Fraser Institute must repent and ask forgiveness

[BitWhys]

Thank God the unions are around to pay for this sort of thing. I smelled rats when I read the stovepipe release last week but didn't have the stomach to go through the report even though I downloaded...

by Tony Sanger

The Fraser Institute has released its report on Canadian Government Debt 2006, designed to create public alarm about rising levels of government debt and push for severe cuts to health and social spending.

The report, which claims that each Canadian taxpayer owes $171,032 in federal, provincial and local liabilities, is a typical Fraser Institute cocktail of alarmist “facts,” sober sounding language, misleading analysis, opaque calculations, quarter truths, significant omissions and wildly overreaching policy lessons.
...

This is the kicker I was wondering about...

...
For example, the Fraser Institute includes $516 billion in unfunded liabilities for the Canada Pension Plan. Although it is not stated in the report, this was calculated on the assumption that no one makes one cent more in payroll contributions to the CPP past December 31, 2004, but the plan still has to pay out benefits to everyone who has contributed so far.
...

when if comes to calculating a fiscal gap, use of such a technique is, honestly, quite shameful. Absolutely no surprise, though.

I like the recommendations...

In response to this study, the Canadian Union of Public Employees offers the following six-step plan for the Fraser Institute and other “free market” research institutes, such as the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.

1. Acknowledge your dependency on funding from the drug and insurance industries, which would profit enormously from your push to destroy medicare, social programs and “restructure” old age security.

2. Come clean about these massive conflicts of interest and provide full disclosure instead of misleading statements, massive omissions and quarter truths in your reports.

3. Abandon your unrestrained idolatry of corporations and acknowledge that there is a greater public good beyond free markets.

4. Admit that public services — such as health care, education, social security, community services, environmental protection — can be much better and more efficiently provided by the public sector than by private corporations.

5. Search deep into your soul and try and demonstrate a modicum of integrity and honesty in your reports.

6. Renounce funding from multinational drug companies and insurance companies, ask forgiveness, and work to serve those whom you have harmed by your actions, including ordinary Canadians and the most vulnerable in society.
Toby Sanger is Senior Economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

:evil3:

 

[Jay]

Thank God the unions are around to pay for this sort of thing.

Thank God I don't pay into one, on top of all the taxes I pay, especially when this is what they do with the money....

4. Admit that public services — such as health care, education, social security, community services, environmental protection — can be much better and more efficiently provided by the public sector than by private corporations.

Right....because healthcare, education, SS, CS and the environment just couldn't be better than they are now run by the public sector....what a load of BS.

How about they come clean that their soaking the union due payers and the tax payers for every "red" cent they can and if this stuff went private they might not be able to do so anymore.

Denying me the right to buy healthcare is efficient like Cuba is efficient, and if these folks like that style so much they can move there.

 

[BitWhys]

you missed the point again

but when it comes to unions, they are democratic institutions that pay for themselves and more. In the US in 1995 union membership meant an average additional $6.14 per hour for all workers, $8.93 for blue collar workers.

 

[DurkaDurka]

you missed the point again

but when it comes to unions, they are democratic institutions that pay for themselves and more. In the US in 1995 union membership meant an average additional $6.14 per hour for all workers, $8.93 for blue collar workers.

Unions glory days are done with... they tried to bring one into my office a couple years ago, they did not get close to being ratified. I personally like the idea that I can be promoted due to working hard, unlike the union method of being promoted by seniority.

 

[tracy]

Unions glory days are done with... they tried to bring one into my office a couple years ago, they did not get close to being ratified. I personally like the idea that I can be promoted due to working hard, unlike the union method of being promoted by seniority.

That really does depend on the workplace. I've worked union and non-union (am currently non). Union membership among nurses in the US is increasing because they have seen the results. California has the only legally mandated RN to patient ratios in the country thanks mainly to the biggest nurses' union in the state. I personally think unions are just a response to bad management. People won't go to the trouble of unionizing if they think they are treated fairly.

Back to the original topic though, I think it's pretty obvious the Fraser Institute was being a little smarmy here.

 

[BitWhys]

..Back to the original topic though, I think it's pretty obvious the Fraser Institute was being a little smarmy here.

The most ironic part (and there are several) is that the government the Fraser Institute most closesly attempts to emulate has systematically picked its own social security system clean and created a looming crisis in the process. The parallel of that process up here (hidden tax on the working class) is the EI swindle started by Martin and happily continued by our current government.

Milagros Palacios and Niels Veldhuis are sleezebags.

 

[Gonzo]

I don't believe anything from the Fraser Institute

 

[Toro]

This is childish

In response to this study, the Canadian Union of Public Employees offers the following six-step plan for the Fraser Institute and other “free market” research institutes, such as the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.

1. Acknowledge your dependency on funding from the drug and insurance industries, which would profit enormously from your push to destroy medicare, social programs and “restructure” old age security.

2. Come clean about these massive conflicts of interest and provide full disclosure instead of misleading statements, massive omissions and quarter truths in your reports.

3. Abandon your unrestrained idolatry of corporations and acknowledge that there is a greater public good beyond free markets.

4. Admit that public services — such as health care, education, social security, community services, environmental protection — can be much better and more efficiently provided by the public sector than by private corporations.

5. Search deep into your soul and try and demonstrate a modicum of integrity and honesty in your reports.

6. Renounce funding from multinational drug companies and insurance companies, ask forgiveness, and work to serve those whom you have harmed by your actions, including ordinary Canadians and the most vulnerable in society.

It undermines the criticisms and calls into question whether or not CUPE is a serious organization.

