Machjo

I often read intentionally disparaging comments about this or that being 'socialist' and so not good. Yet oftem the same people who make thse comments are prepared to support much more spending on the military than they oppose in other services. It just seems to me that the military is viewd by some as a kind of sacred cow and the ideal job-creation programme without having to admit that it's essentially welfare-statism. How is it that spending on education let's say, is socialist, yet twice as much spending on the military is capitalist? I just don't get it.

Sure, after their land is returned to them. Ottawa is still unrelinquished Algonquin territory, so it would be within reservation borders.

As for the South African Apartheid system being based on the Canadian reservation system, I'd learnt that in high school years ago, and have read it in a few books since. If you google it, it's plastered all over the internet.

Thanks. I was not aware of that. This I was aware of.

I've never understood how government spending on education is socialist yet government spending on the military is not. If we define any government intervention in the economy as socialistic, then military spending is just as socialist as education spending, isn't it? I've never understood how military welfare has always been an oximoronic sacred cow to so-called capitalists who are often more socialist in reality than even some self-proclaimed socialists, whereby the self-proclaimed socialist might intend to increase education funding by a little while the 'anti-capitalist' intends to blow the top off the budget for the military.

Ideally, we want predictability, and that would mean fighting both inflation and deflation simultaneously. Just as inflation encourages excessive spending in a race against prices, deflation risks discouraging spending in the wait for better prices. Ideally, we would want people to not worry too much about price fluctuations beyond the ordinary. Sure prices for individual items may fluctuate owing to shifts in supply and demand, but we would still want overall prices in the economy to remain more or less flat so as to allow for predictability and long-term planning, not only for government, but also for family budgets. You might be right on that. But in the end, even deflation is still harmful. For instance, it could exacerbate a person's debts owing to drops in salary or profit but no commensurate drop in the debt. Of course we don't want inflation to help him pay his debt as that would encourage him to borrow some more. But a flat rate of inflation would reflect the real cost of the debt. Now you re making the assumption that all government spending is just to 'rpime the pumps'. Some government spending is in fact legitimate, such as for compulsory education, etc. But I do agree that a government taken by surprise by a recession and with no previous planning is likely to fly by the seat of their pants by spending on all kinds of make-work projects as we're seeing now in this recession. And that of course risks inflation later owing to that spending not being an investment of any kind, unlike education for example. As a result, it's unrecoverable money spent to be paid back later as the economy picks up again with little to show for that spending. I agree that a government need not respond to a recession (in fact, I'd like to do what Sweden does by not having a legally mandated minimum wage so that workers could adjust). But I do believe that governments need to counter deflation with as much vigour as they do inflation. It's just a shame that they don't counter inflation with the same vigour as they do deflation, and I think that's part of the problem as it causes an imbalance. Governments have been printing money for centuries. Nothing new there. And currency is an efficient tool for international commerce, so I have no problem with the existence of currency, and it can exist only if government produces it. As for printing money to pay off the debt, no, I would not normally encourage that. But under special conditions, it could be used to counter deflation, as long as the government is prepared to reel that money back in if necessary to counter inflation later. Are you kidding? His military expansion was the most expensive welfare statism the world had ever seen. Can't find a job? Join the army.

I agree that a tax increase takes money out of the economy and so serves a counter-inflationary, or even deflationary role, which is not a good move per se in a recession. However, in a bubble economy, a tax increase combinedd with spending cuts can be beneficial in cooling the economy down. In a recession, it depends. On the one hand, the government wants to put more money into the economy. On the other hand, it wants to keep a balanced budget. I could see various options there. One option is, if the government is debt free, to reduce taxes and engage in counter-deflationary printing and spend that money. Or if it does have a debt, cut taxes if possible, or increase taxes if necessary to pay the debt, but counter its effects through counter-deflationary printing of money and use that to pay off the debt, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Agreed. Though I'd generally prefer reducing government spending to maintaining high taxes, I'd also be responsible enough to oppose any tax reduction without any commensurate reduction in spending. On that Front, Reagan waas still partly to blame for having pushed for tax cuts without first ensuring spending cuts. A responsible government would ensure spending is reduced and that the debt is paid off before venturing into blind tax reductions. You do have a point there. Not necessarily. In the event of a 0% bank rate alongside overall deflation (which is really the only time counter-deflationary spending is necessary so as to counter the threat of a deflationary spiral), a government could get away with 'printing a moderate amount of money to spend. This would be a way of increasing revenue and spending without necessarily having to go into debt, inflation, or high interest rates sicne it's essentially aiming at simply countering deflation. Granted the pre-conditions are stringent and not often encountered, but within the realm of possibility none-the-less. Again, the deficit does not necessarily need to rise, depending on circumstances. Though granted taxes may have to increase so as to hedge against the extra printed money so as to brace for the possibility of inflation later. Granted. But each one had the option of increasing taxes, reducing spending, or both, but failed to make that decision owing to the fear of losing votes. This is not a Republican vs. Democrat issue. I agree that Obama's borrow and spend strategy will do no more than postpone the hardship. In the end, he really has no choice but to reduce spending, increase taxes, or both. If the problem is with deflation, then he's certainly free at that stage to print however much money is necessary to counter the deflation and use that to pay off the debt, thus killing two birds with one stone by paying off the debt and putting more money into the economy at the same time. With the government as indebted as it is, there is not much more he can do. When I'd pointed out Reagan, it had nothing to do with his being a Democrat or Republican, but just him.

