OSI bean dip posted:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/postmedia-job-cuts-1.3410497?cmp=rss


I cannot wait for more opinions from the same newsroom.

Pinterest Mom posted:

That doesn't make sense as a solution. There's no world in which a government i, on the one hand needing to print money and borrow from the central bank to finance its spending, and on the other hand raising taxes and cutting spending to curb inflation. A government who's going to have to do that might as well just go ahead and run a surplus in the first place and save everyone a lot of headache.

quote:

I think technocratic concerns about institutional credibility and stability are really important! And the concerns about political interference aren't just about relationship between the federal government and the central bank (which, really, the feds can borrow at very low rates already), but more about the relationship between the central bank, the federal government, and the provinces. What happens if there's a big spending Liberal government in Ontario and the federal government is Conservative? What if the federal government is Liberal? What if there's an NDP government in Alberta and the federal Liberals want to ensure their reelection? We already know that the LPC doesn't have many qualms about breaking down, or appearing to break down, central bank independence, so those questions are actually really important!

quote:

The point about class warfare is, I think, entirely orthogonal to this particular issue.

quote:

Wireless rates rise with hikes in internet, home phone ahead

Telcos blame low dollar and high cost of building networks for price increases
Bell, Rogers and Telus customers should get set for rate hikes.

The three largest telecommunications companies have raised or plan to raise the prices of their wireless packages in January, and are warning of increases to home phone and internet prices in February.

Telus will be tacking on $5 to its Smartphone and Premium Smartphone tiers beginning Thursday.

The change affects new customers buying phones — including Apple and Android devices — through Telus.

Rogers increased the cost of its Share Everything plans with 5GB, 9GB or 15GB of data by $5 a month on Jan. 12.

Bell also announced price increases effective Jan. 12, an additional $5 for both Lite and Plus Share plans, with increases of $3 to $8 for Mobile TV.

Together, Rogers, Telus and Bell control 89 per cent of the wireless telecom market in Canada.

Blame the low dollar
Telus told CBC News the low Canadian dollar is pushing up the price of new equipment to build out its networks.

"The modest wireless rate plan increase reflects increasing costs for network components resulting from a weaker Canadian dollar, as well as the annual multibillion-dollar investments required to keep up with the growing demand for wireless data. The change applies only to new contracts and renewals, so existing customers won't notice a change to their monthly bills," said a Telus spokeswoman.

Bell said it spends $3 billion annually to expand its broadband networks, but that most equipment comes from suppliers who charge U.S. dollars.

"The massive and ongoing investment required to build world class infrastructure is coming at a significantly higher cost due to the weak dollar," a company spokesman said in an email.

All three telcos also plan to weaken the attraction for bring-your-own-device plans by raising the price of base service.

According to MobileSyrup's Daniel Bader, the telcos are finding average revenue per user is dropping as people adopt more all-inclusive plans, including long distance and unlimited roaming, prompting price increases for some options.

Cost of internet, TV to rise
At the same time, the cost of residential service is rising.

Both Bell and Telus have announced price increases effective Feb. 1 on home phone, and internet and TV packages.

"Price adjustments support our continued investments in network, product and service enhancements," Bell said in a statement.

Rogers has already raised internet prices and plans to boost the cost of TV packages later in February.

In March, cable and satellite companies must introduce a $25 "basic" package and offer consumers either a choice of individual channels or small bundles of channels.

Helsing posted:

The point is to move away from the idea that the government must first tax pre-existing wealth in order to spend money. Instead the government prints money, and this money gains value because it is required to pay taxes. The money doesn't actually come "out" of the economy, the government / bank creates it out of thin air.

If the economy begins to overheat then the government increases taxes to reduce aggregate demand, which will slow economic growth and thus -- all other things being equal -- reduce inflation. In this scenario taxes aren't used to raise revenue but rather to regulate aggregate demand.

Obviously there are ways that this process could break down but I don't see why it's any more inherently implausible than any other economic theory that calls for counter cyclical fiscal policy.

quote:

I actually agree with everything you've said here so I think maybe we're talking past each other a bit (and looking back at my last comment I can see why, my analysis was a pretty sweeping and yet reductive picture of the economy) but what I do feel that you're missing or under emphasizing is that while the Bank often tends to be at arms-length from the cut-and-thrust of party politics, the bank is still very much a political actor.

Under Diefenbaker the central bank was really concerned about maintaining full employment through low interest rates whereas by the Mulroney era the overwhelming concern was (and remains to this day) keeping low inflation -- even at the expense of full employment.

These are political decisions and I don't believe that the Bank reaches these decisions objectively or scientifically or based on an equal regard for every interest group in Canada. When the bank is trying to set interest rates and is trying to balance unemployment and inflation it's making a political decision with huge ramifications for employers and employees, debtors and creditors, etc. When the bank weighs in on these decisions it tends to be closer to the opinions of bankers and business owners than labour unions or social activists. Maybe you think that's a good thing but that's certainly not an example of the bank being apolitical.