 

[Jay]

3. Abandon your unrestrained idolatry of corporations and acknowledge that there is a greater public good beyond free markets.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is Canada’s largest union.
With more than half a million members across Canada, CUPE represents workers in health care, education, municipalities, libraries, universities, social services, public utilities, transportation, emergency services and airlines.

Of course they don't have to abandon their idols....it must be nice to be an organization like this and live off the dole.

 

[Jay]

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=759

The unfunded liability of Medicare alone grew by more than 28.5 per cent between 1999 and 2003.

At their inception, funding for programs such as Medicare, Old Age Security, and the Canada Pension Plan was based on the assumption that population demographics, economic growth rates, and wage growth prevalent in the 1960s would persist. It was considered favourable social and economic policy to transfer a small amount of money from a large group of younger workers to benefit a small group of relatively poor retirees. These assumptions have proven entirely false.

Birth rates have declined, income growth has stagnated, and mortality rates have decreased. In 1956, the proportion of the Canadian population that was under 20 years of age was 39.4 per cent while the proportion of those over 65 was 7.7 per cent. By 2004, the ratio of those under 20 years old to the total population had decreased to 24.6 per cent and the ratio of those over 65 had increased to 13 per cent.

Estimates of these ratios for Canada predict that those under 20 will make up only 20.1 per cent of the total population by 2040 while those over 65 will make up 24.3 per cent. Expected demographic changes will continue to undermine the ability of these programs to provide the intended level of benefits.

“Unless governments take action to address the growing unfunded liabilities of these programs, Canadians will be faced with reduced benefits and/or tax increases,” Veldhuis concluded.

 

[BitWhys]

This is childish



It undermines the criticisms and calls into question whether or not CUPE is a serious organization.

way I see it what's childish is your reaction to it.

 

[BitWhys]

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=nr&id=759

So other than showing that Sanger is right about Veldhuis pulling dollar signs out of his ass, what's your point?

 

[Jay]

For example, the Fraser Institute includes $516 billion in unfunded liabilities for the Canada Pension Plan. Although it is not stated in the report, this was calculated on the assumption that no one makes one cent more in payroll contributions to the CPP past December 31, 2004, but the plan still has to pay out benefits to everyone who has contributed so far.

They are unfunded liabilities.....perhaps they should make up numbers and claim they are funded?

 

[BitWhys]

They ARE funded. Future costs are offset by future revenues. That's the essence of a pay-go system. The CPP has been fully and properly analyzed and shown to be healthy, changing demographics and all, at current rates for the next 75 years.

The Fraser Report is using a classic misrepresentative technique that caters to the dull and uninformed.

 

[Jay]

To misrepresent would be to exclude real liabilities based on funds not received, and the CUPE seems to want to do that.

What if the rates go down?

The Fraser Institute's calculations of over $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Old Age Security and medicare are even more opaque and misleading. Both of these programs are, of course, funded out of on-going revenues and the calculations appear to discount this fact. The report doesn't show how exactly how they came up with these estimates so it is impossible to sort out the truth from the fiction.

The truth of the matter is the liability is X....if global warming kills off all our posterity, as it supporters believe is going to happen, what number should be we use to cover these legal obligations. It's merely a snapshot of current liabilities.

the dull and uninformed.

Would seem to me be the people who can't see that....the CUPE though, being a leftist organization is just spouting off at the mouth again, and they can afford to do it.....it isn't like their living off volunteer money or anything, they work like the CPP does; they hack off a portion of your cheque whether you like it or not, in that Ol' democratic fashion....

 

[BitWhys]

To misrepresent is to include future liabilities without including future revenues, which is what the Fraser Report does. By their technique liabilities continue to accrue, as in individuals are expected to be paid as if they continued to contribute, but revenues don't. Its a joke. Doing what they did would represent EVERY pension plan in the world as insolvent.

 

[Toro]

way I see it what's childish is your reaction to it.

Of course you do.

In response to this study, the Canadian Union of Public Employees offers the following six-step plan for the Fraser Institute and other “free market” research institutes, such as the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.

1. Acknowledge your dependency on funding from the drug and insurance industries, which would profit enormously from your push to destroy medicare, social programs and “restructure” old age security.

2. Come clean about these massive conflicts of interest and provide full disclosure instead of misleading statements, massive omissions and quarter truths in your reports.

3. Abandon your unrestrained idolatry of corporations and acknowledge that there is a greater public good beyond free markets.

4. Admit that public services — such as health care, education, social security, community services, environmental protection — can be much better and more efficiently provided by the public sector than by private corporations.

5. Search deep into your soul and try and demonstrate a modicum of integrity and honesty in your reports.

6. Renounce funding from multinational drug companies and insurance companies, ask forgiveness, and work to serve those whom you have harmed by your actions, including ordinary Canadians and the most vulnerable in society.
Toby Sanger is Senior Economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

"Ask forgiveness." "abandon" "come clean" "search deep into your soul"

ROFLMAO

This is trite emotional drivel designed to play to the True Believers, not some policy response from a serious organization.

Thanks for marginalizing yourself some more CUPE.

 

[BitWhys]

Of course you do.

At least I'm not pretending to state anything otherwise. Nice job of stepping around the accusations you know damn well the Fraser Institute would be unable to refute in court. For me that's the icing on the parody's cake.

 

[Jay]

Have you read the report at all, Bit?

 

[BitWhys]

Parts of it. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary for them so I didn't bother going into detail. Knew what to look for. Spotted the same errors in principle Sanger confirms. Didn't want to waste the paper it would take to print it off.