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Cake day: March 28th, 2025

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  • That is the problem with Canadians - we dismiss clear visionary projects too soon, just because there is ‘something else’ that vested interests want to protect their investment in. The Americans wanted the Seaway, and they did NOT want the Northern route because they would have no control over it. The Avro again and again and again. Canada does only what the Americans can control. I don’t see anyone complaining that the super-port for ocean-going freighters at Thunder Bay spoiled the North. Still as picturesque as ever.




  • Or maybe the field should be less ‘Ivory Tower’ and more concerned with modern economics.

    Compare the battle between MMT and Friedman, and all the old rules and definitions go out the window. To Friedman, it is profit at all costs, to MMT it is social well being at all costs. With MMT, productivity is irrelevant in any analysis no matter what the definition, and to Friedman productivity is irrelevant except as an input cost. Friedman would ratter get rid of all labor as a needless input cost, no matter how productive they were, and MMT would rather have full employment, no matter how low their productivity was.

    If you are a student of Business Admin. or have an MBA, then the old definitions are just swept aside. it is how to make money by using money, not on how to make money by making things.

    When it means ‘money in your pocket’, the applied meaning takes on an entirely different perspective than when it means ‘marks towards graduation’.

    Speaking of definitions, my pet peeve is the use of ‘decimate’ to indicate total or near total annihilation, when at its roots it means ‘one in ten destruction’. I am told that the English Language evolves, and so to the definitions in all fields, including economics, evolve.



  • One does not really have to go any further than the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church to see the proliferation of fascism in action, and also to see the tremendous effort to re-define fascism so that it does NOT apply to what the Empire has done in the past, and in fact many facets in it are still doing. Although the last Pope seemed to be trying to get the Empire away from operating in that mode, and we will see what the new Pope does.

    My personal take is that the spread of fascism is being prompted by a particularly well organized institution that is co-coordinating a lot of the events that are feeding the fascist goals, and it is managing to stay below the radar simply because the news media refuses to call it for what it is. But the events are too well orchestrated, too well co-ordinated, too well funded, and too contiguous not to be planned by some central authority.






  • Agriculture is relevant only as far as you proclaim to to be. The discussion is neither about agriculture nor agricultural productivity. Yield per acre is now a much better indicator of agricultural success than farm labor productivity.

    I have absolutely no idea where you got the notion that I thought Canada’s educational system is inferior to that of America. That notion is just silly. What I am saying is that the government is not putting enough public money into our highly successful and highly effective apprenticeship programs. A program is only as influential to our economy as the number of students who can get into it.






  • Not completely. Even given China’s enormous manufacturing capacity, there are still gaps in it. China very definitely prioritizes the manufacturing, even after the opening up of the economy to private entrepreneurs. For instance, it has delegated cities of well over a million people each to a dedicated task - one to robotics and the other to quantum computing. Everything in the city - infrastructure, education, facilities, governance - is directed towards these focus centers of excellence.

    If it is not high on the government priority list, it is fair game to outside countries to fill the gap. America just does not want to manufacture what China wants. If Canada decides to do so,the opportunities are there.



  • The problem in Canada is that the apprentice program is government-controlled and monitored. If Canada put a lot more money into apprentice training, the Canadian tech industry would love to have them. It is not the wage rate that is the impediment, it is the training involved to get there. It is not the Canadian private sector that is the problem, it is the Conservative sector that just does not want to spend public money in training the work force. Private companies have absolutely no say in how Canadian high schools are operated, and what their spending priorities are.

    And again agriculture and farming productivity has nothing to do with manufacturing productivity, nor with the statistics for the manufacturing sector.