But, your paragraph about a true monopoly is wishful thinking, not fact. Yeah, I’m sure we all hope that a monopoly will get lazy and complacent and just allow competition to arise without trying to crush it, but there’s nothing that guarantees that.

(and for the record, I hope thats not anytime soon. Because, unlike you, I still hold onto some hope that given a majority, Harper will show some sort of vision, something substansive that excites me again. Here me out.. My real hope is that after a year of a majority, he decides he will step down as leader before the next election. This would FINALLY get him out of constant election mode and allow him think about some legacy project’s. Maybe like repealing gag laws and funding political parties, doing something about section 13, cutting spending, and getting away from agricultural supply management, I could go on and on… I know im reaching here but it could happen. but whether it does or not…)

will you please run to replace him as Conservative leader? You already have my vote. You are the most intellegent and refreshing voice in Canada today.

Sort of like Stephen Harper used to be…

But I’m not talking about in general. I’ve been running the financials on the two plans and the Conservative’s Turning the Corner has oil wealth written all over it. Every trip through the books turns up something new.

for instance, today I finally noticed the stated efficiency-based targets are bogus. The moment sector growth falls off 1.5% per annum the absolute targets snap like a twig.

Its designed to fail and the first to the winner’s circle will be the companies with the brains and the capital to snap up the Technology Fund credits while they’re going for a quarter on the dollar putting them in for over $40B waiting for the credit market to heat up. Talk about a disincentive to success.

The U.S. courts did not impede MS in any way. They settled for a “punishment” in which MS donated million$ of their stuff to government schools, the purpose of which was to grow their market share even more.

If a true monopoly did ever exist, i.e. if it came into being without any help from someone’s police force and army, it would not last long. While large companies have economies of scale, they quickly become deaf to the needs of individual customers. Their products become monolithic, bloated compromises which do nothing particularly well. The organization can no longer feel or respond to the real needs of the market.

This inevitable failure of large, monopolistic companies is what creates the opportunity for smaller, more nimble, more humble and less greedy companies to take over market share.

Anyone who has bought MS Vista knows exactly what I am talking about.

A monopoly is an incredibly powerful thing. It doesn’t die just because some little upstart comes up and tries to give consumers a fair price. Economies of scale can allow the monopoly to operate more cheaply than any competition, and after wiping out two or three upstarts, the market usually concludes it’s not worth trying, leaving the monopoly free to exploit all it wants.

It is not a moral or intellectual shortcoming of politicians that they work this way. Their morals and intellect are about average. The problem is that since the political class enjoys a monopoly power over whatever they do in government, they have nearly complete freedom to tilt the system in their own benefit.

Private producers and service providers would also be motivated to act in their own interests instead of in his customers’ interests, but not enjoying a monopoly (unless of course the government *gives* them monopoly power), these private entities cannot rip off or exploit the people they deal with. If they did, they would be quickly dumped, fired, sued and replaced.

But when firing or replacing a public entity you have to wait four years for an election, in which case the issues will be so many and so complex that voting down any particular scam is impossible. That is why you still have a GST, sponsorship program, gn registry, a pointless war in Afstan, etc. And it is why you are about to get Kyoto-inspired carbon reductions rammed down your throat, despite voting in the party which claimed to be against it.

Like letting your buddies buy Technology Fund credits on the cheap so they can pawn them off later when the market value goes through the roof?

Turning the Corner is a scam.

Would the private owners of a valuable parklike tourist attraction, such as a sugar bush, a salmon stream or the Capilano Bridge clearcut their own land? Hardly, unless maybe property taxes are driving them to ruin.

A private landowner might log his own land or mine it, but he’s unlikely to clearcut it, ruin the fishing streams, let the topsoil wash away, and never replant it. That would be wasting a valuable resource for which he paid cold hard cash, or on which he might have a big mortgage. And only a fool would log or stripmine a property that has more value as a tourist attraction than as lumber and ore.

