Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Yoho

Sit back and enjoy the retribution when it comes my man.

Retribution?

Ever notice that it's only ever the extreme sides that want "retribution"?

If you want retribution, vengence, revenge on another, and not a change to improve the lives for everyone... you've got the wrong take. Period.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Yoho

Sit back and enjoy the retribution when it comes my man.

You know this is getting awfully close to some serious ####ing scary ####.

That's the kind of talk that got the world in trouble around 90 years ago.

Some people were feeling very repressed and they turned to a mustached man promising retribution on the world for the harsh conditions of the treaty of Versailles. It didn't end well for everyone involved.

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by btimbit

When people's lives suck they're more and more willing to blindly believe any nutjob that claims to have the solution. It's a tale as old as time

Song as old as rhyme?

[Ozy_Flame]

Milhouse wondering if Chainsaw Man is trademarked

https://twitter.com/user/status/1726674416539742696

[Calgary '89]

Originally Posted by Muta

That's a weird way to term uneducated / easily manipulated people being hoodwinked.

I see your point here, but in this case Argentina has for what seems like forever, always elected LW Peronists into office. These are highly educated people who have led them to record poverty levels so no matter how voters see it they’re screwed.
Milei’s opposing candidate is more of a status quo centrist but he was also the minister of economy who contributed to leading them where they are now.

I dunno who wrote this or when they did but I read it years ago and it’s still true today: every nation has the leader they deserve.

It tells me that we the voters can do more than just vote to change our outcomes but now we’re also living in a time of extremes and culture wars and excessive distraction and a need to dunk on people instead of actually learning from them and about them.

For the sake of Argentinians I really really hope both extremes hold off on violence but it looks likely.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Calgary '89

I dunno who wrote this or when they did but I read it years ago and it’s still true today: every nation has the leader they deserve.

Is this true because you want it to be true or do you have sort of data to back up why you feel that people living under oppressive governments without free democratic elections deserve what they have?

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Yoho

What do you mean mad? Im over joyed with the latest developments on soon to be all levels of Govt.

The party is over.

Need a penny take a penny. Need two Pennie’s get a job.

Oh ####ing please.

At least you were correct. Simple people waking up buying simple arguments from right wing populists. All problems are easily fixable! A return to good times by simply opposing the woke agenda! Vote for us and we will put it right. If we don’t, we will blame it on immigrants, environmentalists, the “woke” people.m

Yoho’s schtick is as transparent as any other “just asking questions” mouth breather. Hide your toxic bull#### somewhere else

[Ozy_Flame]

Scandal afoot. Justin Trudeau took WEEKENDS off for personal time. The nerve of that scoundrel! and he spends his time off in BC and the Caribbean? What kind of banana republic is this?

The CPC is such a joke I don't know where to start.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1726645362771755463

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Scandal afoot. Justin Trudeau took WEEKENDS off for personal time. The nerve of that scoundrel! and he spends his time off in BC and the Caribbean? What kind of banana republic is this?

The CPC is such a joke I don't know where to start.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1726645362771755463

Is that from a parody account?

There’s literally 832 weekend days since he took office. If most of those (>50%) were weekends, that’s at least 416. So, is somebody at CPC HQ really nitpicking about 200 days or 25 days a year (not an abnormal amount of vacation time per year).

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Scandal afoot. Justin Trudeau took WEEKENDS off for personal time. The nerve of that scoundrel! and he spends his time off in BC and the Caribbean? What kind of banana republic is this?

The CPC is such a joke I don't know where to start.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1726645362771755463

That joke will be running the country soon.

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by Yoho

That joke will be running the country soon.

Possibly, but I thought that about the NDP and was sadly disappointed, Canadians are Liberal in their hearts, give them the slightest excuse and they will vote for Big Red again, whether that's a good idea or not, they are comfortable with a center leftish Liberal Party doing not much at all and hoping it all works out ok

[Yoho]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

Possibly, but I thought that about the NDP and was sadly disappointed, Canadians are Liberal in their hearts, give them the slightest excuse and they will vote for Big Red again, whether that's a good idea or not, they are comfortable with a center leftish Liberal Party doing not much at all and hoping it all works out ok

I can appreciate the sentiment but sunny ways only works in the good times. Big Red is ill equipt to deal with a terrible economy, voters losing their homes due to interest rates, and the inevitable job losses. People will want their pound of flesh for the failed policies.

And no I don’t think Covid was the financial “hard times” when people got paid to stay home. I think the next chapter for Canada could look more like a depression than a recession.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/inf...sion-1.6975814

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Scandal afoot. Justin Trudeau took WEEKENDS off for personal time. The nerve of that scoundrel! and he spends his time off in BC and the Caribbean? What kind of banana republic is this?

It’s not just Trudeau. Did you know that 40 per cent of the sick days people take off are either directly before or after the weekend?

[curves2000]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Central banks only have a limited number of tools in their tool box - partially as a method of limiting their overreach.

One could argue the very few tools that actually works is interest rate manipulation. With our high interests rates right now, we are in a better position to ease downturns in the future than we were in 2008 when interest rates were already low.

Also, i just want to shout out Opendoor - not because of him taking Yoho to the woodshed, but because his information on the money supply was very informative!

My concern is with the level of overall debt levels across the board. The level of consumer, corporate, government debt is outstanding. Take Alberta for example, where I believe we hit approx $100 billion in provincial debt when as recently as 2004, less than 20 years ago, we were virtually debt free. I believe the current debt is approx 80 billion now. The servicing costs are sky high on that debt which takes away from funds to fund operations.

