Why B.C voters should reject Socialism or quasi-Socialism and vote B.C. Conservative

[herbie]

AMAZING

Safe supply and sites haven't stopped the people who don't use them from overdosing!

We should remove all STOP signs because people who ignore them keep crashing, that means they're useless and a bad idea.

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, herbie said:

AMAZING

Safe supply and sites haven't stopped the people who don't use them from overdosing!

 

Haven't stopped people who do use them from overdosing apparently. They just sell their drgs that they got for free to the gangs ad go by the dangerous stuff. Deaths are up like crazy since it started. Even David he says it failed.

Of course the number of deaths don't bother you if they're getting in the way of the echo chamber and tribe

[Old Guy]

On 10/14/2024 at 10:53 PM, CdnFox said:

That would be provincial only, but for all gov't agencies, many of which overlap and do the same jobs, its' about 24 percent of our labour force. it used to be about 18 percent back in 2011.

The article by the Policy Alternatives make a fairly well reasoned case using 2011 numbers that BC was underfunding caused by lower revenues due to tax cuts. Imagine a conservative government lowering taxes and cutting services. I wonder if that has anything to strategic shortages we are experiencing today. I remember in the 80's Bill Bennet cut 10,000 government workers.  He knew that lots of those folks were doing jobs that would be missed so his government encouraged them to set up societies and offered them premiums to do so. He was a hero to conservatives and many former public servants who laughed all the way to the bank. 

BC was the third lowest province for funding per population of any province. The article also points out that public service includes Crown Corps 8%, Provincial Government 9%, Federal Government 10%, Post Secondary Institutions 13%, Local Government including Police and Fire Departments 15%, Public Schools K-12 18%, Health and Social Service 27%. Your contention that your numbers excluded Health, which is not the case at least in the articles you posted. 

I would like to see your math including where you came up with the percentage of Public workers. When I calculate the number of people employed 2,821,000 X 18% = 507,780.  But you state that it is closer to 25% which would yield 705,250. So which is is it.  You also stated that many agencies were doing the same job can you clarify? 

As far as the Fraser Institute bulletin you posted they seem to be upset that the public sector was more effective at filling vacancies than the private sector due in large measure to better salaries and benefits like sick leave, and pensions.  Imagine those rascals offering a living wage. It will be interesting to see what Rustad  and his Merry Band of Wingnuts will do.  Oh yeah what conservatives always do cut taxes and services.  

On 10/14/2024 at 10:53 PM, CdnFox said:

But sure. come back and tell me how math works ya twinkie

[herbie]

Gee not one of the 500 or so people in the area that lost their jobs with mill closures got jobs with the govt.

well maybe, I was one of the highest paid writers in the county years ago when I worked for the govt. I'd write NO NO NO YES NO on a card and mail it in every two weeks for a $350 cheque. That's $75 a word!

Edited October 19, 2024 by herbie

[CdnFox]

2 hours ago, Old Guy said:

The article by the Policy Alternatives make a fairly well reasoned case using 2011 numbers that BC was underfunding caused by lower revenues due to tax cuts.

It's there primary reason for existence. I trust their figures to be relatively accurate just as I trust the Fraser Institutes numbers to be fairly accurate but in both cases I'm Always cautious of their conclusions

Having said that I lived through 2011 in British Columbia and if anything services were better at that time than they are now. 

And no, the Strategic shortages that we have today are largely due to an ineffective immigration policy at the federal level. For example if you need one doctor per 100 people and you add two doctors and 1,000 people, it's going to be a problem pretty quick. There's been a fair number of articles discussing this kind of thing as well.

Billy I'll agree that this would be a federal government issue and not a provincial government issue. You can't directly blame the NDP for it. But they haven't been speaking out about it either.

2 hours ago, Old Guy said:

I would like to see your math including where you came up with the percentage of Public workers.

I posted the sources for that. 

So basically you tried to address absolutely everything except what my point was or the facts I pointed out

So it kind of feels like you don't actually care about the math or the results or anything like that. At the very least after you so rudely accused me of being wrong and ran off you could address the point.

But you didn't because you know you were wrong after claiming otherwise.

At the end of the day along wit the other sources I mentioned and some I didn't there is more than enough room for modest cuts in the public service especially where there's duplication amongst the various government levels to help reduce our deficit obviously would be dangerous to try and achieve all of the results through cuts to the civil service or even through cuts exclusively. Traditionally you would also try and increase revenues by increasing business investments to the province.

