Category: Great Reset

How come this debt isn’t paying for itself?

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 61 Comments

A debt load of $47 billion for a province of 500,000? A new report is recommending that the Newfoundland government slash health care and education spending while selling off any number of government owned enterprises.

In order to rein in a soaring public debt and end the long pattern of deficit spending, Greene recommended a five per cent reduction in core government spending, and that operating grants for Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic be slashed by 30 per cent, at a rate of five per cent annually.

Some of her sharpest points were directed at the health system, which accounts for 37 per cent of public spending. The province also spends 24 per cent more per capita on heath than the Canadian average.

Lest anyone think that Newfoundland is alone in this sinking boat, if every provincial government in this country were as honest as this lot when calculating their actual debt burden, most provinces would not be far behind. Most will wind up, eventually, as wards of the Bank of Canada.

The Great American Recovery Watch Goes On High Alert

Great Reset 47 Comments

Americans are optimistic!

The U.S. economy added 266,000 jobs in April, sharply missing economists’ expectations.

The unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 6.1% — well below the April 2020 peak of 14.7%, but about twice the pre-crisis level, the Labor Department said in its monthly payroll report, released Friday morning. Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected the report to show that unemployment fell to 5.8% and the economy added 978,000 jobs.

Reset: Democrats Blamed After U.S. Steel Cancels $1.5B Project in Pennsylvania

Pretty sure that’s already here — Inflation May Be Coming

Another zero percent interest miracle!

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 16 Comments

In a normal, growing economy, each generation can expect a higher standard of living than the previous one. In Canada, we seem to be going in the opposite direction of normal. If the trend noted in this article continues, millennials will be lucky to buy a principal residence at about the time they would like to retire.

In the epicenter of the housing bubble, it’s particularly bad for an average income earner:

In Toronto, for example, where the median home price crossed $1 million in the first quarter, it now takes 278 months (23 years) to save up for a down payment. In Vancouver, where the price of a representative home is $1,381,274 and you need an income of $237,201 to afford it, you would have to save for 389 months (32.4 years) just for the down payment.

A voice in the wilderness

Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 19 Comments

This op-ed by David Rosenberg points out the problem with using GDP as the yardstick for measuring economic growth. If you discount the impact of governments borrowing capital that they have no intention of repaying as well as consumers borrowing to buy houses that they cannot afford, the economy is actually shrinking, not growing:

…the Canadian housing market has gone simply insane with ultra-low interest rates, easy access to credit, shifting preferences (work from home) toward more real estate and tremendous speculation. Total residential construction has surged 22.5 per cent in the past year and that has taken the housing share of GDP to a record high of 9.3 per cent — double the historical norm. Strip out housing, and GDP contracted 3.5 per cent in the past year (versus the actual decline of 1.5 per cent); strip out housing and government, and the economic contraction is -5.6 per cent.

One has to wonder what happens to the Canadian economy when the housing bubble finally does pop, the stimulus programs abate, and the commodity cycle runs its course. What is left? The reopening of the economy? I have news for you: If the real estate gravy train ever does end, considering the outsized impact it has exerted on the economy, there is no reopening large enough to offset the housing reversal and all the negative multiplier effects that will reverberate across the entire economy.

And then there is this related issue. Coincidence? I think not.

Dangerous precedents

Climate Cult Great Reset Wuhan Flu 41 Comments

Anyone half awake over the last year could see this one coming.

Now, spurred by alarming science, growing public fury and a deadly pandemic, government officials, corporate bosses and civil-society leaders are finally waking up to a simple idea whose time has come: climate is everything.

Five years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has given the E.U. the perfect opportunity to accelerate the remaking of its economic agenda with climate at its core—what Sefcovic calls the “new economy of the 21st century.”

The “new economy” will be the negation of the economy.

No Country for Young Men

Chinada Great Reset More Pavilions At Folkfest Western Separatism 54 Comments

David Solway;

Under the younger Trudeau’s administrations, a perfect storm of destabilizing factors has struck the country. Rampant immigration from third-world nations, predominantly Muslim, has led to sporadic terror attacks, ghettoization, and a depletion of public funds. A punitive and unnecessary carbon tax looks likely to eviscerate the farming community, hamstring commerce and industry, and severely impact ordinary households. Radical feminism has taken root not only in public schools and universities but in the governing cabinet as well, leading to decisions based on ideology rather than pragmatism.

Somebody, get us out of this place.

(h/t Larry)

Adding bricks to the camel’s back

Climate Cult Great Reset 36 Comments

While the CD Howe Institute is right about ditching Freeland’s $100 billion stimulus package, they go completely off the rails with the rest of the prescription.

The C.D. Howe as a result proposes a hike in GST from its current rate of five per cent up to seven per cent, reversing the previous Conservative government’s two per cent cut in 2006.

As if fearing that morale would not improve without further beatings, the report seems to believe that Canada’s carbon tax regime could use some additional help:

[The report] also proposes hiking GST on transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel by 10 per cent, which would “give consumers a strong price signal to discourage CO2 emissions,” it says.

“America is back.”

