I.m surprised that that “Stevie” and the court jesters havn’t come out with an attack ad yet. Slow off the mark this time. Nothing like US style politics.

I hope that Mr. Mulcair can half fill Mr. Layton’s shoes. Layton was a worthy opponent to Harper, let’s hope that Mulcair is too,
metalman.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Mulcair is another elitist lawyer, former high ranking Quebec civil servant, and so called intellectual elitist, whose official bio lists his preferred language as French. He holds French citizenship and says that will not change, even if he is elected PM (even Saint Jack disagreed with this concept). The NDP and their supporters are elated. No surprise there.

That’s a fair comment, fair comment. Socialists can never make their system work because once they’ve robbed from the rich to give to the poor there’s nothing to do for an encore. Everyone might be made equal, but in spite of the re-distribution they’re then only equally poor.

Fundamentally, all socialism really is is monopoly State capitalism with continued control by Finance. Instead of enabling Consumer control of production, (the essence of true ‘free-enterprise’), in socialism an all powerful bureaucracy decides what will be produced, and how much each of us will be allowed to have of it.

I would think Harper and his supporters will be elated, too. He’s likely to be around as our PM longer than old MacKenzie King was.

Quoted for truthyness…

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

truthyness?
didja get that offn the twitter-verse?
;););)
metalman.

“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”

Who said that?

Thomas Jefferson ……

He would not be impressed ……

Neither am I, but who cares, right? It is just our short lives, after all. Who cares what will happen to our kids and their kids? The corporations sure don’t. They just regenerate themselves under new dictatorshi ….. oops, sorry, directorships.

The NDP’s power base at the moment is in PQ. It is a no brainer that the power base would elect someone from Quebec rather than BC, for instance.

The little I have heard and seen from Mulcair yesterday left me totally unimpressed. Maybe he has some strengths which do not show up in public.

What is your solution Gus? Until people quit trying to keep up with the Jones, we amass debt and fall into the very hands you speak of. Please don’t say people are just trying to stay afloat. We are a greedy, self indulgent, wasteful society and have to make fundamental changes. Government will not lead us, we as individuals have to make the right choices.

If socialism is a philosophy of failure (according to the great Winny Churchill) the question one has to ask, of course, is capitalism any better?

How is failure to be measured? I would think that one measure would be whether an ideology is supposed to make life better for EVERYONE.

Based on that premise, how has capitalism fared? I think on that basis it has failed miserably.

If, however, you believe that capitalism need not concern itself with making life better for EVERYONE as long as it makes YOUR life better, and it has done that, then capitalism is a great success …. for you. ;-)

At the end of the day the people can hold the government and the corporations accountable. Most people are fast to complain, but slow to advocate for themselve in a meaningful way!

I agree with you cougs78.

I have no solution, sorry. I think that promoting product after product after product is not the way to do it.

We need to develop corporations that have a social conscience that is real rather than put out there as part of their corporate promotional package.

We should be defining “progress” in non finacial terms and it will then get measured in non financial terms. Many people, especially in the industrial world, have not yet learned how to measure quality of life in non-financial terms.

Maybe a quote from author Tom Robbins would be appropriate here:

“Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state.

“The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There’s only a difference of degree.

“We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in the bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy uber alles.

“Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and driving an entire civilization insane. Don’t spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming.”

Ain’t that the truth.

‘Capitalism’ is simply a system of setting prices based on costs. No more, no less.

It could function perfectly in any economy where the continual flow of costs into consumer products and services prices were matched by an equal flow of money into the hands of Consumers capable of fully liquidating those price values.

This doesn’t happen at the present time because of ongoing overall ‘labour displacement’ in the economy as a whole.

We don’t pay a wage or salary to a ‘machine’; and even if the man who was displaced by the machine is employed elsewhere in the economy, there are now TWO sets of ‘costs’ that have to be liquidated every time this happens. And only ONE income to try to do that.

The costs of the machine, which are ALLOCATED costs that distribute NO current income to anyone, (since the product of the machine first has to actually SELL before any profit from its installation can be received and distributed); and the costs of the man in his new job, i.e. what’s paid him as his income.

It is an accounting problem. A ‘macro-economic’ accounting problem. Left uncorrected, it will erroneously lead as a solution to first the private centralisation of each segment of business into oligopolies and monopolies, and, when those businesses still cannot be made to pay, their ultimate centralisation into one massive State owned monopoly. Which will be ruled by the SAME elite group that currently runs what we commonly call ‘High Finance’.

