BC has expensive housing? How come I am just hearing of this now? BC also has the most expensive fuel prices, which increases the price of everything.

No no, you are mistaken. I'm not confused about how one could implement carbon tax. I'm confused at how anybody could think it was a good idea to tax the most important, innovative and efficient industry peoplekind has ever known, and expect the government who can't even develop a simple payroll system to use that tax money to invent an entirely new technology that does not exist to replace fossil fuels.

Gee, high government spending, I wonder why nobody else has tried that? Oh wait, they all have, and they all failed. You are putting the cart before the horse. Botswana's tradition of fiscal prudence, economic freedom, and individual rights, created a booming economy. The wealth generated by the private sector now enables government spending.

From the CIA

"Through fiscal discipline and sound management, Botswana has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries in the world five decades ago into a middle-income country with a per capita GDP of approximately $18,100 in 2017."


One of the reasons for Botswanas history of fiscal restraint is because prior to the discover of diamonds, their main industry was cattle. Since cattlemen could vote with their feet and move jurisdictions, local governments were kept from taxing them at too high a rate. Botswana was an extremely poor country prior to independence, and this poverty also engendered a culture of fiscal restraint on government spending. After the discovery of diamonds, this attitude of frugality enabled them to escape from the so called "resource curse".



Of course I never claimed that Botswana is or was a perfectly libertarian society. All I said, is that if we want to work on alleviating poverty for the desperately poor, it may behoove us to pay attention to a case study where this was done. What did Botswana do differently from the rest of sub saharan Africa? And the answer is fiscal discipline. Limited government spending. A general respect for property rights, the rule of law, individual freedom. In other words, they were significantly more libertarian than the rest of the area. Of course on the other end of the spectrum you have nations where there is a high degree of government control, like Zimbabwe, that did not do so well.

Well anything you said doesnt imply that full capitalist libertarian like you speak of would work or is necessary right ?

And obviously, any system, regardless being socialist or capitalist will bring huge benefit when u take a country from the stone age with nothing ....

that is why i ask you to check the numbers in the last 40 years from a develop country like the USA or any other and show me with data and facts, how well it is going when u have no government intervention with pure capitalist form and how well they do....

The most prosperous country are fond in northern europe and some are the most taxed in the world.

Point is, and its pretty easy to understand, the best system is a mix of socialism and capitalism simply because you cant have a good economy in a country which is not stable socially .

And socialism is the best answer to protect and take care of the weak while giving to everyone their fair share of equal chance of opportunity without preventing the over achievers economically, which bring stability through acceptable social cohesion.

too much capitalist is bad and too much government is bad....

Well the most economically free developed nation during that time period was Hong Kong. And while I do not support the use of the GDP statistic, as I do not believe it is an accurate measure of a nation's economic health, they certain saw dramatic GDP growth during that time period. The less government intervention you have in the economy, the wealthier the nation becomes. Conversely, the more government intervenes, the poorer the nation becomes.

It is no surprise that European nations are wealthier than most of the rest of the world. Europe was the birth place of capitalism and virtually all of the great thinkers classical liberals came from England and France. But Scandanavia is wealthy in spite of their welfare states, not because of them.

Ultimately, capitalism is just individuals making mutually beneficial exchanges. There is no such thing as too much capitalism. But any amount of government is too much, because the state obtains revenue through the use of coercion, and it is wrong to threaten people with violence in order to get their money.

You keep claiming this but Botswana has had among the highest amount of government spending as a proportion of GDP in Africa for decades. It's certainly true that it has been done in a responsible way and that that is definitely a large factor in their success but the idea that it has had limited government spending is just flat out wrong. It is socially liberal relative to the rest of Africa but as far as government involvement in the economy goes it is nothing even close to resembling libertarianism.

(This really isn't the right place to continue this discussion though and I don't want to take over the thread. If you want to carry it on then we should probably move to the libertarianism thread.)

But that is very misleading, because Botswana is a tiny nation, whose main source of government revenue comes from the diamonds. So taxes are still extremely low. And it is because of the culture of fiscal restraint which I've mentioned, that despite the high revenue Botswana was frequently running fiscal surpluses, saving that money for bad times, instead of squandering it like so many nations would do. And because there is significantly less waste with government spending in Botswana than most nations (again, the culture of fiscal restraint), the money was spent lot more efficiently, instead of going to high salaries for politicians and bureaucrats.

Ok well explain the USA than ......
Unless you think :
having the biggest debts in the world ,
Having the most costly health care system by far with less benefits,
Humongous students debts that will probably default ,
The top 1% are owning has much they did in the 1930s while leaving scrap for the rest of the population ,
Is a sign of wealth ???


all of this due to free market and minimum intervention by the government .

i see the socialism and capitalism like the game theory in poker for bluffing and value betting .

100% one of the other is inefficient while a mix of the two is unbeatable....

Anyway wild is right , wrong thread .

