The AI industry in Canada has been pushing to essentially ‘self-regulate’, and (at least in this layperson’s opinion) seems like the legislative method for giving them what they want.

What happened to the rule of law? This is undermining public transparency and the role of parliament in much the same way that Trump has neutered the US Congressional branch and centralized power in the admin. If you’re pissed off at Danielle Smith and Doug Ford, this is just as bad!

maybe someone made a NFT of it

/s

Avi is honestly really great IMO and it’s awesome to have a leadership candidate who understands media

A recent episode of Tech Won’t Save Us about cars made a nice point about this stuff:

if you build near transit and remove rules around minimum levels for parking spots, you can lower the cost of development significantly, since you either need less underground parking, or less land for parking lots.

Cars make housing less affordable!

I am pointing to Tankus’ blog because he outlines the things Krugman has said.

Second: would you have not issued CERB and had millions lose housing? Or would you issue CERB and accept some inflationary pressure (keeping in mind that much of the inflation was gouging and supply chain issues)? You had made a blanket statement “issuing currency is drinking bleach” and I gave one of many possible examples for why that is a ridiculous statement.

And in terms of your arrogance around understanding what you’re talking about:

“Taxes fund services” is flat out wrong from a MMT perspective, quite literally it is the most fundamentally wrong thing one could say about it as an economic framework, so I suggest you develop a better understanding of the thing you claim to understand the critiques of. Or perhaps read critiques from those who actually understand it.

Cheers

Tankus has blogged about Krugman’s evolution.

And my “defense of printing money” was not a judgement about the inflationary pressure of doing so, it was a recognition that there are more things to consider - such as the risk of millions of people being evicted from their homes or going hungry.

You’re still trying to put words in my mouth, and you’re not engaging earnestly, so, goodbye

(edit: typo)

Krugman has come around on it over the last few years actually, through discussions with noted MMT proponents Rohan Grey and Nathan Tankus. So you might want to search for more recent stuff.

In the MMT, taxes both fund services

incorrect, in MMT taxes remove money from the economy

In your CERB example, there are a lot of factors involved. One is that there really were supply chain disruptions as spending shifted from services to material goods, combined with a lot of intentional price gouging as inflation narratives took hold.

Neither these phenomena nor the disinflationary effect of taxation are immediate or direct in their effects, so I definitely feel for policymakers when crises like these hit.

But we’re now very far from the original point, and you seem to be pointing to an exceptional circumstance to try to prove a generality, as well as trying to claim I’m saying things about that exceptional circumstance that haven’t said.

https://www.marketplace.org/story/2019/01/24/modern-monetary-theory-explained

Really just linking this for the diagrams, which are the most succinct explanation for this that I know of - but this is the theoretical basis for what I am talking about

I’ll give it a go, sure :)

If they still have the old seasons of Commons available, there’s some incredible work there by Arshy Mann (who now runs an outlet/podcast called The Hatchet which I really need to check out). The season called ‘Corruption’ is fantastic

yeah the last time I checked out one of their shows was maybe a couple years ago and I was pretty shocked at how bad it had gotten. I was a regular listener once upon a time, but no more.

Suddenly realising most of my podcast lineup is US-based - but here are a few Canadian standouts:

‘Tech Won’t Save Us’ is a fantastic tech-critical podcast;

‘Theory & Philosophy’ is David Guignion, from Montreal(?), doing excellent and accessible explanations of a wide range of thinkers;

‘The Breach Show’ is journalists Desmond Cole and Martin Lukacs talking about Canadian politics from a left perspective.

Edit: Oh, and Front Burner is a relatively listenable CBC politics podcast.

Just curious if you knew that CUPW decided to move to rotating strikes right now precisely so that people who rely on paper bills aren’t unfairly burdened. The union gets it. Maybe we should listen to them more.

Sorry, but if the first claim is that government spending is inflationary, then there’s no way to claim that taxes aren’t disinflationary.

I can’t remember where I heard it (maybe on a CBC panel?) but MPs can vote remotely now, like on their phone or whatever. I wasn’t aware of this before, but it does mean that an abstention can no longer be handwaved away.

Minority governments require negotiation. Every leader met w/ Carney pre-budget; none got anything they asked for. If Carney wanted to “get things done”, then why is he not working with the other elected members of parliament to do so?

Edit: also recent polling doesn’t look that amazing for the Liberals or Carney. The NDP could regain official party status in a new election, and disapproval of Carney and the Liberals has been rising. A majority is still within reach, but it’s not a foregone conclusion IMO.

Taxes, then, are disinflationary, right? Which is why we need to tax the rich especially

Great ok so we at least agree that issuing currency is not the fiscal equivalent of drinking bleach, and that there are good and bad reasons to do it.

It’s literally how we dealt with the first phase of the Covid pandemic. Was keeping millions of Canadians from being evicted a bad idea?

My best guess at this point is that any potential floor-crosser is currently trying to extract as much federal spending for their riding as they can. Carney will be happy to oblige, of course; he just wants power.

My secret hope is that a couple of the Liberals that still care about climate and social programs (Gould? Erskine-Smith?) will leave the party, but I don’t think any of them have real backbone. Happy to be surprised though.