Election 2015

[Edward Campbell]

My answer to 90% of any government's problems, including changes to monetary policy, is: spend less on social programmes and lower taxes a bit, too.

In the case of the BoC announcing its intention to let interest rates climb to, say, 2% over some reasonable period (say 18 months) then I believe the best policy is to contract by reducing social programme spending and pay down debt. I would allow borrowing, even at higher rates, to continue to fund long term infrastructure maintenance and development. (I would count some of the defence budget commitments (a continuing warship construction programme, for example) as "long term infrastructure.")

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Fiscal or monetary?

Mainly I want them to reveal all of their plans for spending and taxation.  If they don't want to talk very much about it, I assume by default they intend to spend more than they say and tax more than they say.  Harper has done a good job of squeezing the revenue envelope to make it harder for other parties to promise goodies without making an awkward choice to cut other spending, borrow more, or raise taxes/fees.

Economists disagree on the absolute magnitude of estimates, but not the sign of the number: when taxes go up, jobs go away, and vice versa.  Nothing any party has proposed is important enough to justify raising some taxes and losing some jobs in the current economic situation.

Low interest rates are promoting consumer and government indebtedness.  The more private debt people take on now, the less future spending they will do and the less future tax revenue there will be.

Government indebtedness is different and it's much less clear what will happen when it gets too high again.  Last time there was lots of room for interest rates to fall or be pushed down and the burden was mainly federal.  What happens soon when there is nowhere for rates to go but up, and it is provinces - which can not do "quantitative easing" - which are at the breaking point?

My basic point remains that governments and their agencies seem to be trying to prop up their revenue streams at levels which were "above average" prior to the recession, and have nearly exhausted all of their tools.  We need policies which will balance budgets, diminish public debt to allow debt to be taken on again at some future time, and encourage private de-leveraging.  There is no fiscal freedom of manoeuvre for the next recession.

 

[a_majoor]

Rather curious about the trial ballon that was floated a while ago, when the Young Dauphin "suggested" that CPP funds be "borrowed" to pay for infrastructure. I don't recall seeing any further discussion of the idea; did it just evaporate or is it lurking in the background, waiting to be sprung on unsuspecting Canadians?

From any realistic perspective, moves in this direction suggest that I am unlikely to receive any sort of pension at all if I retire (notice the "if"). Assuming the government continues to pay out pensions after draining the funds for their next adventures in crony capitalism, it will be in highly devalued dollars, with printing presses running flat out to "cover" the hole they created.

 

[Edward Campbell]

There are two reasons for governments to tax anyone or anything:

    1. To raise money for necessary public expenditures ~ and paying the interest on the national debt always must have first call on any government revenue; and

    2. Changing public behaviour.

Too much, some might argue most, public expenditure (especially at the provincial level) is patently unnecessary. This is especially the case with social spending: the high desirable, even laudable ends could be met, more efficiently, by private agencies ~ a mix of corporations and charities. (Let me just use healthcare as an example:

    1. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks Canada as 8th (out of 192 countries) in health care expenditures (PPP/per capita) while Singapore is ranked 28th and Sweden 13th; but

    2. The same WHO ranks Singapore 6th (of 190 countries) in terms of health care quality while Sweden is 24th and Canada is 28th.

        Canada's health care system is the most statist and Singapore's is the least of those three. Clearly our publicly funded/single payer health care ~ although immensely popular with ignorant, innumerate people ~ is neither
        cost effective nor especially "good." Much of the money spent on healthcare in Canada is manifestly misspent and, therefore, qualifies and unnecessary public expenditure. But that same money could be transformed into
        necessary public expenditure if the governments were forced out of the system and the individual and the private sector was given the dominant role.)

Changing behaviour covers things like "sin taxes" and could cover a carbon tax ... if it was properly designed and implemented. IF changing how we use (or misuse, if you like) carbon is, indeed, a national priority then a tax might work, provided it lands squarely and completely on the end users of carbon: you and me.

"Good" taxes, those that cover necessary expenses or push/pull people towards socially beneficial behaviour, must be efficient and fair (reasonably progressive).

 

[Kirkhill]

ERC - I'll accept your carbon tax IF

I get a rebate on every pound of carbon filed for posterity on my bookshelves and in my filing cabinets
I get a rebate on every pound of carbon I belch, fart or exhale and thus provide nourishment for all those wonderful trees, grasses and plants
I get a rebate on every pound of carbon my car and my house generate and add to the nourishment from my belches, farts and exhalations
I get a rebate on every pound of carbon I lock in the wood and plastics in my house
I get a rebate on every pound of carbon I in the wood and plastics in my furniture.
I get a rebate on every pound of carbon I lock up in my kids and pets.

Then I would accept paying a carbon consumption tax..... but I already do.  It is better known as a fuel tax.

 

[Edward Campbell]

ERC - I'll accept your carbon tax IF
...

