Tuesday, August 18, 2015

i really don't think this is likely. but, let's suppose it happens. and, let's even look at existing numbers that (i think naively) suggest harper gets around 130 seats, the ndp around 120 seats and the liberals with almost all of the rest of them.

trudeau has recently indicated that the liberal party will only whip it's votes under three circumstances. the first is planks in the party platform, presuming they win (which is now unlikely). the second is confidence issues. the third is charter issues.

confidence issues would include a speech from the throne. but, it's stipulated that this applies to a liberal government.

now, it may be sort of silly to go pouring over a liberal election promise and looking for loopholes that they could use to get out of it without technically breaking it. but, the broad idea here is that trudeau has committed to open votes as a part of his campaign. and, he's likely to be keen to demonstrate that he means it.

i think that this is the way out of this: trudeau will allow a free vote on the throne speech. well, a "free vote". there'll be just enough so it passes.

propping up the ndp would be strategic suicide for the liberals. this will NOT happen. and, people planning on voting for the liberals thinking it will should think again.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/08/17/a-harper-minority-would-have-options-all-of-them-terrible/

Kendall
But both Mulcair and Justin have rejected a coalition government and that should be the signal for leftist Red Grit Liberals to vote NDP .... and the Blue Grit Liberals to vote Conservative to Stop Mulcair .....

deathtokoalas
that's not how either voting bloc thinks. people don't vote based on fear. that's the conservative talking point. right-leaning liberals vote liberal because they're not conservatives. and left-leaning liberals, however rare they may be nowadays, have specific reasons that they don't vote for the ndp.

here's an example.

suppose you're a gay dude making 500,000/year in a gta suburb. you're about as liberal as you can get on social issues - do as you wish, harm none. you're into science-based policy, 'cause you're smart. you're an atheist. but you're also a fiscal conservative, and you think you're overtaxed.

this is what a right-leaning liberal looks like. they're liberals on everything except taxes. and, in a pinch, they're probably more likely to vote for mulcair than harper - and may even be tempted to by mulcair promising to not raise their taxes.

the swing on the right is a red tory swing, and almost always swing towards the liberals rather than away from it. that's why the liberals were in power for the entirety of the last century and the conservatives weren't.

the other side of the spectrum is a little more fluid, because those stark defining points don't exist.

but, the fact is that harper walked into his job as conservative party leader with 38%. he hasn't bested it. he's not going to swing right-leaning liberals. he hasn't, yet. he won't in the future....

conversely, trudeau's red tory shtick may very well be tory enough to break through the harper fatigue and cut deeper into the conservative base than we've seen in a while. that's their strategy. the problem is that it's mathematically and strategically stupid, because it's just going to sweep mulcair in on the other side.

so, i need to be clear: i think the liberals will best their 2011 numbers by a good margin. but, it will be at a 10 point loss to the ndp and a 15 pick up from the conservatives - which will put them second place across the country, and win them almost no seats.

i think the results will look something like this:

ndp: ~37% - majority
conservatives: ~30% - opposition
liberals: ~27% - lose party status

nobody ever said that fptp was fair.

it'll be a while before i state that with any conviction, though.

a 2% swing would be dramatic.
if i were in that position, i'd purposefully try to get fired just to make a political issue out of it. might be why they won't hire me...

you can't do this.

i know. they're doing it.

but they really can't, and get away with it. in the long run.

it's the kind of thing that destroys political movements.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-public-servants-warned-about-social-media-use-during-election-campaign-1.3195402
well, he's kind of right. there's lots of really good reasons why we need a change in government. this political theatre soap opera isn't one of them.

don't bother: i don't even know the plot line...and don't care to. it's really not important.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-harper-duffy-questions-1.3194754
i support this in principle, but he can't actually do this. the trade deals that canada has signed forbid it as "anti-competitive". if he tries, he'll get sued by a consortium of investors, then be forced to change the legislation to abide by wto regulations. the new world order forbids governments from carrying out policies that promote job creation.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-pledges-millions-of-dollars-to-support-green-technology-1.3194875

Wray101
With the exception of Harper's China Investment Deal, all the trade deals have notice of withdrawal clauses. To end Canada's participation in NAFTA requires 60 or 90 days notice and viola, not more secret NAFTA challenges from American corporations. The EU trade deal is not signed, all the rest - Ukraine, Israel, Chile, South Korea, can either be negotiated or ended. Any trade deal with an investor protection clause needs to be torn up and tossed into the circular filing cabinet.