Governments are often very happy to allow a valuable piece of land to be ruined for short term gain, for example by selling someone the right to clearcut it. They do this all the time in order to raise cash to pay off welfare recipients (of both the individual and corporate kind) and cronies, in order to help win elections. A politician’s timeframe is far shorter than a landowner’s. A landowner typically wants to get good use out of his land for his entire life, and then bequeath the land to his heirs so they can live off it for their entire lives. A politician has to win an election in order to make any money, which he usually does by promising public money to the most desperate and unscrupulous people – an advance auction of stolen goods (h/t H. L. Mencken). Once they elect him, he must stripmine the countryside, as it were, to pay off the people whose votes he bought. When he retires in 5-10 years he will be on an indexed pension and and has no pecuniary interest whatsoever in the property he exploited unscrupulously. (see: Commons Tragedy; and Democracy: The God that Failed)

And it gets even worse than that: ruining the economy is actually in the best interest of the political and bureaucratic class, because they own a monopoly on the reconstruction. If they wrecked, say, an entire industry through criminal mismanagement – let’s take a wild, outrageous, hypothetical example and say that a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats somehow destroyed the Atlantic cod fishery, one of the world’s greatest and most abundant resources (I know, highly unlikely you say, but let’s just pretend). If they did, the tremendous outcry to “save us” after such a disaster would give them the perfect excuse to ratchet up spending in order to fix the problems that they themselves caused. Everything from new welfare programs to job retraining to scientific research and university funding. The more money the government spends the more of their cronies they can hire, the more contracts they can give out and the more control they would exert in the community (since the locals are far more dependent on government than they were before their former livelihood was destroyed). And the more government money which is being spent the more potential for bribery, kickbacks, rigged contracts, etc. Thick brown envelopes bulging with cash, dontchaknow. For, ah, consulting. Hypothetically of course.

Why would the average American, or Canadian for that matter, believe that one can take on a mortgage without having the ability to pay it back? Did the ordinary citizen not ask more questions regarding the interest rates going up after two years, I believe. What about that sort of greed: believing that finances will work out regardless!

As if.

as for the policy debates: “jailing 14 year olds”

The way I read the policy proposal is that the Conservatives are proposing for the judges to have longer maximum sentences at their disposal if they so deem necessary. The proposed policy doesn’t state that all 14 year olds need to be receiving that longer sentence, but that the judges will have this at their disposal if needed.

I wouldn’t blame Harper for confusing us on the issue, or taking us for fools, but I would leave that up to Duceppe because he has done his best to discredit this new maximum sentence proposal.

And the other proposal, the one of naming dangerous juvenile offenders, is a welcome thing, I think.

Look at it this way: when a child comes home with a report card, either with good marks or bad ones, does that report card not have a name on it? Have you ever seen a report card without a name attached to it?

Doesn’t anybody believe that humans 14 yrs young/old should at least understand that THEY are responsible for the offense committed? Nameless offenses??? Where does that sort of nonsense find a proper home?

These are proposed party policies under discussion.

It reminds me of the old joke, “How many Libertarians does it take to log a National Park?”

That would be one quick way to get rid of wilderness and habitat that the planet will never get back.

While Libertarian’s agree that a government should not interfere with the people, do they consider that it takes only a few Free men to irrevocably interfere with the rest of their compatriots? Take west coast salmon farming, for instance. What do you get when you add up a Libertarian government, a few Free men that don’t believe in science, and a few more salmon farms?

At least social anarchists would likely offer some protection for the planet.

My apologies if I misunderstood what Libertarians are about.

Big take-away: OECD countries get less of their tax revenue from consumption taxes now than ever before. The report sees no clear benefit for economic growth or competitiveness/productivity from cutting corporate and income taxes and raising consumption taxes.

I must agree with oompus boompus that Harper really has no choice. It is not so much that certain politicians aren’t qualified for turning this country around (I believe Harper could be one of them), it is the voter at large who isn’t weathered enough for taking on reality or taking a joke for that matter. The two actually go hand in hand; when good jokes can be laughed at, it means the concept has been understood.

Politics in the Netherlands, for instance, is much more hard nosed, for the politician and voting public alike. Mainly because the Dutch aren’t so paranoid, or gullible. Take your pick.

