Since breaking the Capitalist Pig cartoon story on March 3rd, the original thread has now run into the hundreds of comments. (And now it’s been linked at Fark) It’s time to update the post, if only to give the discussion a fresh start.
Pressure is still on theSheaf – local media isn’t letting the story go. The Saskatchewan Human Rights commission has received a number of complaints and will decide what to do by months end. FWIW, I think that’s going too far – but then, in my perfect world, these extra-legal, unaccountable thought policing bodies wouldn’t exist n the first place. Though, I’m just twisted enough to enjoy the show of a far-left commission facing hatemongering from “one of their own”. But that’s a topic for another day.
One comment (there are many good ones) did catch my eye, and I’ll reproduce it here – commentor “Karl” replies to “Chad”‘
You wrote: “The cartoon is showing the Christianity and Capitalism/consumerism go hand in hand.”
Actually, it seemed to be showing Christianity and Capitalism/Consumerism going dick in mouth. If he had wanted to convey “hand in hand”, he could have drawn them holding hands. The point (innane though it is) would have been made, and no one would have been offended by the vulgarity of it. Jesus did not need to be made out to be a homosexual with zoophilic tendencies. And Christians need not be told that we are somehow the immature ones for being offended at an image of our Lord performing fellatio on a pig.
You went on:“How is that not true? Has anyone noticed that Xmas is more about a fat guy wearing red than christ’s birth? What about easter? A rabbit that lays eggs.”
As a pastor I can tell you that there is no group who is more critical of this trend than Christians. Have you not noticed all of the ‘keep the Christ in Christmas’ stuff? Have you not noticed that it is non religious people who continually want ‘holiday trees’ and the non specific ‘happy holidays’ greetings rather than ‘merry Christmas’? Have you not seen that non religious people are the ones who insist upon the consumerist non-Christian holiday of sentimentality, greed and gluttony that Christmas has become?? I say non religious, because in my experience, non Christian religious people (eg Muslims, Jews, Hindus) have no problem with Christmas. The ones who have the problem are those of ‘Christian Stock’ who put on airs of sophisticated athiesm, or groovy non sprecific spirituality which means anything, and nothing. Thye claim to be above Christianity, but really they are obcessed with it, blaming it for all of society’s ills, for every tragedy and travesty, and no doubt for their acne as well. To blame Christianity for the bastardization of Christmas is laughable!! If you feel so strongly about it, why don’t you ‘stick it to the man’ by letting your employer know that you are available to work on December 24th and 25th. And don’t buy anybody any presents. Don’t accept any either. Don’t visit family. Refuse that Christmas bonus. And might I suggest a protest fast on the 25th. For myself, I’ll do what I always do on Christmas. Preach the Word, administer Holy Communion, and later that day, break my Advent fast as I feast with my family in celebration of the Nativity of my Lord.
You continued: “I think Christianity has turned became a thing of social status. I find this mind blowing because Jesus preached about doing the exact opposite of this.”
I would find this mind blowing too, if it were true. Perhaps it was once, but the ’70’s are a long time ago. I wear my clerical collar in public quite a lot. I can relate well to the goths, because I get as many hostile stares. (and they seem to like to dress in black as much as I do). Think about it man!!! Stockwell Day was vilified for his Christian beliefs (remember the ‘How Scary’ McLeans cover?). Christians are regularily ridiculed for their beliefs. If we were looking for worldly status, we would be trying out for Canadian Idol, not living as Christians.
I was offended by the cartoon, and I don’t buy the argument that I am missing some deeper meaning. To me it is a sophmoric neo marxist interpretation of religion and its relationship to capitalism which was already past its expiry date some 20 years ago, and is only currently alive in the never never land of tenured political science chairs occupied by professors who are still a little miffed that revolution they boldly predicted some 40 years ago never came to pass. And how their young sheep bleat!!
Nicely done, I thought.
Now, time to take this issue down another tangent – so far the controversy has been limited to the offense given to Christians. That raises an interesting, and as yet, unasked question – When are the cartoonists going to be called on the carpet to explain the hatred directed at so-called “capitalists”?
