Canada's federal government is always playing with new ways to privatize public infrastructure. They are always on the hunt for more esoteric financing models. All based on an ideological assumption that privatization being good for the economy.
Canada has some decisions to make when it comes to our federal spending. Are we making the right ones, or are we following the same failed policies that got us into the current mess with the USA? It is the same, of course.
Every conversation we are having about regulations and barriers to trade or productivity are complex. That complexity means that following the rhetoric on deregulation has unintended consequences as much as regulations have.
Believing Canadian pension plans can lead us out of this housing affordability crisis would be a fool’s errand. The irony is that a main cause of the housing affordability crisis is that Canada’s inadequate public pension system forces people to rely on private real estate markets to fund their retirement income.
The Liberals are hoping that if they throw enough money at the private sector, an army of Elon Musks will emerge from the darkness armed with even more private capital to save humanity and the Canadian economy along with it.
There are many contradictory definitions, explanations, and policy responses to high inflation. Understanding the differences is important to develop the correct orientation to these pressures on workers' wage demands and the left's policy responses.
The current long-term care model is designed to squeeze costs using a private delivery process. It is the state that sets the terms of spending and care delivery. The private system is being used to limit costs through obscuring the state's role in under-funding the service.
Decades of neoliberal political narratives have attempted to convince us that the only reason for public ownership is to subsidize private capital growth. Neoliberal economics are focused on the transfer of wealth from the public to private capital through commodification of public assets and services. The result has been a society tilted in favour of profit generation through public subsidies of infrastructure and services over human need.
Since the early 1980s, central banks and governments of top capitalist countries have been attempting to save their beloved system. Responding to the collapsing profit rate was their ultimate goal and drove economic and social policy for 40 years. To save our economy and solve the social, health, and environmental crises we now face we must reverse course.
The current economic crisis has led to unprecedented government spending. This spending is funded by borrowing or by 'printing money' (which has an effect similar to borrowing) to support furloughed and unemployed workers to the tune of roughly $80 billion and to subsidize corporate revenue. This has been necessary to prop up basic economic activity in an attempt to delay the impact of the economic consequences of the recession. Unfortunately, neoliberal policy makers are already trying to convince us that giving public services away to private interests is the only way to pay for this debt.