Claws of the Panda Great Reset Truinnerashuvaduprezure 40 Comments

Richard Fernandez;

Russia and China — not to mention North Korea and Iran — are all on the move and don’t seem deterred by Washington. If disaster overtakes the Biden Harris restoration future historians will conclude that organized self delusion played a leading part. The cultural and political establishment belief in the Great Reset after Trump sputtered and instead of the predicted return to normal the global world has continued its descent into crisis. Perhaps the status quo overattributed the problems of the old global world to populist unrest and failed to address the basic weaknesses which caused them. They thought they could pick up where they left off and couldn’t. […]
 
Those “far enemies” are now giving Washington a headache. The actions of China and Russia show the actual Great Power perceptions at variance with the way the Biden-Harris administration sees itself in the media mirror.

But this isn’t real socialism!

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset More Money Than Brains 6 Comments

No matter how much borrowing the government undertakes, the only thing one can be certain of is that socialists will always claim it was never enough.

Although the article concerns the American experience with an avalanche of Covid crisis borrowing, the lessons apply equally well to Canada.

“The idea that “governments alone” can provide the “expertise and judgment” necessary to lead the way during an economic crisis is one that fails to recognize the shortcomings of large bureaucracies.

Governments are necessarily unequipped to deal with economic crises partly because they suffer no consequences for their mistakes. It is the people, the business owners and consumers alike, who pay the ultimate price.

Government’s lack of skin in the game excludes their so-called expertise. After all, if a single mom who’s a shop owner in rural Indiana loses her livelihood because of the mandated lockdowns, the governor won’t suffer a thing over it. The shop owner, on the other hand, will lose her home and be unable to feed her children.”

Duty To Die

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 51 Comments

I’m old enough to remember when it was called “killing”.

The Senate has passed a bill to expand access to medical assistance in dying, including eventually to people suffering solely from mental illnesses.
 
By a vote of 60-25, with five abstentions, senators accepted Wednesday a revised version of Bill C-7, even though the government rejected or modified amendments made by the Senate. […]
 
The government had originally intended to impose a blanket ban on assisted dying for people suffering solely from mental illnesses. But, under pressure from senators who believed that exclusion was unconstitutional, it subsequently put a two-year time limit on it.

In the words of a former Saskatchewan NDP cabinet minister, we owe a duty to our health care system; to live healthfully and die quickly.

If we understand that a person in Canada consumes at least 60% of their life time cost to health care in the last two years of their life, should we not fear that the financial powers will see that reducing the last two years of life to one year of life could be the most cost effective approach to the problem. Is there a conflict of interest having the same system determine the services provided, who they will be provided to and when they will be provided, and containing cost in a society of competing values.

Another flashback.

The Children Are Our Future

Children R Our Future entitlement generation Great Reset 27 Comments

The children — and their insufferably weak wanna-be ruling class parents.

The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.
 
“The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”
 
One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.” […]
 
The atmosphere is making their children anxious, paranoid, and insecure—and closed off from even their close friends. “My son knew I was talking to you and he begged me not to,” another Harvard-Westlake mother told me. “He wants to go to a great university, and he told me that one bad statement from me will ruin us. This is the United States of America. Are you freaking kidding me?”

Zombie Apocalypse

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset 19 Comments

“Europe has been laid low by a heady brew of bureaucracy, over-regulation, over-taxation and debt. A crisis of political leadership has in turn produced a deficiency of bold, innovative ideas, a shortage of vision and a huge expansion of government intervention.”

The result is a proliferation of what have come to be known as zombie companies.

“The Bank for International Settlement’s defines a zombie as “any firm which is at least 10 years old, publicly traded and has interest expenses that exceed the company’s earnings before interest and taxes”.

“These companies are in a kind of limbo – neither productive, nor seeking to enter formal insolvency proceedings. The zombies are plagued by large amounts of debt, low levels of profitability, negative margins and no capital for growth, meaning they effectively produce nothing. They survive because they get some sort of cash, often from the government, which enables them to pay the interest on their debt. Creditors allow them to continue existing for as long as they continue to pay interest.”

Like the European monetary authorities, the Bank of Canada is now scooping up around half of current bond issues in an effort to prevent interest rates from soaring like a homesick angel. One does not have to think too long to come up with a list of Canadian companies which might fit the definition of zombies, and this must necessarily include any number of crown corporations and provincially run utilities.

Is it mere coincidence that Manitoba Hydro recently issued 100 year, interest-only bonds? I think not.

How the Grinch Stole Western Civilization

Cancelled Freespeechers Great Reset 50 Comments

We warned it would come to this.

SIX Dr Seuss books will stop being published after Joe Biden canceled the author over claims of “racist and hurtful” imagery.
 
The president skipped a tradition and did not mention Dr Seuss in his Read Across America Day proclamation after the racism claims.[…]
 
Following the racism claims, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy confirmed on Tuesday that production of the books will be seized.
 
“And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer” are being pulled from production.
 
“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator’s birthday.
 
“Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families,” it said.

Hand in hand: Cartoon Network tells Americans to ‘See Color’

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Alternative Subsidy Great Reset 29 Comments

Just one week after Texas: Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant renewal looks to green future

“So we’re looking at using renewable energy, specifically solar at this point in time. We’re looking at putting in 2 to 2.5 megawatts of solar power,” explained Johnson.
 
He said that can be scaled up in the future with more solar, wind or geothermal power.

If you wonder if this is just naive incompetence, this is the same Regina City Council that attempted to ban oil and gas advertising.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation