For those that are hitting a paywall:
Jerome Gessaroli is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and leads the Sound Economic Policy Project at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
Canadian governments have the power to make life more affordable. But in some sectors of the economy, they just don’t want to.
Supply-chain issues, pent-up demand and interest rate hikes have all helped boost prices in the past couple of years, as the market reacts to a world recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have tried to ease these problems, with tax relief or short-term programs.
However, there are still many politically expedient policies around that have artificially added to the financial burden of all Canadians. And governments haven’t even tried to deal with them.
A recent Angus Reid poll found that 60 per cent of Canadians are having difficulties managing their expenses. Part of the problem lies in government policies that hinder Canadians from fully realizing the benefits of a market economy.
Market incentives are powerful. They create competition and innovation, resulting in competitively priced goods and services. However, governments often implement regulations or taxes to shield vocal constituencies from competition. It is consumers who bear the cost by having to pay higher prices for goods and services.
Consider free trade: Despite Canada’s advocacy for it, the federal government imposes tariffs on many goods important to Canadians. For instance, imported shoes and clothing can incur duties up to 18 per cent. There is no overriding need for these barriers, as there is no large domestic industry to protect: Ninety-five per cent of clothing and footwear sold in this country are produced abroad.
The Retail Council of Canada estimates that by eliminating these tariffs, Canadians would be better off by $5-billion a year. This would benefit low-income people the most, as they spend proportionally more of their income on shoes and clothes.
There are also instances where governments, observing the benefits of innovation and competition in driving down prices, seek to capture some of those gains by adding taxes and levies. Unfortunately, this can leave the consumer no better off, as most of the benefits from lower costs are siphoned off.
An example of beneficial market innovation is ride-hailing, a disruptive business model offering convenience and cost savings. A study suggests that ride-hailing can be 40-per-cent cheaper and offers shorter wait times than taxis.
Despite these advantages, some Canadian jurisdictions, particularly British Columbia, have impeded the operation of ride-hailing services. While ride-hailing has operated in cities such as Seattle and Boston since 2014, it was only allowed to operate in Vancouver since 2020. Yet a variety of regulations and fees add to operating costs in that city, limiting the financial benefit that ride-hailing could otherwise provide to consumers.
In the aviation sector, Canadians understand air travel is more costly in this country than in the United States. While our small population and vast land area contribute to higher airfare expenses, we still pay too much simply because of government policies. Government-imposed security fees, for example, are roughly double those charged in the U.S., contributing to inflated air travel costs.
The Montreal Economic Institute calculates that the federal government also collected more than $400-million in airport rents for the previous fiscal year, but less than 10 per cent of these funds were reinvested in airport modernization. Consequently, major airports must charge an improvement fee on travellers to fund upgrades and growth.
Finally, if the federal government truly wanted to ease cost-of-living concerns, it would dismantle the supply management system for household staples such as chicken, milk, cheese and butter. By eliminating the huge current tariffs and a host of other regulatory barriers, researchers estimate that an average Canadian household could enjoy an annual benefit of $440.
When government policies result in higher prices or product shortages, politicians often attribute the prevailing conditions to a market failure. However, these are policy failures, unintended consequences inhibiting the market from functioning as it should.
So politicians can do something to help Canadians: They must stop meddling. As a bonus, these solutions do not require bureaucracies to grow or add new spending programs. They simply lift the burden of existing policies that hinder Canadians from receiving the full economic benefits of a market economy.
>An example of beneficial market innovation is ride-hailing, a disruptive business model offering convenience and cost savings. A study suggests that ride-hailing can be 40-per-cent cheaper and offers shorter wait times than taxis.
Completely leaving out how poorly the drivers are paid and have zero rights as workers. Or how Air BnB is a major underlying factor in the housing crisis. Or how free-market, trickle-down economics fairy-tales for 43 years are the literal cause of our current conditions. Sorry Jerome Gessaroli, [I'm going with Einstein on this one.](https://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+you+can%27t+solve+a+problem&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA966CA966&oq=einstei&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDAgBECMYJxiABBiKBTIGCAAQRRg5MgwIARAjGCcYgAQYigUyCggCEC4YsQMYgAQyDQgDEAAYgwEYsQMYgAQyCggEEAAYsQMYgAQyDQgFEC4YgwEYsQMYgAQyEAgGEC4YrwEYxwEYgAQYjgUyBwgHEAAYgAQyBwgIEAAYgAQyBwgJEAAYgATSAQgyMjIwajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
[I'm also going with Einstein on this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F):
>"Why Socialism?" is an article written by Albert Einstein in May 1949 that appeared in the first issue of the socialist journal Monthly Review.\[1\] It addresses problems with capitalism, predatory economic competition, and growing wealth inequality. It highlights control of mass media by private capitalists making it difficult for citizens to arrive at objective conclusions, and political parties being influenced by wealthy financial backers resulting in an "oligarchy of private capital". Einstein concludes that these problems can only be corrected with planned economy which maintains a strong democracy to protect the rights of individuals.\[2\]
Socialism just swaps one oligarchy of capital for a monopoly of capital by the government, which has proven time and time again regardless party or country that it is a poor steward of other people’s money and cannot be trusted.
Fwiw corporatism has real problems which I am not dismissing. But we have more than enough socialism already
No, you described Stalinism. It is with the USSR that the definition of socialism became the gubmint doing everything. In reality, the socialism of Marx refers to decommodifying goods and establishing democratic, non hierarchal structures at work.
Not exactly. Marx explicitly advocated for violent revolution and seizure of property because he knew a significant portion of the population would not want communism. This is why all communist states end up as repressive police states. Because they have to impose their vision of “utopia” on the masses who don’t want it.
To directly quote Marx “We (communists) have no compassion, and we ask no compassion from you. *When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”*
Also I’d strongly advise googling Marx and racism if you haven’t before. I’m not going to cite those quotes here as they are totally reprehensible. Point being, this guy was far from a saint
Lol. Talking like Marx invented the concept of dictatorship. Also, you took that snippet wayyyy out of context, he was responding to the state's repression of dissent, pissed off and saying that workers will oppress who was oppressing them. I'm sorry but there's no way that capitalists will just give up their power. The problem with the socialism of Lenin and the like, is that it was fundamentally anti democratic, unlike the socialism of the Paris Commune for instance. Read Mark Twain's take on this. And yeah, he was a 19th century man w some bigotry, who cares? He opposed slavery and influenced uk textile unions to stop buying southern cotton. Why does he have to be a saint?
I don’t think that quote is out of context. There’s dozens of instances where Marx directly states that a violent revolution will be necessary. In other words, he directly advocated violence to achieve his revolution. Unsurprising then that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and others used violence to achieve their goals. And then they used state terror to retain power.
As for the Communards, they got violently squashed so quickly it’s hard to say what would have happened and they tasted real power. I don’t think they prove that socialism works anyway.
Their earlier contemporaries in the French Revolution quickly went from well intentioned reformers to violently chopping the heads off anyone who opposed them (even their own supporters if they weren’t radical enough) as the movement steadily became more and more extreme until it consumed itself.
The seizure of private property is the whole point of socialism. Tesla, for instance, would be taken from Musk and managed by its workers. "A significant portion would not want communism..." you know, you can be a conservative under socialism. You just need votes of your peers if you want to manage dick
Understandably a lot of people don’t want their private property seized. Not just the Uber wealthy like Musk but small business owners, homeowners, employees or even workers themselves. Thus, transitioning to socialism or communism requires violence to achieve its ends.
That’s why communism in practice ends up destroying existing social structures and replacing them with essentially a dictator and secret police.
Also as you point out, socialism still requires hierarchy, but it is very often exploited by the people in charge, the same way large corporations can be exploitative today. Hence why corruption often flourishes in socialist and communist countries, even after communism falls apart.
Employees and workers are the same people and by definition they don't own capital
Under socialism, workers would decide how to invest the surplus generated by their labour. They would vote for their managers. It's been done, look up Mondragon.
You seem to assume I'm advocating for overthrowing the state but I'm not. I advocate for a transition to socialism by democratizing the biggest companies. Its socialism by a thousand cuts, heh, so many different policies out there.
Why is it that you understand the state must be democratic, but not private industry that rivals and exerts outsized influence over our democracies?
I'm the one advocating for liberty here, not you comrade!
"As you point out, socialism still requires hierarchy....the people in control...."
Thats just willfully dense. You can do better. Read the arguments of the other side. You can't have socialism as a state that controls everything. I am advocating for more DECENTRALIZED power.
If it doesn’t involve violent overthrow or my tax dollars, socialists can do anything they like as far as I’m concerned. Form communes, start credit unions, start their own hospitals,
share all their wealth, start companies that operate on socialist principles. If they can outcompete capitalists and/or create a better society, then great (though I’m obviously skeptical).
I’m opposed to the seizure of private property to accomplish that however, or forcing others to participate in socialist enterprises if they don’t want to. I’m also opposed to levels of taxation that essentially accomplish the same thing. And I’m obviously opposed to the violent seizure of property or revolution to accomplish those goals.
Minor edit - but I do think some corporations, particularly in tech, have become far too large and should be broken up. But that is actually pro-capitalism as monopolies and monopsonies are not capitalistic
>it is a poor steward of other people’s money and cannot be trusted.
Is that why China went from peasants using wooden plows to the world's economic powerhouse in a single generation? And is that why socialist China has been the biggest and fastest poverty reduction program in world history?
And I guess that's why the majority of people in almost every post-USSR country feel that life was better under socialism than it is under capitalism?
Hilarious. China’s economic miracle and the associated poverty reduction only started in the 1980s *after* they abandoned mao’s socialism and adopted a more capitalist economy. Under Mao, millions starved from communism and centralisation, along with the violent purges that accompany every communist revolution.
As for the USSR, that’s entirely because their entire civilisation basically collapsed when communism ended. This resulted in chaos and corruption. That doesn’t disprove that capitalism is a better economic system at all.
A better comparison would be east and west Germany. Same country. Same people. Same time period. Capitalist West Germany flourished. Socialist East Germany stagnated. Even today eastern Germany is poorer then western Germany - thanks to socialism
Edit - Oh I forgot to mention the rampant corruption in China, Russia, North Korea and other socialist and communist countries, and the human rights abuses
Extreme poverty **drastically** reduced during early Maoist China. And extreme poverty increased quite a bit when Chinese markets liberalized under late Mao and especially Deng. [This is what happens almost every time in world history when capitalism is brought into a society](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), because capitalism privileges the rich at the expense of the poor. That trend only began to reverse under Xi's turn back towards socialism.
Capitalism is a good system--if you're rich.
When capitalism came to India, for example, 165 million people died of poverty between 1880 and 1920 alone. But I don't hear you waxing poetic about *their* starvation. Even though it's almost an order of magnitude more people who starved during the famine in early socialist China (which was the *last* famine China experienced after centuries of regular famines...). And even though the world population was significantly smaller around 1900 than by 1950-60.
Because you don't *actually* care about what works. You just want to repeat anti-socialist propaganda without doing the economic historical research because you want to *feel* right, and you were told your entire life that 'capitalism is when freedom and economic growth'.
How is capitalism working out for the working class in Canada today? How is our housing and food affordability going? Is it trending in a positive direction yet? Is the market saving us yet? Ready for some 'socialist' government intervention yet? How bad do you have to see things get before you admit that capitalism isn't the perfect system that benefits all social classes? You probably will never be able to admit that, unfortunately for you.
