CPC 2017: Bernier vs Alexander

[capricorn]

Scheer was born in Ottawa, moved to Regina when he hooked up with his wife. His French is very good, could be an advantage.

[Argus]

2 minutes ago, -1=e^ipi said:

The social conservatives are certainly more politically organized, just like the social justice warriors are. This means that they can win party leaderships, but the choice their prefer tends to hurt the party when it comes to a federal election.

Scheer seemed to be the most publicly personable of the three, and he's promised not to bring in any legislation on abortion, gay rights or the other hot button social issues. He's promised not to allow private members bills on it either, unlike Bernier.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Argus

[-1=e^ipi]

Well I'm certainly not voting for Scheer. Since he just wants status quo and to continue what Harper did, I doubt he will do anything to change my mind.

Maybe I'll vote for NDP in 2019. I'm not really sure.

[Argus]

Just now, -1=e^ipi said:

Well I'm certainly not voting for Scheer. Since he just wants status quo and to continue what Harper did, I doubt he will do anything to change my mind.

Maybe I'll vote for NDP in 2019. I'm not really sure.

The 'status quo' right now would be big government spending, big deficits, and lots of PR photo ops, along with appointing people to jobs based on identity politics. So in that light Scheer taking over would be anything but the status quo.

As to continuing what Harper did. I agreed with most of what Harper did. His only big failings, for me, were on defense and the deficit.

 

[capricorn]

3 minutes ago, Argus said:

It's interesting he had so much support in Quebec. Nearly as much as Bernier.

His French is very good. Couple that with his Sask.experience that is a double whammy.

[-1=e^ipi]

3 minutes ago, Argus said:

So in that light Scheer taking over would be anything but the status quo.

I meant status quo with respect to what the conservative party was representing.

[capricorn]

6 minutes ago, -1=e^ipi said:

Maybe I'll vote for NDP in 2019. I'm not really sure.

Well you've got a lot of time to make up your mind.

[-1=e^ipi]

Just now, capricorn said:

Well you've got a lot of time to make up your mind.

We'll see who they choose. If they choose someone like Guy Caron, someone with an economics background who wants to introduce a universal basic income, sure. If they choose an identitarian SJW like Nikki Ashton, forget it.

[Argus]

4 minutes ago, -1=e^ipi said:

We'll see who they choose. If they choose someone like Guy Caron, someone with an economics background who wants to introduce a universal basic income, sure. If they choose an identitarian SJW like Nikki Ashton, forget it.

A universal basic income will not work in a country like Canada which has such high immigration. Most of our immigrants are from a very harsh economic climate where you take whatever you can. They'll all jump at this in a second, as will the entire population of Atlantic Canada - which is rapidly becoming an unsustainable welfare society.

[-1=e^ipi]

15 minutes ago, Argus said:

A universal basic income will not work in a country like Canada which has such high immigration. Most of our immigrants are from a very harsh economic climate where you take whatever you can. They'll all jump at this in a second, as will the entire population of Atlantic Canada - which is rapidly becoming an unsustainable welfare society.

UBI can work in every country as long as its level is reasonable.

Economists tend to like UBI.
Economists tend to like taxation of CO2 emissions to internalize externalities.
Economists tend to like Consumption taxes over corporate taxes.
Economists tend to dislike Supply Management.

But all of our political parties in the house of commons disagree with economists on all of these (one exception is the Green Party and CO2 emission taxes).

All our parties are run by economic illiterates. No wonder Canada is falling behind countries like Australia in terms of GDP per capita, life expectancy, HDI and various other measures of standard of living.

The first past the post system certainly doesn't serve Canada very well.

[Argus]

10 minutes ago, -1=e^ipi said:

UBI can work in every country as long as its level is reasonable.

Economists tend to like UBI.
Economists tend to like taxation of CO2 emissions to internalize externalities.
Economists tend to like Consumption taxes over corporate taxes.
Economists tend to dislike Supply Management.

Economists like UBI, perhaps,in theory, but no country has ever implemented it in practice. And the success of the thing rests entirely on human behaviour, which is not something economists tend to be able to predict except that the more you pay people to do something the more they will do it. If you pay people to do nothing, then a lot more people will do nothing.

CO2 taxes on emossions are fine if you really feel cutting back emissions is necessary. I don't believe cutting back on C02 emissions is necessary or even helpful.

I do agree with them about supply management and consumption taxes, however.

Quote

The first past the post system certainly doesn't serve Canada very well.

As opposed to Italy? Greece? Israel? Belgium? There are more screwed up democracies with RBP than FPP

Edited May 28, 2017 by Argus

[marcus]

1 hour ago, Argus said:

Most of our immigrants are from a very harsh economic climate where you take whatever you can.

You continue to push your ill-informed image of who our immigrants are. With the way our immigration system works and who they allow in through the Express Entry system, which is how most of our migrants come in, I'm sure most of them have a higher education than you. In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to immigrate to Canada, if you were to go through the Express Entry system.

[marcus]

51 minutes ago, Argus said:

Economists like UBI, perhaps,in theory, but no country has ever implemented it in practice.

