Canada's wealthiest province utterly rejects the left

[Wilber]

While the corporate/private sector is just one institution within society it is the only institution that generates wealth in our economy. It is in fact, the economy. The corporate/private sector doesn't need a society as much as society needs a corporate/private sector. We are a trading nation. Primarily an exporting nation. Our prosperity also has a great deal with what goes on outside our borders, primarily south of our immediate border.

The corporate sector does not generate wealth; it exploits resources and may control the distribution of wealth. C'mon, guys! This is economics 101.

I didn't take economics 101 but it is not government that takes the risks involved with exploiting a resourse or acutally manufacturing something. Companies redistribute that wealth to their shareholders in return for taking the risk and government shares by taxing it. If governments do get involved, it is because no one else has figured out how to do it without losing money and the taxpayer gets stuck.

The wealth of petro resources in Alberta were not created by the corporate sector. If we had the furthest left government you can imagine, those resources would still be there and would still be being exploited. The difference would be the mechanism for sharing the wealth generated from these resources among the population.

I believe Trudeau tried that with the NEP. Alberta got to sell energy to the rest of Canada for less than world price and in return got to buy the rest of Canada's goods at world price . Such a deal.

As to our being a "trading nation":

a) there is a huge amount of analysis of Canada's economic origins as a mercantile economy dues to its colonial history.

this is 2006. Every country is engaged in international trade ("nations" tend not to be).

What's this got to do with anything? We are prosperous because we sell more than we buy and most of that we sell to the US.

[rbacon]

PS Mar, the thread asked why Albertan's reject socialist leftwing parasites, that was my answer. Socialism does not work.

[mar]

Not the economics 101 I've done, that sounds more like Econ 101 in Moscow.

You can have all the resources in the world and without a strong corporate sector, you'll do nothing with them. The corporate sector does generate wealth, what a ridiculous idea to say that wealth is inherient.

With a leftist government, investors would not have been willing to pour in the Billions its taken to develop the oilsands.

That's because you did yours in "the most conservative university in Canada", geoffrey where students are denied the right to the exposure to a broad range of economic theory essential to truly understanding their subject.

Rather than bother with your knowledge-impaired theoretical obervations, I would point out that over about 60 years China went from one of the world's poorest countries with a less than 10% literacy rate, extremely high mortality rates, etc., to a world economic power. For the bulk of that period, development was in the hands of a highly centralised state government. Even you could not argue that the wealth of China has just been "generated" in the past decade or so with the move to a more market style economy. It was built on the previous foundation.

You have, however, provided me a with a clue to the rather simplisitic pseudo economic theory that characterizes current Conservative thought. You apparently quite simply have huge gaps in your education. Wealth existed long before capitalism. If you don't understand that, how can you understand anything? Private investment is not the only way to exploit resources as in your oil sands example, it is simply the dominant mechanism under the current economic organization.

Apparently the world is not only 6,000 years old, economic organization did not exist until the mid eighteen hundreds (I chose that date deliberately as apparently even Adam Smith is too radical for your tastes).

[A Hermit]

Wonderful, another internet thread loaded with people who think "government" "social democracy" and "socialist" are interchangeable terms....

Laissez faire economics ignore the fact that unregulated economies tend towards monopolization and a concentration of wealth which is ultimately every bit as stifling of economic activity as socialism.

Market forces need to be subject to regulation by a democratic government, and some redistribution of wealth must occur or you end up with stagnation. Watch what happens to America under Bush.

Marxists are fools because they think government is the answer to everything and the market is always evil; laissez faire libertarians are just as bad because they think government is always evil and the market will somehow miraculously look after everyone. Two sides of the same simplistic coin.

Incidentally, the NDP government in Manitoba in the 1980's was balancing budgets while the Conservative federal government was running record deficits, so beware of those labels too.

[mar]

PS Mar, the thread asked why Albertan's reject socialist leftwing parasites, that was my answer. Socialism does not work.

So your "answer" is to cut & paste long passages from sources that conform to your opinions?

Impressive.

[CCGirl]

Try telling the Scandanavian countries that Socialism doesn't work!

Anyway, Klein is a total idiot dipshit moron. We do not have democracy in Alberta and NO ACCOUNTABILITY. The Liberal ADSCAM was NOTHING compared to what happens in Alberta!

