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On October 09 2015 07:44 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Mulroney didn't come to power until September 17th 1984. k thx.
More or less the same is true of 1985 and the following 8 years.
i'll go through the #s year by year, but it looks like the article i posted is basically accurate. this sniping back and forth is pointless. When did Trudeau run at an operating surplus? Pretty sure the 1 year Clark government had a better operating surplus than any Trudeau year. Again, i'll nail down the #s. and again, he was running a minority government.
Like I said, Trudeau's leadership happened in an era where every first world country borrowed a lot and the high interest rates were largely mitigated by the fact that they had loaned a lot of money and collected a lot of interests and also much of the borrowed money were high return investments in infrastructure. Had Mulroney governed during that era, he'd have spent just as much if not more because at that time there was no where near the stigma against deficits as there is today. As for the article, it does seem accurate - and while it does corroborate part of what you're saying I doesn't actually corroborate your claim that Mulroney's deficits are 100% attributable to the existing debt accrued by the liberals. It shows that part of it is.
On October 09 2015 07:44 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Mulroney didn't come to power until September 17th 1984. k thx.
More or less the same is true of 1985 and the following 8 years.
i'll go through the #s year by year, but it looks like the article i posted is basically accurate. this sniping back and forth is pointless. When did Trudeau run at an operating surplus? Pretty sure the 1 year Clark government had a better operating surplus than any Trudeau year. Again, i'll nail down the #s. and again, he was running a minority government.
Like I said, Trudeau's leadership happened in an era where every first world country borrowed a lot and the high interest rates were largely mitigated by the fact that they had loaned a lot of money and collected a lot of interests and also much of the borrowed money were high return investments in infrastructure. Had Mulroney governed during that era, he'd have spent just as much if not more because at that time there was no where near the stigma against deficits as there is today. As for the article, it does seem accurate - and while it does corroborate part of what you're saying I doesn't actually corroborate your claim that Mulroney's deficits are 100% attributable to the existing debt accrued by the liberals. It shows that part of it is.
sounds like "tax and spend" liberal gafflegarb... you should be writing for the Toronto Star.
lol, saying my comment reflects that i do not possess a shred of intellectual honesty is over the top guy.
keep on apologizing for P.E.T.
P.E.T. was known for unorthodox and innovative problem solving. Its a shame he was not that way with his fiscal policy. he created a cycle of debt Canada is still in.
The NDP and Liberals did it in Ontario as well. Mike Harris saved them... and now the Liberals have fucked Ontario into the ground permanently.
And, I have not even talked about Bill Davis or Deifenbaker yet
If I'd didn't have a solid customer base here i would leave Ontario. Even Mike Harris can't save us now!
Just for the record i have voted for all 3 major parties in the past... and i'm leaning towards NDP in this one.. .but i realize they tend to have "tax and spend" style policies....which i do not agree with. i'm not a 1-issue voter.
Let me back up my earlier Joe Clark comment with some #s. Joe Clark's 11.9B deficit was lower than the deficits for the final 6 years of Trudeau's reign ( when adjusted to inflation). Furthering my overall generalization about PCs, Liberals, and NDP.
On October 09 2015 07:44 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Mulroney didn't come to power until September 17th 1984. k thx.
More or less the same is true of 1985 and the following 8 years.
ok, i correctly refuted your claim that somehow a guy elected on September 17th in 1984 running off of the April 84 Marc Lalonde budget is responsible for the 1984 debt. Mulroney's regime is not responsible for the 1984 deficit as your chart indicates. George Orwell where are you?
Mulroney's regime is also not responsible for the 1985 deficit. And this is even indicated in the chart you supplied. The explanation about how fiscal years work is all over the place.. please google it.
so now i've nailed down your 1984 and 1985 claims; i will therefore begin covering the Mulroney years.. year by year beginning with 1986.
AND let's also keep in mind that Kim Campbell was the PC leader in 1993 overseeing the entire PC budget for 1993. just so i don't have to clarify this again i'll do so in advance : Kim Campbell is not Brian Mulroney.
you claim i possess not a shred of intellectual honesty while claiming the Mulroney Regime is responsible for the 1984 deficit and when that does not work you move on to 1985.
you keep taking heavy shots at me.. and you keep missing man. i'll say it again, you should be writing for the Toronto Star.