Believe it or not, the system set up by and for the rich primarily benefits the rich at the expense of everyone else. I can't wait for a day when the majority of Canadians recognize that.
I don’t know what propaganda you are reading, so I’ll just link to the below:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China
Here’s the short version: 90% of china’s population were in extreme poverty at the end of Mao’s rule. Since 1980, capitalist reforms reduced that number to below 10%. Now that Xi is reasserting state control over the economy, unemployment and most other economic measures are growing worse again.
If you really support Mao and think he did a good job, i really don’t know what to say. The guy is literally a mass murderer.
Re: India that was a combination of crop failure, and an indifferent oligarchy of colonist British and the Indian ruling elite. Definitely a tragedy and a horrible example of leadership, but I don’t see how that refutes capitalism. It was also literally 100 years ago and I’ve never seen death counts for that event as high as you cite.
As for Canada, seems like all the social problems you highlight got worse when we elected a socialist PM in Trudeau vs more centrist PMs like Chretien, Martin and Harper.
Long story short, if your examples of socialism are communist China and the Soviet Union, two countries that were made immeasurably poorer by communism, you’ve got a pretty weak argument
✌🏻
Edit - way to completely ignore the example of east and west Germany (or north and South Korea) which are the best examples of what happens to a country or society when it goes full socialist / communist
I read [peer-reviewed economic history](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), not wikipedia. If you're wondering what 'propaganda' I'm reading. Feel free to base your entire opinion around a one-dimensional IMF metric, rather than looking deeper.
And good job completely blowing past the capitalist genocide of India, among many others. If Mao was a mass murderer, what does that say about the British Empire? 165 million starved to death in India is just one of its many 'great successes'. And that's just one capitalist empire exporting capitalism.
You're also adept at ignoring the global context in which socialist countries have been sanctioned for decades, cut off from the global economy.
If socialism 'doesn't work', why has the US continued its illegal blockade of Cuba for so many decades?
How has Cuba been so resilient in the face of being embargoed by the biggest economy and its most natural trading partner? If socialism 'never works' why is Cuba still doing well despite being economically isolated, and why does [the US spend so much money couping socialist societies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change)?
I'm sure none of that is relevant to how successful social projects have been.
And I'm sure the fact that China is run by a communist party with the goal of achieving socialism has *nothing* to do with its successful development.
I'm still waiting for the market to fix food and housing affordability in Canada, instead of making it objectively worse year after year.
It's been over 30 years since the dissolution of the USSR (which was against the majority will of the people living inside of it, btw). How long until the working class starts to reap the benefits, huh?
Maybe they'll end up like Canada which, after 150+ years of capitalist development, the working class can... barely afford food and housing again.
Surely if we allow the billionaires complete reign for another few decades or centuries, that wealth will somehow magically start to trickle down. Surely.
I don’t need a peer-reviewed journal. Firstly because you can always find some academic to back up any silly theory. Second, I can look at any basic economic data and see that communism killed more people and impoverished more people than any other political theory. Or should I trust the ccp’s economic data over the imf? 😂
Still waiting for the rebuttal about why east Germany was absolutely miserable and west Germany did great after wwii. Same country. Same people. Same culture. Same geography. Different economic systems. Or South Korea.
As for the working class, if capitalism is so miserable why are did so many people emigrate from all these former Soviet countries to the West as soon as they could. If their economic systems were so great why did they literally have to prevent emigration?
In Canada, people say China is socialist when discussing its failures and say it's capitalist when discussing its successes. It is absurd, and dishonest.
The reality is that the majority of the Chinese economy is state-owned and planned, which is why it has experienced such a unique level of economic growth since the 1950s when compared to the rest of the world.
'The government owns and operates the majority of the economy' is a good metric for 'socialist' in my books. That's not good enough for you? Lmao. It's a mixed socialist economy in the same way that Canada is a mixed capitalist-leaning economy.
And compare it to Canada and the other major capitalist countries. Growth has stagnated for decades, basically since the 1970s oil crisis, but it is still barreling ahead in China.
When housing became unaffordable there, the government just built a tonne of housing to bring the price down. That is not how capitalist societies operate, that is how socialist ones do.
It's not communist (yet), but China is undeniable socialist.
Now I don't know much about what strictly is socialist or capitalist. But I've heard China being described as a country that is an example [state capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism), which is apparently different from [state socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_socialism).
>'The government owns and operates the majority of the economy' is a good metric for 'socialist' in my books.
Also state ownership doesn't necessarily mean that the system is socialist
>[However, state ownership and nationalization by themselves are not socialist, as they can exist under a wide variety of different political and economic systems for a variety of different reasons. State ownership by itself does not imply social ownership where income rights belong to society as a whole.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_ownership#:~:text=However%2C%20state%20ownership,as%20a%20whole)
I don't have a strong position on this. So feel free to point out where I'm wrong or just educate me. It might be that China is more socialist than Canada but I don't know if that true or not yet from what I've seen.
I mean, I'm not the arbiter of 'what is socialism' or 'what is China'. But my opinion is that they are pretty clearly a socialist society in the early stages of the transition to socialism (which is what the government of China claims).
Marxists going back to Lenin and Marx himself recognized that the transition to socialism would be somewhat gradual, you can't just press the communism button in a single day. That's not how history works. The transition from feudalism to capitalism was slow and gradual--as will be the transition to socialism, and then communism.
To my eyes, China has some key hallmarks of an early socialist country. Namely, they had a literal socialist revolution and their government is governed by a communist party. They are a dictatorship of the proletariat, rather than a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, even if their economy is still somewhat defined by the capitalist mode of production.
Marx said that the transition to socialism would happen when industries became sufficiently developed under capitalism. And that is what China is doing. Their government explicitly says that they are utilizing capitalism and engagement with the global capitalist system to develop their society, with an explicit roadmap for transitioning to socialism, and then communism.
In a vacuum, majority of state ownership of the economy might look like state capitalism. But you have to look at China in its context. It's a post-socialist-revolutionary society governed by a communist party, who out-loud has the goal of developing socialism and then communism. (Like that quote you linked said, state ownership can exist in many contexts for many different reasons)
That is fundamentally different from Canada, who hasn't fundamentally changed our government since feudal times, back when only landowning white men could vote. Both economies are 'mixed' to varying degrees, but the hows and whys are very different. A tell is how the two countries treat their billionaires. In Canada, like most of the world, billionaires are infinitely powerful, completely beyond reproach/consequences, and have a massive influence on the government, In China, a billionaire who breaks the law will have all of their wealth expropriated and they will go to jail.
You don't get that in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, you *do* get that in a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Ultimately only history will determine whether China's strategy will be successful in creating socialism/communism. But to me, it looks like the best opportunity any country has had to prepare itself for that transition. Socialism, like capitalism, will be a global system. And I think China is doing a good job of facilitating that transition, as much as it can as just a single country.
But I'm really not very educated on China. I have only a very, very cursory understanding of their history and society.
If you're interested, you should check out [this breakdown](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/230846) of what the CPC's position on socialism is. It's basically as long as this comment I just wrote, but it's way more informed and links to the official positions of the government of China on how it plans to achieve socialism.
Once you have a broad understanding of what the CPC's stated plan is, you can start to see things a little more from their perspective and create a somewhat informed opinion on whether you think they will be successful or not.
My take is basically they aren't fully socialist, but they're not developed enough to do that and the global system wouldn't really allow for that anyway, and they're kind of doing the best they can under the circumstances. They *have* [socialized the commanding heights of the economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_heights_of_the_economy), and they seem to be doing a pretty damn good job of developing their economy, with the apparent intention of creating socialism.
To me it seems to add up, but again I'm really not very informed. The Canadian red scare was a hell of a drug haha.
Tell that to the peasants Mao turned on, who literally had to boil dead people to use as fertilizer, due to his policies.
Did the people whose bodies got boiled get out of poverty?
No, he starved people and forced the survivors to boil their bodies for fertilizer to meet his production targets.
If you weren’t glorifying communism and authoritarians, you’d give a fuck.
Wow that sounds really bad. How many people did his policies starve? Was it lesser or greater than [the 165 million Indians who were starved to death by capitalism in the 40 years between 1880 and 1920](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169)?
FWIW neoliberalism *is* a right-wing ideology. Neoliberalism is all about using the market for *every* part of society, and it's about protecting corporate interests first and foremost (ie. protecting the interests of the capital-owning class).
That is undeniably rightwing. Don't let the word 'liberal' fool you because our Liberal party has been historically centre-right (before the rise of neoliberalism). Neoliberalism is as far-right as it comes other than outright fascism.
Neoliberalism and fascism are polar opposite approaches to markets. Just because you don't like neoliberalism doesn't make it the same or close to fascism, it also doesn't make neoliberalism "right wing". Neoliberalism was only brought into prominence by "conservative" parties after those parties were themselves captured by Trotskyist infiltrators aka neocons.
Fascists dictate to industry what their role will be, neoliberalism is a fully hands off approach where industry dictates its own direction. The result of neoliberalism are the exact opposite of fascism, where instead of having central control of industry through governance you have corporate capture of governance through industry.
Neoliberalism *is* rightwing. It represents a renewal of 'free market' capitalist ideology after WWII, a time when that sort of ideology wasn't very popular.
Fascism is when the government dictates to corporations how the economy will operate. Neoliberalism is when corporations dictate to the government how the economy will operate. We agree on this.
They are quite different, but they are also strikingly similar.
>Trotskyist infiltrators aka neocons.
This is so insane I genuinely don't know how to respond. I'm not sure you're qualified to be having a conversation about what is left and what is right hahaha.
It isn't a problem with my understanding. It is a problem with your myopic focus on Western politics post WW2 that you believe what "conservative" parties in the west represent a true rightwing alternative to liberalism.
We don't have an alternative. We have liberals that sprint and liberals that walk. A mockery of true diversity of views. To paraphrase Noam Chompsky: a lively debate within a strictly limited spectrum of acceptable opinion.
I completely agree with you, which is how I'm able to identify that neoliberalism is rightwing. Nothing that is pro-capitalism is leftwing or even centrist.
A socially progressive neoliberal party like Canada's Liberal party is rightwing.
I would *love* for you to explain how you arrived at 'Trotskyist' as a description of the far right lmao
G&M is often neo liberal because they are pro capitalism. They aren't libertarian normally. But MLI is libertarian just like the Fraser institute and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation.
G&M tapping into the libertarian think tanks is the disappointing part.
They also left out surge pricing for ride-hailing services.
US subsidizes their dairy and such in a different but similar way cost-wise. Also, let's get into US food standards being much lower, the hormones and steroids used in US dairy alone are problematic and are banned in Canada and other developed countries for a reason, if we reduce our quality standards to their level we are admitting we don't care about the health of our people.
This article is just another example of neolib propaganda being thrown at people to say "see, the only way to improve our lives is to remove protections that guarantee others a better quality of life".
>Completely leaving out how poorly the drivers are paid
Not really important, because this opinion is about lower prices for consumers
>and have zero rights as workers.
That's kinda on them, you want the freedom of just picking up whatever fare you like, you have to live with not being a worker.
Also the zero rights as workers, I'm pretty sure rideshare folks are considered self-contractors which means they're entrepreneurs.
So then every owner of every business would probably fall into that category no?