The “substantive policies” which are under discussion are totally irrelevant to 99 percent of the people who you expect to vote on them. On purpose. Why should anyone in the Gaspé care about how Albertan bitumen or Saskatchewan wheat gets sold? What is the point of making western farmers listen to and judge a debate about whether GM or Bombardier should get subsidies or a financial bailout? Why should they have to pay for any of this? Are people in the GTA supposed to figure out how to fix the problem of fetal alcohol syndrome on native reserves? Name a single person in Canada who is qualified to say whether it’s better for all of Afghanistan, or for the world as a whole, if that country is governed by a corrupt and militarily weak gang of narco-lords who don’t represent the largest ethnic group in the country, or by a militarily strong group of religious fanatics who do represent the largest tribe. Do you really expect anyone to seriously follow such a debate?

So elections are fought over irrelevant issues, things which the government has no business sticking its nose into. Their purpose is to bamboozle people by scaring them with imaginary problems, or with problems that are none of their business, present them with bogus choices and then pick their pockets while they’re scratching their heads trying to figure out who is the least evil of the would-be “leaders”. A mug’s game.

There never was a golden era of political campaigns. Today’s campaigns are just as empty as they’ve always been. Your lament shouldn’t be directed at empty campaigns but at the majority of voters who pay too much attention to them and not enough attention between them.

In fact, that’s pretty much what I said above. We cry about the lack of substantive policy discussions. Yet voters have proven repeatedly that they’d rather think about anything but. Most people come about their opinions via an emotive, knee-jerk reaction to something they don’t like. They interpret things in a way that fits their preconcieved notions about how things are, then go back to listening to celebrity gossip and reading about Lindsay Lohen’s girlfriend. It’s human nature, and it doesn’t lend itself to high-level political debate.

Depending on where Andrew lives, he might be able to vote Libertarian party. I am small ‘c’ conservative and think the best that can be said about Harper/Cons is that they are slightly less socialist than the other parties. I am fortunate enough to live in riding with Libertarian candidate and he will be getting my vote.

Canada’s job -creating and investment-making businesses aren’t going to see $50.2B, period, if Jack has his way. I will leave it to your good minds to figure out what this will mean to Canada in terms of:
– job creation;
– capital investment;
– competitiveness;
– prices increases (Jack’s hidden tax) to you and me;
– ability to stay in business; and/or
– future taxes paid.

Now I’m a (modern day, in AC’s definition) small-c conservative, and I kind of appreciate Dion taking the initiative to call Layton’s socialist plan an onslaught on job creation and economic growth in our business sector. I suspect the CPC will add to this, and to reinforce the point in the debates. Because that’s what it is. To the socialists like Jack, though, you count on fooling most of the people all the eime.

Moving on, I wonder where Andrew will put his vote on Oct 14th. If the CPC is too “wild” for his conservative principles, where does that leave any other party in Canada, in his mind? As I intimated in the first comment of this post, theory and idealism (AC’s “conservativism”) are fine, but then there’s reality. And if (Andrew’s) strict conservativism principles won’t get you elected, then what’s the point? It isn’t the will of the people.

The CPC/Harper approach, of showing folks there is another (slower) way to address fiscal conservativism, is the best way to accomplish the goal. Paul Well’s article on the web site indicates how the CPC might be implementing this.

any reason Steve is leaving that part out?

any reason he’s not being challenged on it?

Oh, he has a plan alright. It’s a tried and true one. Win one or two solid majorities. Pack the civil service with friends and cronies, as a reward for helping to get elected. Retire and quadruple-dip or quintuple-dip with MP’s pension, party leader pension, and 2 or 3 really good retirement jobs consulting, lobbying, speechmaking, getting UN gigs, being a figurehead at a lawfirm, etc. Sign as many long-term, multi-billion-dollar, sweetheart contracts as possible with the dark lords of the sith who even more than your friends and cronies, helped you to gain power. Make sure that enough hacks from the other parties are participating in the contracts, so they won’t torpedo them when you’re booted from power (just up the dollar amount to keep everyone happy, and hint that it was necessary to keep “foreign interests” from winning the bidding). A very simple plan, and extremely effective.

“What isn’t coming through is why countries use corporate taxes at all.”

Easy. Corporate taxes make it virtually impossible to operate any large-scale business profitably, unless you manage to qualify for special tax breaks, subsidies and regulatory protection. How does one qualify for these? By kowtowing to the political establishment and showering millions of dollars on lobbyists who belong to the major parties’ inner circles. No need for the pols to actually nationalize industry and kill the golden goose. Just threaten to tax it out of existence. By using the tax/subsidies/protection racket they get greater subservience from the industrialists and a *lot* more dough rolling in to themselves. Every major industry in Canada, from energy to mining to manufacturing to hi-tech to media to pharmaceuticals operates on this basis.