 

And what's going to happen If Eby gets elected is That he will overspend, we'll get poor results again, And the nex guy after rumstead who will run and get in because the public is panicked about the debts and so on will be far far more hawkish than rumstead is. Just like Ontario passed over on brown who was practically a liberal and then elected ford.

On the other hand, it will make it a million times easier to get British Columbia ridings to go blue for Poilievre next year. 

 

[cannuck]

As usual, people try to divide everything into some kind of simplistic left/right question when in reality their are 4 ideologies distributing within our economy and society:  Communism; Socialism; Capitalism and Casino Capitalism.   AND: on top of that one major function that when applied assures that none of them can work equitably. 

IMHO the place where communism steps over the line from socialism is defined by the Regina Manifesto that says it all: the means of production, income of people and institutions as well of price of goods and services to be exchanged belong exclusively to and operated by the state.   Read what actually brought communism to Canada:  https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-regina-manifesto-1933-co-operative-commonwealth-federation-programme-fu   Sounds good to a 12YO, but as 100MILLION dead farmers and their families discovered when Chairman Mao nationalized the family farm - it doesn't work in the real world.  So, why did something that sounds like Utopia fail so badly?

Socialism (again IMHO) is that property of re-distributing wealth to provide services that everyone needs or deserves as a citizen and human being. EVERY government on this planet provides social services from their tax base or from nationalized resources or industries -some more than others.  Take a look at sick care as an example:  there are several factors, but price and effectiveness both figure in and I could only find one article that combines both into a singular rating:    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world  if you are wading through the tome you will find the whole list down towards the end.   Surprisingly, the wealthiest economies on the planet (US and China one of which defines itself as capitalist and the other communist) son't fare anywhere near as well as "mildly socialistic" Canada, Australia, Taiwan, S Korea.  So, why does this asperity exist?

Capitalism is defined in my house as anything that employs private OR SOMETIMES GOVERNMENT capital to fund resource, production, services, etc into a generally market determined price for exchange.  There only 2 things you can do to create wealth, and you could and MUST do them within any system and that is to add value to a resource or deliver a service in support of value added production.   ANYTHING else is nothing but wealth redistribution - including exploiting raw natural resources (as they are already valued and possessed by the state of ownership).   ALL systems become capitalistic when they create wealth.  So why doesn't every country on the planet simply provide the mechanism for wealth creation (actually, to some extent they must and do) and result in unlimited national prosperity?

Finally, the "right" side is clearly divided between capitalism (we often call Main Street) and Casino Capitalism (Wall/Bay Street) where the vast majority of money moving back and fourth is not wealth that has been created but wealth being re-distributed from purely speculative assignment of values.  Problem we have today is almost the entire world has confused speculative gain with creation of wealth - when speculative gain merely re-distributes value from those who have created and retained wealth by inflating the money supply to cover the speculative gains.  So why can't we all just cash in on "money for nothing"???

Of these four systems, the first 3 can and do exist and could possibly work - whereas the fourth that now dominates our economies is totally unsustainable.  What makes three kind of work, but stumble and fail and the fourth completely unworkable one rule the roost?    The answer is dead simple: allowing governments to dispense privilege vs. genuinely equitably providing for the functions of the first 3. Yes, you are being told by a genuine capitalist pig that communism and socialism are workable (you will note as I have already pointed out EVERY country today has components of each in its workings).   Where things fall apart is when privilege is assigned to one group over another - and that in the extreme is an outright dictatorship where one person or small group acquires the privilege of dictating everything to everyone - be it Putin's Russia, NK's dynasty - or Wall Street's ownership of the central banking system and economic government of the largest economy in history.

 

[CdnFox]

5 hours ago, cannuck said:

As usual, people try to divide everything into some kind of simplistic left/right question when in reality their are 4 ideologies distributing within our economy and society:  Communism; Socialism; Capitalism and Casino Capitalism.   AND: on top of that one major function that when applied assures that none of them can work equitably. 

IMHO the place where communism steps over the line from socialism is defined by the Regina Manifesto that says it all: the means of production, income of people and institutions as well of price of goods and services to be exchanged belong exclusively to and operated by the state.   Read what actually brought communism to Canada:  https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-regina-manifesto-1933-co-operative-commonwealth-federation-programme-fu   Sounds good to a 12YO, but as 100MILLION dead farmers and their families discovered when Chairman Mao nationalized the family farm - it doesn't work in the real world.  So, why did something that sounds like Utopia fail so badly?