The premise that “capitalism=bad” and that any group, any individual, any religion should have to disassociate themselves from business to attain moral purity is an intellectual embarrassment to begin with. But the cartoon goes one step further – in choosing a pig to represent the businessman, they have chosen the time honored progaganda tool of dehumanization.
That these small-minded refugees of Marxism are receiving a heavily subsidized education at an institution funded by tax revenues generated in large part by the very “capitalists” they would portray as pigs, just adds injury to insult.
Instead of hauling them before the Human Rights Commission, or calling for a wholesale purge at the Sheaf. I’d suggest a not-so-gentle push towards a little moral purity of their own – by removing the stench of “capitalism/consumerism” from their university education. Allow the enlightened to demonstrate the courage of their left-wing convictions. Present them with an invoice for the total cost of their education to date, adjust tuition to cover 100% of the costs, and cut off of any tax-funded student loans.
Something tells me the artist Y!th and his defenders at the U of S would find that a little too hard to swallow.
I think that something like 90% of ALL income taxes are paid by the top few percent of income earners in Canada.
As Randy Bachman was saying on the CBC (!!) one Saturday night, Canadas high income taxes drive away her most valuable (and talented) tax payers.
Mike Sutton, Author of “Too Many Christians Not Enough Lions” has made himself available for comments and/or criticisms of his cartoon. I remind letter writers to be civil and respectful towards Mr. Sutton, no matter how upset you may be.
mikesuttonstjohns@yahoo.ca
Kmm…Do you know what socialism is?
Socialism- Wiki
“Socialism is an ideology of a social and economic system in which the means of production are collectively owned and administered by all of society. Amongst other things, this is intended to produce a more evenly spread distribution of wealth. The idea of abolition of private property became a part of the idea in the early 19th century.In Marxist theory, it also refers to the society that would succeed or supplant capitalism, and would later develop further into communism, where the state would wither away.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Daniel
“The only rewards in Socialism is the receiving of other peoples money because you present yourself as one of many types of loser.”
Well said Duke.
Steve
Marx claimed that Capitalism would self destruct because the owners of capital would end up owning virtually everything. This is perhaps not happening as quickly as Marx anticipated but it is happening. Below is a quote from the March 6th issue of the New York Times from a column by Paul Krugman.
” Between 1979 and 2003, according to a recent research paper published by the I.R.S., the share of overall income received by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40 percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a tiny, wealthy elite: more than half the income share lost by the bottom 80 percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.”
So Capitalism is working BUT FOR WHOM?
So be careful what and whom you are defending when you defend Capitalism. Are you brainwashed?
Maybe. Maybe the kids know something the older folks don’t. They are going to be treading water economically over their work life. Not much different from what they are doing already.
Another Marxist who doesn’t understand wealth creation, thinking that wealth is static and is divided like a pie.
“Like they predicted how many medical personnel would be needed?
An excellent example of bad government. If they had done the proper demographic research they wouldn’t have closed the nursing schools.
A responsible government should look at what and will be needed and fund accordingly.
Not just more stoopid marxism,
but Krugman,
PAUL KRUGMAN,
Mr. “I PREDICT KERRY WILL WIN”
What a joke!
That Moron!
The latest from the KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD
ol hoss
when your share of the pie decreases from 50% to 40% you are losing some of the pie relative to what you had 25 years ago. Regardless of the size of the pie. Further half of that missing 10% is going to the top quarter of one percent of the money earners. Maybe you don’t miss your 10% of the pie but I do.
Doug
No this was Krugman quoting the IRS. So if you don’t like the numbers tell it to the commie IRS.
You know, that part of the commie American Government that collects taxes. Hey, maybe America is going commie and i didn’t notice!
“I think that something like 90% of ALL income taxes are paid by the top few percent of income earners in Canada.” – no bozos allowed, at 5:16 PM
Now that is the kind of fact that would blow away a lot of smokescreens. Bozo, would you mind giving the source of that statistic? I would like to see what else is there.
Doug: I live on Prince Edward Island. (a contender for Canada’s most socialist province).
