Not me, Kevin Williamson:
Man, I miss the fiscal discipline of the Bush era!
Gulp.
I never expected to write those words. The Bush-era Republicans were out-of-control big spenders, fiending for appropriations, handing out largesse, creating giant new health-care entitlements here, building nations there, all with a devil-may-care attitude about where the money would come from. They were all carrot and no stick, cutting taxes but not doing a thing about spending.
And then…
RTWT
Perhaps the money quote is this:
Whatever you think about socialism, here is an undeniable fact: Canadians are better at it than Americans are.
Thanks Joe Mama, that was only the most depressing article I’ve read in months.
lawl.
I like the last part where he just goes, “oh hey, here are the things I’m going to cherry pick that I like, that’s what makes this complex system of things run the way it does!”
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but one would hope most people “cherry pick” clean government, balanced budgets and low debt as things that they like regardless of the type of economy or its many moving parts.
I’m trying to say it’s essentially worthless analysis. Some good numbers exist, so we attribute it to some vacuous labels without any effort to substantiate why one is related to the other.
I’ll grant you that “clean government” may be a little inane without context, but I don’t see anything vacuous about balanced budgets or low debt, even in the abstract. And why you would need to “substantiate” how, say, balanced budgets are related to the numbers reflecting narrowing budget deficits is beyond me.
I wasn’t aware Canada has a balanced budget? To my knowledge their debt is expanding quickly.
A cursory glance at wikipedia confirms this.
Sorry, I didn’t think it was worthwhile addressing things that were false.
Jim, you want to share which Wikipedia entry you were looking at? The 2010 federal budget page is sparsely populated with relevant information, and the article linked to in Williamson’s piece is much more recent than any of the Wiki sources. Bottom line though: Nobody here is saying Canada has a balanced budget; what the articles say is that Canada’s budget deficits are rapidly narrowing much faster than they expected. IOW, they are on the road to recovery, and the U.S. is not.
AML: Your link wasn’t the one I had originally viewed, but yours will do. It shows a budget shortfall of more than 20% something I’d be shocked to hear went away simply because of their economy began to recover.
Either way, someone here is saying that, namely Joe Mama in #5, not to mention the author of the piece he links to.
As far as their budget deficits rapidly narrowing, are they? The article doesn’t provide any evidence of that. My brief effort to search for information doesn’t provide any indication of that.
And if the budget were balanced there, what does that mean? Is there recovery because of that? The article certainly attempts to make no argument to that effect, nor does Joe Mama.
And if we established that a balanced budget helped recovery, what does that mean? Should we raise taxes? Cut spending? Both?
This is my criticism of the article. Do you see how many levels deep we are, without any attempt at analysis at any of the levels along the way?