Federal Government & Politics II

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

That seems dramatic. If you are blaming all of Covid spending on him sure. All his discretionary spending is a drop in the bucket compared to Covid. We could have ended some of the Covid spending earlier but that was debatable at the time.

The so-called COVID spending was significantly discretionary it mostly went to boosting household savings (which went up by 350 billion during the pandemic) rather than covering urgent needs. Even before the pandemic he was adding 40 billion a year to the debt.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The so-called COVID spending was significantly discretionary it mostly went to boosting household savings (which went up by 350 billion during the pandemic) rather than covering urgent needs. Even before the pandemic he was adding 40 billion a year to the debt.

How much of the 40 billion would a Conservative government have been running. I'd say at least $30. Same for Covid spending which dwarfs all the budget deficits combined most was happening under anyone's watch. Conservatives might have been a bit stricter on CERB but would have had a big universal tax cut. I'd guess a total GST pause or something like that. Probably also a tax cut for everyone sending out cheques. There is no evidence conservative governments anywhere spent less on Covid. Look provincially we see the same thing.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

How much of the 40 billion would a Conservative government have been running. I'd say at least $30. Same for Covid spending which dwarfs all the budget deficits combined most was happening under anyone's watch. Conservatives might have been a bit stricter on CERB but would have had a big universal tax cut. I'd guess a total GST pause or something like that. Probably also a tax cut for everyone sending out cheques. There is no evidence conservative governments anywhere spent less on Covid. Look provincially we see the same thing.

The Tories handed over a budget that was close to balance, as they did not believe budgets balanced themselves. Why are you assuming the deficit would have gone up to 30?

Why are you assuming they would have spent massive on a tax cut?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The Tories handed over a budget that was close to balance, as they did not believe budgets balanced themselves. Why are you assuming the deficit would have gone up to 30?

Why are you assuming they would have spent massive on a tax cut?

Come on that was not a balanced budget. It was hard earned progress and fudging the numbers. If you are arguing they balance the budget during Covid I really don't think we can have a real fiscal conversation. For sure the Liberals ran up 10s of Billions more in debt than a more responsible government would have. But when you try and say the $325 Billion deficit from 2020-21 would have been zero or even should have been 0 it's like arguing everyone would have just died if PP was there without the the endless lockdowns. Total nonsense. If we had the Sweden policy and no new government program we still would have had $100 Billion in debt just from lost revenues and fiscal stabilizers.

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The so-called COVID spending was significantly discretionary it mostly went to boosting household savings (which went up by 350 billion during the pandemic) rather than covering urgent needs. Even before the pandemic he was adding 40 billion a year to the debt.

Originally Posted by YOWetal

How much of the 40 billion would a Conservative government have been running. I'd say at least $30. Same for Covid spending which dwarfs all the budget deficits combined most was happening under anyone's watch. Conservatives might have been a bit stricter on CERB but would have had a big universal tax cut. I'd guess a total GST pause or something like that. Probably also a tax cut for everyone sending out cheques. There is no evidence conservative governments anywhere spent less on Covid. Look provincially we see the same thing.

Originally Posted by acottawa

The Tories handed over a budget that was close to balance, as they did not believe budgets balanced themselves. Why are you assuming the deficit would have gone up to 30?

Why are you assuming they would have spent massive on a tax cut?

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Come on that was not a balanced budget. It was hard earned progress and fudging the numbers. If you are arguing they balance the budget during Covid I really don't think we can have a real fiscal conversation. For sure the Liberals ran up 10s of Billions more in debt than a more responsible government would have. But when you try and say the $325 Billion deficit from 2020-21 would have been zero or even should have been 0 it's like arguing everyone would have just died if PP was there without the the endless lockdowns. Total nonsense. If we had the Sweden policy and no new government program we still would have had $100 Billion in debt just from lost revenues and fiscal stabilizers.

He's very clearly not arguing that.

Before the pandemic, the CPC had a balanced budget, and the LPC went to $40 billion deficits.

Why would the CPC have shot up to $30 billion deficits if they'd been in power from 2015-2020?

[whatnext]

Despite trying to kumbaya its way around immigration to the developed world this Bloomberg article can't hide the dismal truth:

...even as that record population growth keeps Canada’s GDP growing, life is getting tougher, especially for younger generations and for immigrants such as 29-year-old Akanksha Biswas.

Biswas arrived in Canada in the middle of 2022, just as per-capita GDP started plunging amid the start of the post-pandemic immigration boom and the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest-rate tightening cycle.