Socialism (again IMHO) is that property of re-distributing wealth to provide services that everyone needs or deserves as a citizen and human being. EVERY government on this planet provides social services from their tax base or from nationalized resources or industries -some more than others.  Take a look at sick care as an example:  there are several factors, but price and effectiveness both figure in and I could only find one article that combines both into a singular rating:    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world  if you are wading through the tome you will find the whole list down towards the end.   Surprisingly, the wealthiest economies on the planet (US and China one of which defines itself as capitalist and the other communist) son't fare anywhere near as well as "mildly socialistic" Canada, Australia, Taiwan, S Korea.  So, why does this asperity exist?

Capitalism is defined in my house as anything that employs private OR SOMETIMES GOVERNMENT capital to fund resource, production, services, etc into a generally market determined price for exchange.  There only 2 things you can do to create wealth, and you could and MUST do them within any system and that is to add value to a resource or deliver a service in support of value added production.   ANYTHING else is nothing but wealth redistribution - including exploiting raw natural resources (as they are already valued and possessed by the state of ownership).   ALL systems become capitalistic when they create wealth.  So why doesn't every country on the planet simply provide the mechanism for wealth creation (actually, to some extent they must and do) and result in unlimited national prosperity?

Finally, the "right" side is clearly divided between capitalism (we often call Main Street) and Casino Capitalism (Wall/Bay Street) where the vast majority of money moving back and fourth is not wealth that has been created but wealth being re-distributed from purely speculative assignment of values.  Problem we have today is almost the entire world has confused speculative gain with creation of wealth - when speculative gain merely re-distributes value from those who have created and retained wealth by inflating the money supply to cover the speculative gains.  So why can't we all just cash in on "money for nothing"???

Of these four systems, the first 3 can and do exist and could possibly work - whereas the fourth that now dominates our economies is totally unsustainable.  What makes three kind of work, but stumble and fail and the fourth completely unworkable one rule the roost?    The answer is dead simple: allowing governments to dispense privilege vs. genuinely equitably providing for the functions of the first 3. Yes, you are being told by a genuine capitalist pig that communism and socialism are workable (you will note as I have already pointed out EVERY country today has components of each in its workings).   Where things fall apart is when privilege is assigned to one group over another - and that in the extreme is an outright dictatorship where one person or small group acquires the privilege of dictating everything to everyone - be it Putin's Russia, NK's dynasty - or Wall Street's ownership of the central banking system and economic government of the largest economy in history.

 

I can't really criticize that considering you include your own definitions which is fair. However trying to categorize and oversimplify while at the same time over thinking or making excessively complex various issues.

Socialism is usually Described as control or ownership of the state over the means of prodcution for the purposes of benefitting the state's vision or for wealth redistribution.  Communism is a form of socialism.  There are also market socialist models which allow private ownership but exercise extreme state control through regulation.  Because of its' nature socialism is both an economic AND governmental model.  Can't have state control without a state. 

Capitalism is just an economic model driven by an open market.  "casino' capitalism is just a term that was coined by Strange in her book, and isn't really a model.  The 'open' market is usually called lassez faire and what we have is called a 'regulated' market, where regulation is used to create a more level playing field. 

And none of these are an absolute, they're sliding scales.  You go from LF capitialsm and begin adding regulation till you get to a regulated capitalism, and keep adding and at some point you cross over to market socialism. And so on. The lines are grey and you can't just label them as absolutes. 

 

Thus dividing things into 'left and right'  is not over simplistic - but it encompases a very wide range of subtle differences on a sliding scale, and you can't just dismiss the details.  It would be fair to say it's too 'general' a categorization for a detailed discussion. 

THe left in this day and age is mostly about socialistic issues - the benefits to society as a whole, the percieved rights of society, equality of outcome including wealth redistribution etc.   The right is more concerned with individual rights and freedoms, smaller less intrusive gov't, personal opportunity and equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome, etc. 

 

Historically the greatest benefits over time Comes from a lightly or moderately regulated free market capitalist model and a representational democracy.   The NDP is much heavier on the socailistic side, with more regulation and taxation to fund more social programs, and the conservatives are more on the capitalist side with lower taxes and regulation and slightly smaller gov't. 

It's wise to look at individual programs and policy as well as the policy as a whole but those are the underlying principles that tend to drive the policies. 

The greens are just !diots. 

