Oh sure they are NOW, but if he hadn't lost his seat, none of that would have happened! It's the voters of Edmonton's fault.

It does kinda sound like something he might insinuate….

James Moore did, via twitter. That's what I was referring to. ID swallowed my link.

some of those are public goods myl, or at least one of them is. not all subsidies are unwarranted distortions. indeed the term distortions indicates some kinda of nonsense idea that there is an innate ordering of economic relations which is silly.

i have jumped all over both the CPC and the Libs for their support this MYL.

railroads are indeed generally considered public good, by its technical economics definition. i think there are limited circumstances in which a lumber outfit or the like might have been a public good (there are economically suppressed areas in this country where the level of education we offered was sub-par and we had reasons for wanting them there… in those cases i think it is more desirable to have thrown some money at a lumber outfit or the like than to have them unemployed permanently… like i said i am talking about very rare circumstances that are largely historical).

but as i said you continue to tow a line that an absence of government involvement in an economic happenings is the normal standard from which all subsidies or actions by the government constitute exceptions or distortions. that is silly

Who owns the track, myl?

What largesse is going to the forest industry – I thought the softwood lumber agreement(s) forbade it?

gosh you can be churlish. where did i endorse ownership of VIA? the point is that a private (profitable or not) rail service can only thrive with public investment. do you know the difference of owning something now at whatever price was paid, to the cost of actually building the infrastructure in the first place to make the current ownership at all sensible. the two are miles apart and your focus on the latter make clear your ignorance.

the forestry example was historical as clearly pointed out. let me make it more simple for you. we live in a large country, that certain areas of which remain largely un- or underpopulated. at time we found it desirable to have people in parts of our vast space so other folks would not thinking of those spaces as points of weakness in our defense. so we encouraged people to stay in those spaces and threw some money in their direction to do things like cut down trees (so they were not reduced to hunters and gathers or to be on the dole more or less permanently) for the odd sawmill. since that time technology has reduced the need to have those pockets of land filled (defense tech) and had made it feasible for people to earn a living in other manners while remaining isolated (IT as well as shifts in the economy). so my example, as clearly stated was a historical experience. but you know would coulda just paid them to sit on their hands if you like that better.

and thanks for telling me what i think about arenas. and, please, indicate to me that long lists of governments that never engage in an economy in anyway. i am sure it will be easy for you. and if you could add that equally lengthy list of economies that developed and were maintained with out interference.

and of course the last word goes to you, because frankly attempting a discussion with you is trifling.

because companies can amortize does not mean they will. i was not endorsing ignoring, i was saying some projects won;t be undertaken because startups costs are too high, which does not mean they should not be initiated or that they cannot amount to a public good.

your continued churlishness highlights your ignorance. also it is pretty funny that you seem to be ignorant to the fact that concerns in one portfolio can be heavily important re the expenditures of another with transferring line item $$ correspondingly *pats head; chuckles*

the point is that you continue to treat the idea of 'a market' as a naturally occurring phenomena, which lets you decry gov intervention as a distortion. it is not.

Thanks! I am relieved a) that there has been someone looking at this phenomenon and b) I wasn't wrong in my conclusion. So, there is a need to transfer that whole identity politic emotion to some other (cheaper for us all) thing. I wonder what we could use as a replacement.

Because this reminds me of those countries at civil war, where one side bought guns from the Russians while the other side bought guns from the Americans. They spent a lot of money to kill themselves, and only the Russians and Americans did well. Because if Quebec City gets an arena, so does every other place we've been talking about, and they can get hockey teams to play against the Nordiques . . .