We have gotten away from basic fundamentals when it comes to finance for everybody. Everybody got addicted to cheap financing and spending when interest rates were virtually 0%. Now the piper needs to be paid. In my group of friends in their 30's and 40's, it used to be a pissing match as to who's house was worth more. Typical guy stuff. I would always say, when interest rates go to historic norms, it will hurt. Low and behold now, there is little bragging but extreme concern with mortgage renewals, ballooning payments and legit concern about making ends meet, despite earning significant income.

Although central banks may be able to lower rates in the future to stimulate growth, that just involves more borrowing for everybody in order to do so. That trick has been played for far too long, we all got addicted to it and it's going to cause more pain. Rate's aren't even at "historic highs", they are actually probably below average. What happens if and when rates hit 9, 10, 14%?

That is how we have average Joe's living in a home worth 1 million, driving a luxury car, with $1400 iphones, earning 6 figures yet struggling to pay bills and put a $90 prime rib on the table.

In a lot of "poor" countries where they don't have access to credit as easily, they retire with a 50% savings rate, living in basic accommodations, have multigenerational homes so that the grandparents can look after children while the parents work.

I think the system is a lot more fragile than a lot of people would like to admit and it's kinda scary.

[CliffFletcher]

Given the increasing demands put on public finances as the population ages and health care spending climbs further, I’m not optimistic we’ll avoid a debt crisis in the coming decades.

How will politicians avoid enormous public debts?

The world’s public finances look increasingly precarious. In the year to July America’s federal government borrowed $2.3trn, or 8.6% of gdp—the sort of deficit usually seen during economic catastrophes. By 2025 five of the g7 group of big rich countries will have a net-debt-to-gdp ratio of more than 100%, according to forecasts by the imf. Such debts may have been sustainable in the low-interest-rate era of the 2010s. But those days are long gone. This month the ten-year Treasury yield briefly hit 4.3%, its highest since before the global financial crisis of 2007-09.

How will governments shed these burdens? Economists are increasingly gripped by the question. A recent paper by Serkan Arslanalp of the imf and Barry Eichengreen of the University of California, Berkeley, presented at America’s annual monetary-policy jamboree in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on August 26th, sets out a menu of options. It is not exactly an appetising one.

Big economies have had big debts before. Broadly speaking, they have dealt with them by employing one of two strategies. Call them the austere and the arithmetic. The austere method is to run primary surpluses (ie, surpluses before debt-interest payments). In the 1820s, after the Napoleonic wars, Britain’s debts reached almost 200% of gdp; the Franco-Prussian war left France owing nearly 100% of gdp in the 1870s. Previously Mr Eichengreen and co-authors found that between 1822 and 1913 Britain ran primary surpluses sufficient to reduce the debt-to-gdp ratio by more than 180 percentage points; France did enough to reduce its ratio by 100 percentage points in just 17 years after 1896.

Messrs Arslanalp and Eichengreen are pessimistic about the prospect of democracies repeating the trick today. In the 19th century welfare states were minimal. British politicians followed the Victorian philosophy of “sound finance”; the French sought to reduce debts so as to be ready for their next war. In contrast, modern welfare states are weighed down by ageing populations, and the need for more defence spending and green investment means the size of the state is growing. Politicians could raise taxes. But other research by the imf finds that in advanced economies, from 1979 to 2021, fiscal consolidations were less likely to succeed in cutting debts if they were driven by tax increases instead of spending cuts, perhaps because raising taxes harms economic growth.

… What, then, will happen? “Governments are going to have to live with high inherited debts,” reckon Messrs Arslanalp and Eichengreen. The best politicians can do is not to make a bad situation worse. Yet the ongoing accumulation of debt suggests it is unlikely that politicians will follow this advice. On its current path America will match its post-war record of spending 3.2% of gdp on interest in 2030. Two decades later this will pass 6%. The bill could be higher if another pandemic or major war arrives in the meantime.

However unlikely it seems that voters and politicians will be willing to tolerate primary surpluses, sustained inflation or financial repression, they will probably reach a point where they are equally unwilling to put up with handing over a large chunk of tax revenues to bondholders. At such a time political constraints will ease—and the danger of a bond-market crisis will rise. The debt-reduction menu will then not look quite so unpalatable.

https://www.economist.com/finance-an...s-public-debts

[Slava]

^ I think that part of what needs to happen to deal with this is reducing some of the areas that western governments are involved in. The idea of them collecting money and then redistributing this with giant novelty cheques and campaign promises is goi g to be a tough sell if we’re seeing debts continuing to rise and become more burdensome.

[Doctorfever]

That is some pretty sobering stuff there. It’s pretty clear the Trudeau government won’t be able to spend their way out of this, although I’m sure they will try.

[Cain]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

That is some pretty sobering stuff there. It’s pretty clear the Trudeau government won’t be able to spend their way out of this, although I’m sure they will try.

Responding to a post about a world wide issue, makes it about Trudeau.


I'm not a fan either and would love to see him go, but this is pretty obviously not a single party issue.

[aaronck]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

That is some pretty sobering stuff there. It’s pretty clear the Trudeau government won’t be able to spend their way out of this, although I’m sure they will try.

The fact he takes weekends off and some vacations? Yes the country will never recover according to the Rebel

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Cain

Responding to a post about a world wide issue, makes it about Trudeau.


I'm not a fan either and would love to see him go, but this is pretty obviously not a single party issue.

It’s a problem in all aging, mature democracies. The costs imposed by public programs - especially health care - rise relentlessly while productivity stagnates or declines. Voters resist higher taxes. And politicians have little incentive to look beyond the next 4 or 6 years. Add an increasing cultural tolerance for debt in private as well as public life, and it’s really hard to see how fiscal sobriety will be restored before we suffer a major crisis.