Canada: Norway & Greece in One Country with One Currency

[cybercoma]

Cybercoma, you have stated well the simplistic federal Liberal Party justification of equalization.

No. I started with the actual legislative reason for the equalization payments. You can find this information on the Harper Government website.

There's another logic: provincial governments should be able to offer similar levels of service so that people don't wastefully move around the federation simply shopping for provincial government largesse.

I agree.

Or how about the Bourassa logic: if we are to have a single currency, we must have a single fiscal policy. (I was always doubtful of this but given the transfers between Germany/Greece, Bourassa seems right. The European bailout of Greece is shocking in Europe but so normal in Canada that no one notices.)

No idea what your point is here. Are you seriously suggesting that Canadians in PEI should not expect at least a relatively similar standard of healthcare, social assistance (in all of its forms), and education as Alberta, for example?

I will stay with my original idea.

Whatever that is.

For some people, life is all about spending other people's money. (I call such people "moochers".) For example, politicians and government bureaucrats love to spend other people's money. The further away the other people, the easier it is to mooch.

This doesn't help the discussion at all. We pool our capital in the form of taxes to fund policies and programs that benefit our entire country. Having a relatively similar standard between provinces does many things for the nation, not the least of which is what you pointed out above. It keeps provinces from collapsing due to people abandoning ship. You probably don't know much about the situation in NB; however, this is exactly the problem here. Working-age people move out of the province to Alberta or anywhere else with more opportunities, while the people left behind are the youth, elderly, and disabled. The province has a disproportionate number of people requiring service versus those financing them. The debt here is crippling and politicians are doing little to fix it.

Equalization means that Quebec bureaucrats and politicians can tax people elsewhere in Canada.

It's kind of like the UN.

It doesn't mean that at all. The people of Quebec pay the exact same federal taxes as everyone else in Canada. If you move to Alberta, you don't pay a higher federal income tax to fund Quebec. Likewise, if you lived in a broke province like NB, you still pay the same federal income tax rate.

[cybercoma]

And yet ordinary people from St. John's to Victoria go to a Tim Horton's every morning and take the same, simple coloured paper from their wallet and get a coffee in return.

IMHO, there is something civilized in such transactions.

For some odd reason, you seem to think that federalism means each province is effectively its own country. That couldn't be further from the truth. They simply have separate spheres of responsibility from the federal government, as outlined in sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution. You act like the provinces are wholly independent of the federal government.

Your example, however, does not translate between nations. States are supposed to be entirely sovereign. One state does not have authority or responsibility over any other, as opposed to the federal government that has a responsibility for certain administrative functions across the nation.

Edited April 24, 2012 by cybercoma

[Michael Hardner]

Topaz, we have a GLOBAL economy. (You can skype/email anyone. We have posters on MLF from around the world.)

In the future, should we have/will there be a single currency/money? Well, in the future, will the world have a single language? Why do we have money and language?

IMV, we have money/currency for the same reason we have language: to communicate/deal with one another. I suspect that some people will always want to deal in their own way.

Here's my prediction: As soon as there is a "single" world language or "single" world currency, someone will do a deal on the sly, or make a slang joke.

Interesting ideas. One difference between money and language is that money is always centrally controlled. You can't have money without central government or bank validating and managing it. You can have barter, but that's not the same.

Language is not subject to central control, so you and I can make up our own slang and others may pick up on it but if we develop our own money, we'll have to develop our own government-like or bank-like institution to manage it or it will fall apart.

[Michael Hardner]

IMHO, there is something civilized in such transactions.

Literally. The root of 'civilization' is 'city' and cities developed alongside with social technologies such as writing, money and laws. All of these needed to develop simultaneously so that larger economies could work, allowing cities to develop.

Cities, writing, money, laws - the development of these things are arguably the most important technologies to humans and they all came out of writing, which came first.

Now, what will the computer do to money, to laws, to cities ? We already have seen the beginning of what they've done to writing LOL OMFG !

[Vermpeary]

LOTS OF POOOORN!!!! blblblblblblblblblbl