What is his problem? I legit do not understand why he is doing this? Who benefits from all this? No amount of media control will make people not realize that they’re going to die as a result of this.
We do need to level the playing field somehow. I’ve seen fast food workers work harder and be under more stress than I’ve ever experienced in the corporate or government world. I’d like to see the wages to reflect that. That plus a thousand other things to get ourselves off of that money addiction and start dealing with value. Money and value have become further and further distanced over the years. Just ask the construction industry…
I’m concerned about the cuts but this article isn’t worth reading if it’s not going to talk about our realistic options.
What happens if we don’t increase our defense spending to match NATO targets? In light of our general lack of military spending, the US’s aggression, Russia’s aggression, and the way that China is posturing towards Taiwan, it quite frankly seems like to would be asinine to not increase our defense spending.
If you want to make the argument for taxing the rich to maintain both, then do so, and explain how you will do so while preventing capital flight, but this author is just listing cuts to government departments because that sounds bad and not bothering to actually think through or make any judgements on our realistic paths forward.
Based on the reasoning presented in the article, and having heard Carney talk a few times, I’m fairly confident he has spent more time seriously considering our options than they have.
Capital flight is a myth. Not only that, but some capital is just challenging to move. Irving and Weston arent going to move their whole operations to other countries. Plus Canada has an exit tax.
Capital flight is often blown up into a bigger issue then it is by conservatives to avoid taxing the wealthy, but it is not a myth. It is a real effect that governments need to take into account when making policy decisions.
I.e. If it was a myth, we wouldn’t have an exit tax.
I’m wondering if you could reduce capital flight by providing a discount rate on domestic captial. Biasing domestic investment over foreign internally and externally.
Or scrap the whole system and switch to land value tax across the nation.
Agri-Canada has taken a huge hit. I’m worried about our food security and sovereignty…
Only way to improve our food security is human right to land.
Yup this ones a little weird. Food security is just as important as defense, if not even more so.
I have a question for the article, should debt consume us at all?
Can debt cause us hardship in the future, or what’s the upper limit we can take on?
The idea that national debt must inevitably consume us is a myth pushed by capitalist economists to justify austerity. The reality is that the nature of debt depends entirely on how the economy is structured and who controls the state apparatus. At the end of the day a government that controls its own fiat currency can theoretically issue as much of it as it needs. The crisis of debt is a political choice baked into the current system.
Under capitalism the state does not simply issue money for the public good. Instead it issues currency by creating debt instruments like bonds which are overwhelmingly bought up by private capital holders. This arrangement effectively forces the government into a subordinate position where it must constantly pay off the wealthy class just to function. As the state takes on more debt an increasingly massive chunk of the public budget is swallowed up by these interest payments. That leaves fewer and fewer resources available for actual productive purposes like healthcare or infrastructure. The debt becomes a massive engine for transferring wealth upward from the working class to the rich.
But this whole parasitic relationship is entirely unnecessary. An alternative system could simply use currency issuance to directly fund human needs and build collective wealth. Instead of borrowing from billionaires the state could issue money to create and expand state owned enterprises that provide public goods directly to the people. A democratically planned state driven economy would not suffer from this artificial debt problem because it would not rely on private bondholders to permission its own development. The upper limit of what we can take on is determined by real material resources and labor power rather than arbitrary debt constraints imposed by a capitalist ruling class.
Are there any country that have uncapped their money printing, and does it require capital controls to stop people from fleeing the currency to avoid financial repression, leading to a large inflation via the FX market?
While no country officially calls it uncapped money printing, both China and Vietnam operate systems of massive state directed credit creation as an alternative to capitalist monetary policy. Instead of relying on private banks to originate loans for stock buybacks or real estate speculation they use publicly owned banking sectors to directly fund state owned enterprises and massive infrastructure projects. They are effectively using currency issuance as a tool for allocating real material resources and labor.
Their approach relies heavily on what Western economists complain about as financial repression. Keeping interest rates low allows the state to guarantee cheap credit for massive development projects that benefit the broader society. If the capital account were fully open the domestic elite and foreign investors would immediately move their wealth offshore seeking higher parasitic yields in Western financial markets. Such a massive capital flight would trigger the scenario you described where everyone dumps the local currency causing it to plummet in the foreign exchange market leading to imported inflation that crushes the working class.
China and Vietnam learned from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis when countries with open capital accounts were completely destroyed by Western speculative attacks. Strictly controlling the flow of capital across their borders forces domestic wealth to remain inside the country where it can be put to productive use rather than fleeing to Wall Street casinos. That’s the mechanism that allows them to maintain sovereign control over their macroeconomic policy and prioritize long term industrial development over the short term profit demands of international speculators. Basically, you cannot have a stable currency independent monetary policy and free capital flows all at the same time. So, a socialist oriented state must sacrifice the free movement of capital to protect its economic sovereignty.
This comment makes no economic sense, very much as the linked article.
I am not the mod here, but I would very much welcome if Substack would be banned. Not everything there is necessarily bad, but most articles are imo.
That’s an amazing counterpoint Scotty. If you don’t like it here, feel free to go back to reddit where you can enjoy spending time with your fellow trolls.