[eyeball]

5 hours ago, cannuck said:

Where things fall apart is when privilege is assigned to one group over another

Via lobbying of public officials by private interests behind closed doors.

To bad we'll have to kill one another by the billions to change this dynamic.

[CdnFox]

Just now, eyeball said:

Via lobbying of public officials by private interests behind closed doors.

To bad we'll have to kill one another by the billions to change this dynamic.

I doubt it will take a fake war killing fake people to wipe out your fake ideal that somehow lobbyists control the entire world.

If voters did their job instead of behaving like you and blaming everything on harper that would solve the problem right there

[blackbird]

On 10/18/2024 at 1:50 PM, herbie said:

Safe supply and sites haven't stopped the people who don't use them from overdosing!

We should remove all STOP signs because people who ignore them keep crashing, that means they're useless and a bad idea.

If that is true, why hasn't the number of drug addict deaths dropped?  The truth is the safe supply has not helped solve the problem.  It hasn't worked.  They even found some government paid for drugs were being sold by dealers and addicts to obtain money.  What we got was people taking drugs in public places like Tim Horton's, city parks, hospitals, and just anywhere.  And still the same number of people dying.  Safe supply just created new problems and didn't solve the drug addiction problems.  Even the radical Socialist BC NDP saw it was a disaster and is trying to reverse decriminalization and stop allowing addicts from take drugs wherever they feel like it.

The stop sign comparison is infantile.  Like comparing apples and oranges.

Edited October 22, 2024 by blackbird

[herbie]

5 hours ago, blackbird said:

why hasn't the number of drug addict deaths dropped?

It has if you'd like to look at the data.
In spite of the fact you're unable to understand basic math let alone data sets. There aren't any deaths from safe supply or safe use sites. So therefore the deaths are from fentanyl, not safe supply. Should the deaths go up, it would mean more people are using street drugs, doesn't it.
Which kind of makes ranting against safe consumption disingenuous.

Your gripe is actually against druggies being in your face so you can't pretend that's not a serious problem you can avoid addressing. They've already been outlawed from using in public places, you'll just have to avoid the back alleys and corners they're pushed back into if you wish to continue not acknowledging there's a serious social problem.
Going back to locking them into institutions sure didn't reduce the number of addicts in 100 years of trying, did it?
So do you actually want to solve the problem or not? Sure doesn't sound like it.

And pi$$ off with the radical socialist bullshit, it merely flouts your ignorance.

[CdnFox]

29 minutes ago, herbie said:

It has if you'd like to look at the data.

It is massively higher according to the data. So are the number of deaths. And the high school kids are becoming addicted too thanks to the gangs redistribution of the drugs we the taxpayer bought for them

You're a liar plain and simple. The police have pointed out that this is a failed strategy completely the drug addiction and deaths are up. A number of social workers have as well. A number of other health professionals have pointed out that the drugs are showing up in the schools. The NDP has given up on it because it's making things worse.

 

But you don't care. If more people have to die, and more addicts have to hit our streets in order for you to maintain your lie and ideology and keep your head firmly stuck in your echo chamber then that's just fine.

This is why the woke are so dangerous. It will happily see people die rather than face the simple truth

[Old Guy]

On 10/18/2024 at 8:35 PM, CdnFox said:

On the other hand, it will make it a million times easier to get British Columbia ridings to go blue for Poilievre next year. 

I don't think there is any doubt that Pollievre will win regardless of who is in power in BC or for that matter any other Province. In my opinion governments have a shelve life and the Federal Libs went stale more than a year ago. Similar to what happened to Harper in 2015.  So turn over is a good thing. Of course I know that neither of the party's I support will ever form government so my hope always is for a minority government because minority governments are more willing to listen to opposing ideas and to find compromises. The polarity that is taking place world wide is not a good thing IMHO.

I also agree with you that increasing immigration as much as what happened is not a good thing either. Your point about doctors was a good example but so to is our housing crisis. Although I think it was mostly rich Asians that drove that bubble rather  than poor Latinos.  Many of the immigrants coming in are refugees and are treated differently.  Many leaving war zones whether from armies or gangs.  This is a problem that will need wider solutions with northern countries working together.

I think you meant Russtad rather than Rumstead. He and his government does concern me if in fact he doesn't believe in climate change. Cancelling the Carbon Tax won't effect me. There might be a short period where the price at the pumps drop but I'm confident that the government will find a way to recoup any loss in revenue and or the oil companies will do their best to siphon some into their profits.  No my concern has more to do with consigning science to the realm of alternative facts. 