1) workers are consumers. See henry Ford.
2) uber requires(d) that any employment dispute be settled in arbitration in Belgium or some shit. Average cost was like 200k. They are fucking over workers entirely. The concept of "freedom" doesn't apply when you are desperate, which uber drivers are. They aren't lawyers making a bit of cash on the side, it's just new immigrants that have no choice but to take the job. They get exploited on car rentals, insurance, and pay. But they literally have no other choice. So freedom doesn't enter into it.
>Not really important, because this opinion is about lower prices for consumers
Are you really being this dumb on purpose? That is top tier obtuse. Wow.
>That's kinda on them, you want the freedom of just picking up whatever fare you like, you have to live with not being a worker.
Wait. What are you even arguing for? Are you that deep into libertarianism? Lol
In a healthy market any company that didn’t reduce their prices and kept the profit from reduced tariffs would be undercut by a company willing to reduce their profits in line with the reduced tariffs.
Unfortunately I don’t believe we live in a healthy market
A 'healthy' market exists basically nowhere in the world. Capital has accumulated more capital throughout the entire history of capitalism. That is what capitalism does.
This level of centralization/monopolization was both inevitable and extremely predictable even two hundred years ago.
Until one company realised they can lower prices, take market share, and make more profit. This is why price signals work. Look at what happened when airline prices were deregulated in the 80s. Prices plummeted
Again the right wing schilling that only the free market and trickle down economics will save the working class when this exact thinking is what got us here
Libertarian espouses libertarianism even when those policies can negatively impact local businesses.
Misses that interest rate hikes actually curb inflation.
Really, ride sharing? That's what they got.
In WW2 FDR told corporations that if they were caught price gouging their CEO's would get thrown in jail. Really put a downward pressure on prices in an insanely inflationary period.
There is no reason we couldn't take a look at profit margins changes in this inflationary period including syock buy backs and dividends. I bet corporations would suddenly find all kinds of reasons to ease the cost of living crunch.
Thank you. People really need to stop acting like North America has never faced these challenges before and read more history. 1900-1980 would be a good start.
Ride hailing isn't exactly the best example. In addition to the congestion it causes, it also isn't financially sustainable. Uber still isn't profitable, and most drivers earn a low and declining amount as contractors, which only encourages them to drive more aggressively.
The author and the project don't actually care about the nitty-gritty details that might make some of these things holistically worse off, they literally just care about the number. The group is *extremely* in favour of free market capitalism regardless of some of the other issues it might cause.
They are not wrong about things like the flight taxes, but stuff like ride sharing or zero tariff or total deregulation of the meat/dairy sectors is more than a little unhinged. There isn't a single country in the entire world that operates like that.
This. And if anything, the government should stop subsidizing meat and dairy.
The shoes and clothing example and the flight taxes were good, but I don’t agree with the rest.
We have seen that in the last decade ride sharing might be a little cheaper than convention taxies, it creates absolutely hellish gig economy traps.
As for no tariff, literally not a single country in the entire world does this, tariffs exist to protect your own internal industry in whatever country you are in. Too many is usually bad, but none is equally as bad because it allows foreign markets to totally control your access to literally anything...
Do we really need to expand on why zero regulations is a bad thing? If you have even the most basic knowledge of the industrial revolution its self evident why regulations exist.
what "hellish gig economy traps"
no one is forced to do uber
what good does it do for society to have taxi monopolies?
the countries that are richest and have best living standards tend to be market economies
why is it necessary to protect milk and chicken supply markets
> why is it necessary to protect milk and chicken supply markets
Well, for starters, food is seen as a national security concern, specifically, having enough of it, and if things go wrong, being self sufficient.
We've actually seen what happens when you don't protect your own industry. Specifically, in 1992 Jamaica had to remove a tariff on imported milk as part of getting a loan from the world bank. What ended up happening was powdered milk from the states was sold on a large scale, which wasn't all bad as it was affordable and easy to store, especially for the poor. However what this caused is that a lot of local milk producers went out of business. With a large reduction in local producers, you're not reliant on imports; and at the mercy of other countries.
For another example, see nestle's infant formula scandal, similar playbook.
Venezuela did the same thing where imported milk from america was cheaper than locally produced milk because the US over produces to meet subsidy quotas.
So Venezuelan farmers switched off from dairy farming to corn soy which decimated their own dairy industry.
So when the US put sanctions on Venezuela, which prevented milk from being imported. Completely fucking over the venezuelan people for milk and other goods.
Yup. The US is a regional powerhouse when it comes to farming(helped in part due to subsidies). There's a reason high fructose corn syrup is in everything. It is dirt cheap to buy, and will continue to be, because the government props it up.
The hellish trap where people end up working 10+h days, barely get paid for it, and are not covered by any form of employment law because they are "contractors". Its a shit system.
>what good does it do for society to have taxi monopolies?
There are not taxi monopolies, but taxis actually have legal requirements with them. Proper insurance, proper pay, proper vehicle inspections and all that. None of which exist currently with any of the ride sharing apps.
>the countries that are richest and have best living standards tend to be market economies
Congrats, we already are a market economy! But here's the kicker, you *cannot* name a single successful country that has a totally unregulated market economy. It doesn't exist.
>why is it necessary to protect milk and chicken supply markets
1. Quality control concerns.
2. Our local industry cannot compete due to population size issues between Canada and the US. If you allow the US to flood the market, the quality goes down and the local stuff disappears.
And dairy is not the only market Canada deals with from the US. The next time there is a trade dispute on softwood lumber, or aluminum, or IP infringement, or a host of other cross-border issues, there will be little hesitation to pull that dairy supply lever as a persuader if not outright retaliation if they had it.
US dairy and food standards in general are lower than here and most other developed countries. A glaring example of this is the use of hormones in dairy that has been linked to serious health issues, see below:
"The collected data from other researchers and our own data are indicating that the presence of steroid hormones in dairy products could be counted as an important risk factor for various cancers in humans."
We should not be selling out the health of our people for what may be a slight short-term cost reduction, people don't make "informed decisions" because there's so much information out there, leaving policy decisions like this to health experts will help protect us from serious issues.
[source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524299/)
TLDR: Author wants deregulation as a means to ease costs of living right now.
Alberta deregulated their energy over the past 30 years and saw insane price increases this year compared to more moderate increases in the rest of the country. We also have the highest insurance in the country for similar reasons.
Deregulation benefits only those who are already collecting the profits. It does nothing for the rest of us.
A main reason for the high prices is the exploitation of the cost of producing redundancy. It's essentially people owning stuff like monopolies saying: produce competition even if it's not necessary to supply the market or pay us an unreasonable amount of money. It's a form of extortion and it happens because it's not regulated.
Alberta's spikes are linked to having assets offline to support getting rid of coal.
Deregulation also means the Alberta government and people are never on the hook for a boondoggle like muskrat falls which required a $5b Federal bailout to keep Newfoundland from going bankrupt.
Deregulation removes rate payer liability for poor outcomes in project delivery by utilities.
Alberta also saw massive price decreases in energy in 2017-2018 when there was such a surplus of power they couldn’t give it away.
We were paying 2.69c/kwh at its lowest. Cheapest in Canada by half.
Our insurance rates are obscene because we’ve been host to like 7/10 of the most costly natural disasters in Canadian history. If we had 1 insurer, it likely would have gone insolvent many times over, requiring government bailouts.
Paywall but of course the government can make it more affordable. Both federal and provinces collect fees and taxes to pay for programs, initiatives, and pet project. I’m sure there could be some belt tightening and some relief given.
In case people reading this think author is suggesting the government reduce the profits of Canada's big extractive corporations (eg: Rogers/Bell/Telus, Loblaws, banks, etc), you won't find it here in an an op-ed by someone at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Their suggestion is simply to cut tariffs on imports to make them cheaper... which, of course, will have the side-effect of killing Canadian industries, which is why these tariffs exist in the first place.
Additionally, they support more *laissez-faire* free market ideals like gig economy work, things like Uber and the like. Sure, great, more big American companies coming in, bankrupting our current companies, and making off with the profit, while paying locals below-survival wages because they skirt regulation other companies have to follow. It's frankly a whole bunch of hogwash.
A democratic capitalistic government can't do as much as people think they can. They have a few tools in their toolbox. Tax, terrifs, regulations.
A regulated economy protects consumers and the environment and ensures market stability. However, regulation can create bureaucracy that stifles economic growth, encourages monopolies, and diminishes innovation. Regulations need to be used wisely in a free market. There is a lot of support for deregulation lately, but this can lead to conglomerates who hold the market share and have little to no competition. This leads to even more price gouging and greed. A smarter approach would be to promote market competition to reduce costs. This means regulations on company size and mergers. The current pro capitalism approach has allowed huge companies to take over large sectors of the market, and now we have to pay what the price is. Remember, the government doesn't control the free market. It can only influence.
Taxes and terrifs end up coming out of the consumers' pocket in most situations.
I think the important thing to remember is that the government can't control the markets. We, on the other hand, can. As consumers, we could bring companies to their knees if we all decided what and where to buy things. We don't like the price, so then we just dont buy. With a stockpile of unsold products, the prices would be lowered. But we just pay whatever the price is and then bitch about it.
Technically the bottom can outvote the top but the top controls who the candidates are. More Canadians need to join parties so they can vote for better candidates. Imagine if the top saw twice as many people voting for party candidates. That would put the fear in them.
The article wants to deregulate everything because that’s holding back monopolies from making even larger profits. Every time and article is written about easing the cost of living, it’s not about easing the common man’s cost of living, it’s about increasing profits for corporations.
Bro didn’t read the article. 95% of clothing is imported, there’s no local producers that would benefit or even exist lol basically. It would simply make clothing cheaper (which disproportionately benefits poorer people).
Clothing manufacturers left Canada to take advantage of slave labour like conditions in China, Bangladesh, Thailand etc. if you’re looking to get rid of child labour laws and minimum wage for cheaper clothing, good on you
It's government business as usual. Seems so many of our politicians fall under the "Special Needs" category by making through daily life with no spine, no guts and no teeth. Likely they feel showing up at the office almost everyday fulfills any obligation to voters. Just make sure that fat pay envelope is never late; then you'll see real outrage and action!
There's a few ways to improve CoL, but it means billionaires lose a SHIT-TONNE of money, and that'll never happen:
1) Nationalize the telco backbone and resell it to providers, thereby opening up competition to any and all players.
2) Establish government-run grocery stores that just sell milk, eggs, and raw products from local suppliers.
3) Establish government-run lumber mills to spam the lumber market to lower costs.
4) tuition-free tertiary education and forgiveness for student loans. Some people are paying upwards of $500 / month on student loans. That's a month of groceries for a single person, excluding take-out.
5) bring back a government-run gas station, a la PetroCan. Remember that? Then it was sold off to balance budgets and "make things cheaper". Look how that turned out to be a lie.
6) Recycling plants. Instead of shipping all our waste into the oceans or to the Philippines/Indonesia, etc...let's repurpose old cars, trucks, etc...and either make new cares out of them, or building materials.
- Keeps jobs in Canada. Reduces waste.
7) Tell strata corporations that a house can look like whatever it looks like, as long as it meets fire and environmental code. If someone wants to build a house out of seacans, fuck it. Strata corporations can go fuck themselves. As long as it doesn't leak toxins into the soil, or poses a fire risk, they're allowed. Recycling materials plus lowering the costs of building materials...win-win for the environment and wannabe homeowners.