Go ahead an borrow that term. It’s not mine, my professors seriously said that we had to develop a Critical Consciousness. What we were supposed to be critical of was already blatantly defined for us.
Best site I’ve found that defends Christianity and capitalism (though that’s simplifying a bit) is The Acton Institute.
“The Mission of the Acton Institute is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.”
Great articles, podcasts and scholarship.
Saskboy, no flip flop whatsoever on Gormley’s part. The fundamental difference between the Western Standard and the Sheaf is that no one is forced to subsidize the Western Standard. The Western Standard doesn’t beg the government (aka the taxpayer) for more funding. The Western Standard faces the economic consequences of its publication decisions. The only commonality is that both publications are subject to Canadian and provincial laws (i.e., human rights legislation, libel & slander, etc.).
The problem with the socialist media in this country (CBC, Sheaf, etc) is that they can’t stand up on their own merits and taxpayers are forced to fund them. That is what is wrong with this Sheaf issue.
steve d
I’ve been sittin on the sidelines here and I just love pie, all types of pie. Saskatoon, cherry, banana cream – Heck I better stop it’s making me hungry!
I can’t recall what share of pie my relatives had 25 years ago but I’ll take you at your word about that.
Can’t really follow all that about the half of that missing 10% going to the top quarter of one percent. I haven’t had as much schooling as you.
But it’s never surprised me much that the top earners get more pie than the likes of you and I..
I don’t blame you for being miffed about losing 10% of your pie. From what I’ve seen you write I figure it could be a bunch more than that.
And that’s not a pretty thing to ponder for any of us trying to make the world a finer place.
A few of the responses remind me of a theory I’ve mentioned here before – that one of the core underpinnings of leftist ideology is poor reading comprehension.
Steve d:
So, you would rather the alternative, where the government owns every last thing, wealth creation stagnates and we end up trying to escape on dingys like Castro’s Cubans?
What socialists don’t understand about private ownership is that you are always free to open up a competing business. With true socialism (rather than the mixed economy we have), everything is a monopoly. Think of the frustration you encounter with our healthcare system occurring in every single industry, including food.
Do you have any problem with the fact the province owns all healthcare?
Kate
One of the pre-requisites for being a true-believer conservative is pig headedness. No matter what they read in opposition they still don’t get it.
Angela
Government shouldn’t own every last thing. But because wealth is created BECAUSE the people allow it to happen doesn’t mean those that have and control wealth now can begin to direct government. Corporate taxes used to be 50% of all tax income now they are about 16% with the regular taxpayer picking up the slack. Corporate welfare costs the state far more than actual welfare programs.
In the end, the power elite must remember where all power actually lies and act accordingly. There is a small elite which is vaccuuming up more and more of everything there is to own. The gap between the rich and poor is growing.
I know this situation will eventually correct itself one way or another. Greed and the obscene accummulation of wealth and power after all is not new.
An excellent example of bad government. If they had done the proper demographic research they wouldn’t have closed the nursing schools.
It’s forever the complaint of socialists that if only socialism worked better it would work.
Socialism is akin to spinning one’s wheels in the mud.
Maybe we gotta spin faster to get something done. Something must be happening, I see a lot of, uh, mud flying and lots of movement and the noise, oh that wonderful noise of circular motion…
when your share of the pie decreases from 50% to 40% you are losing some of the pie relative to what you had 25 years ago. Regardless of the size of the pie.
Interesting, that socialist math.
50% of 100 = 50
40% of 200 = 80
Nevertheless, socialist math says 80 is less than 50.
The author of “Too Many Christians, Not Enough Lions” has responded to my E-Mail, and shows that I was right in my initial assesment all along:
http://uncommontruths.blogspot.com/2006/03/cartoon-madness-part-four-final.html
This guy is one hell of a piece of work. Wow. We have met the opposition, and he is ignorant.
***ALERT***
The Sheaf has released Thursday the 9th’s edition, online now.
Go to http://thesheaf.com/ and near the bottom right is tte .pdf download link.
