News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 9.5K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
EarthCam Time-Lapse Documents Rafael Viñoly-Designed New Stanford Hospital Construction
 40K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
Resort Town
 5.4K     0 

JonnyCanuck said:
As far as paying down debit, it is not a knee jerk reaction. It is a responsibility of every individual, company and government to pay it's bills. There are two ways to do that ... control spending and increase revenues.
Click to expand...
Silence&Motion said:
Some people seem to have a moral objection to taking on debt. One of the worse cliches among politicians is the comparison of the government to a family sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay off the credit card. It makes absolutely no sense in terms of fiscal policy. It's a Protestant morality tale about the importance of working hard, avoiding excessive consumption, and "living within one's means".
Click to expand...
As I said, this is a moral commitment. Not fiscal policy.
 
Also, I'll note that this idea of balancing earnings and spending does not even apply to wealthy people. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos basically just live off debt in order to avoid income taxes. They can just keep borrowing forever so long as their wealth grows faster than the debt they take on financing their lifestyles.
 
Silence&Motion said:
As I said, this is a moral commitment. Not fiscal policy.
Click to expand...
You can call it whatever you want but it was government fiscal policy that ran up the federal debt in the early-mid 1990's .... to at that point, the highest gross debt per person in our history... and it was government fiscal policy that reduced that debt to more manageable levels in the late 90's early 2000's. It just so happened that it was a more responsible Liberal government in power then, than we have now.

 
Last edited:
JonnyCanuck said:
You can call it whatever you want but it was government fiscal policy that ran up the federal debt in the early-mid 1990's .... to the highest gross debt per person in our history... and it was government fiscal policy that reduced that debt to more manageable levels in the late 90's early 2000's. It just so happened that it was a more responsible Liberal government in power then, than we have now.

Click to expand...
There is a big difference between now at the 90s. In the early 90s we had a huge recession because Canada hadn't adjusted to higher oil prices, and was opened to competition with free trade, at the same time. At the same time, revenue collection was demonstrably at the Laffer Limit, and we changed how manufacturing taxes worked, which rippled through the economy. We changed how pensions worked. But while all this way going on, we weren't making though choices on the fiscal side, even though the signs were there from at least the late 80s, that we were on a debt treadmill (that we had no viable option other than borrowing money or cutting, and each year the hole got bigger, not just in a $ sense, but in a % sense).

The fiscal reckoning this brought was larger the the average IMF structural adjustment policy package (more than 5% of GDP!). It was huge. The equivalent drop of government expenditure today would be ~ $208 billion across all three levels of government.
1631653767671.png
 
Last edited:
Since the debate I’ve reconsidered my position and I’ll be going back to red this election, since Calgary Centre does have a good chance of flipping back to the reds. I’d urge anyone in Centre and Confederation to do the same.
 
Silence&Motion said:
3. Actually, laying off thousands of people and cutting government services every time there is a dip in revenues would be disastrous public policy. The government's ability to take on debt allows it to maintain overall social and economic stability whenever there are ups and downs in the broader economy.

BTW: I'm not saying debt is always good. I'm saying its a useful tool for governments, but some people seem to have a moral objection to taking on debt. One of the worse cliches among politicians is the comparison of the government to a family sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay off the credit card. It makes absolutely no sense in terms of fiscal policy. It's a Protestant morality tale about the importance of working hard, avoiding excessive consumption, and "living within one's means".
Click to expand...
The best approach would be not to hire excess employees to begin with, which would be counter to human nature. Perceptions of risk move in cycles. Hence the business cycle. Recessions are absolutely necessary to correct bad decisions made in the past and move on.

Instead of "Protestant morality", the real religion is that governments or central banks or anyone can create something from nothing. Debt pulls future consumption into today, which means less consumption in the future. That is binary truth.
 
DougB said:
Instead of "Protestant morality", the real religion is that governments or central banks or anyone can create something from nothing. Debt pulls future consumption into today, which means less consumption in the future. That is binary truth.
Click to expand...
That's actually wrong. If debt produces growth (or at least avoids economic decline), then it actually means more consumption in the future.

Debt is morally neutral. It's a tool. It can either be used wisely or recklessly. But if you think it's being used recklessly, you need to make the case for what negative consequences will come from it, and that those negative consequences are not outweighed by the benefits. In the 1990s there was a case to be made that debt was creating more problems than it was solving, though there were certainly negative consequences for prioritizing debt over other issues. Consensus is now that Ralph Klein's obsession with paying off the provincial debt in full was a really dumb priority that had no long term benefit and that the money could have been better spent elsewhere. But people cheered him on at the time because they had a knee-jerk, moral objection to debt in general.

As Keynes once said, "anything we can do, we can afford". It's just a question of what our priorities are.
 
Sooo...have we figured out what the point of that $600 million election was other than a cabinet shuffle?

What got me choked was when Trudeau, in his victory speech, said something along the lines of, "Thank you Canadians for the CLEAR mandate"...Like you for real bruh? :rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
To reduce demands for support from generational program investments to adjustments around the edges. By showing the opposition that the government enjoys plenty of popular support despite what opposition MPs may think.
 
Alberta vote by party (2015-21)
YearConservativeLiberalNDPGreenPeoples
201560%25%12%3%N/A
201969%14%12%3%2%
202155%15%19%2%8%

I knew the CPC dropped in Alberta since the last election, but I didn't realize that they had also dropped relative to the Harper defeat back in 2015. However, Conservative voters went to the NDP and PPC rather than Liberal.
 
Last edited:
gsunnyg said:
Sooo...have we figured out what the point of that $600 million election was other than a cabinet shuffle?

What got me choked was when Trudeau, in his victory speech, said something along the lines of, "Thank you Canadians for the CLEAR mandate"...Like you for real bruh? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Yeah, not sure that 31.8% of the popular vote is a clear mandate....it's not even a 1/3 of the vote. To boot it's 3% less than the Conservatives.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top