The former Sydneysider moved to Toronto for what she believed would be a better life with a lower cost of living and greater career prospects. Instead, she faced higher rent, lower pay and limited job opportunities.

“I actually had a completely different picture in my mind about what life would be like in Toronto,” said Biswas, who works in advertising. “Prices were almost similar, but there’s a lot more competition in the job market.”

Canada’s working-age population grew by a million over the past year but the labor market only created 324,000 jobs. The upshot: The unemployment rate rose by more than a full percentage point, with young people and newcomers again the worst hit.

Biswas spends more than a third of her income on the monthly rent bill of C$2,800 ($2,050), splitting the cost with her partner. She’s dining out less and making coffee at home instead of going to the cafe. She’s also pushing back plans to have children or buy a home.

“I don’t see my future here if I want to raise a family,” she says....

Meantime, Biswas and her partner are calling it quits on their Canada experiment and moving to Melbourne, where they reckon they can afford a two-bedroom apartment for less than what they paid for a one-bedroom space in Toronto.

But life won’t be easy Down Under either as many of the same strains are playing out, with Australia facing its worst housing crisis in living memory...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...&sref=x4rjnz06

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by jonny24

He's very clearly not arguing that.

Before the pandemic, the CPC had a balanced budget, and the LPC went to $40 billion deficits.

Why would the CPC have shot up to $30 billion deficits if they'd been in power from 2015-2020?

The final "balanced" budget was slight of hand with GM sales, sick leave changes and other one time charges. The oil crash at the end of 2015 meant whoever was in charge would have seen a substantial drop in revenues and increase in expenses in 2016. For sure new programs and the middle class tax cut (mostly went to higher earners) by the liberals added to deficits but all of that is a rounding error compared to Covid so ended up nearly immaterial.

[kool maudit]

The funny thing about the high levels of immigration seen across Europe and her children is that the cosmopolitanism, the lack of prejudice, the openness to new perspectives – that all came from sales.

The programme was and is a sterility fix.

That doesn't mean that cosmopolitanism and openness and all that aren't good things, or that they came out of a place of cynicism. Good salespeople really believe that Cadillacs or laptops or corporate bonds are good products. Generally only the lower tier are predatory or see themselves as exploiting a knowledge gap.

But if the fertility issue wasn't there, this wouldn't be either. Nobody wanted the AfD or Le Pen or whatever, and everybody knew they could show up after a while. But the numbers didn't work and so this was what we went with.

So where do you go from here? Blackrock's Larry Fink was out the other day saying declining populations are good insofar as they spur technological change ("what with computers and all..."). It was weird. That trend is still usually used as a spur to the old fix ("Japan needs to learn to open up").

It would be interesting to see what would happen if development get new ideas after one of the most successful, decades-spanning, embedded-in-peoples-values sales campaigns of all time.

[Truenorth00]

Generational fairness is becoming a broader developed economy theme. He could be talking about Canada for a good part of this:

• Video Link

And it's awesome to see such an uncomfortable audience, get hit with reality.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Come on that was not a balanced budget. It was hard earned progress and fudging the numbers. If you are arguing they balance the budget during Covid I really don't think we can have a real fiscal conversation. For sure the Liberals ran up 10s of Billions more in debt than a more responsible government would have. But when you try and say the $325 Billion deficit from 2020-21 would have been zero or even should have been 0 it's like arguing everyone would have just died if PP was there without the the endless lockdowns. Total nonsense. If we had the Sweden policy and no new government program we still would have had $100 Billion in debt just from lost revenues and fiscal stabilizers.

Of course I am not trying to say that the deficit in 20-21 would have been zero. There were tens of billions in expenses that would have occurred: increased spending on EI, spending on vaccines and PPE, there were certain sectors that needed a bailout such as the airline sector.

The hundreds of billions going to people and business who did didn’t need it (and couldn’t even spend due to COVID restrictions), the overpaying for unnecessary apps and the tens of thousands of new bureaucrats was discretionary and wouldn’t necessarily have happened without Trudeau.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

The final "balanced" budget was slight of hand with GM sales, sick leave changes and other one time charges. The oil crash at the end of 2015 meant whoever was in charge would have seen a substantial drop in revenues and increase in expenses in 2016. For sure new programs and the middle class tax cut (mostly went to higher earners) by the liberals added to deficits but all of that is a rounding error compared to Covid so ended up nearly immaterial.

That is why I said close to balance. The 15-16 deficit probably would have been a few billion.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Why the youngins are deserting the Trudeau Liberals en mass and decamping to the Conservatives..it's the economy duh. Genz, Young Millenials continue to see their personal finances worsen under the Trudeau regime.