Yes. Hmmm... I should go see the doc more often to not overlook these things. Anyway, we still can't pay our own way even if we want to, unless we go cross-border and so export jobs to the US. Brilliant.

Universal health care does not equate with public health care, Both Sweden's and Singapore's systems surpass the Canadian one as far as quality goes, even for those who can't afford it, and are cheaper, and yet have far more private involvment. It's not about ideological dogma, but about saving lives. The more invesment there is in healthcare, regardless of whether it's private or public, the better. Why would we want to block investment in health care?

Why couldn't government pay a private clinic, like a voucher system. Where you go the money follows. Heck, even that model welfare state, Sweden, allows private clinics! If it's good enough for a welfare state of Sweden's magnitude, surely it must be good enough for Canada.

Watch the video I'd liknked to earlier. Children were beaten for speking their language. I remember one woman on TV whose father had refused to teach her his language because of his memory of having had a needle stuck through his tongue for having dared to speak his language. So now that we've taken their land, we should be rewarded by having become the majority over the generations? We don't owe them anything at all as far as helping them maintain their culture is concerned? We can just wash our hands of it and say its' the distant ancient past, and that they must now integrate to our rules. That's rewarding imperialism.

So how do we remedy the consequences, seeing that forced assimilation continues to varying degrees in that our whole system is Eurocentric?

So the government is still involved in trying to cover up current activities today. Of course the residential schools are over, and we hole so is forced sterilization. But why so many people in so many places trying to cover up a kiddy sex ring?

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/44/068.html And this from 2003, an attempted cover-up of a contemporary kiddy sex ring the historical roots of which can be traced back to the residential school syste, with native leaders, church leaders, RCMP, and politicians implicated in the cover-up: http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org/intro2.html

I agree about the point on paedophilia. But how do you explain the forced mixing of healthy students with tuberculosis-ridden students in nearly every school in Western Canada that the doctor inspected? How do we dismiss the still-living survivors who testify to their forced contact with the sick children? How do we explain that in this doctor's opinion, the rates were too high to be just accidental or incompetence? What about the nurse who kicked a five-year-old to death in 1966 in front of the other children, or the child who was beaten to death for having stolen a peach, or the baby thrown in the oven, again witnessed by living survivors and recorded on vido on-line? All of this proves the value placed on their lives and thus corroborates the suggestion that the exposure to tuberculosis was intentional and thus criminal.

Not to mention a doctor who was working for the department of Indian Affairs and whose position had been abolished soon after his reports were presented, all that at the height of an epidemic. Not suspicious?

He was a doctor working for the Department of Indian Affairs, and was soon to have his position abolished after reporting his findings. Not suspicious in the least? Don't you think an insider of his stature would have known more than the average person on this?

It had already been referred to as 'criminal' in a book published in 1907 by Dr Bryce, whose position was abolished soon after he'd reported the high cases of tuberculosis. That's not mere incompetence, but clearly intentional cover-up. You don't abolish such an important medical position right after the holder of that position announced epidemic death rates in the midst of that crisis. And even he himself in 1907 referred to it as 'criminal'.

And what about intentional cover-ups that have been witnessed and recorded?

And there are plenty of reports of children being forced to play with children who were known to be sick, of knowingly contaminated blankets being given to healthy Indians, and healthy children being forced to share beds with sick children. I'm not aware of any written document of some of these, but in the video I'd linked to above, some adults testify that this happened to them as children, resulting in only the naturally immune surviving. On the same video, a photo is presented as evidence of sick and healthy children sitting together even though even at that time it was known that tuberculosis was a quarantinable disease. Medicine was not that backwards then. We're not talking about five centuries ago here.

"I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in our residential schools to spread infectious diseases... The mortality rate in the schools often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime." Dr. Peter Bryce The Story of a National Crime, 1907

Not the abuse, but the forced sterilization and intentional exposure to tuberculosis, as quoted above. Do you have any record of others being intentionally exposed to tuberculosis?

But certainly not on the same scale as the others. We did not see Catholics or Poles being forcefully separated from their parents and forced into residential schools. We certainly didn't hear stories of nuns getting pregnant off of Aboriginal boys and then killing the babies, etc. We're talking about a whole different level here.

Of course, and that's shameful too. I'm not ignoring that this happened to others, and we could certainly create a thread on that. Here however, it was not focussed exclusivly to 'morons', but to an entire race of people.