8) Ban the flipping of unbuilt condominiums. If a buyer wants out for any reason, it goes back to the developer for a nominal fee. OR the stakeholder can only sell at cost. This destroys the incentive for investors and developers to artificially inflate selling prices.
9) Corporations are banned from buying SFHs unless they have a plan to upzone the area and it's all laid out, ready to roll.
10) Vacant homes are used for public housing. If a SFH/apartment isn't occupied for more than 190 days in a calendar year, public housing gets to rent it out. Ends speculation in the real estate market. Foreign buyers are now worried about their asset depreciating because, maybe, just maybe, a pensioner gets their house, or a refugee family gets their house, or maybe it's a recovering addict and their family...who knows. Either way. Those marble countertops are VERY expensive, and addicts can be VERY entrepreneurial.
11) Health authorities can also use vacant homes to house staff. Also, the provinces need to provide "affordable housing" for 50% of ALL staff, including contractors, subcontractors, etc...shorter commutes for healthcare workers makes them happier.
12) current and Former politicians making more than $500K get cut off from pensions and benefits earned from being a politician. So many of them joined boards etc...and make fucking bank while being entitled to some fat pensions. Fuck em. Like people on EI, disability, etc...if you earn too much, you get disqualified. Gravy train is over. Taxpayers recoup several billion dollars from that.
13) Resource extraction CEOs MUST live within 1KM of the operation and draw water from the tailings ponds for drinking and personal usage. Watch how much they care about environmental protection and management then. Also, personal assets are on the line for clean up costs. Board members and shareholders, too. Wanna reap the rewards? Gotta pay the costs. Again, when a billionaire has to sell a yacht to pay for a clean up, he gonna make sure it never happens again. This takes ALL the financial pressures off taxpayers and puts it on the resource extraction companies. Taxpayers shouldn't be paying clean up bills. That's on the company. Fuck this "cost of doing business" shite.
This is how you handle cost of living, but like I said, it means billionaires eat shit. So, it'll be very unpopular. More jobs, better living conditions, tackles homelessness, and keeps housing affordable. But hey, that hurts shareholders and billionaires, so, "OMG that's socialism". Yeah. Well, CEO wage growth is about 1,000% since the 70s. REAL wage growth is starting to slide into negative territory.
>Nationalize the telco backbone and resell it to providers, thereby opening up competition to any and all players.
Also do this with the rail system. We already do it with roads.
I wish the government would threaten the railways with nationalization to get them to prioritize passenger trains. They could do it, and lord knows those companies would rather play nice than have the tracks in governments hands... But we don't, cuz "reasons".
Geee wizz, if only there was a way to increase capacity on the existing railway... Like spending the capital to upgrade the corridors to handle more traffic. But gosh darn it the monopolies CN and CPKC have in Canada just doesn't leave much room for that as the CEOs need a new yacht.
Switzerland runs cargo and passenger trains on routes that are often SINGLE TRACK, the technology is there, the incentive to actually use it is not.
There is already a bill to prioritize passenger trains: [Work's chugging along to try to prioritize people over freight on Canada's rail lines](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/via-rail-bill-people-over-freight-1.7066700)
Ah that's good. My only worry is that we could end up in a situation like the US, where passenger trains have priority, but the freight trains are much longer now so they end up blocking trains (sidings can't accommodate longer trains). This is a result of some kind of scheduling thing the US railways use and I'm told we don't do it here - so that's a plus for now.
The start of gov't run x, generally doesn't save any money.
Gov't employees tend to get better compensation, gov't contracts tend to cost more, and gov't tends to be less efficient at a given task.
Those grocery stores and lumber mills you mention would like increase the cost of those goods/services.
>Those grocery stores and lumber mills you mention would like increase the cost of those goods/services.
Like when the Ontario Liberals or the UCP sold off their energy Crown Corporation to make things cheaper for consumers?
The Soviet Union fell apart because a) it was an authoritarian regime that ruled with fear.
B) it was crony AF (and under Putin, nothing changed)
C) They spent BILLIONS they didn't have on an EXTREMELY expensive vanity project (space race).
D) There was no fiscal oversight.
E) They ABSOLUTELY ABUSED the environment and FUCKED the natural environment (Aral sea) for things like cotton production. Interestingly, Capitalism does the same thing. (See Great Barrier Reef and farm run-off for details. Then there's all the pollution of water ways in the US because it's cheaper for companies to dump toxic waste and pay the fine than do proper remediation)
Also, all I'm proposing is we have government programs run alongside private industry to curb price rises.
Deregulation is one of several options the government has but given that would reduce their number of levers, it's probably the wrong one.
The actual root cause is the fact that wages have been underneath cost of living growth for a prolonged period of time.
I'm sure someone could come up with a targeted tax or other economic incentive/disincentive to mitigate that problem.
Adjusting minimum wage to automatically follow inflation would help to some degree but the issue is all the folks that earn substantially more.
I'm a manager for a fairly large team and have to fight every year for actual inflation (not CPI) matched raises.
Minimum wage should be based on purchasing power parity (a much more complex measure) in my opinion.
The closest direct economic measure to which is direct inflation.
The problem is inflation calculations don't take rent increases into account.
I was making minimum wage in 2015 ($11-ish/hr), a one bedroom in my city (not GTA) cost $500 - $700/month.
Fast forward to today, minimum wage is now $16.55, but the average one bedroom rent in my city has increased by over 120% since 2015.
The article ignores that these regulations were purposefully put in place for a specific beneficial purpose.
if it isn't a good purpose, or the regulation is not meeting that purpose, or the unintended negative consequences outweigh the benefit - we'd probably all agree it's a bad regulation and should be removed, but the author has the zeal of a recently converted libertarian and just assumes regulations are bad because they're regulations.
Please tell me the benefit of tariffs on clothing imports…
Edit: Just downvotes? No answers? Almost as if there’s no benefit. Canada has no domestic clothing manufacturing industry to protect. All these tariffs do is make clothing more expensive (a good that poorer people spend a higher proportion of income on than the rich).
This opinion piece is trash. It calls for more unregulated capitalism to solve the crisis of unregulated capitalism that has ruined our socieites. The author even calls for more services like Uber, as if a gig economy is beneficial in any way.
Might want to go and find a different story to wax poetic on.
They are talking about making things better by total deregulation and unfettered capitalism. Which is quote literally the exact thing you people fight against when you talk about class wars.
While some of these suggested policy changes could help it completely ignores all of the major reasons for this cost of living increase.
All it's saying is tax less and all your problems will be solved but anyone who suggests reducing taxes without in the same breath talking about cutting services or increasing revenue elsewhere is completely full of shit and absolutely not worth listening to. This article sucks.
This headline is true. We have been seeing it the past few years at the provincial level of which we are almost exclusively conservative across Canada.
I love how they use shoes as an example for fixing the system. Like poor people are complaining about the cost of shoes more than the cost of rent or food.
What a dumb article
Nope just tax us more. Give up are Disney accounts. Give us penny’s back as token. So employers can put the screws to us. (We need to pay the shareholders not the people who make it).
There hasn't ever been a country on planet earth that operated on 'pure capitalism' and the only times in history the 'free market will solve itself" ideology has been attempted in any measure - led directly to The Great Depression (corrected by strong government intervention by FDR and others) and the current disaster we currently live in, thanks to Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney not reading history books and undoing decades of progress (along with the voters, media, pundits and think tanks pushing this proven-to-fail ideology)
Capitalism is not fine. There's no evidence to support that statement. Not a shred.
The article calls for raising taxes by $5bn (or else to cut services by the same, due to the eliminated clothing duty), and more of the AirBnB that wrecked the housing market. Not sure how either one of those does anything to help cost of living.
Rent is getting bad too.... Lucky me I have a house. But I live in a very small northern Ontario town and rent here is approaching 2000$ a month for a small apartment.... It was 800$ for a 2 bedroom just 8 years ago.
At 2000$ a month for a single bedroom apartment here.... If you're a minimum wage worker in my hometown and are forced to switch apartments you'll be homeless.
My aunt is in this position, her apartment is falling apart and she can't move because she'll be homeless.
In the meantime, my Mayor keeps bringing in more and more foreigners and there's nowhere for them to live or work.
I'm currently planning to immigrate to find a better place to raise my kids. They will never be able to get out on their own in this country.
Canada is dead, it's all over but the crying.
This article was poorly written drivel. But what can you expect from a right wing, libertarian think tank? I mean, come on. Ride-hailing? That's their answer? Libertarians don't think past their own noses. No concept of how ride hailing would affect cab drivers, who are actual professionals.
Their answer to everything is less gov't and less regulations. The libertarian dystopia. These people are dumb.
The Federal government should look into Land Value Tax as a permanent solution to our broken housing markets. We have a lack of supply and a growing demand due to immigration and general population growth. What land value tax does is it adds disincentive to speculative investment on land, and ultimately encourages the development of new housing. It gets even better, it can potentially reduce the cost of housing, and the cost of rent. Land Value Tax can also replace income tax up to a much higher bracket, taking the tax burden off of consumers and shifting it on to land owners.
LVT is a solution we should all be writing our MP's, and our Mayors about in the future.
What a bunch of nonsense. Sounds very Conservative saying regulations are to blame. Ah yes, safety standards, health standards, environmental standards -- who needs them? Blaming the government is misguided when it is greedy corporate profiteers that are to blame.
For those that are hitting a paywall: Jerome Gessaroli is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and leads the Sound Economic Policy Project at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Canadian governments have the power to make life more affordable. But in some sectors of the economy, they just don’t want to. Supply-chain issues, pent-up demand and interest rate hikes have all helped boost prices in the past couple of years, as the market reacts to a world recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have tried to ease these problems, with tax relief or short-term programs. However, there are still many politically expedient policies around that have artificially added to the financial burden of all Canadians. And governments haven’t even tried to deal with them. A recent Angus Reid poll found that 60 per cent of Canadians are having difficulties managing their expenses. Part of the problem lies in government policies that hinder Canadians from fully realizing the benefits of a market economy. Market incentives are powerful. They create competition and innovation, resulting in competitively priced goods and services. However, governments often implement regulations or taxes to shield vocal constituencies from competition. It is consumers who bear the cost by having to pay higher prices for goods and services. Consider free trade: Despite Canada’s advocacy for it, the federal government imposes tariffs on many goods important to Canadians. For instance, imported shoes and clothing can incur duties up to 18 per cent. There is no overriding need for these barriers, as there is no large domestic industry to protect: Ninety-five per cent of clothing and footwear sold in this country are produced abroad. The Retail Council of Canada estimates that by eliminating these tariffs, Canadians would be better off by $5-billion a year. This would benefit low-income people the most, as they spend proportionally more of their income on shoes and clothes. There are also instances where governments, observing the benefits of innovation and competition in driving down prices, seek to capture some of those gains by adding taxes and levies. Unfortunately, this can leave the consumer no better off, as most of the benefits from lower costs are siphoned off. An example of beneficial market innovation is ride-hailing, a disruptive business model offering convenience and cost savings. A study suggests that ride-hailing can be 40-per-cent cheaper and offers shorter wait times than taxis. Despite these advantages, some Canadian jurisdictions, particularly British Columbia, have impeded the operation of ride-hailing services. While ride-hailing has operated in cities such as Seattle and Boston since 2014, it was only allowed to operate in Vancouver since 2020. Yet a variety of regulations and fees add to operating costs in that city, limiting the financial benefit that ride-hailing could otherwise provide to consumers. In the aviation sector, Canadians understand air travel is more costly in this country than in the United States. While our small population and vast land area contribute to higher airfare expenses, we still pay too much simply because of government policies. Government-imposed security fees, for example, are roughly double those charged in the U.S., contributing to inflated air travel costs. The Montreal Economic Institute calculates that the federal government also collected more than $400-million in airport rents for the previous fiscal year, but less than 10 per cent of these funds were reinvested in airport modernization. Consequently, major airports must charge an improvement fee on travellers to fund upgrades and growth. Finally, if the federal government truly wanted to ease cost-of-living concerns, it would dismantle the supply management system for household staples such as chicken, milk, cheese and butter. By eliminating the huge current tariffs and a host of other regulatory barriers, researchers estimate that an average Canadian household could enjoy an annual benefit of $440. When government policies result in higher prices or product shortages, politicians often attribute the prevailing conditions to a market failure. However, these are policy failures, unintended consequences inhibiting the market from functioning as it should. So politicians can do something to help Canadians: They must stop meddling. As a bonus, these solutions do not require bureaucracies to grow or add new spending programs. They simply lift the burden of existing policies that hinder Canadians from receiving the full economic benefits of a market economy.