Young Canadians feel poorer in warning sign for economy, Trudeau
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/young-ca...deau-1.2069245

Can't forget this either:


https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/sta...04910722637939

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Generational fairness is becoming a broader developed economy theme. He could be talking about Canada for a good part of this:

• Video Link

And it's awesome to see such an uncomfortable audience, get hit with reality.

Some level of gerontocracy is likely an inevitability in any place with an aging population and a dominant demographic that's been politically catered to their entire lives; so we're definitely not alone on that front. Canada just has a knack for making it worse than most of the rest for our younger people (eg. see: Canada ranking ranking 8th in the world for "happiness" for those over 60, versus 58th for those under 30).

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Some level of gerontocracy is likely an inevitability in any place with an aging population and a dominant demographic that's been politically catered to their entire lives; so we're definitely not alone on that front. Canada just has a knack for making it worse than most of the rest for our younger people (eg. see: Canada ranking ranking 8th in the world for "happiness" for those over 60, versus 58th for those under 30).

Incidentally the US has the same dynamic (mentioned in the video), where they rank 10th for those over 60 and 62nd for those under 30.

Also, the problem with Social Security in the US is just a more advanced version of what we have developing with OAS. Indeed, Scott Galloway had the exact same solution I've suggested here. Base The program on need, not just automatic qualification on age.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

The funny thing about the high levels of immigration seen across Europe and her children is that the cosmopolitanism, the lack of prejudice, the openness to new perspectives – that all came from sales.

The programme was and a sterility fix.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if development get new ideas after one of the most successful, decades-spanning, embedded-in-peoples-values sales campaigns of all time.

Japan and South Korea will be fascinating demographic studies in the 21st century.

A lot of what humanity does in economic terms is mostly meeting the demands for other humans. More humans = more demand. It is pretty ‘easy’ in terms of economic growth to juice the numbers. A declining proportion of economic growth is due to technological innovation. I am not discounting the chance of finding a new massive technological windfall, but a lot of the lower hanging branches are looking fairly picked over. Can we double crop yields again? Introduce a fundamental source of power as revolutionary as electricity?

What does degrowth look like? We sort of know. It’s a story told in our smallest, most isolated centres. Don’t need the resource, leave the place. It looks more challenging from a debt-issuance perspective. Italy’s bond yields tell a tale. The lowering of expectations for youth is well underway in advanced economies. Some get lucky with timing. Some don’t. Play the cards with that in mind.

We might see declining world population in our lifetimes. Hard news for the economic growth brigade, but probably beneficial for the planet we live on. The optimal version of humanity to me always looked like less people with higher living standards. Maybe Canada of 30 or 25 or 20 million is closer to optimal, the Miltons and Lavals and Fort McMurrays bulldozed back to the lands whence they came.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Of course I am not trying to say that the deficit in 20-21 would have been zero. There were tens of billions in expenses that would have occurred: increased spending on EI, spending on vaccines and PPE, there were certain sectors that needed a bailout such as the airline sector.

The hundreds of billions going to people and business who did didn’t need it (and couldn’t even spend due to COVID restrictions), the overpaying for unnecessary apps and the tens of thousands of new bureaucrats was discretionary and wouldn’t necessarily have happened without Trudeau.

The idea we could have spent hundreds of billions less is possible. That we wouldn't have seems very unlikely. If we spent $500 billion instead of $6000 but with much higher poverty and death rate I am not sure we are better off. Either way our road to bankruptcy is largely unchanged in either scenario. If you think we could have spent way less I'd ask what model you would have copied. Even with benefit of hindsight every industalized country spent a lot and all gave some/most to people who didn't need it. I'd actually argue some more universal benefits would have been better. We could have avoided adding thousands of CRA employees and the disincentive to work which led to the immigration surge.

I am not saying a different government wouldn't have done better or many mistakes weren't made but pretending we'd have a nearly balanced budget or not inflation or low interest rates seems like a very dubious claim. Every dollar that was unnecessary in your view went to a real person. I could argue people should stop whining about spending more on food as they don't need that money anyway. I find it disigenous for those that got fat cheques to now argue about the inflation "spending caused".

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

The idea we could have spent hundreds of billions less is possible. That we wouldn't have seems very unlikely. If we spent $500 billion instead of $6000 but with much higher poverty and death rate I am not sure we are better off. Either way our road to bankruptcy is largely unchanged in either scenario. If you think we could have spent way less I'd ask what model you would have copied. Even with benefit of hindsight every industalized country spent a lot and all gave some/most to people who didn't need it. I'd actually argue some more universal benefits would have been better. We could have avoided adding thousands of CRA employees and the disincentive to work which led to the immigration surge.