When Brian Mulroney's appointed governor, John Crow, declared that his number one goal was to reduce inflation he was making a political trade off: he knew that inflation fighting policies were going to reduce employment and that this reduction would disproportionately hit people in working and middle class occupations. Indeed the inflation fighting period of the late 1980s and early 1990s inflicted lasting damage on some economic sectors.

That may not be a partisan issue but its a fundamentally political one. And the people who run these banks are educated at elite schools, rub shoulders with the rest of the monetary elite (Crow was at the IMF for a long time before coming to the Bank of Canada) and then afterward they reap big rewards in the private sector (Crow left the bank in 1994, by 1999 he was the CEO of a mining company that was later purchased by Barrick Gold).

quote:

Obviously class conflict isn't an exhaustive or complete explanation. The Bank governor doesn't call up a shadowy cabal of businessmen and ask them for instructions on exactly what to do. But bank governors come from, live among and return to the upper class, are steeped deeply in the world of finance, and inevitably will be inclined to see the world through that lens. I don't think you can entirely separate bank policy from the positionality of bank directors.

Obviously in some narrow sense we should aspire to have a non-partisan government bank. I don't think its wise to give elected government (or any other single institutional actor) total control over monetary or fiscal policy. I do recognize the value of so called "checks and balances".

But when it comes to these bigger questions of "what kind of society do we want to have? what is an acceptable level of poverty? Should we listen more closely to the concerns buyers or sellers, employers or employees, creditor or debtors, landlords or renters, etc.?" then we cannot really afford to maintain this fiction that the bank is independent or ever could be independent of politics.

bunnyofdoom posted:

And here's the senate advisory board
https://twitter.com/kady/status/689464256207556608

Note: No politicians on the list.

quote:

One of the panelists named by the Liberal government to a board that will select new senators tries to recover the past lives of people she treats using a largely debunked psychological technique .

Manitoba folk singer and hypnotherapist Heather Bishop is one of nine “eminent Canadians” who will help choose candidates to fill the 22 vacancies in the Senate, Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef announced Tuesday.

But for a government that prides itself on evidence-based policy, her addition to the Senate advisory board may raise a few brows.

In addition to hypnotherapy, Bishop practices, “time line therapy” and something called “neuro-linguistic programming,” or NLP, according to her personal website.

Neuro-linguistic programming came into vogue in the 1970s, along with other self-help techniques like EST. Self-help guru Tony Robbins is its best-known practitioner.

NLP supporters claim it can treat a wide range of psychiatric illnesses, including anxiety, phobias and depression, by changing behaviour through the use of language.

“The unconscious mind does not hear the negative,” Bishop explains. “You learn tricks about never expressing anything in the negative, always express it in the positive.”

She tells The Gargoyle that she uses NLP along with hypnotherapy and time line therapy to help people get to the root of phobias, even delving into past lives.

“Your unconscious mind stores all of your memories on a line and we call that your time line,” she said.

To treat a client with a phobia of dogs, for example, “I would put you into a trance. I would put you on your time line and tell you go back to the time you first locked-in your fear of dogs.”

This fear, she says, could originate even further, requiring what Bishop calls “past-life regression.”

“It could have been in a former lifetime. It might not be from this life. Sometimes people will say, ‘It was from before I was born.’ We go back to how many lifetimes ago.”

Baronjutter posted:

Criticizing oligopolistic corporations and their handouts makes capital feel "uncertain" which leads to job losses. The working class needs jobs or they'll starve. If you criticize the job creating corporations you're attacking the working class. The NDP cares deeply about the working middle class of canada and will fight to make sure job creators feel safe and certain so they may continue to lay the golden eggs of jobs. Taxing or regulating them would be like killing the goose! That's bad economics.

Pinterest Mom posted:

infernal machines posted:

They'll take their spectrum and leave. Then what will we do?

infernal machines posted:

They'll take their spectrum and leave. Then what will we do?

Furnaceface posted:

Nationalize all the telecom infrastructure. Its the only way to be safe.

Furnaceface posted:

Nationalize all the telecom infrastructure. Its the only way to be safe.

Whiskey Sours posted:

Isn't that a little extreme? Couldn't we just publicly execute their executives and board members?

Whiskey Sours posted:

Isn't that a little extreme? Couldn't we just publicly execute their executives and board members?

quote:

Canada has just appointed a cabinet 50% female with indigenous, Sikh and disabled members. And that’s Canada, a country with all the daring forward-thinking of a defrosting lasagne.

EvilJoven posted:

You know it's bad when people unironically start pining for a conservative government.

I remember living under Harris as a kid.
Be very careful what you wish for.

The Gunslinger posted:

I lived under Harris as an adult but Harris wouldn't be running anything these days so that's neither here nor there. Can't keep sticking our hands in the sand and saying "oh well we think the other guy might be worse". 300 billion in debt with 11 billion in interest alone and no end in sight. Constant corruption, cronyism and mismanagement. We need to try something new.

jm20 posted:

Tell me what about Hudak's plan could be considered new?

