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not even if sober posted:Why would we do that? Nuclear is clean, safe and reliable long lasting energy. What are we trying to avoid by not using nuclear? That's true, but it shouldn't come at the expense of renewable energy, and if we're pennypinching across the board it looks even worse because of the very large initial investments required to do anything more than maintain existing capacity.
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May 13, 2014 00:54
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For all the bitching Hudak is doing about the high pay for senior staff at hydro, I was shocked to learn that his own salary is $180,000. Is he proposing a 10% cut to his own pay if he's so interested in reducing spending? Economy begins at home, after all.
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May 13, 2014 01:03
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Duck Rodgers posted:Nuclear itself might not produce emissions, but building the plants does, and the things that electricity powers generally do too. Why must we be constantly having more of everything? If we can conserve power why wouldn't we? Because advances in energy conservation lead to more energy usage not less: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
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May 13, 2014 01:06
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not even if sober posted:Why would we do that? Nuclear is clean, safe and reliable long lasting energy. What are we trying to avoid by not using nuclear?
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May 13, 2014 01:09
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The cost of wind is competitive with nuclear to about a factor of 2, depending on how the accounting is done. Right now Ontario Hydro gets paid 11.5 cents/kWH for wind and 5.6 for nuclear, although you should take those figures with a grain of salt because prices today do not do a fair accounting of capital costs (which have mostly already been paid for long ago by nuclear). Photovoltaic solar is still outrageously expensive - 55 cents for rooftop solar - and I think it's a mistake to subsidize it so heavily, as I don't see how the costs could possibly go down by a factor of 10 just from Ontario's investment. Anyway, demand is going down and not projected to go up any time soon. We don't really need much more nuclear in the next decade. Would it make sense to develop promising new nuclear technology here, and build potentially cheaper plants than the older CANDU designs? Sure, but that's not going to happen at the provincial level. The only existing plan was to build new reactors at Darlington, which was dropped last October because the bids were more expensive than projected. I don't know if there was a report out with a full cost estimate, but the entire ~4,500 MW expansion was supposed to cost at least $22.5 billion. That's 2 cents/kWH in capital costs over 25 years, roughly, without financing, fuel or operational costs. I think that's a reasonable cost for replacing the gas plants we have now, although I think they're mostly there to respond to hourly spikes in demand. Darlington takes days to shut down, from what I recall, so who knows if that excess power in off-peak times would be marketable at close to cost. Anyway, wind power should get more cost-efficient over time, so I don't really see this as being an important enough issue to be a single-issue voter for.
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May 13, 2014 01:11
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Rutibex posted:Because advances in energy conservation lead to more energy usage not less: Jevon's Paradox is related to decreases in price due to conservation. If that doesn't happen than there's not necessarily a reason for an increase in consumption. Plus a lot of people seem to like nuclear because it's cheaper. Jevon's paradox would come into effect for any energy technology that has the result of reducing prices, not just for conservation measures.
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May 13, 2014 01:13
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sliderule posted:For all the bitching Hudak is doing about the high pay for senior staff at hydro, I was shocked to learn that his own salary is $180,000. Is he proposing a 10% cut to his own pay if he's so interested in reducing spending? He won't be cutting salaries, but he will freeze them for everyone in the public sector for two years, including politicians. So presumably he won't be getting a raise, but he won't get a cut either.
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May 13, 2014 03:58
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quote:According to a technical backgrounder released by the Conservatives, baseline growth, based on the previous decade’s average, would be 523,200 jobs over eight years. I feel like someone was throwing darts at a dart board covered with random job numbers. Edit: He's also apparently giving a news conference where he said: quote:Hudak says he'll get Ontario out of the "handout" business. No grant programs. #voteon #onpoli #sl No grant programs? Really? AegisP fucked around with this message at 18:53 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 18:47
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Wow, if tax cuts really create that many jobs then why doesn't Hudak just go all out and pledge to eliminate taxes on everything altogether? With his magic job math, that would create.... *crunches numbers* INFINITE JOBS! Wow, we'd really be an economic powerhouse then.
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May 13, 2014 18:56
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sliderule posted:There is a rural contingent that is really upset at the Liberals for the wind farms that now pock their landscape, and the corresponding spike in electricity prices. Those that I know support nuclear. The significance of this really can't be understated. My grandparents in Huron-Bruce, card-carrying members of the Liberal party, are chomping at the bit to see Wynne go down over the windmills. Of course, the politics of that riding are a bit of a clusterfuck; real hardcore old-school Christians, untouched by the Moral Majority. Socially right, but economically hard left. They'd be an NDP stronghold if not for the Bob Rae fiasco.
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May 13, 2014 19:19
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vyelkin posted:Wow, if tax cuts really create that many jobs then why doesn't Hudak just go all out and pledge to eliminate taxes on everything altogether? With his magic job math, that would create.... *crunches numbers* INFINITE JOBS! Yeah totally, we should definitely have the government hand-picking which hugely profitable multi-national corporations get billions in tax dollars. I was really angry when Hudak stopped the $700m grant Chrysler was asking for and then they decided it was still profitable to do the refurbishing and went ahead anyways. It's so embarrassing for them because they still owe us $800m from the 2008 bailout, so rude of Hudak. Cisco really needed the $220m to create 1700 jobs in Ottawa's struggling IT sector too, their company only posted a $12 billion dollar profit last year. The unemployment in that city and sector could have hit 3% without it. It's just a shame that Wynne decided to go into politics instead of the private sector, just imagine how many jobs she could have created with decision making like that running a real company.
