[jeffkrol]

Since I'm growing cynical about saving the US from it's own stupidity.. AND the contagion is moving North I decided to post cross border w/ this:

From your southern neighbor I say.... Bunk.
Gov. deficits are priv. sector surpluses.. Look to the UK for an example of what NOT to do.. Double dip recession on the heals of "austerity".. Are you on a gold standard? If not....well to quote our past VP Dick Cheney.. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter".. THINK about what will happen to the economy if you take out wages.. bond rating be darned..
Let me ask a simple question (I'm Canadian illiterate for the most part).
WHAT was your economy doing during this time:
the public sector grew some 45% -- or 33,000 bodies -- during Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first five years..........
Better or worse?
you have an anemic patient and you want to apply leeches to it......
I'll probably have a hard time convincing you.. Why should you be different from the US?
food for thought:
As of January 2010, the ruling Conservatives had raised the federal deficit back to $36 billion dollars. It is claimed by certain pundits that the Conservatives raised Canada's deficit to the largest in the country's history.[113][114] At the same time, Canada had the lowest Debt-to-GDP in the G7 economies.[115] The Economist magazine stated that Canada had come out the recession stronger than any other rich country in the G7.

Sorry I will say no more on this. I have no dog in this fight..except to maybe protect my new "home country" if the US continues in it's stupidity..

At this article........
Sun News : Dangerous deficit of fiscal sanity

Apparently it was Removed....................

Any comments???

[riff]

I hate censorship, I really dislike Sun News, I'm very afraid of where the "civilized" world appears to be heading.

from Sun News Network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun News also takes a populist, conservative-leaning approach that mirrors the namesake Sun chain of Quebecor-owned tabloid newspapers; that, and its employment of conservative commentators and operatives in key on-air and off-air positions, led media reports, pundits, and critics to colloquially bill the network as "Fox News North."

[Deimos]

The Sun is garbage. Sorry, but it is. No surprise they removed a comment that didnt jive with them

The Toronto Star, Globe & Mail and National Post are all much much better papers

[Parallax]

I thought Canadians hated censorship

Canadians only hate stuff like that when it happens in the U.S. Anything that happens in, or is done by Canada is fine.





(Oh lighten up, Canucks. I'm kidding!)

[riff]

I bet you are fun at a party.
No doubt there is US funding behind FOX NEWS NORTH.

--------<edit>---------

Especially at Canada Day office parties.

OK I've gone back to edit this post after Jim's quoted post.
Thread title is I thought Canadians hated censorship
Last poster is Parallax
The trap is set and baited, now we wait for wild west wheaties!

Sorry I've been up for about 36 hours straight
--------<edit>---------

[jeffkrol]

The Sun is garbage. Sorry, but it is. No surprise they removed a comment that didnt jive with them

The Toronto Star, Globe & Mail and National Post are all much much better papers

I understand.. when I went to the front page I was expecting the usual "Aliens took my baby " headline........

[Parallax]

I bet you are fun at a party.

Especially at Canada Day office parties.

[audiobomber]

The Sun is a tabloid, not a real newspaper, but they've sunk even further in my estimation after this move.

[Deimos]

Especially at Canada Day office parties.

Canada day is a holiday...

The one good thing about The Sun, is of course: the long held, highly esteemed journalistic tradition of the Sunshine Girl: http://www.torontosun.com/sunshine-girl

[Ailuropoda]

I don't know where you get the notion that Canada hates censorship. A couple years ago, there was a huge discussion over whether or not we'd allow anti gay speech or add it to the list of things deemed hate speech and illegal. Many american lobby groups decided that they had to cross the border to say their piece. Many were surprised that we weren't drafting a new law on hate speech just for homosexuals, but amending a existing one to include sexual orientation. Prior to that, whether or not we should allow the Westboro Baptist Church into the country was a bit of a discussion topic in the media.
There's also a number of groups that are regularly in the media for getting kicked off university campuses for various things. The genocide awareness project being a major notable one in various cities across Canada. Personally, I think they're doing a great disservice to their cause and free speech in general in this country. Being a jerk about spreading any message gets you viewed as any other annoyance, rather than someone who is struggling to get a message out.
Anyway, I question the assertion that Government deficits are private sector surpluses. As I recall, prior to the crisis that seems to drag on and on, the Canadian government was running surpluses and the private sector was doing quite well. Then surpluses in both died off in unison. The US data shows deficits leading up to, during and depending on whether or not you view the recession as over, after. Granted, there is a little blip of a surplus around the dotcom crash. Counting yours, this brings us to four data points. Not a very conclusive sample by any stretch of the imagination. Is there a correlation study you can link for review?
I think the more common view point in this country is that Canada having the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the G7 is the more significant contributer to economic recovery. Alas, I also lack an XY scatter plot of debt to GDP vs severity of recession of countries with their own currency. Anyone know where I can find one? It's probably harder to define than deficit and economic growth, or should I be hunting a debt and gdp graph?
It just wouldn't be right to ignore Cory Venable and Danielle Park's explanation of Canadian economic recovery Copper and Canadian Stock Market: Siamese Twins | Danielle Park | FINANCIAL SENSE The correlation is scary, and might warrant a discussion on causation as well as whether or not manipulating one necessarily impacts the other. Pushing the needle on your oil gauge won't fill your car's oil and I'll venture that crashing the Canadian economy won't make copper proportionally cheaper for the world. Going the other way, the feasibility of manipulating the copper price pretty much rules that out as a vehicle for economic improvement though.

[jeffkrol]

I don't know where you get the notion that Canada hates censorship.

sorry, that was a bit tongue and cheek... I really am not proficient in Canadian society..

Anyway, I question the assertion that Government deficits are private sector surpluses. As I recall, prior to the crisis that seems to drag on and on, the Canadian government was running surpluses and the private sector was doing quite well. Then surpluses in both died off in unison. The US data shows deficits leading up to, during and depending on whether or not you view the recession as over, after. Granted, there is a little blip of a surplus around the dotcom crash. Counting yours, this brings us to four data points. Not a very conclusive sample by any stretch of the imagination. Is there a correlation study you can link for review?
I think the more common view point in this country is that Canada having the lowest debt to GDP ratio in the G7 is the more significant contributer to economic recovery. Alas, I also lack an XY scatter plot of debt to GDP vs severity of recession of countries with their own currency. Anyone know where I can find one? It's probably harder to define than deficit and economic growth, or should I be hunting a debt and gdp graph?
It just wouldn't be right to ignore Cory Venable and Danielle Park's explanation of Canadian economic recovery Copper and Canadian Stock Market: Siamese Twins | Danielle Park | FINANCIAL SENSE The correlation is scary, and might warrant a discussion on causation as well as whether or not manipulating one necessarily impacts the other. Pushing the needle on your oil gauge won't fill your car's oil and I'll venture that crashing the Canadian economy won't make copper proportionally cheaper for the world. Going the other way, the feasibility of manipulating the copper price pretty much rules that out as a vehicle for economic improvement though.

first lets start w/ "your guy"......

-Planned cuts to delay Canada's recovery, parliamentary budget office says

--Annual GDP growth estimated at 1.6% in 2012, 1.9% in 2013

--Fiscal structure at federal level "sustainable," not so among provinces


By Paul Vieira
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


OTTAWA (Dow Jones)--Austerity measures introduced by Canada's federal and provincial governments will have a "pronounced" drag on the country's economic growth and push the unemployment rate toward the 8% level, the federal parliament's budget watchdog said Wednesday.

In an economic and fiscal outlook, Kevin Page, who reports periodically to Canada's legislators, said he "expects that restraint and reductions in government spending on programs in Canada will act as a drag on economic growth and job creation, pushing the economy further away from its potential GDP and delaying the economic recovery."
Page said the federal government's budget balance will improve through the course of the decade, but warned the fiscal structure among Canada's 10 provinces is on an "unsustainable" track.
The federal government released a budget March 29 that looks to cut up to C$5.2 billion (US$5.27 billion) in spending to reach a budget balance by mid-decade. Combined with spending cuts announced by the provincial governments -- estimated to hit a total of C$9 billion for the two-year period ending March 31, 2017 -- Page's office has estimated that Canada's real gross domestic product will be 0.4% lower in 2014 than otherwise would be the case without the measures in Canada's 2012 budget. Further, the budget watchdog anticipates that government austerity will lead to job losses, peaking in 2014 at 43,000.
"As the drag from reductions and restraint on government spending takes hold, the unemployment rate is projected to average 7.9 per cent in 2013 and 2014," the watchdog said.
Page projects Canada's economy will expand 1.9% this year and 1.6% in 2013. These projections are below forecasts in the 2012 Canadian budget for 2.1% growth this year and 2.4% in 2013, and the upwardly revised outlook released last week by the Bank of Canada for 2.4% in both years

UPDATE: Canada Budget Watchdog Warns Of "Pronounced" Impact From Spending Cuts - WSJ.com

Leeches applied to the anemic patient........

And on to the rest. I'm curious as to Canada because of the "surplus" but I read somewhere where this wasn't exactly true. I'll get back to that..

Now the background..
UNDERSTANDING THE MODERN MONETARY SYSTEM | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM
Sorry a lot there...

On to Canada.......... and australia..
You know the deficit hawks. Now meet the deficit owls. - The Washington Post
POINT:

Mainstreamers are equally baffled by another claim of the theory: that budget surpluses in and of themselves are bad for the economy. According to Modern Monetary Theory, when the government runs a surplus, it is a net saver, which means that the private sector is a net debtor. The government is, in effect, “taking money from private pockets and forcing them to make that up by going deeper into debt,” Galbraith says, reiterating his White House comments.