This is how $200 Billion becomes $388 Billion strictly due to interest payments... and the debt was only $372 at the end of 1991.
Conclusion : my comment the deficits Mulroney ran were due to the interest on the debt the previous liberal government left him with... is basically correct.
and my over all post about the PCs, Liberals and NDP and their generally tendencies regarding fiscal policy at the Ontario Provincial level and Canadian Federal level turns out to be correct.
After doing this research and watching at least 200 episodes of Coach's Corner there is no way i can be deported as is happening with other native born Canadians
ok, i correctly refuted your claim that somehow a guy elected on September 17th in 1984 running off of the April 84 Marc Lalonde budget is responsible for the 1984 debt. Mulroney's regime is not responsible for the 1984 deficit as your chart indicates. George Orwell where are you?
Mulroney's regime is also not responsible for the 1985 deficit. And this is even indicated in the chart you supplied. The explanation about how fiscal years work is all over the place.. please google it.
Your initial claim was that Mulroney's deficits were entirely the government paying interests on its debt. You've never proven this. You did catch my mistake because I did believe that Mulroney took power earlier in 1984, but nonetheless none of what you've showed goes anywhere near proving that servicing the debt was 100% of Mulroney's deficits over 9 years. Every penny is what you've said. Now you've brought some evidence that the interest payments were substantial, which I never denied. If you go, you can even see that I said the interest payments account for a large part of the deficit. Not all the deficit, however. Which is the claim that you've failed to prove. The chart showing 1985 in red doesn't take responsibility away from Mulroney, he was in power for that entire year.
Furthermore you've failed to account for the fact that often, operating surpluses both in the private sector and the public sector are made possible by previous investments in infrastructure and other equipments. It could be argued that the economic turmoil that followed and that, yes, Mulroney had to deal with, actually was made up by the vast improvements to the quality of life of Canadians in that era, as well as the infrastructure that kept Canada competitive during and after those years. Also, I've brought up the fact that western countries across the board had similar deficits, it was the norm back then, and it ceased being the norm under Mulroney. So you can praise Mulroney's administration, or you can open your eyes and realize that a paradigm shifted and the prime minister of Canada is not responsible for the crisis of the welfare state.
There are plenty of context elements that explain why most western countries ran deficit: the fact that it was the norm, the fact that it had significant long term benefits and those who didn't do it have never actually caught up to us (yes, countries which went through the welfare state crisis got out better than the countries which didn't borrow as much). Also, the price of oil went way up before we had much of it. Also, governments across the board followed Keynesianism too closely and made some mistakes along the way. The liberals are certainly guilty of this in their last years... much like, you guessed it, much of the western world.
Now if you feel that I've been unfair to you, I'm sorry. Your early posts have been frankly pretty bad. Then you started doing some work, and yet at this point in time, you haven't addressed too many of my points. We can take 1986 if you'd like, but 1985 was the same. The interest rate was 11%, and the deficit at the end of the year was $60B Canadian dollars. Was the debt in 1986 $600B?
There is no systematic tendency for the liberals to spend more rationally. Mulroney dealt with a crisis just like every other government in the western world. Not because he was better, but out of necessity. Like Reagan. Like Thatcher. Like left wing governments in Europe. Then, when Chrétien and Martin took power, the deficits ended - but, you'll agree with me because you're more interested in proving a point than in reality, it was not because they were great. It was because the context allowed it. And they didn't run a deficit, they could have, though, but they chose not to.
So my argument is two-fold... with a 3rd point for my little summary 1: The Mulroney era, especially early on, had a deficit which was greater than the sum of the interests on the debt. 2: More importantly, the debt accrued by the liberals is largely explained by contextual elements: oil prices, deficits being the norm, etc. Similarly, it's not the liberal's great wisdom that allowed the liberals to get surplus after Mulroney. It was the fact that Canada had, just like the REST OF THE WEST, gone over the hurdle that was caused by energy crisis of 1979 and the other contextual elements that made industrialized countries operate less efficiently.
