The nerve of those assholes! To think that after having brought us the great recession, something that's going to cost us $150 billion minimum, corporate Canada and it its dim-witted spokesmen want to warn Canadians about the economic consequences of the NDP? Seriously?
In the first place, as provincial governments, they're almost always among the more sensitive managers of neo-liberalism. Compared to the problems Bob Rae faced, fuck-head Flaherty demonstrated massive incompetence. Rae saved a couple of important employers ... DeHavilland and Algoma Steel, during a long, drawn-out recession, and in the face of Paul Martin's downloading of federal funding responsibilities to the provinces. Flaherty racked-up multi-billion dollar deficits during a period of consistent economic growth and he presided over a massive rise in homelessness, poverty, and the de-funding of health care and education.
All of it went to tax-cuts for the wealthiest which produced zero benefits to society. Now, these assholes are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars and they're not investing it in Canada and they think that we care about their self-interested whining about how not lowering corporate taxes even further is going to "discourage" them?
Fuck that shit.
For more sober economic analysis, keep watching this blog.
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15 comments:
;-)
Well said.
Canadians have had enough.
It's time for real change.
Indeed it is.
To hear Marcus Gee tell it, we need to double-down on the economic insanity if we're ever to achieve economic nirvana.
Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio has exploded since the government decided to spend less money on its people! B-b-but that goes against everything my C.D. Howe Institute economics professor told me about macroeconomics!
They're deluded. They're enthralled with a mental construct that doesn't work and there's no hope for them.
Yeah. Hey, whatever happened to DeHavailland, anyway? Boy those were monies well spent.
What again precipitated Dofasco from dropping Algoma? Oh, wasn't it the strike?
Yeah, recession, sure, that was the reason Rae pissed away Ontario's budget.
The NDP are the single worst managers of money in politics today. Their grade-school feel-good ideology does not work and holds their fiefdoms back.
Ask us in Sask, ask BC, ask Ont.
hey Lance your heroes the ones that ripped Rae a new one for daring to try to spend Ontario out of a recession just spent about 25 million bragging about how they spent us out of a recession You and your ilk are most certainly full of shit
lance,
The DeHavilland plant was producing planes (and providing good jobs) into the 21st century. So that was almost 15 years of continued economic activity.
I take it you come from the school of geniuses who have encouraged Canada's deindustrialization and now wonder why household debts are soaring and just where that recession came from.
I have no idea what your babbling about the strike at Algoma is supposed to be about. Probably some cromagnon hatred of unions that I don't have time to listen to.
Your credibility nose-dived when you mentioned you were from Saskatchewan and you accuse the NDP of being bad money managers. The NDP is forever cleaning up the messes left by shit-head "conservative" governments, elected by shit-head "conservative" voters, who believe in "free markets" and "entrepreneurial energies" and "Ayn Rand" and the tooth fairy, and flying ponies for themselves and all their friends.
What a joke.
Don't forget Flaherty's record regarding income trusts either: $35 billion dollars spirited away from Canadians, and ending up in the pockets of large institutional investors like Goldman Sachs.
Thwap, THANKS for this! When I read the Grope & Fail piece, I was utterly gobsmacked. Then cancelled my subscription, adding a few choice words re why. I am apoplectic. Have they been living in a different universe?!! You said exactly what I wanted to say, were I able to speak at the time!
And btw, a big thanks for putting "Lance" straight. Anybody from Sk. who actually BELIEVES that the Sk Party is good at economic management, while they are creating an enormous deficit & selling off the province as fast as their greedy little Neocon hands can manage, needs a few "thwaps" upside the head!
Thwap, I don't discourage anything including what companies decide to do with their own assets. I'm small business and I don't like subsidizing any single business especially not for political reasons. It never works. I see benefits for promoting a _sector_ but not a business.
Your logic hole confuses me. Deindustrialization == personal debt. Geez, here I thought it was overspending. I'm assuming you're jumping right past the 'too high taxes so we'll close the plant and lay-off the workers who will then incur personal debt' part of the dialogue?
Perhaps you meant, 'the govt will force the company to sell the plant to the govt, run it at a loss and then have to sell it for a firesale price which will have to be payed with taxes from people who will have to pay more and incure personal debt'?
That's so 1970 NDP though, maybe you meant the 2000's NDP? 'Fire off a news conference about all the investment the govt is going to do in a P3 potato processing plant, then encourage any and all farmers to buy in...only 100k per share. Then when it all falls through spend three years lying about who knew that no one actually put any money in except the now bankrupt farmers who then incur personal debt'?