Klein balanced the budget on the backs of the poor, disabled and marginalized people of society, which is easy enough to do when those people do not have a voice.

The PC's have redrawn the electoral boundries heavily weighted to the rural areas, who tend to vote PC.

To link Alberta's success with competence from the govt is a ridiculous and shallow understanding of provincial politics. The largest ex-patriot community from the USA lives in Calgary. Greed is Alberta.

Parkland Institute

November 7, 2005

by Ricardo Acuña

"They seem to get away with this kind of thing in Ontario and to some degree in Quebec."

Premier Ralph Klein would like to believe that something like the federal sponsorship scandal could never happen in Alberta.

The reality is that corruption of this nature could just as likely be going on in Alberta right now. Albertans, however, would have no way of knowing as the province lacks the necessary mechanisms to guarantee accountability and transparency -- whistleblower protection, access to information, and a lobbyist registry to name just a few.

In this context, red flags that call into question the integrity of government decisions can be suppressed.

Just last spring, the Canadian Association of Journalists awarded the Klein government their annual "Code of Silence" award, recognizing the most secretive government body in Canada. According to the CAJ's press release, Alberta beat out a number of finalists for the award, including the federal Liberal government.

Had the sponsorship scandal occurred in Alberta, it is likely it would never have come to light.

Alberta has no legislation in place to protect whistleblowers like Allan Cutler, who was the first to raise a red flag about activities in the sponsorship program.

This despite numerous attempts by the opposition, a report by the Parkland Institute outlining the numerous paths Alberta could follow with such legislation, and the government's own admission that whistleblower legislation would be useful in identifying potential corruption.

The provincial government has also repeatedly refused to establish a registry for lobbyists in the province.

[CCGirl]

PS Mar, the thread asked why Albertan's reject socialist leftwing parasites, that was my answer. Socialism does not work.

Yes it does.

[fellowtraveller]

Linking to the Parkland Insitute is ilke linking to the collected wisdom of Harpo Marx.

[fellowtraveller]

Rather than bother with your knowledge-impaired theoretical obervations, I would point out that over about 60 years China went from one of the world's poorest countries with a less than 10% literacy rate, extremely high mortality rates, etc., to a world economic power. For the bulk of that period, development was in the hands of a highly centralised state government. Even you could not argue that the wealth of China has just been "generated" in the past decade or so with the move to a more market style economy. It was built on the previous foundation.

China has been a hybrid market economy for about 30 years.

There were two significant acheivements under the long gone Communist regime. The people enjoyed relative security from external threats, although they experienced ongoing terror from their own government. The Communists also did a pretty good job of avoiding mass starvation.

[CCGirl]

Linking to the Parkland Insitute is ilke linking to the collected wisdom of Harpo Marx.

You may not like the source, I was using it to show that the Alberta secrecy is a well known phenomenum.

[rbacon]

What secrecy, that Alberta is the richest jurisdiction in N. America and has no debt. And it got there by dismantling socialist and commie ideals. Socialism is on the dung heap of history. We are going to see even bigger change in Alberta. Hopefully Klein follows through on his promise to deliver private, publicly funded healthcare. I would also like to see him expand on the idea of the taxdollar following the student. And breaking the left wing union hold on the education of our children. If Klein and Alberta get any problems from Ottawa on healthcare reform Alberta should completely opt out of the National program. Would that ever send the socialists into a complete scream fit. Why not we can afford it, we don't need Ottawa and 10,000 admins in English and in French. [PS to Mar] Haydek is always good for a socialist like yourself it tastes bad but it works like Buckleys. Socialist's are parasites on the back of all working people in Canada. Albertan's know that. We know their is no free lunch. We know there is only one pocket and one taxpayer. Hopefully Ted Morton will get elected Premier here and we can dump the CPP and the U/I scam as well. We also need to dump the Marxist Equalization scam. By 2010 it will cost an Albertan family of 4 20,000 per year in taxes just to say we are Canadian. Not worth it at all. Alberta First.

[Hicksey]

Rather than bother with your knowledge-impaired theoretical obervations, I would point out that over about 60 years China went from one of the world's poorest countries with a less than 10% literacy rate, extremely high mortality rates, etc., to a world economic power. For the bulk of that period, development was in the hands of a highly centralised state government. Even you could not argue that the wealth of China has just been "generated" in the past decade or so with the move to a more market style economy. It was built on the previous foundation.