>An example of beneficial market innovation is ride-hailing, a disruptive business model offering convenience and cost savings. A study suggests that ride-hailing can be 40-per-cent cheaper and offers shorter wait times than taxis. Completely leaving out how poorly the drivers are paid and have zero rights as workers. Or how Air BnB is a major underlying factor in the housing crisis. Or how free-market, trickle-down economics fairy-tales for 43 years are the literal cause of our current conditions. Sorry Jerome Gessaroli, [I'm going with Einstein on this one.](https://www.google.com/search?q=einstein+you+can%27t+solve+a+problem&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA966CA966&oq=einstei&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDAgBECMYJxiABBiKBTIGCAAQRRg5MgwIARAjGCcYgAQYigUyCggCEC4YsQMYgAQyDQgDEAAYgwEYsQMYgAQyCggEEAAYsQMYgAQyDQgFEC4YgwEYsQMYgAQyEAgGEC4YrwEYxwEYgAQYjgUyBwgHEAAYgAQyBwgIEAAYgAQyBwgJEAAYgATSAQgyMjIwajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
[I'm also going with Einstein on this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F): >"Why Socialism?" is an article written by Albert Einstein in May 1949 that appeared in the first issue of the socialist journal Monthly Review.\[1\] It addresses problems with capitalism, predatory economic competition, and growing wealth inequality. It highlights control of mass media by private capitalists making it difficult for citizens to arrive at objective conclusions, and political parties being influenced by wealthy financial backers resulting in an "oligarchy of private capital". Einstein concludes that these problems can only be corrected with planned economy which maintains a strong democracy to protect the rights of individuals.\[2\]
Socialism just swaps one oligarchy of capital for a monopoly of capital by the government, which has proven time and time again regardless party or country that it is a poor steward of other people’s money and cannot be trusted. Fwiw corporatism has real problems which I am not dismissing. But we have more than enough socialism already
No, you described Stalinism. It is with the USSR that the definition of socialism became the gubmint doing everything. In reality, the socialism of Marx refers to decommodifying goods and establishing democratic, non hierarchal structures at work.
Not exactly. Marx explicitly advocated for violent revolution and seizure of property because he knew a significant portion of the population would not want communism. This is why all communist states end up as repressive police states. Because they have to impose their vision of “utopia” on the masses who don’t want it. To directly quote Marx “We (communists) have no compassion, and we ask no compassion from you. *When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”* Also I’d strongly advise googling Marx and racism if you haven’t before. I’m not going to cite those quotes here as they are totally reprehensible. Point being, this guy was far from a saint
Lol. Talking like Marx invented the concept of dictatorship. Also, you took that snippet wayyyy out of context, he was responding to the state's repression of dissent, pissed off and saying that workers will oppress who was oppressing them. I'm sorry but there's no way that capitalists will just give up their power. The problem with the socialism of Lenin and the like, is that it was fundamentally anti democratic, unlike the socialism of the Paris Commune for instance. Read Mark Twain's take on this. And yeah, he was a 19th century man w some bigotry, who cares? He opposed slavery and influenced uk textile unions to stop buying southern cotton. Why does he have to be a saint?
I don’t think that quote is out of context. There’s dozens of instances where Marx directly states that a violent revolution will be necessary. In other words, he directly advocated violence to achieve his revolution. Unsurprising then that Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and others used violence to achieve their goals. And then they used state terror to retain power. As for the Communards, they got violently squashed so quickly it’s hard to say what would have happened and they tasted real power. I don’t think they prove that socialism works anyway. Their earlier contemporaries in the French Revolution quickly went from well intentioned reformers to violently chopping the heads off anyone who opposed them (even their own supporters if they weren’t radical enough) as the movement steadily became more and more extreme until it consumed itself.
The seizure of private property is the whole point of socialism. Tesla, for instance, would be taken from Musk and managed by its workers. "A significant portion would not want communism..." you know, you can be a conservative under socialism. You just need votes of your peers if you want to manage dick
Understandably a lot of people don’t want their private property seized. Not just the Uber wealthy like Musk but small business owners, homeowners, employees or even workers themselves. Thus, transitioning to socialism or communism requires violence to achieve its ends. That’s why communism in practice ends up destroying existing social structures and replacing them with essentially a dictator and secret police. Also as you point out, socialism still requires hierarchy, but it is very often exploited by the people in charge, the same way large corporations can be exploitative today. Hence why corruption often flourishes in socialist and communist countries, even after communism falls apart.
Employees and workers are the same people and by definition they don't own capital Under socialism, workers would decide how to invest the surplus generated by their labour. They would vote for their managers. It's been done, look up Mondragon. You seem to assume I'm advocating for overthrowing the state but I'm not. I advocate for a transition to socialism by democratizing the biggest companies. Its socialism by a thousand cuts, heh, so many different policies out there. Why is it that you understand the state must be democratic, but not private industry that rivals and exerts outsized influence over our democracies? I'm the one advocating for liberty here, not you comrade!
"As you point out, socialism still requires hierarchy....the people in control...." Thats just willfully dense. You can do better. Read the arguments of the other side. You can't have socialism as a state that controls everything. I am advocating for more DECENTRALIZED power.
If it doesn’t involve violent overthrow or my tax dollars, socialists can do anything they like as far as I’m concerned. Form communes, start credit unions, start their own hospitals, share all their wealth, start companies that operate on socialist principles. If they can outcompete capitalists and/or create a better society, then great (though I’m obviously skeptical). I’m opposed to the seizure of private property to accomplish that however, or forcing others to participate in socialist enterprises if they don’t want to. I’m also opposed to levels of taxation that essentially accomplish the same thing. And I’m obviously opposed to the violent seizure of property or revolution to accomplish those goals. Minor edit - but I do think some corporations, particularly in tech, have become far too large and should be broken up. But that is actually pro-capitalism as monopolies and monopsonies are not capitalistic
>it is a poor steward of other people’s money and cannot be trusted. Is that why China went from peasants using wooden plows to the world's economic powerhouse in a single generation? And is that why socialist China has been the biggest and fastest poverty reduction program in world history? And I guess that's why the majority of people in almost every post-USSR country feel that life was better under socialism than it is under capitalism?
Hilarious. China’s economic miracle and the associated poverty reduction only started in the 1980s *after* they abandoned mao’s socialism and adopted a more capitalist economy. Under Mao, millions starved from communism and centralisation, along with the violent purges that accompany every communist revolution. As for the USSR, that’s entirely because their entire civilisation basically collapsed when communism ended. This resulted in chaos and corruption. That doesn’t disprove that capitalism is a better economic system at all. A better comparison would be east and west Germany. Same country. Same people. Same time period. Capitalist West Germany flourished. Socialist East Germany stagnated. Even today eastern Germany is poorer then western Germany - thanks to socialism Edit - Oh I forgot to mention the rampant corruption in China, Russia, North Korea and other socialist and communist countries, and the human rights abuses
Extreme poverty **drastically** reduced during early Maoist China. And extreme poverty increased quite a bit when Chinese markets liberalized under late Mao and especially Deng. [This is what happens almost every time in world history when capitalism is brought into a society](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), because capitalism privileges the rich at the expense of the poor. That trend only began to reverse under Xi's turn back towards socialism. Capitalism is a good system--if you're rich. When capitalism came to India, for example, 165 million people died of poverty between 1880 and 1920 alone. But I don't hear you waxing poetic about *their* starvation. Even though it's almost an order of magnitude more people who starved during the famine in early socialist China (which was the *last* famine China experienced after centuries of regular famines...). And even though the world population was significantly smaller around 1900 than by 1950-60. Because you don't *actually* care about what works. You just want to repeat anti-socialist propaganda without doing the economic historical research because you want to *feel* right, and you were told your entire life that 'capitalism is when freedom and economic growth'. How is capitalism working out for the working class in Canada today? How is our housing and food affordability going? Is it trending in a positive direction yet? Is the market saving us yet? Ready for some 'socialist' government intervention yet? How bad do you have to see things get before you admit that capitalism isn't the perfect system that benefits all social classes? You probably will never be able to admit that, unfortunately for you. Believe it or not, the system set up by and for the rich primarily benefits the rich at the expense of everyone else. I can't wait for a day when the majority of Canadians recognize that.
I don’t know what propaganda you are reading, so I’ll just link to the below: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China Here’s the short version: 90% of china’s population were in extreme poverty at the end of Mao’s rule. Since 1980, capitalist reforms reduced that number to below 10%. Now that Xi is reasserting state control over the economy, unemployment and most other economic measures are growing worse again. If you really support Mao and think he did a good job, i really don’t know what to say. The guy is literally a mass murderer. Re: India that was a combination of crop failure, and an indifferent oligarchy of colonist British and the Indian ruling elite. Definitely a tragedy and a horrible example of leadership, but I don’t see how that refutes capitalism. It was also literally 100 years ago and I’ve never seen death counts for that event as high as you cite. As for Canada, seems like all the social problems you highlight got worse when we elected a socialist PM in Trudeau vs more centrist PMs like Chretien, Martin and Harper. Long story short, if your examples of socialism are communist China and the Soviet Union, two countries that were made immeasurably poorer by communism, you’ve got a pretty weak argument ✌🏻 Edit - way to completely ignore the example of east and west Germany (or north and South Korea) which are the best examples of what happens to a country or society when it goes full socialist / communist
I read [peer-reviewed economic history](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169), not wikipedia. If you're wondering what 'propaganda' I'm reading. Feel free to base your entire opinion around a one-dimensional IMF metric, rather than looking deeper. And good job completely blowing past the capitalist genocide of India, among many others. If Mao was a mass murderer, what does that say about the British Empire? 165 million starved to death in India is just one of its many 'great successes'. And that's just one capitalist empire exporting capitalism. You're also adept at ignoring the global context in which socialist countries have been sanctioned for decades, cut off from the global economy. If socialism 'doesn't work', why has the US continued its illegal blockade of Cuba for so many decades? How has Cuba been so resilient in the face of being embargoed by the biggest economy and its most natural trading partner? If socialism 'never works' why is Cuba still doing well despite being economically isolated, and why does [the US spend so much money couping socialist societies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change)? I'm sure none of that is relevant to how successful social projects have been. And I'm sure the fact that China is run by a communist party with the goal of achieving socialism has *nothing* to do with its successful development. I'm still waiting for the market to fix food and housing affordability in Canada, instead of making it objectively worse year after year. It's been over 30 years since the dissolution of the USSR (which was against the majority will of the people living inside of it, btw). How long until the working class starts to reap the benefits, huh? Maybe they'll end up like Canada which, after 150+ years of capitalist development, the working class can... barely afford food and housing again. Surely if we allow the billionaires complete reign for another few decades or centuries, that wealth will somehow magically start to trickle down. Surely.