The mainstream crowd finds this argument as funny now as they did when Galbraith presented it to Clinton. “I have two words to answer that: Australia and Canada,” Gagnon says. “If Jamie Galbraith would look them up, he would see immediate proof he’s wrong. Australia has had a long-running budget surplus now, they actually have no national debt whatsoever, they’re the fastest-growing, healthiest economy in the world.” Canada, similarly, has run consistent surpluses while achieving high growth.

COUNTERPOINT 1:

Quoting the Australian experience of running budget surplus and no Government debt cherry picks the real situation. Both Federal and Sate Government levels in Australia over this time embarked on a large program of Public Asset sales to get rid of Government Debt. They succeeded and at the same time ran significant trade deficits which were funded privately by business and individuals. Plus they fiddled with the definition of when a person is engaged in full time employment. One hour per week spent in paid employment or voluntary work does not equate to full time employment.
The Australian experiment is still underway but is beginning to show signs of collapsing as its exchange rate soars above a realistically sustainable level and if its major source of revenue China slows then their follow on economic performance will be truly an interesting spectacle.
But Budget surplus are most likely an economic drag due to the inefficient way in which Governments seem to manage the distribution of the surplus through economically distorting largess.

COUNTERPOINT 2

Public sector surplus + Private sector surplus + External sector surplus = 0
Australia and Canada have current account surpluses (implying external sector deficits) that are larger than their respective public sector surpluses, so they have private sector surpluses.
The US has a large current account deficit (implying a large external sector surplus). So the public sector surpluses of the late Clinton years did indeed entail private sector deficits. And that led to the 2001 recession. Can ideology trump arithmetic? Evidently it can.

BACKGROUND:
Bill Mitchell – billy blog | Modern Monetary Theory … macroeconomic reality

and:

Canada Government Budget


trade surplus.. you had external money coming in to make up for the removal of money from the national private sector....

GDP = C + I + G + (X – M)

C = consumption
I = investment
G = government spending
X = exports
M = imports
Or stated differently;

GDP = C + S + T
C = consumption
S = saving
T = taxes

From there we can conclude:

C + S + T = GDP = C+ I + G + (X – M)
If rearranged we can see that these sectors must net to zero:

(I – S) + (G – T) + (X – M) = 0

(I – S) = private sector balance

(G – T) = public sector balance

(X – M) = foreign sector balance

see simple.......

so g-t can equal 1.1 while x-m can equal -1.2 then i-s = 0.1

but you could have done better..

and since x-m is dropping and you want to make g-t positive it will drop i-s.........bleeding the patient..
g-t must go negative while x-m is near zero or negative in order to add "money" to the private economy WHICH is the only one that really counts..

I have yet to find Canadian "gross government spending chart..

as a guessitmation your imports in 2002 were 5.5 billion dollars. your gov. surplus was 7 billion dollars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Canadian_federal_budget

[jeffkrol]

To reiterate:

At the aggregate level, the dollar spending of all three sectors combined must equal the income received by the three sectors combined. Aggregate spending equals aggregate income. But there is no reason why any one sector must spend an amount exactly equal to its income. One sector can run a surplus (spend less than its income) so long as another runs a deficit (spends more than its income).
Historically the US private sector spends less than its income—that is it runs a surplus. Another way of saying that is that the private sector saves. In the past, on average the private sector spent about 97 cents for every dollar of income.
Historically, the US on average ran a balanced current account—our imports were just about equal to our exports. (As discussed below, that has changed in recent years, so that today the US runs a huge current account deficit.)
Now, if the foreign sector is balanced and the private sector runs a surplus, this means by identity that the government sector runs a deficit. And, in fact, historically the government sector taken as a whole averaged a deficit: it spent about $1.03 for every dollar of national income.
Note that that budget deficit exactly offsets the private sector’s surplus—which was about 3 cents of every dollar of income. In fact, if we have a balanced foreign sector, there is no way for the private sector as a whole to save unless the government runs a deficit. Without a government deficit, there would be no private saving. Sure, one individual can spend less than her income, but another would have to spend more than his income.
While it is commonly believed that continual budget deficits will bankrupt the nation, in reality, those budget deficits are the only way that our private sector can save and accumulate net financial wealth.
Budget deficits represent private sector savings. Or another way of putting it: every time the government runs a deficit and issues a bond, adding to the financial wealth of the private sector. (Technically, the sum of the private sector surpluses equal the sum of the government sector deficits, which equals the outstanding government debt—so long as the foreign sector is balanced.)

New Page 1

Now, if the foreign sector runs a surplus (negative re: x-m), and the the government sector runs a surplus (positive g-t) this means by identity that the private sector could or could not be in deficit depending on the balance of the foreign sector to the gov. sector..

