Well, that's your definition, if you live in AB, anyone east of MB/On boarder is an easterner. Hmmmm, and maybe, just maybe, anyone who accepts welfare transfer payments is an easterner???? Gotta think about this last def ????
Welfare People Who Want To Work Go To Alberta
- Thread starter Liberalman
- Start date
Sigh, of course there's always going to be people who look at the transfer payments as a bad thing, and feel proud their province is rich enough to not have to take any.
Alberta is rich because people in Alberta were lucky enough to find oil. You, personally, should not feel grand pride, as I have a feeling you played a negligible role in the whole oil affair. Not only that, it's oil, something we need to eventually move past for the sake of the planet. The riches of Alberta come at the expense of the planet (don't infer I think we should immediately stop and abandon oil, because I don't), so you should think before you have pride on that too.
Transfer payments exist so provinces can support their population. Not all provinces have a huge bit of natural resource in which Americans can take for loads of money. They exist so that people will be able to enjoy a minimum standard of living, no matter where you live in Canada. It's an important thing, and it's what keeps our country as one of the best. We should never neglect to help a area/city/people just because they happen to be less commodity or money rich.
Provinces without a booming private sector exploiting their resources have to spend more to deal with the situation they're in. If businesses aren't automatically coming to x province, then x province has to take steps to maintain things, and often times spending is a viable way to do that.
Oh my god.
No, your wrong !!!
It is not only natural resources that can make a province wealthy. Manufacturing can do this as well, as well as numerous other ways. Just look at Japan and Korea for more examples.
If a province cannot pay it's bills, it should lower it's spending to match it's income!!! Don't start looking for welfare payments....simple,,,,like dahhhh!!!!
Sweden, often looked upon as a model social-corporatist state, has never had a minimum wage, yet it has narrower wealth-gap than Canada. Meanwhile, the US, with an even wider wealth -gap than Canada, does have minimum wage. Just some food for though there. Sweden also has a school voucher programme by the way and, again, it has a narrower wealth-gap than Canada!
That said, I'm also not a rabid capitalist. I support more government funding for universal compulsory education, as well as government funding for adult education, especially for the unemployed and those who need to learn necessary life skills. I also favour German-style codetermination legislation.
Overall, though I believe in helping the poor, I also believe we need to do so in an economically-sound manner. While we can manipulate the laws of economics just as we can manipulate the laws of science, we cannot break the laws of economics. You can build a submarine and breathe in that submarine, but you can't just dive and inhale and hope you don't drown. You can build a plane and fly in a plane, but you can't just jump off a cliff and start flapping your arms.
Minimum-wage legislation is an attempt to break the laws of economics, the idea being that by legislating a higher minimum wage, that employers will suddenly raise wages. While that can happen, it can also mean some workers are leid off while others are then overworked.
I think the reason Swedish "socialism" (though I consider it a misnomer) has been such a success is because Sweden did not try to break the rules of economics, but rather tried to manipulate them in accordance with their own rules instead.
I do not want you straining yourself in your old age. That is why i provided the correct answer - There is always a middle -
It's interesting that you should take Japan as an example. Japan's economy has never been a purely capitalist one, but more accurately a confucianist-corporatist one, whereby the government, workers and employers work together to achieve common national objectives. IN fact, even Toyota and Honda have been known to collaborate sometimes, an idea that would be unimaginable between let's say Ford and GM.
Well in Canada it seems that large Corps do not talk to communicate much on common issues. But having worked in the US for awhile, I found they often communicated and worked together on common issues. Not sure why the difference.
The reason they have a smaller income gap is because they heavily tax their wealthy. Is this 'breaking the laws of economics'?
Also here's a fact about Sweden that isn't true for Canada: "Around eighty percent of the Swedish labour force is unionised." It's about 30% in Canada.
Now, the thing is in Sweden is that they negotiate their wages, and most get regular increased as agreed to. Most are in a union, so they don't need a minimum wage. Canada is different, most people are not in a union, so we need a minimum wage to keep a standard of living.
Unless you have a way to get most Canadians unionized (would that break the 'rules of economics'?), then a minimum wage is a sufficient way to keep a minimum standard of living for those in the work force.
By the way, Dury, I voted for a Libertarian candidate this last provincial election.
No, he did not win, and he did coe across as more moderate than some libertarians, but he definitely leaned in that direction, in favour of allowing for private health care in Ontario, and going to a school voucher programme for all Ontario schools.
Just to say that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to "Easterners". We're not as predictable and cookie cutter as you seem to think, any more than Westerners. Oh yeah, by the way, BC's had NDp governments in the past too, right.
No, he did not win, and he did coe across as more moderate than some libertarians, but he definitely leaned in that direction, in favour of allowing for private health care in Ontario, and going to a school voucher programme for all Ontario schools.
Just to say that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to "Easterners". We're not as predictable and cookie cutter as you seem to think, any more than Westerners. Oh yeah, by the way, BC's had NDp governments in the past too, right.
The more I think about it, using Sweden as a comparison is the worse thing you could do if you're sympathetic to libertarians. Jeeze.
Oh, when your on the outside looking in, you are in fact quite predicable. You want money from the west!!!
Yes, BC had NDP, gov, that's why they were a "have not" and the reason they carry such a debt today (or one of the reasons)... Ont on the other hand plans to live off AB for a long long time!!!
Just send em out,we'll put em to work!
I would rather the easterners come here and pay taxes instead of sitting at home living off transfer payments.
I would rather the easterners come here and pay taxes instead of sitting at home living off transfer payments.
