Category: Gradually Then Suddenly

And The Budget Will Balance Itself

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism Shiny Pony The Libranos 30 Comments

WHEE! The Liberal Govt announces a $40B deficit with $50B in debt servicing costs, or $95K a second!

@RealAndyLeeShow is following the shitshow so I don’t have to.

Budget 2024 includes $411 million to support healthcare for asylum claimants and refugees, along with $79 million improve immigration holding centres and $141 million for lodging for asylum seekers.

Meanwhile, $8 million is dedicated towards preventing migrant smuggling.

CBC gets an additional $42 million taxpayer-funded bump in the budget.

Catherine Swift;

It’s painful to listen to @cafreeland speak, but a necessary evil. Major capital gains tax increase pretends to be a wealth tax but actually will be imposed on any Cdns who have retirement savings & other investments. So most of us

“There are very few measures that are designed to increase capital investment and enhance labour productivity.” #cdnpoli #Budget2024 ~ Fred O’Riordan, economist

Hit me harder, daddy: … new controls and taxes on real estate to take effect in 2025. Measures to be detailed in “consultation” documents this summer include a tax on undeveloped property…

Tax and Spend. And spend and spend and spend.

I want a new country.

Gentlemen, Seize Your Engines

Gradually Then Suddenly If Women Ran The World Shiny Pony 18 Comments

CTV News;

“I think this is likely to be the worst budget since the [then-finance minister Allan] MacEachen budget of 1982, in the sense of pointing us in the wrong direction as to how we go about raising the incomes of Canadians and actually making Canadians feel better over the medium term,” Dodge said in an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play with Vassy Kapelos.

In a time of high interest rates and inflation, the 1982-83 federal budget, under then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, became the object of political fury over spending, taxation, and wage restraint measures within it.

Dodge, who was governor from 2001 to 2008, was referencing the strong indications that in order to help finance the nearly $40 billion in pre-announced new spending without raising the deficit, the federal government may impose some form of individual wealth tax or excess profit tax on wealthy corporations.

Freeland will present the budget in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon, vowing a plan centred on “generational fairness.”

Seen somewhere: Why do they tax cigarettes? “To disincentivize smoking.” So why do they tax income?

Don’t Worry, It’s Transitory

Democrats Gradually Then Suddenly RINO 53 Comments

Updated to add the source link! My apologies.

Epoch Times;

For months and even years, the mainstream news has sought to spin terrible inflation news. It’s not so bad, it’s just transitional, it’s getting better, it’s not really a problem, and all your gloom about the value of the dollar is in your head. Truly, in the past fortnight, we have been inundated with articles suggesting that the public is dumb as rocks for thinking that inflation is still a problem.

Yesterday morning: boom! The upward trend for the entire first quarter was solidly confirmed. We could be entering a second wave. It was so bad that not even the two most influential venues could deny it. The New York Times reported, “Inflation Stronger Than Expected.” The Wall Street Journal reported, “Hot Inflation Report Weakens Case for Fed’s June Rate Cut.” The accompanying editorial is even better: “The Inflation Thief Rises Again.”

Truly, I’m stunned by the highly unusual and rather brazen truthfulness of these headlines. I don’t think we’ve seen that in three years. Which makes me wonder: Maybe the problem is even worse! […]

In the 1970s, the devastation occurred in three distinct waves. Each time the trend improved, elites declared victory and the Federal Reserve moved in with rate cuts, thereby causing yet another round. Absolutely no one in charge anticipated the next wave. It came anyway.

Socialist Progress

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 12 Comments

In the continuing saga of The Workers’ State of South Africa, there’s finally some good news. Well, sort of. It seems that there have been fewer power outages lately. Mind you, that’s not because supply is growing. Rather, shuttered factories have no need for electricity and the marginal consumer is simply going off-grid.

The weak South African economy, and the resulting generally flat overall demand for electricity.

Rapidly rising price of Eskom and municipal electricity of two to three times the inflation rate for many years, is dampening demand for Eskom generated electricity.

Load shedding and low reliability of Eskom and municipal grid electricity, particularly for the last four years, have been negatively impacting electricity supply.

Electricity customers are responding by moving to self-generation and alternative energy sources, including rooftop solar PV, battery energy storage, gas for cooking, solar hot water geysers, energy efficiency, and a general reduction in demand for grid electricity.

 

Losses For The Masses

Canada’s Bolsheviks Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 5 Comments

Maybe central planning didn’t work at this time, but trust us, it will work at some point in the future. The question remains, why do we even have such a bank in the first place?

The head of the Canada Infrastructure Bank defended $900,000 spent on a now-cancelled power line project, arguing the project will ultimately get built and the due diligence the bank did was entirely reasonable.

The bank agreed in 2021 to offer a $655-million loan to the project and spent $900,000 on due diligence involving lawyers and outside experts. The project has since been suspended and the original owner sold its interest to another company. The loan did not go through, but the $900,000 had already been spent.

Taxing Measures

entitlement generation Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 18 Comments

Boston is certainly not the first city to hit the wall of declining commercial property values, and it won’t be the last. The cheering was widespread when everyone worked from home during the pandemic, but now that many of those jobs have disappeared and downtowns are filling up with the homeless, there’s simply not enough commercial tenants left to fill the gap.

A recent report by the Boston Policy Institute found the city may lose $1.4 billion in tax revenue over the next five years due to empty office spaces. Boston could also face a recurring shortfall of about $500 million each year after that first half-decade, the report found.