I am not saying a different government wouldn't have done better or many mistakes weren't made but pretending we'd have a nearly balanced budget or not inflation or low interest rates seems like a very dubious claim. Every dollar that was unnecessary in your view went to a real person. I could argue people should stop whining about spending more on food as they don't need that money anyway. I find it disigenous for those that got fat cheques to now argue about the inflation "spending caused".

Yes that money went to "real people" - but the money wasn't "real". It was printed and not backed by actual economic productivity. And without actual economic productivity backing it, it's fake money.

The problem we are in now is that the Trudeau government gave out hundreds of billions of fake money. That has problems.

Money isn't free or unlimited - you can't just write everybody cheques. Trudeau tried it, and now we are paying for it.

Ultimately the economy went into deep, mega recession for 2 years and Trudeau tried to cover over the insane levels of lost productivity with money printing. It worked for a time, as it typically does, but it never ends well. It ended in high inflation, and the ensuing correction coming from sky-high interest rates is resulting in us paying for that lost productivity in 2024 instead of in 2020 when it happened.

did that money go to people? yes. Did it help? yes. Did it help more than it needed to given the massive money printing impact on inflation and the economy? Also, yes.

The focus should have been on minimizing economic closures as much as possible and implementing enhanced EI programs of some sort. And honestly, letting people fall through the cracks. Because it would have either happened now or then. When you forcibly shut down an economy, people are going to suffer one way or another. Thus there should have been a much larger focus on keeping the economy running as much as humanly possible.

[MolsonExport]

he Miltons and Lavals and Fort McMurrays bulldozed back to the lands whence they came

all that would remain is this monolith, to remind people of the Paradise Lost (John Milton).

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

The idea we could have spent hundreds of billions less is possible. That we wouldn't have seems very unlikely. If we spent $500 billion instead of $6000 but with much higher poverty and death rate I am not sure we are better off. Either way our road to bankruptcy is largely unchanged in either scenario. If you think we could have spent way less I'd ask what model you would have copied. Even with benefit of hindsight every industalized country spent a lot and all gave some/most to people who didn't need it. I'd actually argue some more universal benefits would have been better. We could have avoided adding thousands of CRA employees and the disincentive to work which led to the immigration surge.

I am not saying a different government wouldn't have done better or many mistakes weren't made but pretending we'd have a nearly balanced budget or not inflation or low interest rates seems like a very dubious claim. Every dollar that was unnecessary in your view went to a real person. I could argue people should stop whining about spending more on food as they don't need that money anyway. I find it disigenous for those that got fat cheques to now argue about the inflation "spending caused".

It isn’t a difference between $500 and $600, it is a difference between $100 or $200 and $600.

Very little of the money went to alleviate poverty or reduce death rates. Most of the money went to people who didn’t need it and couldn’t spend it because of the many restrictions on spending in place (hence the $350B in increased household savings).

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

It isn’t a difference between $500 and $600, it is a difference between $100 or $200 and $600.

Very little of the money went to alleviate poverty or reduce death rates. Most of the money went to people who didn’t need it and couldn’t spend it because of the many restrictions on spending in place (hence the $350B in increased household savings).

I think if you crunch the numbers the idea we could have only borrowed $100 Billion 2019-2024 is a bit far fetched.


Are you saying all that houshold savings was Covid benefits and we can just zero it out and break even? CERB alone was $80 Billion and a few people with Etsy hobbies ending up getting it the bulk were people who were able to survive. They spent it and sure the dollars went to their landlords bank account but what was other option? Our debt based rental society simply can't have 20% of people without any income. Anyway the past is the past. Though totally fair to turf a government out for their past choices I am interested in what comes next. I agree we need a dramatic U turn in spending and won't get it even with a new Liberal leader like Carney. I know you personally won't be whining but I guarantee there will be endless posts commenting on how heartless the new government cutting x y and z. Or just as likely deficits continue to climb and very little changes until we get our next Blue Liberal finance minister to clean everything up.

[niwell]

There's obviously exceptions but anecdotally the individuals I know receiving direct funding during COVID through CERB needed it to pay rent as their employment was essentially placed on hold. Those that benefited during COVID through decreased spending (like myself) didn't receive any real benefits - just were lucky enough to remain working salaried at home with far fewer things to spend on. That's certainly a factor in the situation we've ended up in but it's correlated more highly with restrictions on the economy rather than direct spending.