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Cake day: April 29th, 2025

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  • toastmeister@lemmy.catoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldGood job
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    2 hours ago

    Canada has had 0.7% per capita GDP growth since 2015. Which puts us 2nd last only to Luxembourg in all 38 countries of the OECD.

    We elected a person who said oil needs to stay in the ground in their book, who wants to grow population at more than 450k a year (1% cap, plus births) to prop up GDP despite the current high unemployment and the severe housing shortage, and who wants to join Germany and the UK in spinning up solar and wind which clearly did not go well for either of them.

    https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/let-ed-run-it

    Through that lens I could see how they could be fearful of Canada’s demise, especially if we have another 10 years like the last. Gross government debt also somehow doubled since 2015 as well to achieve this lethargic growth, before subtracting pensions to create the net debt figure the government generally uses.

    Then theres yesterdays Alberta separation fear with bill 54, and the fact Alberta contributes significantly more to Ottawa than any other province. As tariffs have a chance to wipe out manufacturing and you’ll be asking Alberta to contribute even more to fund unemployed auto workers and the like, after some provinces block Alberta’s access to new trade routes, I could see some clear catalyst for separation. Which would put Canada in a deeply negative current account balance and would be the end of Canada as we know it now.

    https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/understanding-albertas-outsized-contribution-to-confederation-infographic-thb.jpg



  • toastmeister@lemmy.cato196@lemmy.worldrule
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    9 hours ago

    Central bank monetary policy requires that we pay 2% more for goods every year as technology makes things cheaper and we exclude asset price inflation. They construct a wall of debt via low interest rates for inelastic goods like housing in order to provide a windfall to boomers in order to force the prices of goods upwards, every new mortgage new money supply being created.

    That wall of debt that is gatekeeping inelastic shelter is what poverty looks like, prices can’t rise without providing new money supply, and some poor smuck holding that IOU for the first movers to consume. Blaming the rich, whose nominal asset value is inflated by this system, is a naive view; they are simply being spoon fed wealth in a desperate attempt to get them to consume a portion of it. Every bailout for any type of correction caused by an error or oversight in the system is then funneled back to them as wages are debased.

    This likely explains the fanaticism around Bitcoin and gold, I think we can all see who is served by the existing system, and its definitely not the poor.






  • we got in this morass because the neoliberal state and its accompanying economy financialized every damn thing

    The problem is monetary policy, not deregulation. Deregulation of zoning and housing policy would actually prevent monetary policy from creating such a large housing bubble.

    Our Bank of Canada targets a 2% inflation, which means prices need to continuously rise as technology actively reduces goods prices, and we then exclude investments and housing appreciation entirely, and we do hedonic adjustments to discount goods inflation. Then there’s likely an element of shrinkflation, as company find tricks to cheapen products or degrade services, which lead to no inflation in the CPI but higher profits and then lower prices.

    So the money supply needs to grow via low interest rates, in order to provide a windfall to boomers to encourage them sell their real estate holdings, to create new bank loans, to increase the money supply, which turns into aggregate demand, in order to create inflation in the CPI.

    But we can’t build enough houses due to reverse neo-liberalism, so housing acts as liquidity sponges for cheap debt, and people hold them as investments in perpetuity since they think prices are always going to go up. Also as interest rates fall inflation falls, as interest expense is included in the CPI while housing appreciation is not, its a feedback loop due to its poorly constructed nature. The Bank of Canada now also buys half of all mortgage bonds to attempt to reverse this, so they’re actually printing money in order to cause deflation funnily enough, again due to the absurd way the CPI is constructed.