Page two has the apology and resignation of their editor.
steve d, another IRS evaluation:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200510130903.asp
….”the latest Internal Revenue Service data on distribution of the tax burden:
The data show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes in 2003, although they earned just 16.8 percent of the adjusted gross income.
The top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than half of all federal income taxes, the top 10 percent paid two-thirds, and the top half of taxpayers paid 96.5 percent � meaning that the bottom half paid just 3.5 percent.
Another IRS report deconstructed the top 1 percent and found that the top 10 percent of the top 1 percent (the top 0.1 percent) increased their share of all federal income taxes from 7 percent in 1980 to 15.3 percent in 2003.
These 129,000 tax filers earned 7.6 percent of the income and paid an average tax rate of 23.6 percent. This came to $114.6 billion � four times more than all the taxes paid by the 64 million taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent, who paid an average tax rate of 2.9 percent.”
~~~~
KMM: “I was simply saying that removing public funding for the university is a lessening of socialism.”
And that would be a bad thing? Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale. All are ‘privately funded’ schools, recognized for excellence. Can everyone afford to go? Obviously not. Yet both the rich and the poor attend. The rich have to meet the schools minimum standards and the poor by deciding to excel and meet the scholarship standards. Life may not be complelely fair, but you can bet the ‘poor’ person who excels won’t be poor for long.
MIT and Stanford in particular, attract massive amounts of funding from the private sector because the schools recognize the benefits of partnerships – unlike Canadian universities that for the most part put their socialist noses in the air and actively resist any participation by the private sector.
KMM: (Crown Corporations) “Admittedly they don’t match the private sector for profits”
And why pray tell, is that? They often have huge competitve advantages but because they ‘can’t fail’ they become overburdened with bureaucracy and hidebound in practice. They don’t evolve because they don’t have to. In fact, too often they are government monopolies and not ‘competitive business’. And they still, more often than not, lose money.
KMM: “any student that sees their tuition double or whatever will want to go back to the more socialist method of subsidization”
Reminds me of the all too true old maxim: If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you’ll always have the support of Paul. Fortunately, most of the Pauls eventually become Peters when they see how much is taken off their paycheques to pay the ‘Pauls’ who follow in their footsteps.
Steve D: “No one tells them about the dark side and dark history of Capitalism until they get to University.”
Free enterprise is not perfect, but like democracy, it clearly beats everything else. So what about the ‘dark side’ of the alternative? 20 million lost under Stalin’s communism. 40 million under Mao’s communism. These tragedies include deaths due to executions, forced labor camps and genocides of certain social/ethnic groups – none of which happen under western free enterprise. Is the shameful history of ‘socialism’ widely disseminated in universities? Didn’t think so.
Hey! I just realized that I’m one of those capitalist pigs!
Being a self employed small businessman I do evil things like:
1. Pay my 2 employees ~$30000 before I see a single penny myself.
2. Spend +$40000/yr on local suppliers & subtrades.
3. Pay massive commercial property/education tax on my property.
4. Collect +$10000/yr in PST & GST for the government.
5. Pay for about a dozen useless licenses & permits.
All this so I can be a little independent & scrape out a living less than what the typical unionized janitor makes ~$30000/yr.
The worst thing is I’ve even taken work from government employees & union shops!
I feel so guilty. :
BTW, how many of you marxists out there contribute over $90000 into your local economy?
Sorry for the little rant. Doing my bookwork at the moment. Just wanted to put a human face on this.
Hopefully now we all can put this to rest, and moreso, hopefully some learned a lesson of what desecration, err, discretion means.
Chris in Manitoba,
“BTW, how many of you marxists out there contribute over $90000 into your local economy?”
Boy are you ever misguided. Marxists don’t “put in” they “take out”. In your case, and mine, we are short about $30000 (or more) each … it’s always more than you put in … unless you put in nothing or less.
I guess we will have to wait for the Libs to get again to apply for a grant for a fuck-up parade.
‘local’ economy is now a mere illusion, comrade. the last time i looked down the commercial brick road it was paved with old navy, pier 1, and that luvable ol’ home-town business wrecker, walmart.