A Canadian city tried it in Manitoba in the 1970's. It started in 1974 by an NDP government and then shut down by the Conservative government in 1979.

Mincome was an experimental Canadian guaranteed annual income project that was held in Manitoba, during the 1970s. The project, funded jointly by the Manitoba provincial government and the Canadian federal government under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. It was launched with a news release on February 22, 1974, under the NDP government of Edward Schreyer, and was closed down in 1979 under the Conservative government of Sterling Lyon and the federal Progressive Conservative Party of Joe Clark. The purpose of this experiment was to assess the social impact of a guaranteed, unconditional annual income, including whether a program of this nature would cause disincentives to work for the recipients and how great such a disincentive would be.

Post-Mincome research

An important motivation of Mincome and the negative income tax experiments in the U.S. was to determine the impact of a guaranteed income plan on incentives to work. University of Manitoba economists Derek Hum and Wayne Simpson analyzed labour supply or work disincentive issues in Mincome during the 1980s and published their results in a series of papers and a monograph. Their results showed a small impact on labor markets, with working hours dropping one percent for men, three percent for married women, and five percent for unmarried women. Indeed, the largest impact appeared to be changes in family composition not the experimental treatments, as preschool children increased the labour supply of husbands and reduced the labour supply of wives by roughly the same modest amount. Even these decreases in hours worked may be seen to be offset by the opportunity cost of more time for family and education.

Link

[Argus]

15 minutes ago, marcus said:

You continue to push your ill-informed image of who our immigrants are. With the way our immigration system works and who they allow in through the Express Entry system, which is how most of our migrants come in, I'm sure most of them have a higher education than you. In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to immigrate to Canada, if you were to go through the Express Entry system.

Most of our immigrants are either coming in under the refugee program, where there is no skill, language, or education criteria, under the family class, where there is no skill, language, or education criteria, or come in under the skills program as the relative of someone who actually qualifies. Thus only a very small proportion of our immigrants actually qualify according to the 'points' system. Of these, many will never find a job behind menial, manual labour since their academic credentials are either false, or are not recognized, or they don't have the language skills to make use of them in Canada. There is a reason why every public housing project is jammed with immigrants.

[Argus]

6 minutes ago, marcus said:

A Canadian city tried it in Manitoba in the 1970's. It started in 1974 by an NDP government and then shut down by the Conservative government in 1979.

Manitoba in the '70s was a homogeneous community still gripped by the Christian work ethic its then citizenry was raised on.

Canada of 2017 is filled with people, both immigrants and native born, with zero work ethic who would be more than happy to sit on their asses the rest of their lives if someone would pay them to do so. Implement it now and half the minimum wage jobs in the country would go begging for workers as they all decided to sit home and live off the government.

[marcus]

11 minutes ago, Argus said:

Most of our immigrants are either coming in under the refugee program, where there is no skill, language, or education criteria, under the family class, where there is no skill, language, or education criteria, or come in under the skills program as the relative of someone who actually qualifies. 

Here are the targets for 2017, which hasn't changed much compared to previous years:

Immigrants coming through Economic programs: 172,500

Through Family Sponsorship: 84,000

As a Refugee: 43,500

Link

Another important factor to take into consideration is how well the children of immigrants do at school. After a few years in Canada, they end up surpassing non-immigrant students in performance. This is because majority of the people who immigrate to Canada are from higher middle class families in their own countries, where education is taken very seriously.

 

[marcus]

1 hour ago, Argus said:

Manitoba in the '70s was a homogeneous community still gripped by the Christian work ethic its then citizenry was raised on.

Canada of 2017 is filled with people, both immigrants and native born, with zero work ethic who would be more than happy to sit on their asses the rest of their lives if someone would pay them to do so. Implement it now and half the minimum wage jobs in the country would go begging for workers as they all decided to sit home and live off the government.

It would be ridiculous to conclude how well a program/system would do based on how you feel and how you see things.

I'd love to see another experiment done. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening for a while. Especially with people who are unwilling to be open-minded based on their prejudices. 

Edited May 28, 2017 by marcus

[Newfoundlander]

I guess the party wasn't willing to move on from Stephen Harper. What an awful result. Trudeau might be all style and no substance but Scheer seems to be no style nor substance. After all the criticizing Conservatives did of Trudeau's resume they managed to elect someone with an even weaker one. 

[-1=e^ipi]

9 hours ago, Argus said:

Economists like UBI, perhaps,in theory, but no country has ever implemented it in practice.

Yeah. So maybe a country should at least try.

But apparently, because no country has ever tried UBI, no country ever should, regardless of how much economic theory or empirical evidence suggests it makes economic sense.

 

You're a true conservative Argus. You really have a strong desire to irrationally conserve the status quo / tradition (which is the definition of conservatism) even if it makes no sense what so ever if you accept arguments like 'X has never been tried before, therefore we should never ever try X'.

 

9 hours ago, Argus said:

if you really feel cutting back emissions is necessary. I don't believe cutting back on C02 emissions is necessary or even helpful.