China has been a hybrid market economy for about 30 years.

There were two significant acheivements under the long gone Communist regime. The people enjoyed relative security from external threats, although they experienced ongoing terror from their own government. The Communists also did a pretty good job of avoiding mass starvation.

Did you also know that in communist China, people have property rights? And that we don't?

[rbacon]

It is also estimated that the Communists murdered over 100 million of their own citizens. Socialists are nut cases.

[justcrowing]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadA...le.asp?ID=19878

It is hardly a surprise to learn that the current government in China – a regime that has moved China economically into the modern world by taking what Mao had condemned as the “capitalist road” – has moved to suppress the book and prevent its appearance and publication in the mainland. Politically the regime still calls itself Communist. It operates a one-party state, controls all sources of information , suppresses dissidents, imprisons them in the Chinese gulag, and engages in mass suppression of the peasants and factory workers, who are forbidden to organize and try to rectify the horrific conditions in which they live.

[geoffrey]

Did you also know that in communist China, people have property rights? And that we don't?

Get me a red flag, some vodka, cigars and a big bowl of rice.

[justcrowing]

Swedish socialism .... Kind of reminds me of Canada under the Liberals especially when Martin said on National TV "I do not want Canadians to fend for themselves". Income tax we currently pay is slowly creeping up to the 60% range and that does not include other taxes we pay which would increase that figure.

http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v256...0256-000051.htm

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Swedish economy was tanking. Western Europe's post-war capitalist economies caught and passed Sweden relatively quickly. And by the 1980s, Sweden was on the verge of collapse. Businesses fled for more friendly tax jurisdictions in continental Europe and the U.S. Sweden experienced a brain drain as its sharpest minds fled to market-driven economies that rewarded knowledge and know-how with wealth. Entrepreneurs in Sweden were painted as pariahs. Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad told Fortune magazine that Sweden's tax bureaucrats and politicians at the time routinely accused him of "using people" and "just wanting to make a profit."

By 1989, Sweden's unemployment rate had risen to 12%. Social spending had driven the government's budget deficit to 35% of government spending and 13% of GDP. Swedish welfare provisions stipulated that anyone fired or laid off from a job could get up to 80% of his original salary in public assistance. Consequently, absenteeism in the private sector approached 25%. Free, comprehensive national health care made Sweden the "sickest" country in Europe - so long as government picked up the tab, Swedes demanded the highest care for the feeblest illnesses. The system buckled. Because almost everything was provided for, and because of income tax rates approaching 90% in the highest brackets, Swedish households accumulated almost no savings, making them even more dependent on social programs once the economy soured.

In the early 1990s, the Swedes revolted at the ballot box. A neoliberal coalition led by Carl Bildt took power. Bildt quickly went to work. He capped national income taxes at 50%. He set corporate taxes at 28%. He rolled back regulations on telecommunications and banking. While hardly the epitome of laissez faire capitalism, those modest changes alone set in motion the path to Sweden's economic rebirth.

In 1994, the Social Democrats regained power - mostly because Bildt's slashing of government services ignited a backlash. But the signs of recovery were already in place, and so the Social Democrats, led by finance minister Goran Persson, followed Bildt's lead. More privatization of government-controlled industries. More tax cuts. To that they added more cuts in government spending, and a real effort to balance the federal budget.

The result? Native Swedish entrepreneurs who fled the oppressive tax and regulation codes to start businesses elsewhere brought their businesses and payrolls back to Sweden. Sweden today is home to some of the world's top telecommunications firms. In sharp contrast to the eugenicist philosophy of Sweden's ruling 1940s socialists, the streets of Stockholm and Goteborg teem with entrepreneurial immigrants from Asia and the Middle East. Fortune reports, "from 1995 to 1999, venture capital and private equity investment in Sweden rose 201% annually, against 40% in the U.S."

Sweden of course is in no danger of becoming a shelter for tax-oppressed U.S. business. Education and health care are still free (and, consequently, still on the verge of collapse). Though corporate tax rates are reasonable, personal income tax rates are still inordinately high. And the lingering haze of conformity that comes with rampant socialism still holds a good number of Swedes in despair. Sweden's suicide rates are among the highest in the world (much higher than latitudinally similar, low-sunlight communities in, for example, Alaska). Alcoholism is rampant, and this in a country where the state owns all the liquor stores. Even Per Stalberg, singer for the socialism-espousing Division of Laura Lee admits that the everything's-taken-care-of life of a Swede leaves something to be desired.