“‘local’ economy is now a mere illusion, comrade. the last time i looked down the commercial brick road it was paved with old navy, pier 1, and that luvable ol’ home-town business wrecker, walmart.”
Well … no. Check up on the stats for small business in Canada. The majority of business taxes are paid by people living in your community … they also employ the majority of people (except for the government in some areas).
acedementia, you may not believe this but I make an extreme effort to purchase & support local/small business when ever possible. As do most other small businesses. We are in the same boat & tend to support each other. In my experience it’s been the government tenders & contracts that have gone to the big boys or down south.
BTW, I hate all those big box stores! Poor service & quality. Does that make me a bad right winger?
This whole debate reminds me of this saying:
“A socialist is somone who feels he owes a great debt to his fellow man…and wants to pay it off with your money”
ol hoss,
I’m for:
1. small government
2. any money that is taxed from the public should be used wisely for the public good.
Apparently poor reading comprehension and Pavlovian responses to selected sentences rather than comprehending the entire argument is not totally exclusive to the left.
Canadians can serve in the US military, at least my niece can. Only restriction is the amount of security clearance allowed.
The comments by Paul about 50 back show him for what he is, a whiny sniveling leftie who is so inclusive of all that he tries pathetically to dis religion as a fairy tale. It is as if they are threatened by the very idea of religion.
“that luvable ol’ home-town business wrecker, walmart.”
Posted by academentia at March 9, 2006 12:50 AM
Man, guys such as you just don’t get how markets work. I’ve been a small (thats small ‘s’)business owner all my life and I don’t have any problem with Walmart or any other competitor.
Walmart doesn’t ’cause’ other business to fail. (Most)People will always choose to shop where it’s in their own self-interest. Nobody ever said they HAD to shop at a Walmart. And nobody owes another business owner large or small, an obligation to help keep them in business.
You know who’s shopping at Walmart, don’t you. You. Me. Young families. Teachers. Lawyers. Nurses. Everybody. Even the socialists.
Don’t try and put another segment of society in the victim role.
Government shouldn’t own every last thing.
Governments shouldn’t own anything. There is no industry that they succeed as well as the private sector in terms of profits and shareholder value – an important element in all of our retirements and economic well-being.
So Capitalism is working BUT FOR WHOM?
Look around at what countries have the highest per capita incomes. Are you that lame or fact challenged? Capitalism works for anyone willing and able to participate.
I’m beginning to think that behind you and your prior incarnation “steve from bc”(?) is an anti-social adolescent geting your kicks from being the skunk at a garden party.
The most persuasive fact laden arguments you walk on past or respond ignoring direct challenges to your childish dribble. You parrot the stupidest trash without a factual basis that some lame professor constructed for you.
It’s getting old, steve “d” or “from bc”(?)
Return to Fark, DailyKos or Indymedia where you can have a leadership position. Critical thinking isn’t for you.
A few of the responses remind me of a theory I’ve mentioned here before – that one of the core underpinnings of leftist ideology is poor reading comprehension.
Agree, Kate, poor reading comprehension is a requirement of leftist ideology. If the ridiculous leftist sheeple ever read history, economics or decent literature they would soon be off the plantation.
Ever notice that your basic leftist’s underpinnings are feelings(I feel it most be true.) rather than the empirical/logical quest for truth.
1. Where I stand: The cartoon is offensive to me because it’s poorly drawn and not very funny. As far as offending the religious sensibilities of people, I can certainly see why Christians or Jews would be offended by the cartoon, but since when is offending Christians or Jews a crime? This afternoon on Rawlco there were actually call-in idiots who were characterizing the cartoon as “hate speech”. This just goes to show how much “hate speech” laws suck: they have become an all-purpose legal cudgel with which to beat those who exercise their free speech (with or without exercising their common sense). I think that if we’re serious about free speech as a foundation of democracy, we should not allow the State to determine what is acceptable. The remedy for speech you don’t like is to speak up yourself and denounce it, but not to throw people in jail for saying something disagreeable (and no, this doesn’t imply that speech should never be regulated, but the point is we already have laws against slander and incitement, and we don’t need a separate category for a concept as ill-defined as “spreading hate”). Anyway, calling this particular cartoon “hate speech” is ridiculous even under the current definition of the term.
