a case of the rich winning while the middle class loses. And that's our "betters" like Mr Harper feed us vague promises; which you apparently accept holus bolus.

Yeah. Stay away from the airport, whatever you do.

I don't generally quote blogs, unless they are from someone with some reputation. I more rely on reputable news sources. Well, that's the thing, isn't it. If you took his nonsense (his word salad as TB so elegantly put it) and put it into a blog, you wouldn't pay any attention to it. It would be a case of just another science wannabe trying to make a name for himself. But because he doesn't write a blog and he's one of "us" he's interesting? It makes no sense. Either he knows what he's talking about (in which case he should be publishing for peer review) or he doesn't in which case he's not worth reading. So, here's the thing. Most people in this world aren't scientists and most scientists aren't experts and even experts are only experts in one particular area. And to top it all off, lots of today's cutting edge science turns into tomorrow's bullsh*t. So, we all have to go through life trying to figure out what's real and what's not. And we need to decide if people know what they're talking about or if they just think they know what they're talking about or if they just wish they knew what they're talking about. So, I think most people are here as lay people to exchange ideas. And having -1 and hitops pretend like they have some expert level insight into climate science is just polluting the threads. If they want to go off and have a let's pretend we know everything thread, I say they should knock themselves out.

The reason that most people "rehash" posts from elsewhere is that climate change experts tend not to hand around MLW. Whether his posts mean anything or not is up for debate but I suspect they are sophomoric arguments that would be laughed off by the experts. If he seriously thinks that he can poke holes in the work of experts, he should go and publish some work and get it peer reviewed. Either way, he's wasting people's time in this forum because nobody around here has the background to evaluate whether he's on to something or not.

Indeed. And I would never question your right to question the work of scientists, although you are clearly not qualified to do so. I just find it curious that you accept the claims of economists holus bolus as an article of faith when economists have clearly shown they are unable to predict anything with any accuracy. And I don't care whether they work on you or not. Sovereignty is a right in international law and Harper giving it away as a sacrifice to show his religious devotion to right wing economics is a bad deal. Comparative advantage is inferred in my descriptions. I'm not going to write a book. And comparative advantage is not without its detractors (see James K Gailbraith).

I suppose that's a fair assumption but don't you think it would have been nice if Harper had spent just a little less time patting himself on the back about what a fine deal he made and put a little more effort into some hard analysis in terms of how this will help Canada and where it will hurt? Do you think that Canadians deserve a little actual information about what we're getting into? It's funny how people will insist on absolute proof that climate change is real before doing even the slightest thing to save their grandkids from possible catastrophe but will accept a major change like this without asking for the slightest evidence of whether it will be good for the country or not. Belief without evidence is called faith. And faith is the bedrock of religion. And right wing economics is the predominant religion in the western world today.

Wow. The guy who thinks his science degree entitles him to second guess every detail of climate science thinks that we should trade away our sovereignty on the basis of a buzz phrase he learned on Economics 101. OK, let's talk about competitive advantage. Why don't we start with the Vietnamese? Since they have almost no economy, they have little in the way of labor or environmental standards. So, Canadian companies that don't like to pay people or are bothered by the inconvenience of not dumping toxic waste wherever they like can just move there. And Japan? Well, they are so culturally inclined to work long hours, they actually have a work for death from working too hard (karoshi). It's common practice for workers to work huge amounts of overtime but not record any of it. And the US? Well, one of the advantages the US has is it's gargantuan military industrial complex that allows its government to feed mind blowing sums of money to US companies (national security and all, right?). But of course, its biggest advantage is its ability to coerce smaller countries to behave in a way favorable to it, including making us sign a deal like this, a deal that apparently, even the proponents can't find anything good to say about. And us? Well, from everything I've heard, including all of the discussions on this forum, all this deal will do is reinforce our status as a trader in raw commodities. No need to fret over that because commodity prices stay high forever, right?

Nonsense. You can't claim a recession in 2008 is somehow responsible for a structural deficit in 2016. Oh. the devil made me do it. He did create the structural deficit and for entirely ideological reasons. As an ideologically blind believer in small government, he wanted to hamstring future governments to hamstring them from have a government that does things. So, he cuts revenue, knowing that some future government will be forced into a choice of cutting program spending or raising taxes. Patent nonsense. If Harper wants to constrain his own spending that's one thing. He's created a poison pill to constrain a future government. This type of dishonest governance needs to be called out for what it is. After Chretien/Martin ran their surpluses, I would have been happier if they had put the surplus towards the debt and split the interest savings between new program spending and lower taxes. We would probably be $100 billion less in debt if that had happened. But instead, the Liberals spent the surplus and Harper created a structural deficit. And nobody complained because they were too greedy for tax savings. So blaming this mess on Trudeau is ridiculous.