The Gunslinger posted:

Can't keep sticking our hands in the sand

jm20 posted:

Tell me what about Hudak's plan could be considered new?

quote:

What, to prevent ourselves from detecting the texture of the government?

EvilJoven posted:

You know it's bad when people unironically start pining for a conservative government.

I remember living under Harris as a kid.
Be very careful what you wish for.

sliderule posted:

What, to prevent ourselves from detecting the texture of the government?

Mr Luxury Yacht posted:

I'm pretty sure if the PCs had drawn a smiley face on a bowling ball and nominated it as their leader they would have won the last election by the virtue of how lovely the provincial Libs were and the fact a bowling ball can't say anything stupid.

Instead they chose Tim Hudak and he threw away the easiest election in decades with a plan of "I'll fire 100,000 of you".

jm20 posted:

Tell me what about Hudak's plan could be considered new?

quote:

Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak says he'll hand decision making in Ontario's health-care system to doctors and nurses rather than bureaucrats.

Speaking at a hospital in St. Catharines Saturday, Hudak repeated his promise to eliminate the "bloated" bureaucracy he says is siphoning funds from patient care.

The Tories say they'll get rid of the 14 Local Health Integration Networks set up by the Liberals to co-ordinate regional health-care funding and services.

http://www.hamiltonnews.com/opinion-story/6230647-ccacs-lhins-on-life-support/ posted:

Since the CCACs were created in 1997 by the Progressive Conservatives and the LHINs in 2007 by the Liberals, the public agencies have been a lightning rod for criticism on how health care is delivered. They were crafted to provide such services such as nursing, physiotherapy and help with personal care for about 700,000 patients outside of hospitals.

But last September Ontario’s Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk found that about $1.5 billion, or as little as 61 cents out of every dollar spent by the agencies, goes to client services. The rest is used to pay for a bloated bureaucracy, including high salaries to executives. The report also discovered gaps in the level of health care across the province and a lack of transparency.

Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins is proposing what is being called a “transformational” structural change to the province’s health care landscape. Called “Patient First,” the idea is to expand the LHINs’ health care role, including through possible LHIN sub-regions that would oversee regional planning and performance management across the health system. His ministry has requested various stakeholders provide input on what changes should take place.

But if the core change is simply to eliminate the CCACs, which will save about $163 million a year, and transfer their responsibilities to the LHINs, how will that improve access, quality, cost and even health care for the public?

Ikantski posted:

True, Wynne and Hudak both needed to cut tens of thousands of public jobs, privatize government assets and implement some form of austerity with Hudak promising to balance the budget 1 year earlier than Wynne. You could even argue that Wynne is doing a better job of being Hudak than Hudak could have done. I'm pretty sure the OPP was on the radio saying that if Hudak won, he was going to round up every single puppy in the province and personally kill it. So at least we still have puppies.

The biggest difference to me were green energy subsidies, corporate welfare strategy and which type of public sector jobs are cut and kept.

Hudak wanted to make the business environment slightly better for all businesses. Wynne likes to target individuals companies and shower them with millions, as such.

Hudak was going to scrap the green energy act and cancel any contracts that weren't final including the $9billion samsung wind farm. With Wynne, we get more windmills and more energy exported to the US.

With Hudak, we kept nurses. With Wynne, we keep teachers. With Hudak, we were going to scrap the bureaucratic LHINs and CCACs, the healthcare "jobs" that spend about 61% of their budget on front line care and the rest on management.


With Wynne, we're now scrapping CCACs and expanding LHINs into something that sounds a lot like Hudak's regional health care hub.


Which is certainly a plan but it seems like the core of their health care plan is to just freeze hospital budgets for the fifth year in a row with no raises for even inflation or currency (most of those medical supplies come from the US) and let the hospitals figure it out.

Like the guy said, we're over $300b in debt and spending $11b just on interest. That's 20% of our entire health care budget. Selling 15% of Hydro One only gets us 32 days of relief from debt interest payments. We're metaphorically selling the copper in the house so we can skip a mortgage payment.

No matter which government we elect, there's going to be pain. We're so close to being the highest debt per capita province. Our debt-GDP ratio is 42% now, in 2011 it was 36% and 2007, 26.2%. The higher that gets, the higher our borrowing costs get, hopefully the GDP growth doesn't slow down. I don't feel like it's a stretch to say that Hudak's gang would have been better than the group that's writing secret million dollar cheques directly to the teachers' unions who spent millions advertising for the Libs.

jm20 posted:

OPPA != OPP.

quote:

“We’re here to keep you safe,” says one ad, which shows a uniformed officer pushing a lawbreaker into a cruiser.

“We’re the OPP and we’re here for you. Who’s Tim Hudak here for?” the voiceover asks.

quote:

Writing 1m cheques is chump change for the overall budget, let's discount the OLP being liberal with the public purse which I suppose is to be expected. We need to rein in costs on a much larger scale across a broad range of ministries. I think its fairly obvious e are losing and will continue to lose the grow the gdp faster than the debt:gdp race that we have.

Electing tea party conservatives to manage a province with a large public sector and powerful unions seems like a stretch.