there’s a big strategic hole in this article.

The federal govt. spends first, taxes later. So spending isn’t constrained by taxes collected.

The debt/deficit argument is ONLY used against social spending. When it comes to pro-capital spending, the argument vanishes. $40B for pipelines? $150B in military spending? $80B in annual subsidies to give big investors risk-free bonds to buy? These are also all deficit spending.

Progessives should avoid reinforcing the debt/deficit spending myth, since it’s only used against progressive spending.

Haven’t been back since the coop was deliberately bankrupted. No plans to.

Is there more context for this?

It didn’t cost “us” anything. Citizens aren’t respsible for the Fed govt’s spending, deficit, or debt. Private individuals and companies don’t pay it. Taxes never need to be raised to run surpluses to “pay off the debt”.

The money spent on elections or anything else is received by private individuals and firms, and they go on to spend it on other things. Some of it is returned in taxes.

If the govt were to run austere spending and high taxes, producing enough surpluses to pay off the debt…how much money would remain in private hands? ZERO!

Something to keep in mind any time someone complains about how expensive elections or other useful govt spending is.

Why is the cost a concern? It mostly goes to low income temp workers. Even a general election is a microscopic component of govt spending. Democracy and elections should be among the highest spending priorities.

If you want to complain about spending, complain about something wasteful, like $60B in annual subsidies for the US-owned oil industry that produces 70% of AB oil. Shave that by 1% and you’d pay for every by-election since 1867

Sounds good to me.

Totally agree about electoral reforms of most kinds.

Sadly the NDP has drifted far from their socialist root, and doesn’t really talk about any kind of major reform to capitalism. They offer a lot of marginal policy change, but don’t talk about alternatives that would reverse the 50 year trend. When Mulcair was leader, h3me wanted to eliminate the federal deficit.

I think everyone can get behind interprovincial trade. Not much else that’s positive in there. Build pipelines faster, and double down on the fraud of carbon-capture. Nothing about any systemic changes that will help Canadians find housing or secure stable, increasing incomes. Nothing about shifting the share of economic growth from capital to workers. The inflation adjusted incomes of Canadians have be flat since the 1970s, and we are much less secure and have inferior services like health and education.

Canada’s reverse colonization of the British Isles begins … don’t worry, the food we bring will be a big step up. 🦫🍁

there’s a saying “if it can be done, you can afford it”…it means that money is never the problem for currency-issuing entities, like “Europe”. They always have enough Euros.

What is needed are the resources to do the thing - labour, material, organization.

A state can gently steer the resources using money as an inducement. Or it can just do it with power and laws.

Of course, creating Euros in this way means that the Euros aren’t being created in the same way they are now - which is by paying them to those who already hold Euro bonds, and that makes them upset, and that’s why it will take a while to happen.

so they only ban hateful content from balck guys now? Is that how this works? 🤷‍♂️

shlab

I’m not arguing in favour of libertarianism, it’s nonsense. I’m pointing out some basic tenets of credit money. In whatever form currency is, it’s always tied to state power over law and taxes. The rai stones are an OK example of it.

https://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html

there is not an item of currency attached to every asset on earth…There is vastly more real asset value than there is currency.

Modern currency is liquid float to help facilitate transactions among items having real value.

Currency itself has only one fundamental value - it’s the only thing that can be used to settle taxes. This gives it a lot of exchange value - people will accept it in exchange for real value because they know there are always people needing to pay taxes, including themselves.

Ax the Ax the Tax

Sounds good to me. No point leaving a bunch of open senate seats for some future govt to fill.

I look forward to Trudeau’s many non-partisan senators to blocking a future attempt by Poilievre to bypass the charter of rights using the notwithstanding clause federally. The senate would be right to reject that when conservatives try to advance attacks on whatever marginalized group they want blame for their own failings (probably transgendered people).

The senate would be right to reject that.

family farms are a tiny part of the ag industry. In the US it was under 10%. The image of a pastoral low-intensity 19th century family farm has been drilled into peoples’ minds by food industry advertising for 100 years. People like that image but it’s not real.

Ag is big business. Loans and leases for land, equipment, inputs, most of the labour isn’t from the business operator.

There’s probably under 10k family farms in Canada that would be impacted by a transfer to family and they can easily be exempted, it’s chump change for tax revenue.

link goes to article about biodegradable micro beads

“cures” involving immunosuppression have been around for a long time. It’s not a good outcome for most, the side effects of immunosuppression are worse than taking insulin.

The main patient discussed uses immunosuppression but later in the article they discuss some progress that doesn’t involve halting the immune system. That’s the potential breakthrough.

looks like pseudoscience bullshit to me.