It doesn't need to be necessary to justify it. Actually, you don't even need to believe that decreasing CO2 emissions is beneficial for Canada to justify taxation of CO2 emissions. CO2 emission taxation can be justified on the grounds that, up to a certain point, it is a more efficient form of charity to other countries than either aid or military expenditure, so if we were to implement CO2 emission taxation and cut aid/military spending, then we could do more charity for the same economic cost.

 

As opposed to Italy? Greece? Israel? Belgium? There are more screwed up democracies with RBP than FPP

New Zealand and Netherlands appear to be in good shape.

But you want the system that gave us Trudeau, Notley, Wynne, Trump, Harper, Hitler, etc. Cause it's worked out so well!!

Let's be honest. We both know that the main reason why you oppose changing FPTP is because it favours Harperites such as yourself and the extreme identitarians of the fake liberal party run by Trudeau. It allows your minority view point to occasionally hold all the power and denies various groups representation (classical liberals, libertarians, communists and other groups get zero representation). You are inherently against the idea of a representative democracy and are only interesting in how frequently you minority beliefs can hold power.

[scribblet]

Scheer was an acceptable choice, pretty bland tho, but he did oppose C-16 and carbon taxes.   Supply management is an issue which he wasn`t going to get into but it may be a moot point after Trump has finished with little Trudeau.  As for social conservatism, not much there for them as Scheer has promised not to revisit the abortion issue.   I don`t see him being strong enough to beat Trudeau and for sure he  et al are not as media savvy or able to manipulate the media as well as Trudeau does. 

[Argus]

12 hours ago, marcus said:

Here are the targets for 2017, which hasn't changed much compared to previous years:

Immigrants coming through Economic programs: 172,500

Through Family Sponsorship: 84,000

As a Refugee: 43,500

And as I said, the majority of those who come in under the economic class are the relatives of the principal applicant. Thus of 300,000 immigrants Canada gets only about 60,000 are actually passed on their purported economic and educational skills.

12 hours ago, marcus said:

Another important factor to take into consideration is how well the children of immigrants do at school. After a few years in Canada, they end up surpassing non-immigrant students in performance. 

Cite? 

[Argus]

13 hours ago, marcus said:

It would be ridiculous to conclude how well a program/system would do based on how you feel and how you see things.

I'd love to see another experiment done. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening for a while. Especially with people who are unwilling to be open-minded based on their prejudices. 

It's based on my wallet, actually. I don't want to pay people to sit around on their asses doing nothing. If, however, you progressive want to start a petition which allows the government to increase your taxes in order to pay for such a thing I'm fine with it. You could all sign up on a web site and the government could allot the costs among you.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Argus

[Argus]

6 hours ago, Newfoundlander said:

I guess the party wasn't willing to move on from Stephen Harper. What an awful result. Trudeau might be all style and no substance but Scheer seems to be no style nor substance. After all the criticizing Conservatives did of Trudeau's resume they managed to elect someone with an even weaker one. 

I'd say speaker of the house and house leader were more important positions than two years as a private school teacher.

[Argus]

4 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

You're a true conservative Argus. You really have a strong desire to irrationally conserve the status quo / tradition (which is the definition of conservatism) even if it makes no sense what so ever if you accept arguments like 'X has never been tried before, therefore we should never ever try X'.

And you're a true progressive in ignoring reality and facts that get in your way.  Communists thought their system would work so well, but like many such theories it foundered on human nature, You want to rush to implement a system which goes against human nature in rewarding people for doing nothing, and somehow expecting that will have a beneficial impact on society. Hey, it's new and shiny! Let's do it! Yes, that's the progressive way. The conservative way is to look at things realistically and ask for evidence before you implement something. What impact will it have on participation in the labour force? What impact will it have on business seeking workers, particularly in lower wage categories? What impact will it have on the national budget? These are considerations progressive have little time for because they complicate their desire for simplistic solutions.

 

4 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

t doesn't need to be necessary to justify it. Actually, you don't even need to believe that decreasing CO2 emissions is beneficial for Canada to justify taxation of CO2 emissions. CO2 emission taxation can be justified on the grounds that, up to a certain point, it is a more efficient form of charity to other countries

I'm not interested in charity. I"m interested in the impact of such a policy on business, particularly manufacturing here in Canada, and whether it will drive businesses across the border to other jurisdictions which have no such tax. Another complexity you are uninterested in addressing.

4 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

).You are inherently against the idea of a representative democracy and are only interesting in how frequently you minority beliefs can hold power.

My views on most subjects are in the majority, thanks. I'm simply inherently against changing what works on the blithe belief that somehow the new system will work better. I see nothing about pr around the world which leads me to believe it results in more responsible or intelligent or capable government.

[Omni]

Congratulations to Andrew Sheer It seems a bit of a surprise but a welcome one in my books. I didn't like a number of Bernier's ideas, especially his approach to our highly cherished healthcare system. I get the feeling he'll be Stephen Harper II, and if so it will keep JT safe for another term due to the residual bad taste of the previous PC decade, but Sheer now has the stage, lets see the cut of his jib.