It's not my carbon tax. I think we have enough taxes, more than enough revenue ... what we are missing is some discipline on spending. We are burdened by unnecessary government expenditures and if we would fix (cancel) those we could have a sane tax system.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

My issues is neither taxes, which are necessary to pay for expenditures, which are also necessary.  The real problem is tax expenditures - a uniquely inefficient way to achieve public policy ends, but a damned efficient way to buy votes.

 

[Edward Campbell]

         

And here is a further update to David Akin's (Sun News) Predictinator:

    149 days until we vote and it’s anybody’s ball game   
   

    WIth a couple of new polls out in the last week, some new candidates nominated and, voila — here’s the latest seat count from my Predictionator. You can grab an RSS
    feed of all posts tagged with “Predictionator” here.


So, more gains for the NDP at the expense of both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Unfortunately for Thomas Mulcair, it is too early to peak ... both the CPC and the LPC have plenty of time to turn the tables on the NDP, riding by riding.

And here is yet another of David Akin's Predictinators based on the latest polling data he has seen:

The only thing that's consistent is that the Liberals are falling farher and father behind.

David Akin suggests that you should "Read up, if you’d like, at the relatively arbitrary way the Predictionator works.

 

[ModlrMike]

I wonder if poling during the campaign will show blue liberals shifting right to conter the NDP, or if that phenomenom will be reflected at the ballot box. We can accept that the LPC has a core 20% of the electorate, but if the NDP shows forwards momentum, how solid with that core remain?

 

[The Bread Guy]

As much as I'm not entirely wild about the Liberals/Trudeau Jr. to get the reins, I'd be surprised if the NDP's lead remains in place as we get closer to election day.  I stand to be corrected, but the NDP's never been Canada's "let's give them a try now that we're sick of the incumbents" party.

 

[MilEME09]

No someone more versed in Canadian election laws will have to help me out but those polls got me thinking, what happens in the case of an electoral tie? IE Cons and NDP have the same number of seats with the libs in 3rd

 

[suffolkowner]

It looks/feels to me like a conservative minority too. There just doesn't seem to be a credible alternative to the governing party Federally or in Ontario. By credible I mean capable of forming a government. The provincial Tories and federal Liberals appear to have lost there way. While in theory I like the idea of minority governments in practice I think it has resulted in the greatly diminished autonomy of our MP's. I have been disappointed in Trudeau's performance so far not because of the lack of policy presented, who in the electorate(or for that matter the candidates) actually reads their party's platforms never mind the other parties. But he has had an amazing ability to just blurt out brain farts something that use to identify the Reform/Alliance party and a young Harper as well. Regardless I await the election results with interest and notwithstanding those results I feel that Harper will join the list of former great conservative PM's Mulroney,Diefenbaker,MacDonald, Borden(?). I doubt any one of those gentleman would consider any of the others their type of conservative though.

 

[suffolkowner]

No someone more versed in Canadian election laws will have to help me out but those polls got me thinking, what happens in the case of an electoral tie? IE Cons and NDP have the same number of seats with the libs in 3rd

MilEME09  they figure out, parties have no standing anyways. They are an arbitrary and perhaps necessary construct of the system.  One leader would have to gather the confidence of parliament much like John A MacDonald did

 

[Kirkhill]

The question came up with respect to the recent British election.  The highlighted bit is the one you might be referring to.  The PM doesn't actually have to step down until he/she is defeated in the House and the other parties can present a credible alternative.

Interesting review of Minorities and Coalitions by the Hansard Society of the UK.

http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/A-Numbers-Game-Hansard-Society.pdf

Their view on two critical points:

The government does not have to have the largest party although it helps.

It is not enough that the Prime Ministers party is defeated in the General Election, nor even that he and his party are defeated in the House.  The Queen must not be deprived of council until there is a replacement.  Accordingly the other parties not only have to demonstrate that the PM does not command the House but that one of them can.

It is the UK society but as all Westminsters are linked I think it fair to assume that a similar rationale would apply over here.

Could Trudeau and Mulcair find enough common ground policies - that would not taint either one in the long term - that they could co-operate?  And how long would such a minority government last?

We know that Harper can manage a minority without a formal coalition.  Mulcair is probably bright enough to manage it.  Would Trudeau be bright enough to either do it himself or let Mulcair do it?  Jury's out, here.

 

[suffolkowner]

Kirkhill, I agree Mulcair and Trudeau do not seem to get along. But how long can the Liberals and NDP continue to lose elections. Eventually you would think someone would smell their way to power much like Harper and McKay especially without the vote subsidy going forward

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think M Mulcair and M Trudeau each have, and need to have, the same strategy: if they win a plurality (but not a majority) they would invite the other to be the junior partner in a coalition. Each would expect that the other would decline. The "winner" would, confidently, expect, for a while at least, that the weaker party would support the winner in a minority situation for a year or 18 months while the weaker party sorted out its leadership.

