NS Politics

Everything is politics, at least to someone.

Category: Fed Politics

  • Canada Day 2025 – Not Like Them

    US vacations make you traitor.

    Having an enemy worse than you typically makes you look significantly better by comparison. Existential threats also force a certain amount of action. Most of the 20th century was in the shadow of communism, and since it was not as easy to get information out of a secretive anything as it is today you could argue it took a long time to confirm that the USSR had not figured out a good way to run an economy. The mood at the time forces some extent of negotiations with the working class, lest your state become the next theatre of a communist civil war. Cold War technological races pump up spending and invigorate a sense of needing highly educated people, especially in the US space race. Conflict, after all, does tend to get things done.

    Feel the patriotism burn in your soul. And hope it doesn’t eventually become malignant.

    And now as Canadians we border a country half filled with lunatics. To be a bit more fair only about two thirds of the eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2024 US election. So about a third of the country is confirmed lunatics, one third doesn’t care, and one third loves the status quo. This is hyperbole but I don’t feel like giving the US much credit right now.

    So today we are Canadians dammit! Better than the US because we haven’t fallen nearly as far. But this is going to be tough to maintain. We don’t have much choice but to negotiate with a lunatic. A lunatic that under modern trade and labour has a huge impact on our economy whether we like it or not. We just scrapped a cool tax idea on big tech who deserve to pay after they have gotten soft on the whole democracy and truth idea, if we don’t get a deal we should bring it back.

    Those tech companies don’t actually believe AI will set us free. You will not be getting money for nothing in that future.

    Make Them Hurt As Much As Possible

    It’s okay to start wishing harm on your enemies… right?

    They only know money, this American administration has no concept of soft power. That’s not great because boycotts are typically really hard to maintain if there’s anything you really like about a product of service. Bud Light might be easily replaceable by Coors, but is that Disney World vacation you promised you would take your kids on before they got old and jaded easily replaceable? I guarantee you neither that company or state deserves your money.

    I offer my condolences to the good people of Maine, but sort your own country out first before you ask for more tourists. Maine isn’t particularly Republican either but 45% for Trump is a good indication of how low things will go.

    Keep the American liquor imports out, find as many items like that with domestic and international supplies that can easily replace them.

    Republicans want their people to be poor. Their donors love it, and some of them are true believers that working people to death is the moral thing to do. We can’t chase them to the bottom, they are trying to dig deeper than we can possibly imagine. And if you actually talk to people about how they feel about the super wealthy you might get an idea that a more progressive stance on wealth is warranted. They’ll fight like hell to stop it though.

    Be proud of what we can accomplish as a nation, we are to some extent built on ideals that are worth holding onto. The introspection can be a little less this year.

  • Untax and Spend.

    I’m the last registered socialist.

    Today Prime Minister Carney announced that Canada will hit the NATO 2% of GDP target for military spending within the next year. This was inevitable, or at least moving in this direction was. It’s as close to a bipartisan issue within the NATO countries you could hope to find. It will help Canada’s credibility if we try to shore up defence agreements with Europe, as the USA starts indicating it doesn’t want to include us (or Europe based on the leaked signal chats) anymore.

    As much as I might dream morally of a world with no need for military and war, we don’t live in that world. All evidence points to humanity being too confrontational for that message to hold long. Coca-Cola and Pokemon Go only brought us together for so long.

    From the Coca-Cola website themselves, “I’d like to buy the world a coke” Ad from 1971. At least Pokemon Go brought us together a bit more organically.

    So defence spending will have benefits in certain places and to certain people. Like any government spending that isn’t just sent to the shadow realm.

    But turning government spending into more government revenue is a trick only a tax collection agency can pull. So this spending will either increase the deficit, require new taxes, or require cuts elsewhere. Carney indicated cuts elsewhere were likely. After all, he has just cut taxes. Everyone is cutting taxes. Because cost of living is rapidly reaching levels of unbearable and a large cohort of people might revolt if nothing happens to bring it down.

    In the short term this is fine. In the long term we might be kicking a debt crisis down the road where tough decisions will be made at the expense of a lot of people. Again. Recessions are cyclical. Hurrah.

    What seems to baffle us about the economy we created is how to fairly tax income, sales, investments, and corporations. As long as we don’t pull a Romney and get people and corporations confused the answer to this seems to depend entirely on what you hold. Income and sales taxes impact the lower wealth bracket of working age people, most which seems to be the driver of all the recent tax cuts. Capital gains on investments were pitched to be raised, but that was a different Prime Minister so that has since been scraped. Investments do benefit people besides the rich, if you have parents thinking about retirement they are probably relying on them at least partially. Like the cost of housing, once you own them you don’t really want the price to go down or taxes to go up. And I doubt most economic analysts would recommend raising taxes on corporations during a trade war against an American president trying to get them to leave our country for the USA.

    What about wealth? This would probably be the most popular among the general population if we can find a way to do it. Easier said then done I’m sure, since corporations with a lot of money have figured out ways to avoid paying taxes by moving country flags around like a cruise ship. I love a good race to the bottom. It would at least be worth figuring out a method to prevent rich people from taking out loans against their assets, which isn’t taxed since they never sell anything and loans aren’t taxed. Neat trick with Twitter Elon, I wish you nothing but the worst with your Trump breakup.