While America was originally founded on classically liberal ideals, there is as (as far as I Know) as much or almost as much government intervention in the economy in the states as there is in any other developed nation. So I do not agree that the USA can be described as a free market society with minimal government intervention in the economy. According to the Heritage institute's 2019 ranking, the USA ranks 12th in economy freedom, behind Canada and most of the Commonwealth. After all, they could scarcely accumulate twenty six trillion dollars in debt without massive amounts of government spending.

Still, if we ask ourselves why is the America the wealthiest nation in the world, we certainly have to look at the fact that it was conceived in liberty, with a constitution specifically designed to limit the size and scope of the state. During the 18th and 19th century America did have a laissez-faire economy, and the result was that America became the wealthiest nation in the world.

lmao I thought i'd seen all the standard arguments from libertarians. I REALLY did not see putting ****ing botswana out front as their case study. Ya know, the country that won the resource lottery and literally half of government revenues come from mining that resource heavily controlled by the government. Like it seems gg and all that the government of botswana has seemed to have managed that resource much better than similar jurisdiction who won the resource lottery (cough alberta cough), but holding it up as some libertarian standard bearer is pretty loltastic.

Are you familiar with Dutch disease?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

It's facile to say that natural resources will make a nation wealthy. Hong Kong is barren rock with absolutely no natural resources, and yet it became the financial center of Asia precisely because they adopted the economic policies of laissez-faire. Simiarly, nations like Singapore, Japan, and Korea are quite resource poor, but have historically performed quite well.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are excellent case studies in the benefits of economic freedom. Not only are those two provinces more economically free than the rest of Canada, they are also more economically free than the majority of American states. And the result is obvious and predictable. They have the highest per capita incomes in Canada and by far the strongest economies, even after the recent drop in oil prices. This is because they have less government intervention in their economy, and lower taxes.

They were amazing for a while because oil is a cyclical sector ...
It has nothing to do about their ideological politics and the proof is :
You said it yourself , Dutch disease !

Btw Alberta took that wealth and eradicated for it golf course and couple of hundreds tax cut ( like trump and look the US now ...) it wow what a wealth !
instead of taking all that wealth and take some profit and invest it .

While Norway kept some % of revenue from oil ( what a bad socialist idea) and invest it in a sovereign fund and today it is worth over 1 trillion , aiding to finance a bunch of thing for everyone cheaply for practically free since the dividends exceeds the expenses !
A value of around 200k per citizens .

A government like that , socialist has a goal but using a capitalist method to enrich everyone was great ( yes bad socialist) and today in 30 years , achieve great wealth while Alberta , suffering like crazy , got a 32 billions funds .

Ho yes those free checks of couple hundreds to spend per year for cheap stuff and a sale tax less was so much more Creator of wealth .....

I know it must sound absurd to you but it is possible more than 1 solution is possible to a problem , economics included ....

As a born a raised Albertan we are not the poster child for a well run economic system. Instead were more like the person that won the Lotto 649 3 times yet and deeply in debt. Plus we now have a fool at the helm

Off to Federal Politics will see what Justin's plan is in the next few weeks. I am scared 2021 will bring another 200 billion dollar deficit.

Id like to hear him nationally address the country with his plan and a national mask mandate as the second wave is surely coming

Mask are mandatory in Québec since yesterday now.
400$-6000$ penalty if not .

Yeah I loved the premiers comment . Kudos to him I realize you can not make it a federal law

This winter will be interesting

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/gua...rals-1.5721943

Like I said look out 2021 we may have another 250 billion $ deficit. Though it is a debate worthy concept in commons

With that you can get rid of minimum wage .
It’s actually totally in the spirit of Milton Friedman ideology .

I mean at a certain point the credit rating of the CDN government is going to tank, having a budget deficit equal to total revenues is really not sustainable.

In the spirit of the "genius" who came up with the idea that government should withhold x % of your paycheck for payment towards income taxes? I would say so.

Glad to see the Liberal cabinet can have a 2 day retreat with some not wearing masks as they enter the hotel . Yet unsafe to hold parliament

New Brunswick election .
Very polarized results , not surprising people think more about themselves than the province or country in hard health and economic difficulties.

Regardless .... “big moment” or supposed to be for the country and when you think about it , the implication or analysis you can make from the results , it end up Being like a quarter of the population of Calgary that voted for all of it ....

Can we considered it meaningful?

It's meaningful in that people will read into it far more than it deserves. The minority government was seen to handle the COVID response well and the premier had a high approval rating.

In a perfect world he remains a minority government, but to ascribe the results as people 'only thinking about themselves' might say more about how you view politics than how New Brunswickians (??) vote.

No!
I was just speaking on the representation on numbers .....
And fwiw, it’s simply a fact that more the economy is bad , , the more division appeares and the unity get destabilize.

The wealth gap and social injustice surrounding the world at this moment , and thought out history is pretty clear about that .

Thx for the simplistic and Malevolent intention of my post tho ...

Well seem finally trump realize how dumb he was with imposed aluminum tariffs for Canada....

I am curious why a conservative vote is a selfish vote? The liberal candidate had no experience and voters were impressed with the job he had done on Covid. As for economy I really can't see any province not getting hit hard.


Trump probably didnt like having to do it. Is there not a big shortage of aluminum in the USA and they faced pressure from the manufacturers?