It seems to me that M Trudeau must win at least a minority, even a weak minority, if he wants to stay on as LPC leader. M Mulcair may have the benefit of lower expectations.

 

[Kirkhill]

I believe that Janet Daley in yesterday's Telegraph alludes to the problem facing the NDP.  Its tribalists are steeped in the cause and will brook neither truck nor trade.

...

Even what are known as “moderate” candidates for the Labour leadership have to mind what they say about the value of wealth creation and steer clear of embracing those infamous “liberal” economic solutions, while the party wallows in the most absurd explanations for its own unpopularity. The most idiotic of these – that the campaign wasn’t Left-wing enough – reminds me of the apologists who insisted after the 1983 Labour defeat that the electorate had failed to “understand our message”. It took another decade for the realisation to dawn that voters had – boy, had they ever – understood it. This was not incomprehension: it was repudiation.

I do know how deeply frustrating this is to committed activists. When my husband and I were fresh-faced young Trotskyists, we would go to visit his working-class parents in the North bringing with us the great message. Mystifyingly, my father-in-law was not receptive to our gospel of the “organised working class”. He described his shop steward as “a little Hitler” who was not only determined to disrupt the working life of the factory but who constantly badgered the men to slow their rate of production in order to increase the overtime.

The thing that angered my in-laws was not the conditions at work but what they called “the stoppages” on their pay packets each week: the amount that was taken from their wages in tax and national insurance. That was in the Sixties, before Thatcherism was ever dreamt of. But almost 20 years later when it came along, there were plenty of working-class people who were more than ready to hear what it had to say to them. Labour knew this once. Now it can only accuse the benighted electorate of letting themselves down when they turn away from the socialist call. As the painfully young Ed Miliband fan Richard Briggs said on the BBC’s Daily Politics last week: “Ed Miliband is too good for this f------ country.”

That (as Mr Biggs might put it) is basically it: the nation is not worthy. Just wait for the Left to take its revenge. It will do this by invading and subverting (in the true, technical sense of the word) every public issue that it can. Sometimes this will be through front groups – anything called the Coalition against this, or the Alliance for that, is almost certainly an assemblage of hard-Left groups banding together in what Marxists used to call a “popular front” – and sometimes through the indefatigable determination of a tiny handful of individuals.

Assuming that the Labour Party does not elect Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, the hardcore Left will move out of the formal democratic process. But it will continue to exert extraordinarily disproportionate influence on the national discussion because so many people who should know better will not stand up to its accusations. That is the real risk to the life of the country.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11657461/If-Labour-thinks-voters-got-it-wrong-it-has-learnt-nothing.html

For the extreme on the left (in my opinion, moreso than on the extreme of the right) the "ends justify the means" and if the ballot will not suffice there is always an alternative.  While some on the left of the LPC and some on the right of the NDP will find common ground I think that the Waffle core will never permit a joining - except perhaps as an expedient coalition.

 

[suffolkowner]

ERC I agree with this but it just seems to me that Trudeau seems to be getting worse at his job not better, I question his judgement. Perhaps it is all rhetoric and when the time comes the obvious will happen.

Will they join form a coalition in the face of a conservative minority?

Kirkhill

I think it is easier for the true believers to hold sway when the possibility of success is not great. The NDP have never really had a chance federally before.

 

[Edward Campbell]

ERC I agree with this but it just seems to me that Trudeau seems to be getting worse at his job not better, I question his judgement. Perhaps it is all rhetoric and when the time comes the obvious will happen.

Will they join form a coalition in the face of a conservative minority?

Kirkhill

I think it is easier for the true believers to hold sway when the possibility of success is not great. The NDP have never really had a chance federally before.

My guess is that once again it's a question of balance ...

Let's, first, posit a weak CPC minority: IF the LPC and NDP are very close in seats then they might be persuaded into a coalition IF they can find some, enough common ground ... but see Kirkhill's comments, above. If one party or the other has a large advantage and there is, clearly, a senior and a junior partner then I believe that M Mulcair would be unwilling to join as junior partner, but M Trudeau would be unable to join as the junior partner: the LCP would rather go to the polls again, and risk everything, than play second fiddle to the NDP.

If the CPC minority is strong then I suspect that the Manley Liberals might force the party to support the Conservatives while they, yet again, examine their leadership.

(Like you, I mistrust M Trudeau's judgement. I think M Trudeau is a weak, indecisive leader ~ not, in other words much of a leader at all. I believe he lacks what the English call "bottom," gravitas, if you like, but it actually means more than that: depth, roots, grounding, principles, even moral courage. I don't think M Trudeau has much "bottom" at all, and I seriously mistrust his guru, Gerald Butts.)

 

[suffolkowner]

Sometimes I worry that the attraction to charisma/gravitas etc.. is a holdover from a tribal past and wonder if it serves us well in selecting modern leaders