And so while you do have a point in that Mulroney had to put up with paying large sums to the interest on the debt, you have a very simplistic understanding of the issue. You don't understand that that much of Mulroney's ability to pay at all came from the increased ability of Canada to get stuff done because it invested.
Conclusion : my comment the deficits Mulroney ran were due to the interest on the debt the previous liberal government left him with... is basically correct.
Still there aren't you... alright, cross your numbers, see if it adds up. Take 1986, check the debt, calculate its interest, it does not add up to the deficit for 1986 in 1986. Does it add up to a large part of it? No - but you did say every penny. And that is not true. Yet you'll keep on going about this, ignoring context, ignoring everything you need to take into account to actually understand what happened - except when it suits you. When it suits you, context is a big deal. When it doesn't it's irrelevant and you'll repeatedly refuse to address it.
the #s are all there guy.. i outlined Clark and Mulroney and contrasted their performance with PETs.
according to you its terrible for Reagan to run a deficit, but when Trudeau does the same thing from 1981-3 its ok because "everyone is doing it". ok man.
On October 09 2015 07:05 Djzapz wrote: JimmyJ how do you explain that the debt was 135 billion, BoC's interest rate was 11-13%
the day Mulroney was elected the debt was 136 Billion. Source in my previous post. On that day the government was operating under the April 1984 Marc Lalonde budget which remains in effect until April 1985. This givess the new ruling party a few months to take a microscope to the books and come up with a game plan. So he ain't responsible for the growing debt under the 1984 Lalonde budget as is shown in the graph you have provided. You own self contridictory "sources" are proving you inconsistent at best. You are throwing around all these #s that are misleading.
On October 09 2015 07:05 Djzapz wrote: JimmyJ how do you explain that the debt was 135 billion, BoC's interest rate was 11-13%
the day Mulroney was elected the debt was 136 Billion. On that day the government was operating under the April 1984 Marc Lalonde budget which remains in effect until April 1985. This givess the new ruling party a few months to take a microscope to the books and come up with a game plan. So he ain't responsible for the growing debt under the 1984 Lalonde budget as is shown in the graph you have provided. You are throwing around all these #s that are misleading.
Don't talk about what is misleading, you're the king of misleading... nonetheless like I said use another year if you want. 1986 is great. Yet none of it matters because if you continue to ignore the importance of the international context and you continue insisting on the local trends, it really, really doesn't matter. In fact, if you ignored the international context and were right about Mulroney's deficits being 100% debt service, your analysis would still not matter because you're comparing parties when there's a complete overlap of how nations thought about public finances between those two administrations. In 1978 every nation was running deficits and in the second half of 1980 every nation was trying to do away with the welfare state. If you think it's a Canada-only thing, or worse a political party thing, you truly don't understand history.
And yes the numbers are all there. Not only you read them wrong, you can't be bothered to read beyond the numbers.
I think Mulcair would make the best prime minister. I will just vote to defeat Stephen Harper, guy is such a crook, control freak. He muzzle scientist and seems to be working for the petroleum industry in secret. I don't want someone who seems to imbue his religious perception into my country.
On October 09 2015 11:06 JimmyJRaynor wrote: just doing a back of the envelop calculation $200 grows to $388 with interest rates of 10% to 14% over 6 years.
turning up the volume on the rhetoric won't change the #s.
Seems I have nothing to stand on if you specifically take that specific 6 years as a lump. I'll actually give you that. To be fair I was looking at the first few years because I consider that after 3 years, you do get to change these things. You can pull in a direction. He didn't. Worse yet, after 9 years of incumbency with control over your country's finances, the choice to borrow at high interests to pay high interests on debt instead of of lowering your expenses or increasing taxes is a growth strategy of its own.
I'm from BC and the whatever the heck Ontario's conservatives are doing at the provincial level means exactly zero to me for when I am evaluating what's going on at the federal level. A large wing of the Conservative party didn't even come through the old PC's, but from the old Reform party, which had no provincial analog.
Ronald Reagan don't matter but this other guy here brought up Reagan so i'll outline the contridiction in his points.