"I have no idea what your babbling about the strike at Algoma is supposed to be about."
That could be because you're thick. The company went broke afterward...twice. Massive restructuring, (read lay-offs) after the 2nd CCAA and pretty much a complete union busted.
But it's the results that count, right? It is good to know that this Indian owned company now has much fewer workers at much less wages and making much greater profits. Good ole NDP. Ontario taxes for India's profits.
Nurse: It isn't a question of belief, nurse. It's math. I understand that the courses you took may have had some of that stuff in it.
Icky...I know. Those hard number thingies really hurt the fuzzy-headed.
If you can find _anything_ in the last three SP budgets that you can't find in the previous 13 NDP budgets which they described as 'balanced' then I'll eat my hat.
I'd have gone further with my wager, but last year the SP had the arrogance to revert to that horrible 'rainy day account' crap that Calvert always used to describe short-term borrowing.
anonymous,
I really need to look into that whole income trusts thing.
CanNurse,
I'm glad my rant provided some sort of catharsis for you. Truly. I appreciate it when I go online and find antidotes to the corporate drivel that passes for news and analysis sometimes.
lance,
You appear to have been day-dreaming.
The shit-assed system you're talking about DOESN'T WORK.
I notice you've scampered well away from any attempt to justify the incompetent Devine and Wall governments (amazingly corrupt as well in the case of Devine).
I notice you didn't really address that comparing the Rae achievements with the Harris-Flaherty record of disaster (rising debts, rising homelessness, under-funding of schools and hospitals) shows the NDP coming out way in front.
I notice you say you're a small businessperson. No doubt you sometimes idle away the minutes imagining how sweet it would be if you didn't have to pay any wages or any taxes.
That's an understandable fantasy to have, but the real world doesn't work that way.
Wages pay for people to survive and buy your products.
Taxes pay for services that can be more efficiently provided collectively, rather than by individuals themselves, or large, profit-driven corporations. These services make life less harsh and provide an equality of benefits that would otherwise be impossible.
Okay? So, there have to be taxes to pay for them and people need high enough level of wages.
So, as much as you imagine what a world-beater you'd be if only you didn't have to pay decent wages or pay your taxes, society can't accommodate you. Sorry.
The only time capitalism built up a high enough level of affluence for the whole thing to work and work with any degree of stability, was when it did so under the post-war social-democratic compromise.
Since that compromise has been broken (by your team btw.) things have turned to shit. Decent manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, ordinary households have had to increase indebtedness to maintain consumption levels, recessions have gotten more frequent and more intense. The economy has become more and more dependent upon bubbles (with the last bubble built almost entirely on fraud).
Your simplistic fantasies simply don't work.
And your slurs against NDP governments are factually incorrect, and, in the case of a comparison between Saskatchewan NDP and "conservative" rivals, entirely unjustifiable and hypocritical.
I have family in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and I live in BC. (I have family elsewhere, but this post is in regards to whose provincial economy worked best.)
Under the NDP, all of the Prairie provinces listed above made out better. So, when members if the Conservative Reform Alliance Party (or CRAP as I will still call them) do their little faux economic dance, I will remind them that numbers speak louder than ideology (that means when you make shit up to support your mental constructs for the CRAPers in the group
Thanks Sheila,
That needed to be said. I'm sick of all these shameless liars.
There are things that the Rae government did that pissed me off...namely the so-called "social contract" imposed on public sector workers and their gutless caving in to the insurance companies by failing to bring in public auto insurance when they had the chance.
But the NDP government had no control over Mulroney signing the Canada/US FTA. Factories started closing before the ink was even dry on the agreement. Then we had Bush the first's US recession which spilled over into Ontario which depends so much on cross border trade.
And don't forget the fanatical right-wing "zero inflation" policies of the Bank of Canada which drove interest rates through the roof. Piled on was the Mulroney & Chretien cuts in transfer payments to the provinces.
Then into the mid 1990's we had the absolutely savage cuts to the EI system brought in by Chretien/Martin.
The right-wing keeps trying to re-write history. They were full of shit then and they're full of shit now.
bobintoronto,
Well said!
Sorry lance, you've been thwapped. Another self deluded free market responsibility avoider. Pay your way or get out. Stop demanding the rest of us subsidize your business with lower wages and lower taxes. Corporate taxes have been declining for years, wages have stagnated and deregulation has been implemented but where is the promised prosperity and stability? Just around the corrupt, greedy corner right? Get real.
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