Easy for you to say!

In that case, ‘opportunism’ is simply a system of setting prices based on what the market will bear. No more, no less.

Dictionary definition of opportunism = ” the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances, with little regard for principles”.

Capitalism and opportunism are like siblings. ;-)

Sure, the UPPER limit of price is determined by the so-called ‘law’ of supply and demand. But the LOWER limit of price is always governed by financial COST. And in any economy where the overall capacity to produce already far exceeds the public’s capacity and/or desire to consume, and there’s competition for sales, its the lower limit of price which will be the ruling limit.

cougs78:- “Easy for you to say!”

It’s by no means difficult for anyone to understand either, cougs.

Socialism is based on the premise that the poor are poor because the rich are rich. That by making the rich a whole lot less rich, the poor can be made a little less poor. It would bear some veracity in any situation where there was a genuine shortage of the actual material necessities of life.

For instance, if you and a couple of friends were off the beaten path in the middle of Death Valley in the full heat of summer, and your car broke down and you weren’t sure how long you might be out there before someone came to your rescue, and you only had one canteen of water amongst you, it might be prudent for the survival of all to equally ration that water.

But if you and the same two people were adrift in a lifeboat in the middle of Lake Superior, again unsure of how long before you’d be rescued, and one of you said, “I think we’d better ration our water,” the other two would look at him like he was nuts! You’ve got a lake of fresh water under you that you couldn’t ever drink dry in a million years! A supply of water is the very least of your problems.

Socialists automatically assume that there is always an equality between the overall ‘price values’ of all the goods and services on the market, and the overall quantity of money available to the public as a whole to fully purchase them.

Their thinking is that the poor cannot get these goods because the rich have hogged too much of this money that they got unjustly though charging prices that included a profit. There is never any effort on the part of any socialists to verify whether the total amount of all price values, taken collectively, ACTUALLY equals the total amount of money in the hands of the public, rich and poor and in-between all together, again taken collectively, at any same point in time.

If the quantity of money were fixed and invariable they’d have a case. For just like the trio in Death Valley where water is scarce, if one drinks too much the other two will get too little.

But that isn’t what attends in the modern industrial economy. The supply of money ISN’T fixed and invariable. Any more than the actual and potential supply of goods and services is. The quantity of money varies every time there is another bank loan written, or one is repaid. The economy is ‘creditary’ ~ a concept that Karl Marx and all those other socialists that came after him have never been able to understand.

And the poor are not poor because the rich are rich at all. Not in any economy where the actual capacity to produce far exceeds the desire or capacity of the public to consume. Re-distribution through taxation, the socialists’ answer to curing poverty, simply further concentrates the control of the economy into the hands of a financial elite.

The rich do not hold their wealth in ‘money’ ~ they hold it in Assets VALUED in money. The ONLY way they can pay any ‘money’ tax levied on them is to GET money ~ either through the operation of those assets, if they are productive assets, by getting a HIGHER price for the production from them from the general public; or, through sale of those Assets, generally into Bank financed monopolies. Which might be private or public. In which case the public will still be paying higher prices, to pay for the costs of the financing.

Mulcair, this story was about his new role as leader of the NDP….

What if the denial of service was the deciding vote?

And how was the vote verifiable? How can it be audited if its a matter of a program that had glitches in it and no paper trail?

ndp power base is not in Quebec from a members stand point. Quebec has more MP’s but only a third as many members as BC. If all the BC members voted on Saturday that would have been half the votes cast.

Gus the ideology that brings the most to the most people… and I might add respects meritocracy… would be free enterprise. In Canada we don’t have a free enterprise party anymore even though that through compromise is what built our country?

Respecting the idea of equalizing opportunity for all Canadian citizens and not hand outs, while rewarding merit and effort with the rewards of capital… government mediating this equation is free enterprise.

Next election we have a choice between a French national for Prime Minister, or an egomaniac friend of globalist bankers, or possibly an unknown for a party that will have marijuana legalization on its platform? Canadian respect for fellow Canadians will likely be on the ballot as a prime issue for most Canadians.

We won’t have a free enterprise party in the next election, but legalizing marijuana might be the lesser of three evils when it comes to respect of Canadian values? Most elections in recent years have been about the lesser of evils?