He defends Trudeau's massive deficits in 81, 82, 83, and 84 with an appeal to authoriity.. "everyone is doing it" is his explanation for Trudeau's deficit running. Ok , great.
Reagan runs massive deficits in those same 4 years. According to the guy i'm debating this makes Reagan a terrible, horrible right wing zealot destroying the US economy in the long term.
Why the difference? Reagan represents a right wing party: the Republicans. Pierre Trudeau represents a left-of-centre party: The Liberals.
My Take? Both Reagan and Trudeau are fucking amazingly charismatic leaders with flawed fiscal policies. Both got elected primarily based on their charisma. They were not elected on whether voters believed in the theory behind the Laffer curve. It would appear the guy i'm debating with just doesn't like right wing political parties and their representatives.
These are 2 of the greatest speeches i've ever seen ever.
"just watch me"
"a time for choosing"
Ronald Reagan and Pierre Trudeau are just oozing charisma and its obvious to see why both of these guys were massively fucking popular. I'm blown away by how amazing these guys appear in speeches. None of that means their carefully calculated moves regarding their economic policy will be correct. It just means they are great to talk about at parties.
That Reagan speech makes want me to run out to the book store and pick up another hard cover copy of Atlast Shrugged for $50. "A Time For Choosing" just kicks as over "This is John Galt Speaking".. damn.
Watching PET speeches i'd have to say Justin looks a lot more like Maggie T than PET.
The polls seem to be getting interesting. CBC's Poll Tracker aggregator thingy now gives the Liberals the edge after having the Conservatives having the potential to win the most seats for the last couple weeks. The NDP are now definitely in third place, down over 10% from the Liberals. It's insane what a difference a month makes. Interestingly, in the last few days, it went from Conservatives having the most seats to Liberals having the most seats purely at the expense of the NDP. The % of voters for the Conservatives hasn't changed while the NDP has basically dropped, and with each drop the Liberal percentage increases almost equally.
I'd rather the NDP win but I'm fine with the Liberals winning. Anything's better than Harper at this point.
Interestingly even the right-leaning local newspaper is admitting that most of the Saskatchewan city ridings are going to go to the NDP and Liberals. Before they were saying the Conservatives were going to sweep the entire province (which is insane to say because Ralph Goodale has won his riding consistently in Regina and that riding is expected to go Liberal again).
The NDP here are straight up into anti-vote splitting mode, with entire ads showing graphs of how vote splitting let the Conservatives win a bunch of ridings last time around and how people need to vote strategically to prevent the Conservatives from winning again. Of course in Saskatchewan that means trying to convince Liberal voters to go NDP.
On October 10 2015 04:54 Ben... wrote: The polls seem to be getting interesting. CBC's Poll Tracker aggregator thingy now gives the Liberals the edge after having the Conservatives having the potential to win the most seats for the last couple weeks. The NDP are now definitely in third place, down over 10% from the Liberals.
it has been a baffling campaign for the pollsters as well. Even my theory about NDP's fall in Ontario doesn't really have a lot of "bite". Its my best guess though.. and it is outlined in my comments below.
On October 10 2015 04:54 Ben... wrote: It's insane what a difference a month makes.
Wynne did some dumb stuff a month ago and it really impacted Liberal support in Ontario She has done a nice job of staying invisible lately.
i think what happens in Ontario is that many months before the election lots of people reply to pollsters "o ya i'm going NDP"
as the election draws closer they do more and more research and take a closer and closer look at the extreme left wing faction that is part of the NDP and say... "i think i want a safer left wing party so i'm going Liberal"
can't speak for what is going on in the rest of the country regarding the NDP decline though.
From what i understand higher voter turn out rates usually indicate a relatively close race. Also, higher voter turn out rates sometimes indicate a strong will to throw out the incumbent.
Well, Voter turnout in advance polls is up substantially despite increased voter identification requirements.
Honestly, I was asked why I wouldn't vote for Harper, and on the spot I could only think of a few reasons off the top of my head. He's been in power for a long time, though, and he's done a lot of things that I do not approve of. So I thought I would compile a reminder list. The issues are not sorted in any sort of order of priority (for me in particular the science and long-form census ones are huge).