jessica murray
that's all very true and everything, but the liberals have not indicated the slightest level of interest in renegotiating or criticizing the trade regime since the mulroney era. there's a contradiction here, and it's not likely to end in pulling out of any trade deals.

that said, it would be an interesting question to pose to trudeau directly: if his legislation is ruled anti-competitive, would he amend it or pull out of the relevant agreement?

further, keep in mind that the issue in ontario was not carried out through any specific trade deal. it was carried out through the world trade organization.
the rising gap between the economy and economists is a growing problem that requires innovative solutions.



we can see that as the economy has changed dramatically, economists have remained stagnant. this is largely due to downward pressures from ideological forces, and can be resolved by creating incentives to better analyze evidence.
the disconnect between wages and productivity will not reassert itself; rather, we should be beginning to understand that the connection is no longer valid, as a consequence of automation. this is a part of a fundamental economic shift that we have to get our heads around. which means we need to stop looking towards the old, steady hand and start looking towards young people that have grown up in the new economy and understand it without the baggage of the past.

back when workers were involved directly in production, it certainly made sense that wages should rise with productivity. but that is no longer true and will never again be true in the future. today, most workers are involved in jobs that have to do with the distribution end of the cycle. we should not expect increases or decreases in productivity to have any effect on wages in a store or a restaurant.

further, it follows that the old arguments about inflation and wage increases are no longer valid either, because labour costs are coming primarily out of the retail end rather than the production end.

the economy has drastically changed. economists across the spectrum have not. it's the rising gap between economists and the economy that needs to addressed, as a starting point.


i drew a graph:

 

daveruda
+deathtokoalas The resonable thing would be to tax the production itself instead of Labour. That way everyone can still enjoy the fruits of production. On top of that use the automation as a way to reduce working hours and share jobs and free time more equal.

deathtokoalas
+daveruda i don't deny that this is sort of a snotty position, but i've never seen anybody counter it effectively.

if corporations are people, why is it not discriminatory to give them special tax status? (the reason is that they're constitutionally exempt, but it's basically legislating themselves above the law). why should they not be taxed like people?

that's 30-40% above $100,000. and it could solve a lot of problems.

for ideological reasons, i'd rather put the production in the hands of the people. but, that's probably unrealistic. in the short term, i'd really honestly like to see corporations taxed like people...
these are the same kinds of kangaroo courts you see in all these trade agreements. it maybe opens up a little bit of space for liberal democrats to get these taken out of the upcoming slate of agreements.

it's a class thing, and you've maybe got the causality backwards. lower class white dialects are also viewed in a rather derogatory manner. and, it kind of goes back quite a ways in english. we have this collection of words we're not supposed to say. these are words that developed in the common vernacular of english, often from norse or welsh, and were rejected for deviating from the correct, aristocratic anglo-saxon version of it. scottish dialects remain widely mocked as well. judging people by the way they speak is a way to enforce class divisions, rather than a cause of them.

personally, i'm in favour of abolishing collectivized grammar altogether in favour of purely individualized expression. there's a kind of gramscian argument, there. the enforcement of correct modes of grammar is equivalent to the enforcement of correct modes of thinking. you could look at the rules of capitalization as one example of how grammar enforces the status quo. stepping back from that and allowing children greater freedom in constructing their own grammar conventions will allow for a wider range of individual expression that would be much more difficult to encapsulate into hierarchical categories.

for that reason, i think linguists need to be careful about how they approach ebonics, or whatever you want to call it. there have been periodic calls for this to be taught in schools and enforced as a cultural norm. but, the result of that is that it is going to enforce a hive mentality and then be used to further enforce a black/white class distinction. the path to equality is to abolish these sorts of distinctions, not to further cement them.

while integration has certainly not proceeded at the level that one might have predicted after brown v board, ebonics is not entirely a black language, either. whites raised in lower class majority black neighbourhoods in cities like detroit will speak in roughly the same way that the people around them will. policies that aim to mix it up a little and break down the association of dialect with skin colour will help in removing it as a tool of racial segregationist thinking, even if it doesn't take it out of the toolbox for class oppression. breaking down that perception and partial reality of ebonics as a "black language" is probably the best way to start.