In a sane world, the solution would be to cut spending and align it with revenue. But in the insane Keynesian universe, the “solution” is to tax the remaining commercial property owners even harder than they already are. I can’t imagine any negative consequences arising from that, can you?

The measure would give the city the flexibility to temporarily shift more of the property tax levy onto commercial and industrial property owners. If approved, new tax rates would only go into effect if commercial valuations come in low as expected, Wu said.

Broken Records

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 28 Comments

It’s about time that Zimbabwe switched off the broken record and admitted that decades of scientific socialism have only yielded abject failure, but Maximum Leader seems intent on forcing the citizens to bang their heads against the wall yet again.

On Friday, Mushayakarara is expected to announce the introduction of a gold-backed currency to replace the worthless local dollar, which is currently trading at around 30,000 to one U.S. dollar and, unlike the South African rand, does not circulate in neighboring countries.

Zimbabwe has introduced and abandoned at least five currencies since independence in 1980, all of which lost value to become almost worthless.

Zero Income Earners

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 21 Comments

The emergence of another casualty of California’s decision to hike the minimum wage to $20 per hour comes as no surprise to anyone who understands basic economics: the real minimum wage is actually zero.

When making their way to work Monday morning, Navarro and her team learned upon arrival that the restaurant owner had made the decision to close its doors for good. The owner, Loren Wright, told local Fox affiliate KMPH that this was the “last thing” they wanted to do, but knew by Friday night the business likely wouldn’t be able to absorb the wage hike…

“And those who are still working in the areas around us that went up to $20 an hour, they got their hours severely cut.”

Conservative in Name Only

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 36 Comments

If even a conservative government can rack up this kind of debt, there’s no comfort in knowing that a liberal government would rack it up even faster. There’s virtually no political constituency for smaller government left anywhere on the planet, perhaps with the exception of Argentina.

Ontario is delaying its path to balance as lethargic economic growth drags the province’s books further into the red, with a $9.8-billion budget deficit projected for the coming fiscal year.

The deficit for 2024-25 is almost double what the province projected in the fall economic update. That document had also eyed a return to surplus the following year, which was already delayed a year from the 2023 budget. Bethlenfalvy now projects that a small surplus will not happen until 2026-27. In 2025-26, the deficit is forecast to be $4.6 billion.

Self Defense in the Rainbow Nation

Cold Dead Hands Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing 17 Comments

At one time I was told that legal, personal ownership of a firearm was extraordinarily difficult in South Africa, but it seems that times have changed. That won’t stop the BBC, however, from trying to frame the problem as one of gun ownership as opposed to a criminal justice system that has largely collapsed along with the economy.

For the last six years Penson Mlotshwa has been carrying a gun with him wherever he goes in the South African city of Johannesburg. To the shops, restaurants and even the gym. His gun has become an extension of him as the country battles record levels of crime. “I’m not a fortune teller – I never know when I will be attacked,” the YouTube content creator told the BBC.

“Unfortunately, I’ve had to use my gun multiple times to protect myself,” he sighs, explaining how a man wanting his wallet pulled a knife on him after dinner one night. He drew his gun and made the mugger hand over the pocket knife, which he threw in the gutter.

Thirsty Proletarians

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing More Pavilions At Folkfest 32 Comments

First there was the collapse of the electricity grid, then the collapse of the railway network, and now the water is running out. Yet few South African voters seem able to make a connection between these events and a political philosophy of nationalizing the mines, banks and monopoly industry. They cannot fathom that a mix of African superstition, tribalism and Marxism-Leninism is nothing less than toxic.

The shortages, which have lasted nearly two weeks, have affected some 50% of Johannesburg Water’s supply area, officials said. The South African city has a population of almost 6 million people.

Businesses have been hit hard, and several hospitals have been affected. Nurses at one medical center told local media that they were not able to wash their hands.

The Rising Cost Of Bird Choppers

Climate Cult Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing 25 Comments

These days it’s routine to hear that wind power is “free” energy. But the Swedes are finding out that the absence of an invoice for raw material doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to still lose your capital investment.

Christian Sandström and Christian Steinbeck analysed wind-power companies’ annual reports in Sweden and their work revealed “significant financial problems”, they told Swedish media outlet Kvartal on February 28.

“The total loss for the years 2017–2022 amounted to 13.5 billion Swedish krona [€1.2 billion], which meant a loss margin of 39 per cent,” they said about the sector.

Sandström and Steinbeck pointed out that the sector as a whole has not made a profit in any year since 2017.

Company losses have ranged from 19 per cent to 90 per cent of turnover between 2017 and 2022, they said.

Crumbling Narratives

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing There Goes The Narrative 75 Comments

When I saw Peter Zeihan speak over a year ago, he openly derided the Russian war effort and confidently claimed that they were critically short of transport vehicles to even get troops to the front. A year later, it appears that the Ukrainians are the ones who seem to be running out of all sorts of stuff.

The Russian advances come in the face of a deep crisis in munitions for the Ukrainian military, creating a near-existential debate for frontline troops who must ration ammunition and are questioning how long they can withstand Russian pressure.

In another sign of the mounting sense of unease, the new commander of the Ukrainian military, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, twice in the past week scolded his subordinate officers for poor performance on this key front line.

On Thursday, Syrskyi criticised “certain shortcomings” and “miscalculations” by commanders on the Avdiivka front lines “which directly affected the sustainability of defence in certain areas.”

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