1) General attacks on non-profits and funding cuts to civil-society government programs: ranging from cuts to the status of women to the new and absurdly strict limitations put on left-wing charities (i.e. the whole Oxfam debacle about preventing poverty, KAIROS, the new anti-partisan restrictions on church organizations and in particular the United church) that are in any way critical of Harper government policies, Mr. Harper has systematically dismantled any government support for the non-profit sector and used the CRA to essentially silence "dissident" charities. It got so bad that there was even a push from the federal party to encourage campus Conservative groups to have referendums to defund student organizations perceived as "left-wing". Seriously, look that shit up (google): it's actually documented. The attack on perceived left-wing charity/civil society organizations was comprehensive and intentional.
2) Environmental legacy: This guy has dismantled environmental protections across the country, ranging from cutting funding to marine fisheries monitoring, decreasing environmental protections to favour oilsands development, gutting the freshwater fisheries act and allowing the industry to self-regulate, Stephen Harper has been the most damaging prime minister to the Canadian environment in modern history.
3) Attacks on personal freedoms: Bill-C51, pretty much don't need to say more on that topic. Also, the whole niqab thing is disgusting coming from a social libertarian perspective, and the way he is consistently using it as a wedge issue is atrocious. EDIT: Oh yeah, forgot the whole "barbaric practices" tip-line. Are we supposed to by spying on our neighbours for the government, now?
4) Destruction of Canada's international reputation: no more peacekeeping, increasingly warlike on the international scene, focus on oilsands export and anti-climate change rhetoric, absurdly pro-isael stance to the point of extremity, and the most recent Syrian refugee debacle, these things have all tarnished what was once a pretty damn good international reputation. Also, think about this: If the Iraq war happened on Harpers watch and not Chretien's, do you think we would have sent troops to Iraq? There isn't a doubt in my mind that we'd be more involved in the Iraqi quagmire than we already are now if Harper was the Prime Minister when it happened; Republicans are generally always willing to start a war, so honestly people should actually think pretty hard about this. Project into the future: if people start launching objectively stupid wars, do you want to be a part of it or not? Also, our international scientific reputation is pretty much in the gutters, too, although there's a whole section below devoted to that. EDIT: I shouldn't have said "not a doubt in my mind" because it sounds speculative: he actually came out publicly supporting the Iraq war, at least initially. If he had a majority Canadian troops would have been sent.
5) Orientation of the economy to resource/oil export: Signing the TPP, destroying environmental protections to favour resource exploitation, etc. have all favoured oil export at the expense of manufacturing.
6) Gutting of science funding: core science research funding, to quote a prominent scientist on the quirks and quarks program, is at "starvation levels". I know this, I am currently in the biological sciences. It is increasingly difficult to get research grants for research that doesn't have an immediate industrial application: this has gutted funding to the environmental sciences, in particular, as research into environmental issues is often seen as antagonistic towards industrial development.It is also increasingly difficult to obtain NSERC funding for graduate studies; funding for training for new scientists is probably at an all time low. Also, federal scientists are horrendously muzzled, to the extent that they can't even talk about their own research without government handlers present, even at some international conferences. That is, and I am not exaggerating, Soviet levels of censorship on government scientific research. Morale at scientific organizations in the government is at an all-time low, to the extent that new scientists are hesitating to work for them; government positions used to be coveted, but many student researchers are now hesitant about joining the ranks.
7) Criminal justice: mandatory minimum sentences (god I hate those) are awful. Also, marijuana should be legalized and taxed, not criminalized. It's easy revenue to obtain for a cash-strapped government.
8) Income splitting -> this is honestly fucking retarded. It only benefits households where one individual works and makes a practically six-figure salary. My wife and I weren't even eligible for income-tax splitting, despite the fact that I am in graduate studies and have a child, because our total household income wasn't high enough. This tax cut pretty much helps only wealthier households. Yeah, let's give the rich more money, why the fuck not....
9) Defence spending -> do we really need to buy those F-35s? Good god, I remember running the approximate numbers in my head a few years back, and it worked out to something like 500-600 dollars of tax money per working Canadian. Do you, as a working Canadian, really want to spend 500 dollars on buying F-35s to defend from non-existant enemies?
10) The destruction of the long-form census: This one kind of lumps in with attack on science, but it deserves it own. Destroying this was honestly fucking stupid, and definitely justifies the perception that the Conservatives don't give a fuck about scientific data when designing policy. You need data to inform policies, and the long-form census was great at it. I used to study economics and the social sciences before switching into the hard sciences, and it was widely acknowledged internationally that Canada was a great place to study that stuff. The reason? The long-form census. We had a great continuous long-term data set. Statistics Canada was known as a stellar, independent research organization that had great datasets, of which the long-form census formed the backbone. Whyyyyyy.....honestly, I have no idea why Harper did this. It was pretty out of left(right?)-field, and just fundamentally strange. Must have been ideological, because there's no cost reason to do it (I guarantee you it's saved more money than it's costed by informing and improving social policy), and a voluntary census is garbage.
11) The gutting of the CBC: I love CBC radio (honestly it's BBC level-quality, give it a try if you haven't already). TV I am less fond of, but they still do good programming. I strongly dislike the (clearly malicious) funding cuts and attacks on the CBC by the Harper government.
12) Increasing voter requirements: Honestly, wtf. Voter fraud was a non-existent issue, this was just dumb.
13) Requiring a national referendum on changing a first-past-the-post system to proportional representation: Understandable, because the Conservatives would never win another election in a proportional representation system, but still, first past the post is a ludicrous system when it comes down to it.
That's everything I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more, I'll add to the post through editing if I remember any others.
you make some pretty persuasive points man. and thanks for the list.. here is my take.
2) fuck the environment.. i'm against trees and i hate soft furry animals... i want jobs and a thriving economy.
3) Fuck Harper for Bill-C51. Fuck the PCs.. Fuck John Deifenbaker.. fuck'em all. this is horrible for the country. Ben Franklin said it best 200+ years ago.. "should this country fall to oppression it will be under the 'guise of fighting a foriegn enemy.". I'll say it 1 more time.. Fuck Harper for Bill C-51.
5) the sky high canadian dollar forced Harper's hand on this one... really not his fault.
7) canada has really soft criminals. i had a crime ridden youth.. i know lots of criminals..and i think canada's soft on crime approach makes for really soft wimpy criminals.. and i want it to stay that way.. i want canada to remain soft on crime. Fuck Harper on this minimum sentencing bullshit. I want my local B&E artist to be scared of me when i wake up and i want teh B&E artist to run out of my house in fear like they still do today. i don't want hardened criminals. Minimum sentencing takes bush-league scoundrals who deserve a slap on the wrist and turns them into hardened criminals. Fuck Harper for trying to manufacture hardened criminals via minimum sentencing.
8) personally ,i don't care. i've made 6 figures the last 4 years. can u own a house in TO without at least 1 family member making 6 figures ? other than that, u make some good points.
11) over the last 40 years lots of liberal governments have cut the CBC down substantially .. this was just the killing blow. there is no easy answer for what to do with the CBC .. so i can't trash Harper .. or commend him.... its just a "meh" reaction from me.
13) i like our currently flawed system. it ends up working out best for us... so i dunno .. 'meh' to creating a more difficult hurdle to jump over to change the system.
My Vote : Mulcair
Trudeau is not smart enough Based upon Trudeau's weak-sauce educational background; Based on his speeches and actions from the age of 18 on.. he looks like he is of somewhat above average intelligence; that is not good enough ; its good enough to be an X-Ray Technician, but not PM. Both Mulcair and Harper are really fucking smart guys.
Harper FUBARed The Economy i'm going wth Mulcair because the Harper/Wynne combo has created a weak-ass Ontario Economy. Harper is 50% responsible for that... Wynne/Mcguinty are to blame for the other 50%. I don't believe in Mulcair's tax-and-spend leanings. However, he is a really smart guy and there is more to running an economy than what you appear to be doing when the media spotlight is on you. Mulcair is just as smart as Harper and Mulcair's team deserves a shot at running the Canadian Economy.
EPT