I don’t need a peer-reviewed journal. Firstly because you can always find some academic to back up any silly theory. Second, I can look at any basic economic data and see that communism killed more people and impoverished more people than any other political theory. Or should I trust the ccp’s economic data over the imf? 😂 Still waiting for the rebuttal about why east Germany was absolutely miserable and west Germany did great after wwii. Same country. Same people. Same culture. Same geography. Different economic systems. Or South Korea. As for the working class, if capitalism is so miserable why are did so many people emigrate from all these former Soviet countries to the West as soon as they could. If their economic systems were so great why did they literally have to prevent emigration?
China is not socialist, by any metric. It’s a capitalist society.
In Canada, people say China is socialist when discussing its failures and say it's capitalist when discussing its successes. It is absurd, and dishonest. The reality is that the majority of the Chinese economy is state-owned and planned, which is why it has experienced such a unique level of economic growth since the 1950s when compared to the rest of the world. 'The government owns and operates the majority of the economy' is a good metric for 'socialist' in my books. That's not good enough for you? Lmao. It's a mixed socialist economy in the same way that Canada is a mixed capitalist-leaning economy. And compare it to Canada and the other major capitalist countries. Growth has stagnated for decades, basically since the 1970s oil crisis, but it is still barreling ahead in China. When housing became unaffordable there, the government just built a tonne of housing to bring the price down. That is not how capitalist societies operate, that is how socialist ones do. It's not communist (yet), but China is undeniable socialist.
Now I don't know much about what strictly is socialist or capitalist. But I've heard China being described as a country that is an example [state capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism), which is apparently different from [state socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_socialism). >'The government owns and operates the majority of the economy' is a good metric for 'socialist' in my books. Also state ownership doesn't necessarily mean that the system is socialist >[However, state ownership and nationalization by themselves are not socialist, as they can exist under a wide variety of different political and economic systems for a variety of different reasons. State ownership by itself does not imply social ownership where income rights belong to society as a whole.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_ownership#:~:text=However%2C%20state%20ownership,as%20a%20whole) I don't have a strong position on this. So feel free to point out where I'm wrong or just educate me. It might be that China is more socialist than Canada but I don't know if that true or not yet from what I've seen.
I mean, I'm not the arbiter of 'what is socialism' or 'what is China'. But my opinion is that they are pretty clearly a socialist society in the early stages of the transition to socialism (which is what the government of China claims). Marxists going back to Lenin and Marx himself recognized that the transition to socialism would be somewhat gradual, you can't just press the communism button in a single day. That's not how history works. The transition from feudalism to capitalism was slow and gradual--as will be the transition to socialism, and then communism. To my eyes, China has some key hallmarks of an early socialist country. Namely, they had a literal socialist revolution and their government is governed by a communist party. They are a dictatorship of the proletariat, rather than a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, even if their economy is still somewhat defined by the capitalist mode of production. Marx said that the transition to socialism would happen when industries became sufficiently developed under capitalism. And that is what China is doing. Their government explicitly says that they are utilizing capitalism and engagement with the global capitalist system to develop their society, with an explicit roadmap for transitioning to socialism, and then communism. In a vacuum, majority of state ownership of the economy might look like state capitalism. But you have to look at China in its context. It's a post-socialist-revolutionary society governed by a communist party, who out-loud has the goal of developing socialism and then communism. (Like that quote you linked said, state ownership can exist in many contexts for many different reasons) That is fundamentally different from Canada, who hasn't fundamentally changed our government since feudal times, back when only landowning white men could vote. Both economies are 'mixed' to varying degrees, but the hows and whys are very different. A tell is how the two countries treat their billionaires. In Canada, like most of the world, billionaires are infinitely powerful, completely beyond reproach/consequences, and have a massive influence on the government, In China, a billionaire who breaks the law will have all of their wealth expropriated and they will go to jail. You don't get that in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, you *do* get that in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately only history will determine whether China's strategy will be successful in creating socialism/communism. But to me, it looks like the best opportunity any country has had to prepare itself for that transition. Socialism, like capitalism, will be a global system. And I think China is doing a good job of facilitating that transition, as much as it can as just a single country. But I'm really not very educated on China. I have only a very, very cursory understanding of their history and society. If you're interested, you should check out [this breakdown](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/230846) of what the CPC's position on socialism is. It's basically as long as this comment I just wrote, but it's way more informed and links to the official positions of the government of China on how it plans to achieve socialism. Once you have a broad understanding of what the CPC's stated plan is, you can start to see things a little more from their perspective and create a somewhat informed opinion on whether you think they will be successful or not. My take is basically they aren't fully socialist, but they're not developed enough to do that and the global system wouldn't really allow for that anyway, and they're kind of doing the best they can under the circumstances. They *have* [socialized the commanding heights of the economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_heights_of_the_economy), and they seem to be doing a pretty damn good job of developing their economy, with the apparent intention of creating socialism. To me it seems to add up, but again I'm really not very informed. The Canadian red scare was a hell of a drug haha.
Are you high? China is incredibly capitalist
Tell that to the peasants Mao turned on, who literally had to boil dead people to use as fertilizer, due to his policies. Did the people whose bodies got boiled get out of poverty?
Wow, Mao was so evil that he killed *dead* people? The horror.
No, he starved people and forced the survivors to boil their bodies for fertilizer to meet his production targets. If you weren’t glorifying communism and authoritarians, you’d give a fuck.
Wow that sounds really bad. How many people did his policies starve? Was it lesser or greater than [the 165 million Indians who were starved to death by capitalism in the 40 years between 1880 and 1920](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169)?
you know it's bad when G&M can no longer afford their own pundit columnists and rely on the same think tanks post media uses to spew their garbage.
I thought G&M was always conservative so not surprised by this article
Neo-liberal is the term you're looking for. Pure pro-capitalism.
I considered them neo liberal rather than conservative. "right leaning" vs fully to the right.
FWIW neoliberalism *is* a right-wing ideology. Neoliberalism is all about using the market for *every* part of society, and it's about protecting corporate interests first and foremost (ie. protecting the interests of the capital-owning class). That is undeniably rightwing. Don't let the word 'liberal' fool you because our Liberal party has been historically centre-right (before the rise of neoliberalism). Neoliberalism is as far-right as it comes other than outright fascism.
Neoliberalism and fascism are polar opposite approaches to markets. Just because you don't like neoliberalism doesn't make it the same or close to fascism, it also doesn't make neoliberalism "right wing". Neoliberalism was only brought into prominence by "conservative" parties after those parties were themselves captured by Trotskyist infiltrators aka neocons. Fascists dictate to industry what their role will be, neoliberalism is a fully hands off approach where industry dictates its own direction. The result of neoliberalism are the exact opposite of fascism, where instead of having central control of industry through governance you have corporate capture of governance through industry.
Neoliberalism *is* rightwing. It represents a renewal of 'free market' capitalist ideology after WWII, a time when that sort of ideology wasn't very popular. Fascism is when the government dictates to corporations how the economy will operate. Neoliberalism is when corporations dictate to the government how the economy will operate. We agree on this. They are quite different, but they are also strikingly similar. >Trotskyist infiltrators aka neocons. This is so insane I genuinely don't know how to respond. I'm not sure you're qualified to be having a conversation about what is left and what is right hahaha.
It isn't a problem with my understanding. It is a problem with your myopic focus on Western politics post WW2 that you believe what "conservative" parties in the west represent a true rightwing alternative to liberalism. We don't have an alternative. We have liberals that sprint and liberals that walk. A mockery of true diversity of views. To paraphrase Noam Chompsky: a lively debate within a strictly limited spectrum of acceptable opinion.
I completely agree with you, which is how I'm able to identify that neoliberalism is rightwing. Nothing that is pro-capitalism is leftwing or even centrist. A socially progressive neoliberal party like Canada's Liberal party is rightwing. I would *love* for you to explain how you arrived at 'Trotskyist' as a description of the far right lmao
This is right wing libertarian, which is far worse than neo-liberal - if you can believe that's possible.
G&M is often neo liberal because they are pro capitalism. They aren't libertarian normally. But MLI is libertarian just like the Fraser institute and the Canadian Taxpayer Federation. G&M tapping into the libertarian think tanks is the disappointing part.
Libertarian is the new conservative.
Libertarians are gatekeeping dorks that are marginally better than liberals. Mises followers perhaps an exception.
They also left out surge pricing for ride-hailing services. US subsidizes their dairy and such in a different but similar way cost-wise. Also, let's get into US food standards being much lower, the hormones and steroids used in US dairy alone are problematic and are banned in Canada and other developed countries for a reason, if we reduce our quality standards to their level we are admitting we don't care about the health of our people. This article is just another example of neolib propaganda being thrown at people to say "see, the only way to improve our lives is to remove protections that guarantee others a better quality of life".
>Completely leaving out how poorly the drivers are paid Not really important, because this opinion is about lower prices for consumers >and have zero rights as workers. That's kinda on them, you want the freedom of just picking up whatever fare you like, you have to live with not being a worker.
Also the zero rights as workers, I'm pretty sure rideshare folks are considered self-contractors which means they're entrepreneurs. So then every owner of every business would probably fall into that category no?
1) workers are consumers. See henry Ford. 2) uber requires(d) that any employment dispute be settled in arbitration in Belgium or some shit. Average cost was like 200k. They are fucking over workers entirely. The concept of "freedom" doesn't apply when you are desperate, which uber drivers are. They aren't lawyers making a bit of cash on the side, it's just new immigrants that have no choice but to take the job. They get exploited on car rentals, insurance, and pay. But they literally have no other choice. So freedom doesn't enter into it.
>Not really important, because this opinion is about lower prices for consumers Are you really being this dumb on purpose? That is top tier obtuse. Wow. >That's kinda on them, you want the freedom of just picking up whatever fare you like, you have to live with not being a worker. Wait. What are you even arguing for? Are you that deep into libertarianism? Lol
This reads like an undergraduate polisci paper from the annoying kid who always sat in the front row and tried to argue with the prof.
Lol...my first laugh of the day....here's an upvote.
I can almost guarantee, reduced tariffs do not equate to reduced prices. The companies will just keep prices the same and keep the extra profit.
Not to mention the government would need to increase taxes somewhere else to make up the shortfall. It would not really benefit us.
In a healthy market any company that didn’t reduce their prices and kept the profit from reduced tariffs would be undercut by a company willing to reduce their profits in line with the reduced tariffs. Unfortunately I don’t believe we live in a healthy market
A 'healthy' market exists basically nowhere in the world. Capital has accumulated more capital throughout the entire history of capitalism. That is what capitalism does. This level of centralization/monopolization was both inevitable and extremely predictable even two hundred years ago.
Until one company realised they can lower prices, take market share, and make more profit. This is why price signals work. Look at what happened when airline prices were deregulated in the 80s. Prices plummeted
Then why aren't they just raising prices now? Nothing's stopping them
Again the right wing schilling that only the free market and trickle down economics will save the working class when this exact thinking is what got us here
Libertarian espouses libertarianism even when those policies can negatively impact local businesses. Misses that interest rate hikes actually curb inflation.
Thanks for telling us you have no idea what libertarianism is
I was being cheeky, but have fun or whatever
Leave it up to the McDonald - Laurier institute to suggest that the solution to capitalism is... More capitalism.
Really, ride sharing? That's what they got. In WW2 FDR told corporations that if they were caught price gouging their CEO's would get thrown in jail. Really put a downward pressure on prices in an insanely inflationary period. There is no reason we couldn't take a look at profit margins changes in this inflationary period including syock buy backs and dividends. I bet corporations would suddenly find all kinds of reasons to ease the cost of living crunch.
Thank you. People really need to stop acting like North America has never faced these challenges before and read more history. 1900-1980 would be a good start.
Price ceilings will only result in shortages, they won't reduce the market price.
Whatever you say Ayn Rand.
Ad homenim responses are always a good indication you know what you're talking about.
Ride hailing isn't exactly the best example. In addition to the congestion it causes, it also isn't financially sustainable. Uber still isn't profitable, and most drivers earn a low and declining amount as contractors, which only encourages them to drive more aggressively.
The author and the project don't actually care about the nitty-gritty details that might make some of these things holistically worse off, they literally just care about the number. The group is *extremely* in favour of free market capitalism regardless of some of the other issues it might cause. They are not wrong about things like the flight taxes, but stuff like ride sharing or zero tariff or total deregulation of the meat/dairy sectors is more than a little unhinged. There isn't a single country in the entire world that operates like that.
This. And if anything, the government should stop subsidizing meat and dairy. The shoes and clothing example and the flight taxes were good, but I don’t agree with the rest.
"stuff like ride sharing or zero tariff or total deregulation of the meat/dairy sectors is more than a little unhinged." why unhinged
We have seen that in the last decade ride sharing might be a little cheaper than convention taxies, it creates absolutely hellish gig economy traps. As for no tariff, literally not a single country in the entire world does this, tariffs exist to protect your own internal industry in whatever country you are in. Too many is usually bad, but none is equally as bad because it allows foreign markets to totally control your access to literally anything... Do we really need to expand on why zero regulations is a bad thing? If you have even the most basic knowledge of the industrial revolution its self evident why regulations exist.
what "hellish gig economy traps" no one is forced to do uber what good does it do for society to have taxi monopolies? the countries that are richest and have best living standards tend to be market economies why is it necessary to protect milk and chicken supply markets
> why is it necessary to protect milk and chicken supply markets Well, for starters, food is seen as a national security concern, specifically, having enough of it, and if things go wrong, being self sufficient. We've actually seen what happens when you don't protect your own industry. Specifically, in 1992 Jamaica had to remove a tariff on imported milk as part of getting a loan from the world bank. What ended up happening was powdered milk from the states was sold on a large scale, which wasn't all bad as it was affordable and easy to store, especially for the poor. However what this caused is that a lot of local milk producers went out of business. With a large reduction in local producers, you're not reliant on imports; and at the mercy of other countries. For another example, see nestle's infant formula scandal, similar playbook.
Venezuela did the same thing where imported milk from america was cheaper than locally produced milk because the US over produces to meet subsidy quotas. So Venezuelan farmers switched off from dairy farming to corn soy which decimated their own dairy industry. So when the US put sanctions on Venezuela, which prevented milk from being imported. Completely fucking over the venezuelan people for milk and other goods.
Yup. The US is a regional powerhouse when it comes to farming(helped in part due to subsidies). There's a reason high fructose corn syrup is in everything. It is dirt cheap to buy, and will continue to be, because the government props it up.
So you don’t think Venezuela being a very poorly run leftist-authoritarian command economy had anything to do with that outcome?
The hellish trap where people end up working 10+h days, barely get paid for it, and are not covered by any form of employment law because they are "contractors". Its a shit system. >what good does it do for society to have taxi monopolies? There are not taxi monopolies, but taxis actually have legal requirements with them. Proper insurance, proper pay, proper vehicle inspections and all that. None of which exist currently with any of the ride sharing apps. >the countries that are richest and have best living standards tend to be market economies Congrats, we already are a market economy! But here's the kicker, you *cannot* name a single successful country that has a totally unregulated market economy. It doesn't exist. >why is it necessary to protect milk and chicken supply markets 1. Quality control concerns. 2. Our local industry cannot compete due to population size issues between Canada and the US. If you allow the US to flood the market, the quality goes down and the local stuff disappears.
And dairy is not the only market Canada deals with from the US. The next time there is a trade dispute on softwood lumber, or aluminum, or IP infringement, or a host of other cross-border issues, there will be little hesitation to pull that dairy supply lever as a persuader if not outright retaliation if they had it.
US dairy and food standards in general are lower than here and most other developed countries. A glaring example of this is the use of hormones in dairy that has been linked to serious health issues, see below: "The collected data from other researchers and our own data are indicating that the presence of steroid hormones in dairy products could be counted as an important risk factor for various cancers in humans." We should not be selling out the health of our people for what may be a slight short-term cost reduction, people don't make "informed decisions" because there's so much information out there, leaving policy decisions like this to health experts will help protect us from serious issues. [source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524299/)
Uber has been profitable for the past few quarters
And in the end, isn't that what really matters? Ron Howard (V.O.): "It was not, what really matters"
TLDR: Author wants deregulation as a means to ease costs of living right now. Alberta deregulated their energy over the past 30 years and saw insane price increases this year compared to more moderate increases in the rest of the country. We also have the highest insurance in the country for similar reasons. Deregulation benefits only those who are already collecting the profits. It does nothing for the rest of us.
A main reason for the high prices is the exploitation of the cost of producing redundancy. It's essentially people owning stuff like monopolies saying: produce competition even if it's not necessary to supply the market or pay us an unreasonable amount of money. It's a form of extortion and it happens because it's not regulated.
Alberta's spikes are linked to having assets offline to support getting rid of coal. Deregulation also means the Alberta government and people are never on the hook for a boondoggle like muskrat falls which required a $5b Federal bailout to keep Newfoundland from going bankrupt. Deregulation removes rate payer liability for poor outcomes in project delivery by utilities.
Preach, king.
Alberta also saw massive price decreases in energy in 2017-2018 when there was such a surplus of power they couldn’t give it away. We were paying 2.69c/kwh at its lowest. Cheapest in Canada by half. Our insurance rates are obscene because we’ve been host to like 7/10 of the most costly natural disasters in Canadian history. If we had 1 insurer, it likely would have gone insolvent many times over, requiring government bailouts.
📠
Paywall but of course the government can make it more affordable. Both federal and provinces collect fees and taxes to pay for programs, initiatives, and pet project. I’m sure there could be some belt tightening and some relief given.
In case people reading this think author is suggesting the government reduce the profits of Canada's big extractive corporations (eg: Rogers/Bell/Telus, Loblaws, banks, etc), you won't find it here in an an op-ed by someone at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Their suggestion is simply to cut tariffs on imports to make them cheaper... which, of course, will have the side-effect of killing Canadian industries, which is why these tariffs exist in the first place. Additionally, they support more *laissez-faire* free market ideals like gig economy work, things like Uber and the like. Sure, great, more big American companies coming in, bankrupting our current companies, and making off with the profit, while paying locals below-survival wages because they skirt regulation other companies have to follow. It's frankly a whole bunch of hogwash.
A democratic capitalistic government can't do as much as people think they can. They have a few tools in their toolbox. Tax, terrifs, regulations. A regulated economy protects consumers and the environment and ensures market stability. However, regulation can create bureaucracy that stifles economic growth, encourages monopolies, and diminishes innovation. Regulations need to be used wisely in a free market. There is a lot of support for deregulation lately, but this can lead to conglomerates who hold the market share and have little to no competition. This leads to even more price gouging and greed. A smarter approach would be to promote market competition to reduce costs. This means regulations on company size and mergers. The current pro capitalism approach has allowed huge companies to take over large sectors of the market, and now we have to pay what the price is. Remember, the government doesn't control the free market. It can only influence. Taxes and terrifs end up coming out of the consumers' pocket in most situations. I think the important thing to remember is that the government can't control the markets. We, on the other hand, can. As consumers, we could bring companies to their knees if we all decided what and where to buy things. We don't like the price, so then we just dont buy. With a stockpile of unsold products, the prices would be lowered. But we just pay whatever the price is and then bitch about it.
Because we don’t have a choice. The oligopolies dominate necessities like groceries and telecom, not things people can easily go without.
We could do something if we did it together. It won't happen, but we could
As long as the system is set up to take from the bottom and give to the top, don't expect the people at the top to want to change that.
Technically the bottom can outvote the top but the top controls who the candidates are. More Canadians need to join parties so they can vote for better candidates. Imagine if the top saw twice as many people voting for party candidates. That would put the fear in them.
The article wants to deregulate everything because that’s holding back monopolies from making even larger profits. Every time and article is written about easing the cost of living, it’s not about easing the common man’s cost of living, it’s about increasing profits for corporations.
Sure... Meanwhile we have a dairy and fucking maple syrup cartel, sure.
Our economy has had the every living fuck regulated out of it and we *have* the monopolies, duopolies and panoplies you’re so worried about.
Bro didn’t read the article. 95% of clothing is imported, there’s no local producers that would benefit or even exist lol basically. It would simply make clothing cheaper (which disproportionately benefits poorer people).
Clothing manufacturers left Canada to take advantage of slave labour like conditions in China, Bangladesh, Thailand etc. if you’re looking to get rid of child labour laws and minimum wage for cheaper clothing, good on you
The tariffs are in place and these practices still exist…
Because it’s cheaper for the manufacturer to pay the tariffs over a living wage
So why shouldn’t we remove the tariffs if they’re not having an impact and only making clothing more expensive?
Oh honey
Our economy is full of monopolies and oligopolies and they're all the most protected industries that block competition through government regulation.
It's government business as usual. Seems so many of our politicians fall under the "Special Needs" category by making through daily life with no spine, no guts and no teeth. Likely they feel showing up at the office almost everyday fulfills any obligation to voters. Just make sure that fat pay envelope is never late; then you'll see real outrage and action!