I'm enjoying this forum but for a while I'm going to be a sporadic poster while I care for my daughter who for some time will need a care taker. Cheers  

[CdnFox]

1 hour ago, Old Guy said:

I don't think there is any doubt that Pollievre will win regardless of who is in power in BC or for that matter any other Province. In my opinion governments have a shelve life and the Federal Libs went stale more than a year ago. Similar to what happened to Harper in 2015.  So turn over is a good thing. Of course I know that neither of the party's I support will ever form government so my hope always is for a minority government because minority governments are more willing to listen to opposing ideas and to find compromises. The polarity that is taking place world wide is not a good thing IMHO.

I also agree with you that increasing immigration as much as what happened is not a good thing either. Your point about doctors was a good example but so to is our housing crisis. Although I think it was mostly rich Asians that drove that bubble rather  than poor Latinos.  Many of the immigrants coming in are refugees and are treated differently.  Many leaving war zones whether from armies or gangs.  This is a problem that will need wider solutions with northern countries working together.

I think you meant Russtad rather than Rumstead. He and his government does concern me if in fact he doesn't believe in climate change. Cancelling the Carbon Tax won't effect me. There might be a short period where the price at the pumps drop but I'm confident that the government will find a way to recoup any loss in revenue and or the oil companies will do their best to siphon some into their profits.  No my concern has more to do with consigning science to the realm of alternative facts. 

I'm enjoying this forum but for a while I'm going to be a sporadic poster while I care for my daughter who for some time will need a care taker. Cheers  

Not a doubt governments can become stale. Not always I certainly there are Canadian examples where a party held office for many many years. 

But in this case this government it is still late after it's first mandate. I don't think people appreciate the level of damage that's been done. This isn't like when we went from mulroney to chretien or from chretien into harper. I wasn't a big fan of Chretien but he was a reasonable steward of the country even though he did things I don't agree with. 

Trudeau has deeply wounded this country and I'm not sure we'll be able to fully recover. If we do it will be in at least 15 years or more. About all we can say is that we can make it better than it is right now.

Yes, Russtad is who i meant but for some reason my spellchecker hates the guy   

To be honest I don't think it's so much that he doesn't believe in climate change. I think he doesn't believe that anything we can do in British Columbia will affect climate change at all. And he's probably right. And I guarantee the carbon tax affects you even if you don't see it directly. 

I would like to see a much stronger emphasis on adoption. I actually kind of liked the provincial government rebate program for lower income people to put in air conditioning as an example.

Sadly we don't have a housing bubble. People think it's a housing bubble because the rates and prices went up. But there's no bubble there. The fact is we currently do not have enough homes to satisfy demand so price is rise as a result. And as that happens we see more and more homeless or people who are oversharing accommodations or the like. The so-called "Trudeau towns" Are popping up in many provinces in huge numbers. Cheaper to afford a motorhome and park it on public lands and try and get a place to live.

For an investors don't actually affect that as much as you might think. If they need it for themselves then their residents and that's just the way it is. If they bought it as an investment property to rent out, they're still providing that roof for someone to use as a home. If there's more than enough then rates go down if there's less than enough rates go up but the number of houses doesn't actually change and that's what drives that price.

 

The solutions are tricky. You can't just ask the tax and everything is automatically better, that's for sure. And you can't just flash immigration to zero and let that Builders catch up because they'll stop building. But basically we know what needs to happen. The overall tax burden to British Columbians needs to be substantially lowered, we need to build a lot more homes, and we need to keep immigration at a manageable level until we do. Some of that's not really in our control but that's what has to happen

 

Best wishes with your daughter. I hope she's okay and happy and healthy as circumstances allow. Obviously it goes without saying, but you're a good man for taking care of your family

 

[SpankyMcFarland]

Is there a BC election thread here that actually tries to report what’s going on, including details that wouldn’t necessarily be more widely known beyond the province? 

[CdnFox]

6 minutes ago, SpankyMcFarland said:

Is there a BC election thread here that actually tries to report what’s going on, including details that wouldn’t necessarily be more widely known beyond the province? 

No, not enough people bother with the provincial sections for it to get enough traction.

[herbie]

Sure - after the count the NDP gained another seat 47-44-2 when they kept Surrey-Guilford by 18 votes.
They have a (bare) majority govt.