2. The hypocrisy the right-wing media in this town has shown over the cartoon is absolutely radiant. We have Gormley on his show salaciously describing in ever-more-graphic detail the content of the cartoon leaving absolutely NOTHING to the imagination while going on and on about how disgraceful the whole thing is, et cetera. Of course I’d be willing to bet that Small Dead Animals has certainly gotten its share of hits after printing the cartoon, eh, Kate? I guess these images are only deemed ultra-offensive when they are purveyed by the “left-wing”. Conservatives seem to feel they can traffic in offensive speech all they want if it’s in service to their demagoguery. It just goes to show the latent pornographic cravings simmering within the typical social conservative.
3. It’s clear the Sheaf was wrong to ban the Danish cartoons on the grounds of respect for religious sensibilities, and then turn around and print the Jesus cartoon. On the other hand, there were a lot of conservatives who pooh-poohed the Muslim outrage over the Danish cartoons, citing their veneration of the concept of “free speech” (e.g. the Western Standard). I have also seen McNally Robinson excoriated on this blog for not selling the WS issue with the Danish cartoons. Will these champions of “free speech” now stick up for the students who put out the Sheaf? Are those of you who are howling for heads to roll at the Sheaf not “unwilling to make a modest effort at home”, in the effort to “secure(e) secularism and liberty”. The shoe now appears to be on the other foot, doesn’t it?
Kmm…Do you know what socialism is?
Socialism- Wiki
“Socialism is an ideology of a social and economic system in which the means of production are collectively owned and administered by all of society. Amongst other things, this is intended to produce a more evenly spread distribution of wealth. The idea of abolition of private property became a part of the idea in the early 19th century.In Marxist theory, it also refers to the society that would succeed or supplant capitalism, and would later develop further into communism, where the state would wither away.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Daniel
Posted by Daniel at March 8, 2006 06:21 PM
Of course I know what socialism is. What’s your point?
“KMM: (Crown Corporations) “Admittedly they don’t match the private sector for profits”
And why pray tell, is that? They often have huge competitve advantages but because they ‘can’t fail’ they become overburdened with bureaucracy and hidebound in practice. They don’t evolve because they don’t have to. In fact, too often they are government monopolies and not ‘competitive business’. And they still, more often than not, lose money.”
hmm, not sure of the point of this one either. I never did argue for or against socialism in any of my posts as far as I remember. I was simply making those statements in order to support my claim that cutting funding in order to teach students the perils of socialism is actually teaching them the perils of capitalism.
Meanwhile, Scottie was at the trough piggling away when Mr. Blackberry intervenined. Who is this Mr. Blackberry? Waht are Blackberry addicts? Why would Brison be tracking down a lady? Afraid of blackberry blackmail? Who is Mr. X? The thot plickens. Who is hunting whom? Will Mr. X help Scottie? Who is whom? Will scottie need scotties?
And now, a word from our sponsorship scandal…$$$$$$ +
Mr. Brison was trying to track down a woman who had taken a picture of him and his partner at an event in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre several weeks before. The woman, as it turned out, was a friend of Mr. Nowlan, so Mr. Brison e-mailed his old acquaintance to get her number, beginning the now infamous electronic exchange.
When The Globe and Mail published this story on Tuesday, Mr. Brison’s office checked his agenda to see where he was when the messages were sent. Ottawa is filled with BlackBerry addicts and Mr. Brison is apparently one of the worst.
One of his strategists suggested yesterday that Mr. Brison was quite possibly in the House of Commons at the time, BlackBerrying away to Mr. Nowlan during votes. +
http://www.rapp.org/url/?A8P8FIRH
ol hoss,
I’m for:
1. small government
2. any money that is taxed from the public should be used wisely for the public good.
Excellent, you can now explain why you think gov’t should be in the forecasting business when past experience shows them always to have been wrong.
Thanks for the data on the income tax breakdown Bufflo Bean.