The problem is that it is hard to see how the US can do that—in fact, our current account deficit is now rising toward 7% of GDP. All things equal, that means our budget deficit has to be even larger to allow our private sector to save. Given our current account balance, the budget deficit would have to reach 9% of GDP to allow our private sector to have a surplus of 2% of GDP.

I don’t want to give the impression that government deficits are always good, or that the bigger the deficit, the better. The point I am making is that we have to recognize the macro relations among the sectors.

If we say that a government deficit is burdening our future children with debt, we are ignoring the fact that this is offset by their saving and accumulation of financial wealth in the form of government debt. It is hard to see why households would be better off if they did not have that wealth.
If we say that the government can run budget surpluses for 15 years, what we are ignoring is that this means the private sector will have to run deficits for 15 years—going into debt that totals trillions of dollars in order to allow the government to retire its debt. Again it is hard to see why households would be better off if they owed more debt, just so that the government would owe (them) less.
There are other differences between the federal government and an individual household. The government is the issuer of our currency, while households are users of the currency. That makes a big difference, and one explored in many other CFEPS publications. However, the purpose of this particular note is to explain why we cannot aggregate up from the individual household situation to the economy as a whole. The US government’s situation is not in any way similar to that of a household because its deficit spending is exactly offset by private sector surpluses; its debt creates equivalent net financial wealth for the private sector................

.......................

[audiobomber]

I don't know where you get the notion that Canada hates censorship. A couple years ago, there was a huge discussion over whether or not we'd allow anti gay speech or add it to the list of things deemed hate speech and illegal. Many american lobby groups decided that they had to cross the border to say their piece. Many were surprised that we weren't drafting a new law on hate speech just for homosexuals, but amending a existing one to include sexual orientation.

Canada has it right IMO. I like that free speech is curbed, when the intent is to incite hatred against a group, based on race, creed, colour, gender or sexual orientation.

Pulling comments that disagree with your point of view, like The Sun did here, is censorship of free speech, an entirely different thing.

[Wheatfield]

Canada has it right IMO. I like that free speech is curbed, when the intent is to incite hatred against a group, based on race, creed, colour, gender or sexual orientation.

Pulling comments that disagree with your point of view, like The Sun did here, is censorship of free speech, an entirely different thing.

Does the Sun own the website that the comments were pulled from? If so, they have every right to decide what they want visible. Your right to free speech ends at my door, so to speak.

The other day, I made a comment on a thread in this forum where I was responding to a post, and I used exactly the same language as the person I was responding to.
My post got removed and I was banned from the thread for 3 days. The guy I was responding to kept posting, and his posts weren't touched.
That is both censorship and hypocrisy on the part of PentaxForums. But, since I just pay rent here, I don't get to make the rules, or (apparently) even deserve a response from the mods for asking why the rules are applied asymmetrically. All I can do is withhold my financial support in future if I decide that I disagree sufficiently (I've decided I've cut my last cheque to Adam over this, in point of fact), and stop commenting or reading the forum entirely (I like too many of the people here for that).

My point is, everyone practices censorship, or limits free speech, and if it is their house, they have a right to do it. Come into my house and cross the line regarding what I am tolerant of and you'll get one warning to mind your manners before being shown the door.

Where censorship is wrong is when the government itself practices it. While I don't agree with hate speech, I feel the hate speech laws are wrong, since they can easily be a slippery slope towards though control.

An extreme example of this sort of thought control has already happened in Canada with the legal harassment of Ernst Zundel. While I never did read any of his ravings, my understanding is that all he was guilty of was denying that the holocaust happened, not advocating for a second one.

While saying "the holocaust didn't happen" is wrong and stupid, it isn't advocating hatred of killing of anyone.
But apparently in Canada, you don't have to advocate hatred, all you have to do is offend a particular group of people and you end up in all sorts of trouble (Zundel spent a couple of years in solitary confinement and was then deported as a security risk).

[Deimos]

Zundel was deported for promoting hate through his website not for his belief that the holocaust never happend. (EDIT: actually looks like the initial court rulings were overturned based on freedom of speech, later he left Canada before the Human Rights Commission trial was finished, then the US deported him, then Germany put him in prison, so clearly it wasnt just us that thought this guy needed to be separated from society, and we actually protected his right to free speech in our courts, he wasnt even a citizen)

I agree that websites can pretty much do what they want on their own turf in terms of deleting posts. I had a similar experience to you here as well Wheat.

Our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects our citizens is actually now used more than any other document (including the US Constitution) for countries creating new/revised constitutions, they tend to like the language we use below, vs say entrenched rights to bear arms. 30th anniversary of its creation was last week actually, though the conservatives barely mentioned it, no surprise.

"15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms