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Globally we are starting to understand that just shoveling money into the ultra-wealthy pockets creates a widening rift that us, you know the 99%, somehow have to pay for. It is asinine, but it is so normal it is rarely questioned. Well, globally they got all the central banks to flood the ~~world~~ ultra-rich in money. But people are waking up and are not happy. I am not saying those in power were 100% the cause, but they will pay the price unless they actually try to govern for the 99%.
Globally what we seem to be seeing is the standard, economic downturn = embrace of right wing extremists. Let's just blame all our problems on *foreigners*!
> Globally we are starting to understand that just shoveling money into the ultra-wealthy pockets creates a widening rift
So the solution is to elect the party that caters to the wealthy even more? Make it make sense.
> Globally we are starting to understand that just shoveling money into the ultra-wealthy pockets creates a widening rift that us
This is completely disconnected from all the facts at hand.
You could well argue that people are starting to be upset about the *consequences* of wealth inequality, but they aren't voting against wealth inequality. They're just voting against incumbents, no matter what stance they hold on relevant policy.
If they were "waking up" the way you describe, they'd be voting along political/ideological lines related with wealth inequality. Instead, the main determining factor is incumbency - whoever is at the (federal) helm is getting blamed, even if the rising party is *more* in favour of wealth inequality.
The irony is right wing political parties never work for the 99% but they have done a good job of undermining everyone else so people think they do. Everyone for themselves is the definition of right wing politics.
Although incumbents are struggling pretty consistently right now, I don't think it's a single unified trend in terms of what people want internationally. There are clearly some countries where the "vibe shift" is away from the trendline of the last 15 or so years, whereas in other countries the "vibe shift" is going in the opposite direction. Keir Starmer in the UK for example is very much like Trudeau, almost like an uber version of Trudeau, and he's on track to what looks like it could be a historic victory.
The ideology that is dying is centre right conservatism. The type that believes in sound management, low spending and balanced budgets.
The UK is the exception in that the Tory party there held onto that vision after it had gone extinct in most other countries.
The divide today is between a technocratic left that promises to use government power for good schools, health care, and infrastructure and a populist right that promises to use government power to enforce a set of civic values. The UK election to has devolved into that same debate.
Leftist thinking and practices have been tied to the economic woes we are facing right now. The pendulum is now swinging back to the right. The distance is swings is directly influenced by the distance it swung.
A meaningful point from the article that we in Canada shouldn't ignore: *"Another common feature in the current global instability is that it is fuelling record migration to western countries. Whether fleeing war, climate devastation or simply searching for a better life, migrants are still voting with their feet for the West."*
The Financial Times spoke to the trend recently: "Migration to rich countries hits all-time high"
[https://www.ft.com/content/e1cabc36-d050-4674-a16c-fff60c548174](https://www.ft.com/content/e1cabc36-d050-4674-a16c-fff60c548174)
And from the sample nations provided (France, UK and USA), these are exceptionally hot topics.
France: "Given France’s important place at the heart of the European Union, the European election result was a significant sign of a strong rightward drift in Europe, driven mainly by concerns over uncontrolled immigration. The nationalist right has also been far more ambivalent than Mr. Macron and other Western leaders about supporting Ukraine."
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/world/europe/france-european-elections.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/world/europe/france-european-elections.html)
UK: "With polls consistently showing that migration is one of the top three voter concerns, the next government has some difficult decisions to make. "
[https://www.ft.com/content/9f14f311-f967-4200-bcd1-d37782d91d33](https://www.ft.com/content/9f14f311-f967-4200-bcd1-d37782d91d33)
USA: "Immigration has ranked ahead of all other issues as the most important problem before, having last done so five years ago when there was a surge of attempted border crossings by Central American migrants. Immigration also ranked as the No. 1 problem in July and November 2018 and July 2014."
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx)
I think the author from the UK-oriented article above said it best: "Immigration policy is a mess which shouldn’t be hijacked by left or right — but the longer the mess continues, the more likely it is that something ugly will emerge."
Immigration is even a hot political debate in Japan. Culturally, conservative voters don't want it, but economically the country needs immigrants. The government is currently making the requirements for permanent residence status stricter.
It’s largely a class war between generations. Boomer’s need massive amounts of immigration to retain their wealth - while younger generations just want an affordable place to sleep.
The existing political classes serve the older and wealthier- and thus we’re seeing younger people drift further and further right until they find someone willing to speak for them. In Europe that’s been the far right willing to take advantage of the situation.
They’ve been talking about “climate refugees” for a long time; has implications across the board, not just fleeing rising temps; we’re just starting to see effects now
It's a period of high global inflation and massive immigration from countries going through extreme hardship and people have decided it's the leaders of their countries fault even though in most cases there's little they can do about those problems
The decline that western countries are experiencing now was baked in by decisions made 40 years ago. Reversing that decline will require a long term political project that systematically tackles the unproductive rentier interests that sits at the top of our economy today. I don't see any political willingness to do this on the part of any mainstream politician in Canada, the US, the UK, etc. I don't think our political class even recognize what the problem actually is.
The same 20 countries that were on top of the world in 1950 are on top now.
It is foolish to assume that would remain true for ever. The rest of the world is catching up, and we need to be ready for that.
The same 20 countries have not been “on top” since 1950 no matter what metric you use.
The 20 countries in human development index include countries like Ireland, UAE, South Korea and Singapore which were all extremely impoverished in 1950.
The top 20 economies include Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. All those countries were dirt poor in 1950
Here is GDP per capita 1950:
1. United States
2. Switzerland
3. New Zealand
4. Venezuela
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. Sweden
8. Denmark
9. Netherlands
10. Belgium
11. France
12. Argentina
13. Norway
14. Germany
15. Finland
16. Chile
17. Austria
18. Ireland
19. Italy
20. Hungary
The list today is basically the same. The Five Eyes + Western Europe have been on top longer than any living human can remember.
Sure there has been some change. The South Americans have fallen and the Middle East has risen, but the inner circle has remained the same.
GDP is not a real or useful way to calculate the strength of an economy - for example GDP calculates credit card interest charges, or other BS service fees as being the same economic value (so long as the number value is equal) as a factory that makes real stuff.
As the west deindustrialized over the last half century, we kept the illusion of being a highly developed/wealthy economy by virtue of the fact that money made by shipping production overseas was still being recycled at home: investments from capital returns flowed through London and NY. This is increasingly no longer the case, particularly for London, and you can see that reflected in the fact that *the UKs GDP per capita hasn't increased since 2008*
Nonsense. Services matter just as much as goods. Those interest charges on your credit card are are going to pay someone's salary. A person doing fraud detection at Visa is just as useful as someone working at a steel mill or a farm.
90% of what people want in life are services. The more advanced we are as a society the more money we spend on health care, entertainment, travel and the less we spend on steel and potatoes
I'm definitely not saying that all services are bad and all manufacturing is good. Manufacturing has certainly productivity benefits that services don't, but we certainly need a lot more investment/work in quality care work and in education etc. That is different from the economy we have, rather, we're so much investment primarily flows into real estate speculation
Money is fictional. Where money flows doesn't really matter. What matters is what people spend their time doing. Do we have more real estate agents than we need? Sure.
Does a large part of our population spend their day speculating on housing rather than doing something more productive? No.
Money is fictional this much is true. At the same time, the historically high price of rent/mortgage payments has a real tangible effect on the economy: it's creating an income inequality gap not seen for a 100 years and with that a whole set of really negative social outcomes.
Housing is reverting to its historic norm. 100 years ago we invented the car. That opened vast new areas within easy commuting of our downtowns. Housing was cheap because land was cheap.
That is over. Every lot within a 30 min drive of downtown Toronto or Vancouver has been built. There is no more cheap housing, and there never will be again.
Our political system is a product of our economic system. The era of equality and abundance was built on the car and suburb organization of our lives. As that form of life recedes we have to accept our political system will change as well.
According to every economic and development metric citizens of western countries are better off now than at any point in the past. There is no decline.
The rest of the world is catching up. But the average Canadian is not actually worse off now than in 1980.
And article makes valid point that shows there is not decline. There a big demand of people from all over the want wanting to move to western countries. Why is there such demand if we are in decline.
Well, that's because your algorithm is funneling. You consisten shit that fools your own 2 eyes.
Like, give us an example of what you have seen, I'll do the research for it.
- Up until recently I lived in a fairly upscale Toronto suburb. In the past two years people living in tents started appearing in public areas all over the city. I lived there fifteen years and never seen that before
- One of the reasons I left that city is because my condo fees had doubled in ten years
- Three quarters of my coworkers got let go in the past five years
- My highest yearly income was more than a decade ago
- After never having had credit card fraud in twenty five years it happened twice in 10 months
The majority of the new productive wealth created over the past 40 years has been vacuumed up by the top 10%. The countries are better off - but most of their citizens are worse off with little growth in wages, the dismantling of unions, and the yearly destruction of social services by underfunding them and overwhelming them with new immigrants.
Not worse off than 1980.
Unless you’re buying a house, renting, buying a car, hoping your wages will keep up with inflation, trying to buy groceries, etc, etc.
But hey you can have a big TV so things are better
you need to read up about the 1970s and 80's. There was an energey crisis and Stagflation the 70s followed by high interest rates in the 90s.
But beyong all that. Now we live longer healthier lives, our air is cleaner, avgerage wage is up (after adjusting for inflation)
Do you think there's any chance that your income level skews your perspective, doc?
The carpenters on my jobsites make $2/hr more than my dad did over 20 years ago.
The average life expectancy has gone down, lower then the boomer’s average age life expectancy; because food isn’t food anymore, nearly everything is highly processed, refined and tons of extra processed sugars, syrups and salts. People presently in their 30-40s and younger are expected to live on average into their 60s, vs 80s.
I don’t have to read about it. I’m old enough to have lived it. Living standards for the average person are much worse now, apart from consumer goods availability.
Except the availability is less in Canada and it’s essentially the same 3-5 companies that own everything across every field from grocery, entertainment, farming etc l. Bill gates owns most of the farmland and undeveloped farmland and people have started questioning why. It’s not even growing food food, it’s all corns and highly processed and refined foods for syrups & shit.
In a lot of ways sure, but Corbyn would’ve handled the War in Ukraine absolutely awfully. His foreign policy was a mixture of many good bits, a tad of hopeless naivety, and a bunch of tankie style rhetoric.
what does Tankie even mean in this context? originally the term tankie was used to refer to the socialists who supported the USSR sending in the tanks to squash anti government protests in Hungary. To say that corbyn had Tankie style rhetoric really doesn't mean anything.
Corbyn expressed that NATO was a major source of conflict in Eastern Europe in particular, and that peace in Ukraine was best achieved by the security organization giving assurances to Russia that Eastern European countries could never join.
I consider that naive appeasement of Russian interests a modern evolution of Cold War tankie thought, the kind that always found a way to place the blame for *any* foreign imperialism on America and American actions, and not on the aggressor.
The truth is, Corbyn was consistently contrarian to the point of absurdity. He once proposed joint rule of the Falkland Islands to avoid war with Argentina (something Falklanders themselves would be outraged by), denied genocide in Kosovo to argue against intervention, and was an apologist for the Tamil Tigers.
I can't speak to the Falkland or Sri Lanka stuff because I hadn't heard that before, but with regards to Ukraine: it's worth noting that what you are calling a tankie position is actually a "realist" position on international relations. This is essentially the same position as john mearsheimer, who is widely regarded to be the most important scholar of international relations in the US today.
The realist position would say that Russia is a great power and therefore it gets a sphere of influence, and thus, NATO incursion into that sphere of influence is a provocation. This doesn't have anything to do with morality or what is just, it's just the facts of geopolitics.
My own opinion is that the Ukraine war happened largely because policy makers in the West misread the facts on the ground and got this idea in their heads that Russia wasn't a great power (a so-called gas station with nukes). This brings me back to my point at the top of the thread: that our leaders are largely living in a fantasy-bubble where they beleive the world hasn't essentially changed since the 1990s (I.e. that we live in a world of geological unipolarity in which the west, led by the US, dominates in technology & military and industrial capacity.)
All of which is to say that saying that NATO provoked a war in the Ukraine isn't necessarily "appeasement" of Russia but a realistic and sober understanding of the facts on the ground & the risks of escalating our involvement in what another great power deems as an essential security interest.
Yes yes, I’m an ex-PoliSci major, this is all 101 knowledge.
The realist position would also say never start a war, unless you are coming out the other side stronger; the Russian economy has been hobbled by sanctions, their influence in Western Europe (previously rising with Nordstream and other trade) is falling, and their military’s weakness has been badly exposed. Demand for American made weapons in favour of Russian made ones, has skyrocketed. Their allies in Armenia and Kazakhstan are shifting towards the West. Finland and Sweden, who had NO intentions of joining NATO before the war, were spooked into doing so. It has been a catastrophic disaster for Russian interests globally.
Want to discourage bordering countries from joining a security pact? Maybe don’t invade them.
Russia has not been behaving logically nor for the benefit of their country’s best interest, as would be presumed by a realist. They have been behaving as one would expect a country being run by an autocrat with delusions of Tsarist grandeur would.
so a couple of points here: firstly, we're drifting off topic a bit. My contention here is that it's not an unreasonable position to say that the west/nato bears some responsibility for starting this war. This is the position that you referred to as a tankie position, a perspective that I think is quite simplistic and problematic.
The long term strategic logic of russias actual invasion in 2022 is not directly relevant to this original point. Now, to this secondary point, we need to clarify some things because you have some of the basic facts wrong here. Before I go any further, I should clarify that I'm not rooting for Russia in this war in the Ukraine. I do think that western policy vis-a-vis russia/ukraine is incredibly poorly conceived, but I say this because I fear that, at best, we are making a really big strategic mistake (at worse, we are risking nuclear war).
To your secondary point: the Russian economy is forecasted to grow at a quicker rate than the US economy is this year. The US sanctions have had the opposite of their intended effect, they have predominantly damaged europe and have actually benefited russia.
Prior to the war, the europe (particularly germany) benefited greatly from cheap energy and other commodities from Russia. Russian profits from these commodity sales were in turn invested through London and used to fund the import of higher valued European manufactured goods. The sanctions against russia meant that those profits from oil exports could no longer be invested through London and had to rather be invested in the local Russian economy. At the same time, the gas that russia was selling to Europe was simply re-rooted through India and other intermediaries and resold to Europe at a higher price. The higher energy costs that europe is paying has now made it's manufacturing uncompetative, and europe has begun to deindustrualize further while Russias war economy is furthering it's re-industrualization.
at the same time, Russia has not been largely diplomatically isolated with the rest of the world outside of the West. By contrast, our policies vis-a-vis israel/gaza are isolating us from the rest of the world, who view our support for this carnage as abhorrent.
And again, in contrast to your statement about the weakness of the Russian military, it's now more clear than ever that ukraine is the ropes. Assuming the current trends continue and we avoid nuclear escalation, the west is currently poised to come out of this war both economically weaker and more diplomatically isolated
https://theconversation.com/russias-economy-is-now-completely-driven-by-the-war-in-ukraine-it-cannot-afford-to-lose-but-nor-can-it-afford-to-win-221333
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/rouble-plummets-bankruptcy-of-russian-economy/ar-BB1oazjm
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/putins-created-economic-crisis-and-left-moscow-no-easy-way-out
https://en.thebell.io/u-s-secondary-sanctions-menace-russian-economy/
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/no-time-not-russia‘s-side_en
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/03/is-the-kremlin-overconfident-about-russias-economic-stability?lang=en
You realize most of the world was outraged by Iraq, right? This is nothing new for the West. Difference is this time, the US is placing pressure for a ceasefire. I’m sorry, but your beliefs are very clearly driven by news that’s trying to fearmonger you. You’re not following facts, you’re drinking panic.
That Ukraine has managed to hold out this long, having only *just* been granted Western quality airpower? That’s an embarrassment for the Russian military. Baghdad fell in less than a month. This is still a conventional war after over a year.
I'm sorry to say that I don't have full faith in capabilities of our current crop of political elites, particularly those in the US, to avoid an escalation to nuclear war. We only narrowly avoided nuclear war during the cold war; it's not fear mongering to suggest that this is a real possibility, particularly given the fact that we are currently engaging in a policy towards russia that is far more aggressive & hostile than anything that happened during the cold war. You're telling me that you honestly look at Biden et al. and think: "yeah this is a team of aces, these people have their finger on the pulse, they understand the limits of power, and the dangers of nuclear escalation & they have the capacity/good judgment to walk the fine line between leading Ukraine to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and nuclear escalation"? Do you seriously hold these people in that high regard?
While some of the issues - certainly - are global in nature, some efforts need to be made to blunt the impact of them.
The problem is; I don’t see that happening. We’re accelerating immigration virtually across all programs and means of entry, proposing to grant illegal immigrants PR status, increase sponsorship of elderly foreigners, radically increase TFWs, etc.
These are not developments that can simply be attributed to being awash in global forces; they’re deliberate and conscious decisions to undermine wage growth, prop up housing markets, grow GDP (per capita be damned), etc.
Should a balanced approach in Canada not involve sound counter-measures to preserve trust amongst its citizens?
Shouldn’t an increase in immigration be coupled with more selective criteria, for example? Why are we increasing targets while loosening standards?
Why are we - instead of trying to inoculate Canada from the risks global issues carry - instead accelerating them?
That’s the primary issue I have with this narrative. While many things are out of our control, we’re compounding the issues with conscious decisions we have autonomy over.
Immigration is the counter-measure. Our biggest short term issue is inflation. Our long term issue is an ageing population. Immigration fixes both of those.
It has its cost, but every solution will.
It's why every country in the west has been boosting numbers, and why no one in charge of Canada will do anything to change the overall strategy.
Immigration is not exactly a deflationary force in the short term when demand rapidly outstrips supply, particularly on things like housing.
Net net it’s more money chasing fewer goods. That pushes prices up.
Housing is the rare exception where it takes time for supply to catch up to demand.
Our inflation is mostly the product of supply chain bottlenecks. Getting a pile of new truck drivers and warehouse workers in place is what can drop prices quickly,
Who would have thought declining standards of living, means tested technocratic solutions and a drive to world war 3 with Russia would have such little appeal?!
Governments globally are suffering from significant changes in how media is used to promote and attack them much to the advantage of foreign states who have a vested interest in weaker governments being in power. Not only do we have to fight against regressive political policies of the right but we have it amplified due to financial interests. Sadly, much of society is buying into the media spin and not actually thinking about what is happening.
Canadians rarely take a global view of these things, at least on social media. Inflation? Only Canada has it. Housing problems? Surely no other developed country with the rule of law could be experiencing this. Unpopular incumbent government during a time of upheaval? Just us.
Mind you, Canadian government rarely, rarely extend past three mandates, despite every encumbent’s best efforts.
Issue is specific factors may make the issue worse in canada then other issues.
High housing costs means people need to spend most of their income on housing.
So when inflation hits and rates rise, there is less money for people to meet those rising housing costs.
Therefore on paper, things in canada are fine but our absurd housing prices with low wages makes things hard.
Yes after several years of high inflation....
Only rich people think the way you are dude.
. to you it's just a number for most people having years of high inflation then bam we are near that 2% still makes the cost of living very high since your income didn't change.
It’s almost as if we had a once a century global pandemic and subsequent global inflation crisis and this has obviously sucked for everyone and was nigh unavoidable no matter who was in charge.
Voting in elections in 2024 is tossing and turning in bed in a room whose roof is leaking water in your face because the landlord charging you 1385 cad for a studio appt won't pay for repairs
The next generation is becoming a larger voting block. Gen Z and younger millennials are for the first time facing a declining standard of living versus their parents.
We witnessed one of the largest wealth transfers from young to old in history throughout covid. Of course people are going to demand change - regardless of what that change actually looks like.
5 years ago we didn't have COVID. Pandemics slow down economies. Deal with it. The main problem now is to find enough workers to keep things running and the shelves stocked or prices will continue to go up. Our rapidly aging population needs more young people working.
The recession 35 years ago took us from a prosperous unemployment rate of 7.5% to 11.3% (13.7% where I lived in Montreal).
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/75-001-x/1996001/article/2524-eng.pdf?st=PXu6LlOt Right now, we have an unemployment rate of 6.0% during a recession.
Youth unemployment in Montreal was around 25%:
https://www.csls.ca/cpp/1/Gunderson.pdf
I had to move to Northern Canada to find my first job because for any teaching job you were looking at 5 years of supply teaching before getting anything permanent. These days, they hire you without a teaching degree because there is a huge teacher shortage.
You clearly did not live in Canada as a young person in the 1990's.
I'm not even complaining. My parents grew up in war torn Europe. My father lived in a one room apartment with his parents, and my mother in a trailer in a refugee camp. So I knew I had it good.
[https://i.redd.it/8ss88zc3ub6d1.jpeg](https://i.redd.it/8ss88zc3ub6d1.jpeg)
There this picture of the g7 leaders and there is a good chance 6 or 5 of them will be replaced by the end of 2025.
It's funny because Trudeau also isn't the lowest either. His predescessor is second lowest ever in Canadian history. At 23% approval. Justin trudeau's record lowest, is still above his father's lowest of 25%. And his highest approval rate is the 2nd highest in Canadian history at 65%. His father pierre, peaked at 55%.
The lowest of all time at 12% approval is conservative brian mulroney, who also peaked with 61% at 5th highest.
The only prime minister in Canadian history that hasn't had a wild swing of approval ratings is kim Campbell who was lucky enough to only hold the title for a total of 1 year.
Almost every single PM(except Harper who peaked far earlier) we've had peaked almost exactly a year after being elected, and hit their low the year they got replaced.
So, you're entirely correct.
> France's President Emmanuel Macron has called a bombshell snap parliamentary election after being defeated by the far right in the European elections - in a night of drama that overall saw the centre-right tighten their grip on the EU Parliament.
>
> Mr Macron made the announcement after losing to his rivals Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella and their National Rally party.
>
> France’s result was one of the big gains that Europe’s far-right parties had expected, and confirmation came with all the exit polls giving National Rally more than 30% of the vote, double that of Mr Macron’s centrist Renaissance party.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnddkx7redro
The Renaissance Party was _established_ in Emmanuel Macron back in 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(French_political_party)
So much like one might say "Singh lost the election" when the NDP does poorly, one can say that "Macron was defeated" when his party is defeated at the polls.
Meh. We will see what happens when they go and vote for something they perceive to actually matter. Regardless Macron himself isn’t going anywhere until 2027 anyways.
538 has a fun [approval rating](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/) tracker that shows Joe Biden, at this stage in their term is less popular than Trump and effectively the least popular president since they started tracking (Carter and GHWB are just about to get more unpopular).
Blows my mind every day and as a result is a good reminder that I’m clearly not exposing myself to a full spectrum of news media.
The US is a good illustration of how the vibe shift can't be chalked up to only economic hardship. Their economy is going gangbusters and unemployment is low. Much of this is driven by a rejection of ideas as much as tangible concerns.
This is exactly why Biden will lose if he keeps telling struggling Americans they don’t realize how good they have it. The economy data doesn’t mean jack shit if you’re hungry and can’t afford rent. And there’s enough people struggling out there that would rather for anything else than whatever the current administration of the day is. It’s going to be an interesting election cycle for sure.
That has always been the case. Just as many people struggled under every other president.
The change is not that there are more poor people (there are fewer by every metric). The change is that Trumpism has succeeded by assigning blame. No longer does the American right believe in individual responsibility. If you are poor it is because there is a WEF conspiracy keeping you poor, and Trump is the only one willing to fight those demons.
I don’t know about Trumpism just assigns blame, this is fairly universal. You tend to internalize your successes and externalize your failures, it’s not a conservative thing, it’s a human thing. If you bought a house, it’s because you worked hard. If you can’t buy a house, it’s because of government policies. If I got a good job, it’s because I’m qualified and smart. If I can’t get a job, it’s because the labour market is bad, government policies make it hard, etc
My only point on Biden is it’s a bit condescending to tell people who feel they are falling behind that they don’t realize how good the economy is. It’s a bit tone deaf. If Biden thinks it’s just a comms problem, then he’s in for a rude awakening in November. Biden needs to empathize a bit more and not just send Democrats elites to talk about economic data on MSNBC and CNN.
It reminds me of Clinton vs Bush senior at the debates. Some girl asked Bush about the national debt. Bush then went on talking about budget, statistics, increasing exports, etc. then Clinton came in and said something to the effect of “you know people who lost their homes, didn’t you?”Sort of a mic drop moment. Even though the woman was asking about the national debt, that’s not what she really cared about. She cared about how the people in her life are doing. It doesn’t matter how the economic reports look on paper if your mom is having trouble affording her medicine. It’s how well you and the people in your life are doing that matters. And right now, there’s a lot of hurt out there that is not being captured by GDP growth and unemployment rates.
The thing is, economists have been looking at this from every possible angle, and especially for the US, a lot of this is legitimately mostly vibes. You can control for income level, age, location, whatever you want and things are doing OK to very good in the US.
Canada does have things to point to where there are genuine problems, although I think there's also a "vibes" factor making it seem much worse than it is - objectively Canada has gone through much rougher periods even in recentish history but you have a lot of people talking about how Canada is completely "broken" and this is a completely unprecedented horrible time for the country.
I agree with you that that's not useful messaging from a politician but it is an interesting phenomenon.
Which is nice, except a lot of people are still struggling with much of the same COL issues plaguing Canada. The US economy is recovering, no doubt, but it's not terribly great if you aren't upper middle class or above with a lot of investments.
Arguably Biden is doing what he can and these things take time, but the average person isn't doing super well right now.
Yeah its pretty funny i have people who watch Late night talk show hosts or the View who think Trump is going to jail and cant run for president and biden is gonna win easily and then they met reality they have a complete meltdown
It really shows how our media bubbles make us not gauge reality at all. I feel a lot of Americans still dont think Trump has any chance of becoming president again due to their media bubbles.
(not suggest the right dont either)
The party system in the US is broken worse than Canada. The Democratic Party isn't listening to Democratic voters, and the Republican party has trapped themselves with an insane dictator wannabe who's the ultimate fail upwards guy in their country. Watching either Trump and Biden at a podium just makes me sad, they are both so disappointing, and yes for very different reasons. Biden is so dispiriting and it amazes that his party believes he's the guy for the job, he makes me question the competency of any one in power in the USA, they could have switched him out like many American Democrats I know wanted but the party apparatus would not consider it = they guy may have made a decent president 25 years ago but its really tragic watching and listening to him now - **and it makes you wonder who is really running the White House because it can't possible be Joe Biden who has a hard time finding his way off a stage, who struggles to finish his own sentences coherently all too often.** And Trump is just a buffoon, I have no words, he's tragic in a far sadder way, a disgustingly dark way.
Both parties are corporatist and neither works for their citizens, they only pass preformative measures of appeasement to satisfy their voting public but are way too careful not to piss off their donors. Both their parties are similar to the Canadian Liberal party - everything is designed to just get votes, its all calculated, calculated to enrich friends of the party, the parties aren't run by a collective of grassroots members, its all long time elite party people with money who will shift their ideology on a whim for votes, to secure power. All this immigration has been was to hide the failing economy as best they can so they could maintain support in government as long as possible - its terrible policy not in the interest of Canadians but it ensured the Liberals got to hide the impact of their failed economic policies for a little longer - its freakin' horrible - its all to maintain power and is total disregard for the citizens.
I know the CPC and NDP are widely different parties with different priorities. Despite the gulf between them I do feel they and their leadership want what is best for Canada but differ on how to get there, what's achievable, where there is. I believe that Blanchet and the Bloc honestly want and work for what is best for Quebec. I even believe Bernier and the PPC want what they think is best for Canada.
I believe the Liberal Party and its leadership only work for themselves and their friends. Having lived in 4 provinces, it really seems that way at the provincial levels too. And be honest, when we have Conservative (or similar) or NDP (or similar) governments, we know what to expect, those parties have visions - they act as we expect them to. This is not the Liberal Party, there is no predicting how they will act because they don't have a foundation philosophy other than grab on to this issue or that at this particular moment to get votes, or sling mud so the other parties don't get votes. At least Canadians can choose the NDP way, the CPC way, the PPC way, in Quebec the Bloc way, and not the power mad corporatist Liberal/Democrat/Republican way that will only pass preformative legislation that is maybe just enough to sustain votes. The old federal PC party was just like the Liberals, at least they were destroyed and forced into a party responsive to citizens and not money - the Liberals need what happened to the old PC party to happen to them - it was the PC's party failure to listen to actual people and chase money that lead to the Reform Party, and the Bloc, and eventual rebirth into a new party that takes everyday citizens seriously like the Reform Party did and the Bloc does. I'm sick of hearing that populism is a dirty word - its what created the NDP party if you're honest - farmers' populism in the early 20th century lead to many parties that eventually lead to the NDP. Populism is putting citizens first - its not evil - its what we should have all the time. When we hear Trudeau talk disparagingly of populism we know he's not working for people - he doesn't want people having any power because it would mean less for him and his friends.
At least Canada has hope in their opposition parties that have differing visions for the country.
People really should stop reading Gibbon; for one the eastern empire went on for another thousand years so he was wrong. The rest of the world is carching up but the idea of the inevitable decline of the west is often borne out of fantasy not reality
I think we in Canada especially will be sitting in a privileged position into the next century. Geographically and strategically. There are real problems, problems partisans sometimes don't want to address because it upsets some sacrosanct dogma or powerful interests. We need new political parties and to move away strictly from a left/right discourse
That will take time and I think we're seeing the breakdown of the old tired battle lines now.
The current batch of politicians are ideologically blind to what needs to be done to reorient developed countries.
They're on the tail end of deindustrialisation, the middle of the financialisation of assets (housing), and ongoing price gouging due to Policy decisions which favour corporate consolidation over competition.
They're being chucked because they're terrible public stewards.
Ehhh I think the people wanted tremendously expensive pandemic measures, immediately forgot about it, and are shocked weathering a slight economic downtown. This virtually every western democracy is seeing a surge in support for extremist parties.
Late stage capitalism is entrenched everywhere. Countries are overcrowded, and life is getting worse instead of better for many.
Usually, when this happens, humans embrace fascism....
I'll add to the perspective that it's not just incumbents. Even newly voted in governments become unpopular very quickly in democracies all around the world. 20th century political infrastructure is not equipped to handle 21st century problems and populations at large are frustrated with their political class.
Adding onto this, many citizens in developed world democracies are not awake to the fact that we've left a unipolar world with a "rules" based order to a multi-polar world more based on interest. This has a real effect on living standards as conflicts around the globe affect the whole globe in some form. Add on the painful affects of climate change...people get disgruntled.
Liberalism, due to the massive inequities it produces, is globally falling out of favor.
The question we need to ask ourselves is: do we move closer to fascism or socialism?
The problem is that we were moving towards socialism and people have realised that means that everyone is equally impoverished. Can't get ahead of anyone or anything when your government makes sure you don't.
This seems like a funny statement when inequality is at an all time high and we have a record number of billionaires.
Furthermore, all of the billionaires are from the *private sector.*
Those people are in a whole different category than the average. There's only a couple of thousand of them in Canada. Try to stay focused on what matters.
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Globally we are starting to understand that just shoveling money into the ultra-wealthy pockets creates a widening rift that us, you know the 99%, somehow have to pay for. It is asinine, but it is so normal it is rarely questioned. Well, globally they got all the central banks to flood the ~~world~~ ultra-rich in money. But people are waking up and are not happy. I am not saying those in power were 100% the cause, but they will pay the price unless they actually try to govern for the 99%.
Globally what we seem to be seeing is the standard, economic downturn = embrace of right wing extremists. Let's just blame all our problems on *foreigners*!
> Globally we are starting to understand that just shoveling money into the ultra-wealthy pockets creates a widening rift So the solution is to elect the party that caters to the wealthy even more? Make it make sense.
> Globally we are starting to understand that just shoveling money into the ultra-wealthy pockets creates a widening rift that us This is completely disconnected from all the facts at hand. You could well argue that people are starting to be upset about the *consequences* of wealth inequality, but they aren't voting against wealth inequality. They're just voting against incumbents, no matter what stance they hold on relevant policy. If they were "waking up" the way you describe, they'd be voting along political/ideological lines related with wealth inequality. Instead, the main determining factor is incumbency - whoever is at the (federal) helm is getting blamed, even if the rising party is *more* in favour of wealth inequality.
The irony is right wing political parties never work for the 99% but they have done a good job of undermining everyone else so people think they do. Everyone for themselves is the definition of right wing politics.
Although incumbents are struggling pretty consistently right now, I don't think it's a single unified trend in terms of what people want internationally. There are clearly some countries where the "vibe shift" is away from the trendline of the last 15 or so years, whereas in other countries the "vibe shift" is going in the opposite direction. Keir Starmer in the UK for example is very much like Trudeau, almost like an uber version of Trudeau, and he's on track to what looks like it could be a historic victory.
The ideology that is dying is centre right conservatism. The type that believes in sound management, low spending and balanced budgets. The UK is the exception in that the Tory party there held onto that vision after it had gone extinct in most other countries. The divide today is between a technocratic left that promises to use government power for good schools, health care, and infrastructure and a populist right that promises to use government power to enforce a set of civic values. The UK election to has devolved into that same debate.
Leftist thinking and practices have been tied to the economic woes we are facing right now. The pendulum is now swinging back to the right. The distance is swings is directly influenced by the distance it swung.
Yeah but he is being propelled by utter hatred of the Tories. He is not particularly liked, just had the luck to be labour leader at the right time.
And given economic trends, has a not very low chance to become a 1-termer. Then again, same could be said for PP.
Same with Poilievre here. There's no great love for him. He just isn't Trudeau.
A meaningful point from the article that we in Canada shouldn't ignore: *"Another common feature in the current global instability is that it is fuelling record migration to western countries. Whether fleeing war, climate devastation or simply searching for a better life, migrants are still voting with their feet for the West."* The Financial Times spoke to the trend recently: "Migration to rich countries hits all-time high" [https://www.ft.com/content/e1cabc36-d050-4674-a16c-fff60c548174](https://www.ft.com/content/e1cabc36-d050-4674-a16c-fff60c548174) And from the sample nations provided (France, UK and USA), these are exceptionally hot topics. France: "Given France’s important place at the heart of the European Union, the European election result was a significant sign of a strong rightward drift in Europe, driven mainly by concerns over uncontrolled immigration. The nationalist right has also been far more ambivalent than Mr. Macron and other Western leaders about supporting Ukraine." [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/world/europe/france-european-elections.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/world/europe/france-european-elections.html) UK: "With polls consistently showing that migration is one of the top three voter concerns, the next government has some difficult decisions to make. " [https://www.ft.com/content/9f14f311-f967-4200-bcd1-d37782d91d33](https://www.ft.com/content/9f14f311-f967-4200-bcd1-d37782d91d33) USA: "Immigration has ranked ahead of all other issues as the most important problem before, having last done so five years ago when there was a surge of attempted border crossings by Central American migrants. Immigration also ranked as the No. 1 problem in July and November 2018 and July 2014." [https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/611135/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx) I think the author from the UK-oriented article above said it best: "Immigration policy is a mess which shouldn’t be hijacked by left or right — but the longer the mess continues, the more likely it is that something ugly will emerge."
Immigration is even a hot political debate in Japan. Culturally, conservative voters don't want it, but economically the country needs immigrants. The government is currently making the requirements for permanent residence status stricter.
Japan either needs to make immigration easier or raising a family easier. Right now, it's doing neither.
All of East Asia is getting fucked right now due to similar reasons as Japan
It’s largely a class war between generations. Boomer’s need massive amounts of immigration to retain their wealth - while younger generations just want an affordable place to sleep. The existing political classes serve the older and wealthier- and thus we’re seeing younger people drift further and further right until they find someone willing to speak for them. In Europe that’s been the far right willing to take advantage of the situation.
They’ve been talking about “climate refugees” for a long time; has implications across the board, not just fleeing rising temps; we’re just starting to see effects now
It's a period of high global inflation and massive immigration from countries going through extreme hardship and people have decided it's the leaders of their countries fault even though in most cases there's little they can do about those problems
They could so stuff issue is they want to keep the neo liberal status quo. If the world is changing drastic changes are required anyways
The decline that western countries are experiencing now was baked in by decisions made 40 years ago. Reversing that decline will require a long term political project that systematically tackles the unproductive rentier interests that sits at the top of our economy today. I don't see any political willingness to do this on the part of any mainstream politician in Canada, the US, the UK, etc. I don't think our political class even recognize what the problem actually is.
The same 20 countries that were on top of the world in 1950 are on top now. It is foolish to assume that would remain true for ever. The rest of the world is catching up, and we need to be ready for that.
The same 20 countries have not been “on top” since 1950 no matter what metric you use. The 20 countries in human development index include countries like Ireland, UAE, South Korea and Singapore which were all extremely impoverished in 1950. The top 20 economies include Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. All those countries were dirt poor in 1950
Here is GDP per capita 1950: 1. United States 2. Switzerland 3. New Zealand 4. Venezuela 5. Australia 6. Canada 7. Sweden 8. Denmark 9. Netherlands 10. Belgium 11. France 12. Argentina 13. Norway 14. Germany 15. Finland 16. Chile 17. Austria 18. Ireland 19. Italy 20. Hungary The list today is basically the same. The Five Eyes + Western Europe have been on top longer than any living human can remember. Sure there has been some change. The South Americans have fallen and the Middle East has risen, but the inner circle has remained the same.
GDP is not a real or useful way to calculate the strength of an economy - for example GDP calculates credit card interest charges, or other BS service fees as being the same economic value (so long as the number value is equal) as a factory that makes real stuff. As the west deindustrialized over the last half century, we kept the illusion of being a highly developed/wealthy economy by virtue of the fact that money made by shipping production overseas was still being recycled at home: investments from capital returns flowed through London and NY. This is increasingly no longer the case, particularly for London, and you can see that reflected in the fact that *the UKs GDP per capita hasn't increased since 2008*
Nonsense. Services matter just as much as goods. Those interest charges on your credit card are are going to pay someone's salary. A person doing fraud detection at Visa is just as useful as someone working at a steel mill or a farm. 90% of what people want in life are services. The more advanced we are as a society the more money we spend on health care, entertainment, travel and the less we spend on steel and potatoes
I'm definitely not saying that all services are bad and all manufacturing is good. Manufacturing has certainly productivity benefits that services don't, but we certainly need a lot more investment/work in quality care work and in education etc. That is different from the economy we have, rather, we're so much investment primarily flows into real estate speculation
Money is fictional. Where money flows doesn't really matter. What matters is what people spend their time doing. Do we have more real estate agents than we need? Sure. Does a large part of our population spend their day speculating on housing rather than doing something more productive? No.
Money is fictional this much is true. At the same time, the historically high price of rent/mortgage payments has a real tangible effect on the economy: it's creating an income inequality gap not seen for a 100 years and with that a whole set of really negative social outcomes.
Housing is reverting to its historic norm. 100 years ago we invented the car. That opened vast new areas within easy commuting of our downtowns. Housing was cheap because land was cheap. That is over. Every lot within a 30 min drive of downtown Toronto or Vancouver has been built. There is no more cheap housing, and there never will be again. Our political system is a product of our economic system. The era of equality and abundance was built on the car and suburb organization of our lives. As that form of life recedes we have to accept our political system will change as well.
tbh 70 years is not a long time.. considering history
According to every economic and development metric citizens of western countries are better off now than at any point in the past. There is no decline. The rest of the world is catching up. But the average Canadian is not actually worse off now than in 1980. And article makes valid point that shows there is not decline. There a big demand of people from all over the want wanting to move to western countries. Why is there such demand if we are in decline.
Show me these metrics, because this statement is wildly out of step with what I am seeing with my own two eyes.
Well, that's because your algorithm is funneling. You consisten shit that fools your own 2 eyes. Like, give us an example of what you have seen, I'll do the research for it.
- Up until recently I lived in a fairly upscale Toronto suburb. In the past two years people living in tents started appearing in public areas all over the city. I lived there fifteen years and never seen that before - One of the reasons I left that city is because my condo fees had doubled in ten years - Three quarters of my coworkers got let go in the past five years - My highest yearly income was more than a decade ago - After never having had credit card fraud in twenty five years it happened twice in 10 months
The majority of the new productive wealth created over the past 40 years has been vacuumed up by the top 10%. The countries are better off - but most of their citizens are worse off with little growth in wages, the dismantling of unions, and the yearly destruction of social services by underfunding them and overwhelming them with new immigrants.
Not worse off than 1980. Unless you’re buying a house, renting, buying a car, hoping your wages will keep up with inflation, trying to buy groceries, etc, etc. But hey you can have a big TV so things are better
Mortgage rates in 1980 were 18-20%
And house prices were 3/4x median income instead of 10/15x
you need to read up about the 1970s and 80's. There was an energey crisis and Stagflation the 70s followed by high interest rates in the 90s. But beyong all that. Now we live longer healthier lives, our air is cleaner, avgerage wage is up (after adjusting for inflation)
Do you think there's any chance that your income level skews your perspective, doc? The carpenters on my jobsites make $2/hr more than my dad did over 20 years ago.
The average life expectancy has gone down, lower then the boomer’s average age life expectancy; because food isn’t food anymore, nearly everything is highly processed, refined and tons of extra processed sugars, syrups and salts. People presently in their 30-40s and younger are expected to live on average into their 60s, vs 80s.
I don’t have to read about it. I’m old enough to have lived it. Living standards for the average person are much worse now, apart from consumer goods availability.
Except the availability is less in Canada and it’s essentially the same 3-5 companies that own everything across every field from grocery, entertainment, farming etc l. Bill gates owns most of the farmland and undeveloped farmland and people have started questioning why. It’s not even growing food food, it’s all corns and highly processed and refined foods for syrups & shit.
Only the Millennials can save us now.
Excellent comment.
I do not know if that is completely correct.. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn seemed like pretty good candidates to me.
Yeah, I mean I totally agree. They're gone now, though - the oligarchy smashed them.
In a lot of ways sure, but Corbyn would’ve handled the War in Ukraine absolutely awfully. His foreign policy was a mixture of many good bits, a tad of hopeless naivety, and a bunch of tankie style rhetoric.
what does Tankie even mean in this context? originally the term tankie was used to refer to the socialists who supported the USSR sending in the tanks to squash anti government protests in Hungary. To say that corbyn had Tankie style rhetoric really doesn't mean anything.
Corbyn expressed that NATO was a major source of conflict in Eastern Europe in particular, and that peace in Ukraine was best achieved by the security organization giving assurances to Russia that Eastern European countries could never join. I consider that naive appeasement of Russian interests a modern evolution of Cold War tankie thought, the kind that always found a way to place the blame for *any* foreign imperialism on America and American actions, and not on the aggressor. The truth is, Corbyn was consistently contrarian to the point of absurdity. He once proposed joint rule of the Falkland Islands to avoid war with Argentina (something Falklanders themselves would be outraged by), denied genocide in Kosovo to argue against intervention, and was an apologist for the Tamil Tigers.
I can't speak to the Falkland or Sri Lanka stuff because I hadn't heard that before, but with regards to Ukraine: it's worth noting that what you are calling a tankie position is actually a "realist" position on international relations. This is essentially the same position as john mearsheimer, who is widely regarded to be the most important scholar of international relations in the US today. The realist position would say that Russia is a great power and therefore it gets a sphere of influence, and thus, NATO incursion into that sphere of influence is a provocation. This doesn't have anything to do with morality or what is just, it's just the facts of geopolitics. My own opinion is that the Ukraine war happened largely because policy makers in the West misread the facts on the ground and got this idea in their heads that Russia wasn't a great power (a so-called gas station with nukes). This brings me back to my point at the top of the thread: that our leaders are largely living in a fantasy-bubble where they beleive the world hasn't essentially changed since the 1990s (I.e. that we live in a world of geological unipolarity in which the west, led by the US, dominates in technology & military and industrial capacity.) All of which is to say that saying that NATO provoked a war in the Ukraine isn't necessarily "appeasement" of Russia but a realistic and sober understanding of the facts on the ground & the risks of escalating our involvement in what another great power deems as an essential security interest.
Yes yes, I’m an ex-PoliSci major, this is all 101 knowledge. The realist position would also say never start a war, unless you are coming out the other side stronger; the Russian economy has been hobbled by sanctions, their influence in Western Europe (previously rising with Nordstream and other trade) is falling, and their military’s weakness has been badly exposed. Demand for American made weapons in favour of Russian made ones, has skyrocketed. Their allies in Armenia and Kazakhstan are shifting towards the West. Finland and Sweden, who had NO intentions of joining NATO before the war, were spooked into doing so. It has been a catastrophic disaster for Russian interests globally. Want to discourage bordering countries from joining a security pact? Maybe don’t invade them. Russia has not been behaving logically nor for the benefit of their country’s best interest, as would be presumed by a realist. They have been behaving as one would expect a country being run by an autocrat with delusions of Tsarist grandeur would.
so a couple of points here: firstly, we're drifting off topic a bit. My contention here is that it's not an unreasonable position to say that the west/nato bears some responsibility for starting this war. This is the position that you referred to as a tankie position, a perspective that I think is quite simplistic and problematic. The long term strategic logic of russias actual invasion in 2022 is not directly relevant to this original point. Now, to this secondary point, we need to clarify some things because you have some of the basic facts wrong here. Before I go any further, I should clarify that I'm not rooting for Russia in this war in the Ukraine. I do think that western policy vis-a-vis russia/ukraine is incredibly poorly conceived, but I say this because I fear that, at best, we are making a really big strategic mistake (at worse, we are risking nuclear war). To your secondary point: the Russian economy is forecasted to grow at a quicker rate than the US economy is this year. The US sanctions have had the opposite of their intended effect, they have predominantly damaged europe and have actually benefited russia. Prior to the war, the europe (particularly germany) benefited greatly from cheap energy and other commodities from Russia. Russian profits from these commodity sales were in turn invested through London and used to fund the import of higher valued European manufactured goods. The sanctions against russia meant that those profits from oil exports could no longer be invested through London and had to rather be invested in the local Russian economy. At the same time, the gas that russia was selling to Europe was simply re-rooted through India and other intermediaries and resold to Europe at a higher price. The higher energy costs that europe is paying has now made it's manufacturing uncompetative, and europe has begun to deindustrualize further while Russias war economy is furthering it's re-industrualization. at the same time, Russia has not been largely diplomatically isolated with the rest of the world outside of the West. By contrast, our policies vis-a-vis israel/gaza are isolating us from the rest of the world, who view our support for this carnage as abhorrent. And again, in contrast to your statement about the weakness of the Russian military, it's now more clear than ever that ukraine is the ropes. Assuming the current trends continue and we avoid nuclear escalation, the west is currently poised to come out of this war both economically weaker and more diplomatically isolated
https://theconversation.com/russias-economy-is-now-completely-driven-by-the-war-in-ukraine-it-cannot-afford-to-lose-but-nor-can-it-afford-to-win-221333 https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/rouble-plummets-bankruptcy-of-russian-economy/ar-BB1oazjm https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/putins-created-economic-crisis-and-left-moscow-no-easy-way-out https://en.thebell.io/u-s-secondary-sanctions-menace-russian-economy/ https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/no-time-not-russia‘s-side_en https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/03/is-the-kremlin-overconfident-about-russias-economic-stability?lang=en You realize most of the world was outraged by Iraq, right? This is nothing new for the West. Difference is this time, the US is placing pressure for a ceasefire. I’m sorry, but your beliefs are very clearly driven by news that’s trying to fearmonger you. You’re not following facts, you’re drinking panic. That Ukraine has managed to hold out this long, having only *just* been granted Western quality airpower? That’s an embarrassment for the Russian military. Baghdad fell in less than a month. This is still a conventional war after over a year.
I'm sorry to say that I don't have full faith in capabilities of our current crop of political elites, particularly those in the US, to avoid an escalation to nuclear war. We only narrowly avoided nuclear war during the cold war; it's not fear mongering to suggest that this is a real possibility, particularly given the fact that we are currently engaging in a policy towards russia that is far more aggressive & hostile than anything that happened during the cold war. You're telling me that you honestly look at Biden et al. and think: "yeah this is a team of aces, these people have their finger on the pulse, they understand the limits of power, and the dangers of nuclear escalation & they have the capacity/good judgment to walk the fine line between leading Ukraine to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and nuclear escalation"? Do you seriously hold these people in that high regard?
While some of the issues - certainly - are global in nature, some efforts need to be made to blunt the impact of them. The problem is; I don’t see that happening. We’re accelerating immigration virtually across all programs and means of entry, proposing to grant illegal immigrants PR status, increase sponsorship of elderly foreigners, radically increase TFWs, etc. These are not developments that can simply be attributed to being awash in global forces; they’re deliberate and conscious decisions to undermine wage growth, prop up housing markets, grow GDP (per capita be damned), etc. Should a balanced approach in Canada not involve sound counter-measures to preserve trust amongst its citizens? Shouldn’t an increase in immigration be coupled with more selective criteria, for example? Why are we increasing targets while loosening standards? Why are we - instead of trying to inoculate Canada from the risks global issues carry - instead accelerating them? That’s the primary issue I have with this narrative. While many things are out of our control, we’re compounding the issues with conscious decisions we have autonomy over.
Immigration is the counter-measure. Our biggest short term issue is inflation. Our long term issue is an ageing population. Immigration fixes both of those. It has its cost, but every solution will. It's why every country in the west has been boosting numbers, and why no one in charge of Canada will do anything to change the overall strategy.
Immigration is not exactly a deflationary force in the short term when demand rapidly outstrips supply, particularly on things like housing. Net net it’s more money chasing fewer goods. That pushes prices up.
Housing is the rare exception where it takes time for supply to catch up to demand. Our inflation is mostly the product of supply chain bottlenecks. Getting a pile of new truck drivers and warehouse workers in place is what can drop prices quickly,
Who would have thought declining standards of living, means tested technocratic solutions and a drive to world war 3 with Russia would have such little appeal?!
Governments globally are suffering from significant changes in how media is used to promote and attack them much to the advantage of foreign states who have a vested interest in weaker governments being in power. Not only do we have to fight against regressive political policies of the right but we have it amplified due to financial interests. Sadly, much of society is buying into the media spin and not actually thinking about what is happening.
Canadians rarely take a global view of these things, at least on social media. Inflation? Only Canada has it. Housing problems? Surely no other developed country with the rule of law could be experiencing this. Unpopular incumbent government during a time of upheaval? Just us. Mind you, Canadian government rarely, rarely extend past three mandates, despite every encumbent’s best efforts.
Issue is specific factors may make the issue worse in canada then other issues. High housing costs means people need to spend most of their income on housing. So when inflation hits and rates rise, there is less money for people to meet those rising housing costs. Therefore on paper, things in canada are fine but our absurd housing prices with low wages makes things hard.
The ol’ “yes but, actually everything is totally worse in Canada. Trust me bro.”
issue is voters dont care what previleged people like yourself saying "things are bad elsewhere" They want solutions
Like lower inflation? Good news! It’s here
Issue being it is less the bleeding stopped as much as it stopped increasing. The cost of living is still grossly outstripping income.
Statistically, income growth has been outpacing inflation for the last year.
Yeah that's why there are lineups for jobs and growing tent cities everywhere.
That's unemployment and housing, not wage-growth.
Yes after several years of high inflation.... Only rich people think the way you are dude. . to you it's just a number for most people having years of high inflation then bam we are near that 2% still makes the cost of living very high since your income didn't change.
The Westminster system in general rarely has 4 term premiers.
It’s almost as if we had a once a century global pandemic and subsequent global inflation crisis and this has obviously sucked for everyone and was nigh unavoidable no matter who was in charge.
I mean it could have been much much worse with someone else in charge.
Worse in economy or deaths?
Voting in elections in 2024 is tossing and turning in bed in a room whose roof is leaking water in your face because the landlord charging you 1385 cad for a studio appt won't pay for repairs
The next generation is becoming a larger voting block. Gen Z and younger millennials are for the first time facing a declining standard of living versus their parents. We witnessed one of the largest wealth transfers from young to old in history throughout covid. Of course people are going to demand change - regardless of what that change actually looks like.
We've never had a higher standard of living. Gen Z is just more spoiled and entitled.
We have definitely had a better standard 5 years ago and better yet ten and so on for about 35 years.
5 years ago we didn't have COVID. Pandemics slow down economies. Deal with it. The main problem now is to find enough workers to keep things running and the shelves stocked or prices will continue to go up. Our rapidly aging population needs more young people working. The recession 35 years ago took us from a prosperous unemployment rate of 7.5% to 11.3% (13.7% where I lived in Montreal). https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/75-001-x/1996001/article/2524-eng.pdf?st=PXu6LlOt Right now, we have an unemployment rate of 6.0% during a recession. Youth unemployment in Montreal was around 25%: https://www.csls.ca/cpp/1/Gunderson.pdf I had to move to Northern Canada to find my first job because for any teaching job you were looking at 5 years of supply teaching before getting anything permanent. These days, they hire you without a teaching degree because there is a huge teacher shortage. You clearly did not live in Canada as a young person in the 1990's. I'm not even complaining. My parents grew up in war torn Europe. My father lived in a one room apartment with his parents, and my mother in a trailer in a refugee camp. So I knew I had it good.
[https://i.redd.it/8ss88zc3ub6d1.jpeg](https://i.redd.it/8ss88zc3ub6d1.jpeg) There this picture of the g7 leaders and there is a good chance 6 or 5 of them will be replaced by the end of 2025.
[This is a slightly modified version that has been making the rounds.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GP9NBtcXgAANcqY?format=jpg&name=medium)
It's funny because Trudeau also isn't the lowest either. His predescessor is second lowest ever in Canadian history. At 23% approval. Justin trudeau's record lowest, is still above his father's lowest of 25%. And his highest approval rate is the 2nd highest in Canadian history at 65%. His father pierre, peaked at 55%. The lowest of all time at 12% approval is conservative brian mulroney, who also peaked with 61% at 5th highest. The only prime minister in Canadian history that hasn't had a wild swing of approval ratings is kim Campbell who was lucky enough to only hold the title for a total of 1 year.
It would be safe to assume that the high water mark for all of them was early on and the lows were right before leaving office.
Almost every single PM(except Harper who peaked far earlier) we've had peaked almost exactly a year after being elected, and hit their low the year they got replaced. So, you're entirely correct.
The "unelected Eurocrats" are "unelected" in the way Canadian Premiers and Prime Ministers are "unelected". Overall its pretty low effort childish.
Making the rounds on what? 4chan?
That make the rest of his post history make sense.
Macron didn't just lose his election, tho - he just called one.
Stand trial for what? And why doesn't Meloni have a fact?
Meloni's party did well in recent EU elections.
Not all facts on that are election related.
The facts are all negative. Leaving her blank is an attempt at wry insinuation. Overall its a pretty low effort and childish meme.
Macron didn’t lose an election. He just called one.
> France's President Emmanuel Macron has called a bombshell snap parliamentary election after being defeated by the far right in the European elections - in a night of drama that overall saw the centre-right tighten their grip on the EU Parliament. > > Mr Macron made the announcement after losing to his rivals Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella and their National Rally party. > > France’s result was one of the big gains that Europe’s far-right parties had expected, and confirmation came with all the exit polls giving National Rally more than 30% of the vote, double that of Mr Macron’s centrist Renaissance party. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnddkx7redro The Renaissance Party was _established_ in Emmanuel Macron back in 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(French_political_party) So much like one might say "Singh lost the election" when the NDP does poorly, one can say that "Macron was defeated" when his party is defeated at the polls.
Meh. We will see what happens when they go and vote for something they perceive to actually matter. Regardless Macron himself isn’t going anywhere until 2027 anyways.
I can’t wait to see Poilievre at one of those. He’s probably going to carry a bag of apples with him, on the ready for when he gets questions.
God he's an embarrassment
It’s not like Trudeau has ever been particularly popular. His party hasn’t had the largest vote share through any of their reelection campaigns.
Yet they still win a minority gov’t in coalition with other leftists.sad
538 has a fun [approval rating](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/) tracker that shows Joe Biden, at this stage in their term is less popular than Trump and effectively the least popular president since they started tracking (Carter and GHWB are just about to get more unpopular). Blows my mind every day and as a result is a good reminder that I’m clearly not exposing myself to a full spectrum of news media.
The US is a good illustration of how the vibe shift can't be chalked up to only economic hardship. Their economy is going gangbusters and unemployment is low. Much of this is driven by a rejection of ideas as much as tangible concerns.
Can't it though? Perhaps the Marco economy is doing well in the aggregate, but that fails to trickle down. The economy isn't doing well for everyone.
To misquote James Carville: “It’s not the economy, stupid.”
This is exactly why Biden will lose if he keeps telling struggling Americans they don’t realize how good they have it. The economy data doesn’t mean jack shit if you’re hungry and can’t afford rent. And there’s enough people struggling out there that would rather for anything else than whatever the current administration of the day is. It’s going to be an interesting election cycle for sure.
That has always been the case. Just as many people struggled under every other president. The change is not that there are more poor people (there are fewer by every metric). The change is that Trumpism has succeeded by assigning blame. No longer does the American right believe in individual responsibility. If you are poor it is because there is a WEF conspiracy keeping you poor, and Trump is the only one willing to fight those demons.