“Isn’t the debate over the right balance between various forms of taxation?”

Er, no, at least, not in the way that you think. The government could take as much money as they want, from anyone they want, at any time that they want. They can print as much money as they want. The debate – to which you’re not invited – is the internal one that takes place in the political establishment over the best way to maximize their rakeoff and minimize any chance of you evading their clutches or getting uppity ideas of liberty. Income taxes are downright silly, grabbing money right off your paycheque before you’ve even seen it. Why do it? Because this allows them to insert themselves into every single corporate finance department and bank account (and every private bank account). To catch “evaders”. Do you ever sometimes feel like a runaway slave?

Taxes on investment income are also silly, but the point is for it to be impossible to make any after-tax, after-inflation profit on investments. The goal is partly to kill private savings (because people with private savings are not meekly dependent on government handouts), and partly so that they can set up tightly-controlled “registered” savings plans, in which you are only allowed to invest your money for specific reasons which they define, and for which you can only place your money with their cronies who run banks and brokerages. Who kowtow to them for reasons of corporate taxation, as discussed above.

Clear enough?

They don’t end up on the Tory website for some reason. Surely the national reporters on the plane have noticed, though.

Haven’t they?

Have there been a series of Rapid Reaction Battalions for All announcements this time around? Or just for Bagotville this time? And did he make that one in both official languages, or just one?

When did that happen ? I thought that was what contending philosophies and elections were all about….. well, maybe not elections.

“The Nordic countries have chosen 1) and 2).”

I invite you to read Andrew Coyne’s recent column. It summarises pretty well the reasoning behind the case for corporate tax cuts. What I would add is that no-one has yet figured out the theory of how a welfare state can be built on high corporate tax rates, and we don’t have an example of how a country has managed to pull off all three of the following elements:

1) Being rich
2) Having high levels of social spending
3) Having high corporate tax rates.

The US has chosen 1) and 3). The Nordic countries have chosen 2) and 3). As long as we’re all agreed that Canada would do better to stay in the ‘rich country’ category, then my vote would be for the Nordic model.

Actually, Sean, that is only partially correct. It also rolls back the tax cuts that took affect in January of this year. So it raises corporate taxes (from 19.5% to 22.12%) as well as cancels future tax cuts.

And it should come as no shock that Gerry Nichols of the famed NCC is singing in the same choir as Mr. Coyne.

Why are the planned corporate tax cuts necessary? If I get a vote, I would rather hear you answer that than see you argue about whether canceling a planned tax cut should count as a tax increase. I think your answer would be interesting and helpful, particularly if you spent a couple of lines on the policy/economic reasons for having a mix of taxes rather than relying exclusively on consumption taxes.

New spending requires new tax revenues. And corporate taxes are the absolutely worst way of generating them.

If you cancel a planned tax cut then the budget surpluses in future years will be larger than planned. C’mon Stephen, I can accept that you think canceling the tax cut is a bad idea but I can’t accept that you can’t figure out that simple bit of economics.

Increase schmincrease. Open your wallets either way. We all pay.

Question is, what the f**k are we paying for?

Shite.. suddenly I remember something we used to say back in the day; “It’s like a bridge.”

We meant–”it’s going nowhere.”

We all knew the answer–we were simply too ____ to agree. You fill in the blank.

That was “the rant of all the glorious rants” and I congratulate your originality. So are you the “white face” Reverend Wright of Canadian politics?

We are Canadian, even when we disagree.

Public apology to follow.

The spending bit is not the issue here. It’s the way-beyond-stupid corporate tax increase that’s supposed to finance it. If the spending had been accompanied by a commitment to increase the GST, the NDP would have leapfrogged its way into first place in the category of ‘Most credible economic platform.’ As it is, it’s fighting for third place with the Greens.

How about the 1980 Liberal campaign?

*sigh* I guess I really am that old…

http://www.punditsguide.ca/riding_e.php?riding=1054&cmdGoRiding=Go