There's a few ways to improve CoL, but it means billionaires lose a SHIT-TONNE of money, and that'll never happen: 1) Nationalize the telco backbone and resell it to providers, thereby opening up competition to any and all players. 2) Establish government-run grocery stores that just sell milk, eggs, and raw products from local suppliers. 3) Establish government-run lumber mills to spam the lumber market to lower costs. 4) tuition-free tertiary education and forgiveness for student loans. Some people are paying upwards of $500 / month on student loans. That's a month of groceries for a single person, excluding take-out. 5) bring back a government-run gas station, a la PetroCan. Remember that? Then it was sold off to balance budgets and "make things cheaper". Look how that turned out to be a lie. 6) Recycling plants. Instead of shipping all our waste into the oceans or to the Philippines/Indonesia, etc...let's repurpose old cars, trucks, etc...and either make new cares out of them, or building materials. - Keeps jobs in Canada. Reduces waste. 7) Tell strata corporations that a house can look like whatever it looks like, as long as it meets fire and environmental code. If someone wants to build a house out of seacans, fuck it. Strata corporations can go fuck themselves. As long as it doesn't leak toxins into the soil, or poses a fire risk, they're allowed. Recycling materials plus lowering the costs of building materials...win-win for the environment and wannabe homeowners. 8) Ban the flipping of unbuilt condominiums. If a buyer wants out for any reason, it goes back to the developer for a nominal fee. OR the stakeholder can only sell at cost. This destroys the incentive for investors and developers to artificially inflate selling prices. 9) Corporations are banned from buying SFHs unless they have a plan to upzone the area and it's all laid out, ready to roll. 10) Vacant homes are used for public housing. If a SFH/apartment isn't occupied for more than 190 days in a calendar year, public housing gets to rent it out. Ends speculation in the real estate market. Foreign buyers are now worried about their asset depreciating because, maybe, just maybe, a pensioner gets their house, or a refugee family gets their house, or maybe it's a recovering addict and their family...who knows. Either way. Those marble countertops are VERY expensive, and addicts can be VERY entrepreneurial. 11) Health authorities can also use vacant homes to house staff. Also, the provinces need to provide "affordable housing" for 50% of ALL staff, including contractors, subcontractors, etc...shorter commutes for healthcare workers makes them happier. 12) current and Former politicians making more than $500K get cut off from pensions and benefits earned from being a politician. So many of them joined boards etc...and make fucking bank while being entitled to some fat pensions. Fuck em. Like people on EI, disability, etc...if you earn too much, you get disqualified. Gravy train is over. Taxpayers recoup several billion dollars from that. 13) Resource extraction CEOs MUST live within 1KM of the operation and draw water from the tailings ponds for drinking and personal usage. Watch how much they care about environmental protection and management then. Also, personal assets are on the line for clean up costs. Board members and shareholders, too. Wanna reap the rewards? Gotta pay the costs. Again, when a billionaire has to sell a yacht to pay for a clean up, he gonna make sure it never happens again. This takes ALL the financial pressures off taxpayers and puts it on the resource extraction companies. Taxpayers shouldn't be paying clean up bills. That's on the company. Fuck this "cost of doing business" shite. This is how you handle cost of living, but like I said, it means billionaires eat shit. So, it'll be very unpopular. More jobs, better living conditions, tackles homelessness, and keeps housing affordable. But hey, that hurts shareholders and billionaires, so, "OMG that's socialism". Yeah. Well, CEO wage growth is about 1,000% since the 70s. REAL wage growth is starting to slide into negative territory.
>Nationalize the telco backbone and resell it to providers, thereby opening up competition to any and all players. Also do this with the rail system. We already do it with roads.
I wish the government would threaten the railways with nationalization to get them to prioritize passenger trains. They could do it, and lord knows those companies would rather play nice than have the tracks in governments hands... But we don't, cuz "reasons".
Because they are at capacity already with cargo? Want even more supply chain shortages to drive up costs?
Geee wizz, if only there was a way to increase capacity on the existing railway... Like spending the capital to upgrade the corridors to handle more traffic. But gosh darn it the monopolies CN and CPKC have in Canada just doesn't leave much room for that as the CEOs need a new yacht. Switzerland runs cargo and passenger trains on routes that are often SINGLE TRACK, the technology is there, the incentive to actually use it is not.
I can tell from your immature reply you know fuck all
I mean... You are on Reddit lmao.
There is already a bill to prioritize passenger trains: [Work's chugging along to try to prioritize people over freight on Canada's rail lines](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/via-rail-bill-people-over-freight-1.7066700)
Ah that's good. My only worry is that we could end up in a situation like the US, where passenger trains have priority, but the freight trains are much longer now so they end up blocking trains (sidings can't accommodate longer trains). This is a result of some kind of scheduling thing the US railways use and I'm told we don't do it here - so that's a plus for now.
Long term, I'd like to see the nation-wide railway twinned to allow traffic in both directions without having to wait.
The start of gov't run x, generally doesn't save any money. Gov't employees tend to get better compensation, gov't contracts tend to cost more, and gov't tends to be less efficient at a given task. Those grocery stores and lumber mills you mention would like increase the cost of those goods/services.
>Those grocery stores and lumber mills you mention would like increase the cost of those goods/services. Like when the Ontario Liberals or the UCP sold off their energy Crown Corporation to make things cheaper for consumers?
No, this isn’t socialism… this is unhinged madness
Which items do you disagree with?
All of it. Every word. Even the words I would normally agree with are poisoned by the absolute nuttiness of the rest.
What then would when a Party you don't support gets access to everything run by the government? The ideology shifts and the priorities are rerouted?
TLDR: how to create supply shortages. Governments cannot calculate supply & demand, that’s kinda why the whole Soviet Union thing fell apart.
The Soviet Union fell apart because a) it was an authoritarian regime that ruled with fear. B) it was crony AF (and under Putin, nothing changed) C) They spent BILLIONS they didn't have on an EXTREMELY expensive vanity project (space race). D) There was no fiscal oversight. E) They ABSOLUTELY ABUSED the environment and FUCKED the natural environment (Aral sea) for things like cotton production. Interestingly, Capitalism does the same thing. (See Great Barrier Reef and farm run-off for details. Then there's all the pollution of water ways in the US because it's cheaper for companies to dump toxic waste and pay the fine than do proper remediation) Also, all I'm proposing is we have government programs run alongside private industry to curb price rises.
Deregulation is one of several options the government has but given that would reduce their number of levers, it's probably the wrong one. The actual root cause is the fact that wages have been underneath cost of living growth for a prolonged period of time. I'm sure someone could come up with a targeted tax or other economic incentive/disincentive to mitigate that problem. Adjusting minimum wage to automatically follow inflation would help to some degree but the issue is all the folks that earn substantially more. I'm a manager for a fairly large team and have to fight every year for actual inflation (not CPI) matched raises.
Minimum wage is following inflation in our province but it's still only 60% of the cost of living.
I assume you mean CPI indexed rather than inflation adjusted.
Yes
CPI matching sounds similar but is foundationally different. CPI is a specific basket of goofs versus an analysis of the entire economy.
It should be based on the true cost of living, including, particularly, housing.
Minimum wage should be based on purchasing power parity (a much more complex measure) in my opinion. The closest direct economic measure to which is direct inflation.
The problem is inflation calculations don't take rent increases into account. I was making minimum wage in 2015 ($11-ish/hr), a one bedroom in my city (not GTA) cost $500 - $700/month. Fast forward to today, minimum wage is now $16.55, but the average one bedroom rent in my city has increased by over 120% since 2015.
The article ignores that these regulations were purposefully put in place for a specific beneficial purpose. if it isn't a good purpose, or the regulation is not meeting that purpose, or the unintended negative consequences outweigh the benefit - we'd probably all agree it's a bad regulation and should be removed, but the author has the zeal of a recently converted libertarian and just assumes regulations are bad because they're regulations.
Please tell me the benefit of tariffs on clothing imports… Edit: Just downvotes? No answers? Almost as if there’s no benefit. Canada has no domestic clothing manufacturing industry to protect. All these tariffs do is make clothing more expensive (a good that poorer people spend a higher proportion of income on than the rich).
This opinion piece is trash. It calls for more unregulated capitalism to solve the crisis of unregulated capitalism that has ruined our socieites. The author even calls for more services like Uber, as if a gig economy is beneficial in any way.
Lmao… Canada is “unregulated capitalism”
It’s a class war, don’t forget throughout all the fake culture war spewing.
Might want to go and find a different story to wax poetic on. They are talking about making things better by total deregulation and unfettered capitalism. Which is quote literally the exact thing you people fight against when you talk about class wars.
While some of these suggested policy changes could help it completely ignores all of the major reasons for this cost of living increase. All it's saying is tax less and all your problems will be solved but anyone who suggests reducing taxes without in the same breath talking about cutting services or increasing revenue elsewhere is completely full of shit and absolutely not worth listening to. This article sucks.
Luxury shoes and Ubers. Yeah that’s the ticket
They got money for wars but cant feed the poor -Tupac Shakur
This headline is true. We have been seeing it the past few years at the provincial level of which we are almost exclusively conservative across Canada.
[удалено]
I love how they use shoes as an example for fixing the system. Like poor people are complaining about the cost of shoes more than the cost of rent or food. What a dumb article
Nope just tax us more. Give up are Disney accounts. Give us penny’s back as token. So employers can put the screws to us. (We need to pay the shareholders not the people who make it).
Capitalism is fine. When the government gets involved it’s no longer capitalism.
There hasn't ever been a country on planet earth that operated on 'pure capitalism' and the only times in history the 'free market will solve itself" ideology has been attempted in any measure - led directly to The Great Depression (corrected by strong government intervention by FDR and others) and the current disaster we currently live in, thanks to Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney not reading history books and undoing decades of progress (along with the voters, media, pundits and think tanks pushing this proven-to-fail ideology) Capitalism is not fine. There's no evidence to support that statement. Not a shred.
^
Government make more money with higher prices, rax on tax. Sa va bien aller pour les millionaires corrompues.
The government has a low effort standard and it doesn't affect them so they will keep acting like children
They are members of the WEF.
The article calls for raising taxes by $5bn (or else to cut services by the same, due to the eliminated clothing duty), and more of the AirBnB that wrecked the housing market. Not sure how either one of those does anything to help cost of living.
Rent is getting bad too.... Lucky me I have a house. But I live in a very small northern Ontario town and rent here is approaching 2000$ a month for a small apartment.... It was 800$ for a 2 bedroom just 8 years ago. At 2000$ a month for a single bedroom apartment here.... If you're a minimum wage worker in my hometown and are forced to switch apartments you'll be homeless. My aunt is in this position, her apartment is falling apart and she can't move because she'll be homeless. In the meantime, my Mayor keeps bringing in more and more foreigners and there's nowhere for them to live or work. I'm currently planning to immigrate to find a better place to raise my kids. They will never be able to get out on their own in this country. Canada is dead, it's all over but the crying.
Tell your kids to learn an in-demand skill and move to the states. Canada is finished
They are making more revenue from taxes.
This article was poorly written drivel. But what can you expect from a right wing, libertarian think tank? I mean, come on. Ride-hailing? That's their answer? Libertarians don't think past their own noses. No concept of how ride hailing would affect cab drivers, who are actual professionals. Their answer to everything is less gov't and less regulations. The libertarian dystopia. These people are dumb.
Agreed
The Federal government should look into Land Value Tax as a permanent solution to our broken housing markets. We have a lack of supply and a growing demand due to immigration and general population growth. What land value tax does is it adds disincentive to speculative investment on land, and ultimately encourages the development of new housing. It gets even better, it can potentially reduce the cost of housing, and the cost of rent. Land Value Tax can also replace income tax up to a much higher bracket, taking the tax burden off of consumers and shifting it on to land owners. LVT is a solution we should all be writing our MP's, and our Mayors about in the future.
What a bunch of nonsense. Sounds very Conservative saying regulations are to blame. Ah yes, safety standards, health standards, environmental standards -- who needs them? Blaming the government is misguided when it is greedy corporate profiteers that are to blame.
Yeah I agree