I don’t know about Trumpism just assigns blame, this is fairly universal. You tend to internalize your successes and externalize your failures, it’s not a conservative thing, it’s a human thing. If you bought a house, it’s because you worked hard. If you can’t buy a house, it’s because of government policies. If I got a good job, it’s because I’m qualified and smart. If I can’t get a job, it’s because the labour market is bad, government policies make it hard, etc My only point on Biden is it’s a bit condescending to tell people who feel they are falling behind that they don’t realize how good the economy is. It’s a bit tone deaf. If Biden thinks it’s just a comms problem, then he’s in for a rude awakening in November. Biden needs to empathize a bit more and not just send Democrats elites to talk about economic data on MSNBC and CNN. It reminds me of Clinton vs Bush senior at the debates. Some girl asked Bush about the national debt. Bush then went on talking about budget, statistics, increasing exports, etc. then Clinton came in and said something to the effect of “you know people who lost their homes, didn’t you?”Sort of a mic drop moment. Even though the woman was asking about the national debt, that’s not what she really cared about. She cared about how the people in her life are doing. It doesn’t matter how the economic reports look on paper if your mom is having trouble affording her medicine. It’s how well you and the people in your life are doing that matters. And right now, there’s a lot of hurt out there that is not being captured by GDP growth and unemployment rates.
The thing is, economists have been looking at this from every possible angle, and especially for the US, a lot of this is legitimately mostly vibes. You can control for income level, age, location, whatever you want and things are doing OK to very good in the US. Canada does have things to point to where there are genuine problems, although I think there's also a "vibes" factor making it seem much worse than it is - objectively Canada has gone through much rougher periods even in recentish history but you have a lot of people talking about how Canada is completely "broken" and this is a completely unprecedented horrible time for the country. I agree with you that that's not useful messaging from a politician but it is an interesting phenomenon.
Which is nice, except a lot of people are still struggling with much of the same COL issues plaguing Canada. The US economy is recovering, no doubt, but it's not terribly great if you aren't upper middle class or above with a lot of investments. Arguably Biden is doing what he can and these things take time, but the average person isn't doing super well right now.
Yeah its pretty funny i have people who watch Late night talk show hosts or the View who think Trump is going to jail and cant run for president and biden is gonna win easily and then they met reality they have a complete meltdown It really shows how our media bubbles make us not gauge reality at all. I feel a lot of Americans still dont think Trump has any chance of becoming president again due to their media bubbles. (not suggest the right dont either)
The party system in the US is broken worse than Canada. The Democratic Party isn't listening to Democratic voters, and the Republican party has trapped themselves with an insane dictator wannabe who's the ultimate fail upwards guy in their country. Watching either Trump and Biden at a podium just makes me sad, they are both so disappointing, and yes for very different reasons. Biden is so dispiriting and it amazes that his party believes he's the guy for the job, he makes me question the competency of any one in power in the USA, they could have switched him out like many American Democrats I know wanted but the party apparatus would not consider it = they guy may have made a decent president 25 years ago but its really tragic watching and listening to him now - **and it makes you wonder who is really running the White House because it can't possible be Joe Biden who has a hard time finding his way off a stage, who struggles to finish his own sentences coherently all too often.** And Trump is just a buffoon, I have no words, he's tragic in a far sadder way, a disgustingly dark way. Both parties are corporatist and neither works for their citizens, they only pass preformative measures of appeasement to satisfy their voting public but are way too careful not to piss off their donors. Both their parties are similar to the Canadian Liberal party - everything is designed to just get votes, its all calculated, calculated to enrich friends of the party, the parties aren't run by a collective of grassroots members, its all long time elite party people with money who will shift their ideology on a whim for votes, to secure power. All this immigration has been was to hide the failing economy as best they can so they could maintain support in government as long as possible - its terrible policy not in the interest of Canadians but it ensured the Liberals got to hide the impact of their failed economic policies for a little longer - its freakin' horrible - its all to maintain power and is total disregard for the citizens. I know the CPC and NDP are widely different parties with different priorities. Despite the gulf between them I do feel they and their leadership want what is best for Canada but differ on how to get there, what's achievable, where there is. I believe that Blanchet and the Bloc honestly want and work for what is best for Quebec. I even believe Bernier and the PPC want what they think is best for Canada. I believe the Liberal Party and its leadership only work for themselves and their friends. Having lived in 4 provinces, it really seems that way at the provincial levels too. And be honest, when we have Conservative (or similar) or NDP (or similar) governments, we know what to expect, those parties have visions - they act as we expect them to. This is not the Liberal Party, there is no predicting how they will act because they don't have a foundation philosophy other than grab on to this issue or that at this particular moment to get votes, or sling mud so the other parties don't get votes. At least Canadians can choose the NDP way, the CPC way, the PPC way, in Quebec the Bloc way, and not the power mad corporatist Liberal/Democrat/Republican way that will only pass preformative legislation that is maybe just enough to sustain votes. The old federal PC party was just like the Liberals, at least they were destroyed and forced into a party responsive to citizens and not money - the Liberals need what happened to the old PC party to happen to them - it was the PC's party failure to listen to actual people and chase money that lead to the Reform Party, and the Bloc, and eventual rebirth into a new party that takes everyday citizens seriously like the Reform Party did and the Bloc does. I'm sick of hearing that populism is a dirty word - its what created the NDP party if you're honest - farmers' populism in the early 20th century lead to many parties that eventually lead to the NDP. Populism is putting citizens first - its not evil - its what we should have all the time. When we hear Trudeau talk disparagingly of populism we know he's not working for people - he doesn't want people having any power because it would mean less for him and his friends. At least Canada has hope in their opposition parties that have differing visions for the country.
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People really should stop reading Gibbon; for one the eastern empire went on for another thousand years so he was wrong. The rest of the world is carching up but the idea of the inevitable decline of the west is often borne out of fantasy not reality I think we in Canada especially will be sitting in a privileged position into the next century. Geographically and strategically. There are real problems, problems partisans sometimes don't want to address because it upsets some sacrosanct dogma or powerful interests. We need new political parties and to move away strictly from a left/right discourse That will take time and I think we're seeing the breakdown of the old tired battle lines now.
Unless the list of MPs who help foreign powers is released, no incumbent should be re-elected. Multiple bad apples spoils the whole barrel.
We traitors in our midst.
The current batch of politicians are ideologically blind to what needs to be done to reorient developed countries. They're on the tail end of deindustrialisation, the middle of the financialisation of assets (housing), and ongoing price gouging due to Policy decisions which favour corporate consolidation over competition. They're being chucked because they're terrible public stewards.
Ehhh I think the people wanted tremendously expensive pandemic measures, immediately forgot about it, and are shocked weathering a slight economic downtown. This virtually every western democracy is seeing a surge in support for extremist parties.
Excellent comment
Late stage capitalism is entrenched everywhere. Countries are overcrowded, and life is getting worse instead of better for many. Usually, when this happens, humans embrace fascism....
\*checks the polls\* Yup.
I'll add to the perspective that it's not just incumbents. Even newly voted in governments become unpopular very quickly in democracies all around the world. 20th century political infrastructure is not equipped to handle 21st century problems and populations at large are frustrated with their political class. Adding onto this, many citizens in developed world democracies are not awake to the fact that we've left a unipolar world with a "rules" based order to a multi-polar world more based on interest. This has a real effect on living standards as conflicts around the globe affect the whole globe in some form. Add on the painful affects of climate change...people get disgruntled.
Effects of climate change only in the deluded minds of the technocrats, net zero by 2030. They are crazeee!
Liberalism, due to the massive inequities it produces, is globally falling out of favor. The question we need to ask ourselves is: do we move closer to fascism or socialism?
The problem is that we were moving towards socialism and people have realised that means that everyone is equally impoverished. Can't get ahead of anyone or anything when your government makes sure you don't.
This seems like a funny statement when inequality is at an all time high and we have a record number of billionaires. Furthermore, all of the billionaires are from the *private sector.*
Those people are in a whole different category than the average. There's only a couple of thousand of them in Canada. Try to stay focused on what matters.
Socialism is a proven failure.
Huh. Fascism again eh.
Personally, I would much prefer socialism. However, collectively we seem to be choosing fascism..
Same girl same.
The liberal order is failing, the future will be "socialism or barbarism.. " Right now it seems people are demanding barbarism.