Crystia Freeland is a right-wing neoliberal. Justin Trudeau is an amoral air-head. The Liberal Party of Canada is a party of amoral, opportunistic freaks. Even at that, they represent the slightly more socially conscious aspect of Canadian capitalism. The possess the "intellectual rigour" (for want of a better term) that doesn't see yet more cuts to taxes and spending and further de-regulation as the solutions to any and all economic problems. So when (from the headlines of stories that I can't be bothered to read) the CBC is only presenting the responses of Pierre Poillevre, Bill Morneau, and other right-wing assholes, I decided to see what the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives had to say. (That link goes to a page of collected budget responses from several Canadian lefty organizations.)
4 comments:
Morneau was an express ticket to austerity and an early hint that Trudeau II. had a different interpretation of sunny days/ways than many of us. I want to nominate Harold Steves for Chief Poohah of everything.
Far as I can tell, the budget is a story of the kind of good, the mediocre, and the mediocre.
The kind of good is the increase in capital gains tax to closer to what real people pay for money they work for, except only for a very few really rich people. It's not enough, but it is an unambiguous improvement.
One mediocre is the housing stuff, which is probably marginally better than not doing anything but continues to resolutely avoid the fundamental effective way for a government to arrange for more housing to exist--BUILD THE FUCKING HOUSING. Most of the billions they're allocating just won't get spent, because they're allocating them to an existing fund that . . . didn't get spent, because the private sector didn't take them up on the offered subsidy-in-return-for-affordable deal.
Another mediocre is the disability benefit stuff, which is too little (because it's small) and too late (because if I understand right it's not scheduled to take effect until after the fucking Cons get a majority and cancel it).
More mediocre is all the stuff they didn't do that sensible people, not even radicals like me, were saying they should do, like windfall profit taxes and getting serious about promoting various clean technologies and stuff. Fucking wusses.
Danneau,
Yeah. My first thought with seeing the Morneau story was "Who cares what that idiot thinks?"
Is this the Harold Steves you're referring to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Steves
Purple library guy,
A pretty succinct summary of what I've read so far. Which is far different from what our useless media is telling people.
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