    So income and sales taxes went down and… nothing else really changed. So government income is lower… and spending is going to be higher. Unless we create growth.

    From halifaxharbourbridges.ca Removing the tolls on the harbour bridges has benefited me but it will cost the province, and thus all provincial taxpayers.

    How do we create that growth? Well resources tend to be taxed differently, companies can’t really bypass resource revenue but it isn’t stable since it depends on the price of the resource. But still, it’s a guaranteed winner for a government looking for more income. Thus the incentive to chase what’s in the ground.

    Do we need more investment? More entrepreneurs? I don’t know, I’m an idiot and would need some experts to advise on what’s possible and advisable. But as someone firmly within the working age that income matters, maybe we should have given the capital gains increase a try.

    And Now, An Aside on Marginal Income Tax Brackets

    If you aren’t aware of how income taxes work in Canada it’s worth knowing the basics of marginal income tax brackets. A salary increase is ALWAYS WORTH TAKING, your take home pay will go up no matter how close you are to the next bracket. There is an argument for some people to chose between overtime pay vs time off in lieu, but that’s a calculation of how much the extra time off is worth to you compared to the money.

    A flat tax is a scheme by the rich to make themselves richer.

    Notice how these are bands. If you made $300k in income, you only get taxed 33% on the last $43k of your income ($300k-$253k). Note this only federal tax rates, but provincial income taxes work the same way.

  • Liberal Death and Liberal Resurrection

    General thoughts on a provincial and federal election.

    The Nova Scotia provincial election of November 2024 was boring. Which is probably good since all the exciting elections recently have been about someone losing the plot.  But Tim Houston has held it together, “A good man you might disagree with” to paraphrase John McCain. Houston was only one term in and had a deeply unpopular federal Liberal party holding the provincial Liberals back. My absence will have to excuse my unfamiliarity with Zach Churchill and if they were doomed from the start. Calling an early election after promising not to is a class move, but no one likes keeping promises when it’s hard.

    We were getting electoral reform at some point, right Trudeau?

    Conservatism Rising

    Economic issues have been eating at the general public for a couple years now. I’m still convinced the federal liberals lose the 2021 election to a conservative minority if they didn’t seize on several conservative premiers looking stupid with how they were handling ongoing COVID measures. Needless to say, everyone be pitching tax cuts in 2024-2025. But even pitching more tax savings couldn’t save the NS Liberals. I don’t think what came next could have given them a win but it might have saved their party status.

    By Matthew McMullin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154461541

    Die Libs!

    The federal liberals were destined to a similar fate. But bizarrely didn’t seem able to boot Justin Trudeau to attempt to cut the bleeding. I was sure no one wanted to take the fall, until that fateful day.

    Et Tu, Chrystia?

    It’s likely impossible to know all the motivations involved, was this a mistake on Trudeau’s part, was he given bad advice, was Freeland waiting for an opportunity? But to cut to the chase Freeland stabbing Trudeau saved the Liberal party. (My Caesar metaphor breaks down a bit on that point, but Freeland held to the rule that you probably don’t want to hold the knife that stabs.) Mark Carney becomes the new leader and PM and gives to the inevitable election call.

    Milhouse Loses The Trump Card

    But before I give all credit to Carney, who generally seems like the boring centrist dad a lot of people crave right now, we can’t discount how effective Trump was at getting him elected and how ineffective Pierre Poilievre was at pivoting the message. To avoid a long digression, Trump is an idiot and the willingness of half the US population to follow him off a cliff is the swan song of this dying age. With that much of a following, behind that much stupid, it is a huge national and global risk. And with all those chips down we had Poilievre, who up to this point only had a real strength at messaging (the guy was an MP for 20 years with no bills)… fail to message. Except enough to scare NDP supporters to back a more centrist Liberal party.

    Centre-right leaning provincial conservatives didn’t seem to care if Poilievre lost which is notable. A glimpse perhaps that they see too much of Alberta’s Danielle Smith brand of “break the government to own the Libs” in him. That might be projection on my part, and a certain Elon Musk owns that crown now.

    The analysis that given a couple more weeks we likely would have seen the Conservative win seems possible given how close we got to a two party system in that election and the direction of the polls. NDP losing ground to a central banker who at least isn’t as bad as the other guy, and more populist economic messaging on the right. There’s a lot of data with none of it being easy to solve.

    What’s Next?

    Having lived in a province with only viable NDP and Conservative parties, do I think the NS Liberals are dead? It’s a more interesting “what if” had the federal Liberal party died this year, but now I would say no. Not unless the NDP tries to choke them out of the centre, and that risks alienating their core supporters. The Alberta NDP happened into a situation in which the Liberal party was nonviable, right when the right split itself in half. They emerged as the only surviving alternative. I expect a return to the status quo in NS so long as there are no breaks in the PC party. But Houston is leading a very boring party so far (let’s see where the Uranium fights go, I’m living the coal on the rocky mountains all over again).

    As for the federal government, I think their task is impossible. Especially for a minority government. But if they can swerve around the on-again, off-again maniacs to the south to give us a bit more independence, I’ll take what I can get.

    Alberta politics weren’t boring, but that’s not necessarily good. I’m more bored now in my native land, but still not inspired.