Fixing the problem with austerity:

The political failure is all the greater because it is abundantly clear that the fiscal adjustment should start with pensions and the welfare budget. Britain spends about 6% of GDP supporting pensioners, up by over a third this century. Generous, automatic increases to the state pension have become unaffordable. So have benefits to the 15% of Britain’s working-age population who now claim jobless allowances, after a surge in disability claims since the pandemic. The scale of the increase is impossible to justify. The system has been gamed.

Fixing the problem with taxes:

The trouble is that Labour promised before it was elected not to raise broad-based taxes on income and consumption. The hunt for alternatives is a risky business. Many bad ideas have been hinted at, from taxing pension contributions to imposing capital-gains tax on primary residences. Taxes on narrower bases cause more distortion, because the rates must be higher. The party’s left flank wants heavier taxes on capital. That might deter investors, including those who buy Britain’s government debt. As well as risking economic damage, creating a concentrated group of big losers can be politically fraught. Some backbenchers fantasise about throwing fiscal caution to the wind. If ministers overplay their hand, they could find themselves making a third U-turn.

Note how the author is only highlighting the negative consequences of tax increases, not austerity.

Big ass skepticism when I hear from Michael Katchen but maybe his profit motive is in our interest this time.

Doubt. If we’re talking large platforms content regulation, then we’re talking. But I doubt that.

Well he certainy knows what he needs to do tactically in order to continue the genocide. And we gotta keep ourselves informed about the new weapons of hasbara.

It’s crazy. Some friends under the influence of hasbara are doing the same. And they went from Netanyahu-bad in 2024 to Netanyahu-does-what-a-leader-has-to-do-to-keep-his-people-safe these days. 😒

Yeah I’m not going into the fake numbers debate. You choose to believe the numbers you believe. I made a specific point since the topic was factory automation which typiclly has effects on wages, productivity and employment. To me the trend in wages is the most interesting. Especially given the context of automation so far. If you believe the numbers, wages are rising rapidly. If the trend continues they will close the gap with us. Adjusted for PPP they’re almost at Greece’s average wage level. If you believe the numbers.

“About eight in ten Republicans support something like that and almost the same number of Democrats oppose,” Newall says. “So there is a significant partisan divide here.”

“Don’t broadly support”

Sure, in a strict definition.

Yeah. Just province, household income and age group.

I concur. Took me 3 minutes tops.

Anyone wondering about the authenticity of the survey link - it’s linked on canada.ca so it seems legit.

Wages (in manufacturing) increasing at a rate somewhat proportional (pasted a pic below since longer periods require login) to the growth of the economy, which means that workers are capturing a significant chunk of the economic growth. This is also reflected in the falling Gini index after its peak in 2010.

It works and it’s gonna keep working so long as people feel their lives are getting worse while some groups are getting special treatment. They’re obvious scape goats for the right. We need universalist economic policies that tangibly improve the majorities’ lives but neoliberalism has been delivering the opposite - means-testing and tinkering round the edges, all the while we’re more productive than ever. Have another welfare cut.

E: I’m not at all saying different social groups don’t deserve special treatment due to historical mistreatment and such. I’m saying that a system that only targets those groups for improvement while most get poorer is ready for disruption by using said groups as scape goats to explain why the majority is poorer.

Looking at the loss numbers cited since 2018 come down to $20-30 per Canadian per year tops. This whole hullabaloo, erosion of confidence, economic disruption and more are over that. Mail and parcel delivery is basic economic infrastructure today. Having a public, reliable delivery service that covers all of Canada, that’s run below cost, is an economic enabler for Canadian businesses, like water, electricity and roads. I can’t believe we’re doing what we’re doing right now, especially for a government that talks about boosting Canada’s economy. Ridiculous.

E: I’m beginning to believe that this isn’t about incompetence mismanagement but perhaps willful mismanagement on the part of CP’s exec layer who perhaps see higher compensation on the horizon, should CP be privatized. Of course at the expense of everyone else, workers, businesses and individual Canadians.

The Android app finally works the way you’d expect it. The UI no longer lags due to syncing. Syncing is much faster and more reliable.

He wants the cartels to build domestic manufacturing instead.

This is why I think the narrative that China’s economy is going to collapse due to losing workers over time because of their demographics is false. I think the engineers running China are going to turn to mass automation and AI to increase their workforce’s labour productivity and maintain the ability to make everything.

Whether the Chinese workers would be able to capture more of that higher productivity than their western counterparts is an open question. Given some numbers I’ve seen, so far they have done better in this regard. But I imagine the Chinese capitalist class would be fighting tooth and nail to change that.

Absolutely. And if it’s a large group of people, it’s not difficult to have several people buy a few tickets each.

Weak episode redeemed by throwing the line that jews aren’t Israel and it killing thousands of people makes American jews face increased antisemithism into the mainstream discourse. I don’t think I’ve heard these obvious dots connected in high-profile media. I’m not mad.

Stand with the posties and send a message to this government that siding with corporations instead of labour won’t end well.

The same way everyone else who regulates it does it - require the ID of the purchaser to be presented upon entry. Ticketmaster/LiveNation are simply not interested in curbing scalping as they make directly money off of it. Small independent vendors have employed ID verification for a long time to stop scalping along with explicit obvious messaging that tickets cannot be resold prior to purchase.