[newbie]

I think one of the big stories of this election was Alberta's utter rejection of leftist policies.

The province that has been governed by conservatives throughout most of its entire history

Are Albertans just a bunch of dumb rednecked cowboys?

Albertans are unwilling to change, unlike Ontario and other Provinces re their politics. I've lived here all my life all of it under a Conservative or Social Credit banner. We haven't been Liberal since 1905-1921.

[tml12]

I think one of the big stories of this election was Alberta's utter rejection of leftist policies.

The province that has been governed by conservatives throughout most of its entire history

Are Albertans just a bunch of dumb rednecked cowboys?

Albertans are unwilling to change, unlike Ontario and other Provinces re their politics. I've lived here all my life all of it under a Conservative or Social Credit banner. We haven't been Liberal since 1905-1921.

That's 88 years of right-wing rule!!!

[justcrowing]

I think one of the big stories of this election was Alberta's utter rejection of leftist policies.

The province that has been governed by conservatives throughout most of its entire history

Are Albertans just a bunch of dumb rednecked cowboys?

Albertans are unwilling to change, unlike Ontario and other Provinces re their politics. I've lived here all my life all of it under a Conservative or Social Credit banner. We haven't been Liberal since 1905-1921.

And I gather Alberta has survived very nicely without socialism in it's fullest form. B.C also did very well under the Social Credit banner, then along came NDP and it was downhill all the way. Now B.C have Liberals and things improved but I do not believe BC Liberals are into socialism in the manner Federal Libs are.

[geoffrey]

I think one of the big stories of this election was Alberta's utter rejection of leftist policies.

The province that has been governed by conservatives throughout most of its entire history

Are Albertans just a bunch of dumb rednecked cowboys?

Albertans are unwilling to change, unlike Ontario and other Provinces re their politics. I've lived here all my life all of it under a Conservative or Social Credit banner. We haven't been Liberal since 1905-1921.

That's 88 years of right-wing rule!!!

85 tml...

[tml12]

I think one of the big stories of this election was Alberta's utter rejection of leftist policies.

The province that has been governed by conservatives throughout most of its entire history

Are Albertans just a bunch of dumb rednecked cowboys?

Albertans are unwilling to change, unlike Ontario and other Provinces re their politics. I've lived here all my life all of it under a Conservative or Social Credit banner. We haven't been Liberal since 1905-1921.

That's 88 years of right-wing rule!!!

85 tml...

88 was by the time Klein's current term is done...

[mar]

88 was by the time Klein's current term is done...

Amazing. And Klein's still just as mentally sharp as Ariel Sharon is today!

[stignasty]

Swedish socialism .... Kind of reminds me of Canada under the Liberals especially when Martin said on National TV "I do not want Canadians to fend for themselves". Income tax we currently pay is slowly creeping up to the 60% range and that does not include other taxes we pay which would increase that figure.

The implicit tax rate for Canadian families was 17.4% in 2002, down from 17.8% in 2001 and a lengthy plateau of 19 to 20 percent for several years before that. Unattached individuals had a similar decrease, posting an implicit tax rate of 16.3% in 2002, down from 16.6% in 2001, and a plateau fluctuating about 18% since 1996.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/75-2...00002/part5.htm

And just to reply to the thread, yeah Albertans have rejected the left. However, you can't really place the federal Liberal party on the left. Just because they don't adhere to modern neoconservative beliefs doesn't make them "leftist."

[rbacon]

No their digbat leftwing policies make them socialist. If you want an insight into the butchery and cruelty of Socialism and Communism here is some new stuff just translated about Chairman Mao, Trudeau's hero. www.ninecommentaries.com

[stignasty]

No their digbat leftwing policies make them socialist. If you want an insight into the butchery and cruelty of Socialism and Communism here is some new stuff just translated about Chairman Mao, Trudeau's hero. www.ninecommentaries.com

Yes their dingbat leftwing policies such as lowering corporate taxes and scaling back unemployment insurance benefits make them socialist. Just like in communist China.

Note that I'm not defending socialism (which is not the same thing as communism, since you seem rather confused about it). I'm simply noting that the Liberal Party of Canada is not a socialist party. Again, just because they're not neoconservatives, they're not by default socialist.