I doubt though that, like in Japan, that they talk to government, workers, NGO's and such to find common ground. There are differences but also similarities between confucianist-corporatist economics in Japan and South Korea, and social-corporatist economics in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, and more liberal-corporatist systems such as in Germany. After all, they are all corporatist economic systems, and they do generally work better than non-corporatist systems.
Oh, and just to clarify, I'm not using the word "corporatist" here in the common sence of thw word, but rather as the term is normally used in economics textbooks, having to do with viewing each player in the economy as an organ of a single economic entity, the government's role being to ensure all of these entities work smoothly together. It might come across as a capitalist system on the surface, but it should not be confused with capitalism, the main difference being that whereas capitalism is based on competition between different sectors of the economy, corporatist economies are based on working towards common objectives. The companies might be privately owned like in capitalist ones, but unlike in capitalist economies, their activities are coordinated in one way or another by the government, either via consultarion with all parties involved as is the cases with most modern forms of corporatism, or as in the 1930s fascist corporatism, through the government dictating to corporations what they are to produce.
Fascist economic systems have not worked so well, but the more progressive corporatist economies have generally outperformed capitalist ones in the long run.
You're welcome to separate from Canada any time. Let's see if most Albertans would agree with you.
Fully agreed, Kakato. You have not typed a single thing in this thread yet that I can disagree with from what I've read so far.
Me too, I'm even in favor of training them !!
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You're welcome to separate from Canada any time. Let's see if most Albertans would agree with you."
Many would agree with me, but we have a lot of Libs/loses out here as well, so maybe not enough to separate!!!
Sigh
Sounds like the government is all over this method of governing, I'm sure gov employees would love it. Sounds like a formula for failure! So what country follows this model?
I'm actually more sympathetic to the Greens or the NDP. However, they have gone a little loony over the years.
Now let's look at Sweden for a moment. For many years the SDP (Social-Democratic Party) remained in power, and did a good job overall and built a model social-corporatist state. However, it did eventually run out of ideas and then the Christian Democratic Party came to power. Of course it had to guarantee quality education and such since it could not have won otherwise, but it also recognized that it could provide these services in such a way as to also grant people more freedom. It thus introduced a school voucher programme and allowed for more private helth care while still keeping taxes (though it did lower spending somewhat and eventually also lowered taxes somewhat too) high and maintaining generous government funding for education, skills training for the unemployed, etc.
Once the SDP came back to power, it of course maintained the funding, but did not dare go back to restricting private health care and returning to a public school monopoly. From that standpoint, a liberal-conservative-leaning government served to rejuvenate the left once it had returned to power.
So looking at it that way, perhaps having a more liberal-conservative government come to power just to purge some of the excessive control of the government from the social system before then handing the reigns of power back to the left can be a good thing sometimes. We could consider the brief period of Christian-Democratic rule in Sweden as Spring cleaning before the SDP returned to a clean house.
That said, I will give both the SDP and CDP credit for always having maintained a balanced budget (proof positive that fiscal conservatism is a domain belonging to neitehr the right nor the left, but rather to whoever can manage the country's finances responsibly), and working together when necessary, as well as being willing to keep the good things introduced by the other.
In my riding neither the Liberal, PC, nor NDP nor Green candidates ever answered any of my myriad emails asking questions of them, the Libertarian and FPO candidates did. Also, though I did not agree with everthing the Libertarian candidate stood for, I did like some of his ideas, such as eliminating the separate school system, granting more freedom in educaiton via school vouchers (which would also solve the embarrassing issue of religious discrimination), etc.
And honestly, hw likely is it that a single Libertarian MP could tear down Ontario's social system. Let's be honest now. The way I saw it was that having an MP presenting such ideas to the Legislature would be a good thing, contributing to the wider pool of ideas in the House. Again, I vote candidate, not party.
Actually, there are a number of somewht corporatist economies in the world, bearing in mind that just as there are different kinds of capitalist economies, there are also different kinds of corporatist economies. Among them include Sweden (mostly social-corpoaratist), Japan, South Korea (like Japan, mostly confucianist-corporatist but with a strong capitalist influence), and to lesser degrees Germany (mostly liberal-corporatist with a strong capitalist influence) and China (a confusing blend of national-corporatism, and capitalism, with little no no communism).
Again, unless you have a plan you unionize all of Canada, your ideals are pretty failure. Sweden is systematically different from Canada when it comes to the workforce, they don't need a minimum wage because most people have unions to work out that for them.
Not only that, they heavily tax the rich! Libertarians do not like that one bit.
Not only that, they heavily tax the rich! Libertarians do not like that one bit.
Build it and they will come.
There's so much money in the oilsands that unless you have been there it's hard to imagine,suncor alone probably loses a million a day in waste that they cant account for.I could have drove 20 brand new suncor pickups off the site at any time and no one would have noticed.
Money is no object there,they have scads of it!
I have heard stories of lots of suncor trucks turning up in Newfoundland,no one even knew they were gone.
There's so much money in the oilsands that unless you have been there it's hard to imagine,suncor alone probably loses a million a day in waste that they cant account for.I could have drove 20 brand new suncor pickups off the site at any time and no one would have noticed.
Money is no object there,they have scads of it!
I have heard stories of lots of suncor trucks turning up in Newfoundland,no one even knew they were gone.
Oh, so that's why their stock is falling so badly, I was wondering about that !!! Lol !!
I have seen $2000.00 slings left next to a pipe after one use because the guys were too lazy to throw it in the truck when done,they were laying all over the place,Theres machinery up there that no one even knows who it belongs to.
These operations are like small citys,they have traffic lights,traffic cops,radar traps,stores and the whole nine yards,downtown suncor is a busy place.