Re: The data show that the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 34.3 percent of all federal income taxes in 2003,
Presumably this very wealthy top 1% has options.
If they get sick of paying high taxes they can take up residence elsewhere.
Unless, like their hero Fidel, the socialists make that illegal too and turn Canada into a socialist prison.
There are only 5 ways to create wealth.
1) Work, i.e., employment
2) Business, i.e., employing others.
3) Ideas, i.e., invent, market, consult.
4) Invest, ie., put your money to work.
5) Leverage, i.e., put other peoples money to work.
Thats all folks!
Kmm wrote:
“Are you joking? Do you even know what the left or socialism is? I’m assuming you dont because of your statement. Socialism basically is a more prominent role of government(eg. crown corps, public health care, PUBLIC EDUCATION) Your so called Leftists are not funded by the system they want to destroy. Saskatchewan has a mixed economy”
The reason I sent you the definition of Socialism is you seemed to me to be spreading disinformation about it. Socialism is far more than “a more prominent role in government” as you state…read my previous post for socialisms definition. By definition, you seemed to be the one who didn’t know what socialism is.
You asked “what is my point?”
Let us go to the lab and look at the experiment to put the conversation in context:
First lets zip bck to the 1930’s. Alberta and her twin sister Saskatchewan, born the same time in 1905 had basically the same agrarian based economies that failed by and large because of the depression. The populations were roughly equal immigrating about the same time from similar backgrounds. Land mass similar. Resources similar. Let us fast forward to today and look at the twins. Albertas popualation is about triple Saskatchewans. Saskatchewans biggest export is its best and brightest, its youth. Albertas number one import…you guessed it, youth from everywhere else. Alberta has one of the hottest economies in Canada, without a debt now. Saskatchewan is mired in debt with a sluggish economy.
With almost the exact same potential in resources, and it could be argued that Saskatchewan has much more because of potash and uranium, we are today two very different provinces. What is the difference? or what made the difference? Alberta has had strong conservative governments from the mid 1930’s til present. Saskatchewan on the other hand had socialism take root in the mid 1940’s when the patron saint of Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas came to power with the CCF. By and large we have had socialist or left leaning governments since then with tenures by both the Conservatives and the Liberals for a time.
Today Saskatchewan has corporations competing with privately owned companies…For example, why does the government feel they have to provide my cable televison? There is a debris trail of failed government corporations, look into Spudco. We continue to lose millions in public money to ventures that would best be left to the entrepreneurial risk takers. If there is a need, the market is very good at filling it. Saskatchewan has become beaurocratically top heavy to the point of ridiculous for the size of our popualation and it is stifling the economy. Alberta is a lean mean fighting machine with a prosperous ecomomy that encourages and inspires growth.
I have lived in both provinces. Born and raised in Alberta, I moved to Saskatchewan in my mid twenties and have been in Saskatchewan for almost twenty years. I have seen both sides and Saskatchewan is failing from government interference, competition and controls.
Many people on this thread are very hard on “lefties”. Those who feel that Saskatchewan is the right model for the future. Judge for yourself.
I have sent two sons to Alberta for education. One because we don’t have the population to hold training for the trade anymore. The other because there were not enough spots avaiable in his area of choice.
The U of S and other institutions that continue to teach the wonders of socialisn are doing a disservice to the best and brightest in this province. We could be so much more.
I am tired of being someones lab rat!
Daniel
hmm, I’m still not sure where all this is coming from. It seems like we are argueing about two different things. I haven’t expressed my own views on whether socialism is good or bad, nor will I in this type of environment. The point that I have wanted to make is that suddenly stripping funding for the uni is hardly the best way to teach the kids at the uni that socialism is bad. If you want to take away funding over the long term that is your opinion(trust me, judging by the recent jumps in tuition at the u of s its already happening), but suddenly cutting funding to the institution will serve no benefit to anyone in saskatchewan. Anyways i’m sick of writing the same thing over and over.
Anyways i’m sick of writing the same thing over and over.
Get well soon:)
Socialism needs capitalism like a mosquito needs a blood donor.
Thank God for dragonflies!