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May 13, 2014 19:24
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urrrngh Tim Hudak says PCs will cut personal taxes 10% after balancing budget quote:OTTAWA — Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives are promising to cut personal taxes once they balance the budget in 2016-17.
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May 13, 2014 20:43
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Ikantski posted:Yeah totally, we should definitely have the government hand-picking which hugely profitable multi-national corporations get billions in tax dollars. I was really angry when Hudak stopped the $700m grant Chrysler was asking for and then they decided it was still profitable to do the refurbishing and went ahead anyways. It's so embarrassing for them because they still owe us $800m from the 2008 bailout, so rude of Hudak. Its just backwards thinking. Companies don't hire more people when they have higher profit margins; they hire more people when they have more customers. Cutting 100,000 public service jobs means 100,000 less customers for these businesses to serve. They will need less employees not more 
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May 13, 2014 20:50
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Rutibex posted:Its just backwards thinking. Companies don't hire more people when they have higher profit margins; they hire more people when they have more customers. Cutting 100,000 public service jobs means 100,000 less customers for these businesses to serve. They will need less employees not more I suppose his plan would be to cut government and cut taxes to put more money in people's pockets and thereby encourage them to be bigger and better customers.
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May 13, 2014 20:56
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*balances budget* *chokes off even more government revenue* *new deficit requires even more cuts* *repeat until America*
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May 13, 2014 20:58
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Lobok posted:I suppose his plan would be to cut government and cut taxes to put more money in people's pockets and thereby encourage them to be bigger and better customers.
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May 13, 2014 21:01
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vyelkin posted:Wow, if tax cuts really create that many jobs then why doesn't Hudak just go all out and pledge to eliminate taxes on everything altogether? With his magic job math, that would create.... *crunches numbers* INFINITE JOBS! As taxes approach 0, the amount of jobs created nears infinity. Rutibex posted:Its just backwards thinking. Companies don't hire more people when they have higher profit margins; they hire more people when they have more customers. Cutting 100,000 public service jobs means 100,000 less customers for these businesses to serve. They will need less employees not more Supply and demand? Nah its a lie. Companies will just hire more people out of the goodness of their hearts and because they can afford it thanks to lower taxes. Thanks Hudak! CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK fucked around with this message at 21:36 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 21:33
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Rutibex posted:Its just backwards thinking. Companies don't hire more people when they have higher profit margins; they hire more people when they have more customers. Cutting 100,000 public service jobs means 100,000 less customers for these businesses to serve. They will need less employees not more I disagree with Hudak cutting 100,000 jobs right away, it's too sudden, especially in education. I can't believe he came out with that number and didn't specifically say where they would come from, he's such a turd. That being said, 100,000 skilled public sector workers being out of work for a few months until they find a private sector employer won't cripple the economy. Ontario's added 75,000 jobs since last April, I wouldn't say there's a tremendous difference economically.
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May 13, 2014 21:49
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Ikantski posted:That being said, 100,000 skilled public sector workers being out of work for a few months until they find a private sector employer won't cripple the economy. Ontario's added 75,000 jobs since last April, I wouldn't say there's a tremendous difference economically. edit: holy poo poo, this is so fundamental to this that I'm actually shocked. Hudak cannot campaign on austerity because it always leads to a worsening of debt in the short run. It simply cannot be a thing he's allowed to do. Kafka Esq. fucked around with this message at 21:54 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 21:51
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Ikantski posted:That being said, 100,000 skilled public sector workers being out of work for a few months until they find a private sector employer won't cripple the economy. Ontario's added 75,000 jobs since last April, I wouldn't say there's a tremendous difference economically. Except that the people being fired will disproportionately be people trained in education, a field in which the overwhelming majority of jobs are, and always will be, provided by the government.
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May 13, 2014 21:52
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Ikantski posted:100,000 skilled public sector workers being out of work for a few months until they find a private sector employer won't cripple the economy. Ontario's added 75,000 jobs since last April, I wouldn't say there's a tremendous difference economically. I take it you're not an economist.
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May 13, 2014 22:01
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On the contrary the esteemed poster appears to be extremely well versed in conservative 'economics'.
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May 13, 2014 22:11
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tagesschau posted:I take it you're not an economist. No, I'm not. How many education jobs did professional economist Don Drummond advise cutting when we paid him to recommend ways for the province to save money? Around 10,000 I think. Kafka Esq. posted:Austerity always leaves the cutting state in worse debt-to-GDP than before. You said it yourself, rising interest rates are going to spell disaster for entities holding a lot of debt. That includes the province. Our debt interest is the 3rd largest expense behind health and education and it's growing faster, as a percentage of total spending, than anything else. Even with the aging population, the amount we spend on servicing debt is growing twice as fast as what we spend on health care. As interest rates rise, the percentage we spend on debt interest has to rise as well and takes money away from health, education, infrastructure and social services. Even Dalton McGuinty's finance minister recognized that. Dwight Duncan posted:“Our deficit leaves us vulnerable,” he said, adding that a one percentage point increase in interest rates translates to $500 million a year and would accrue to as much as $3.5 billion over four years.
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May 13, 2014 22:28
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Ikantski posted:No, I'm not. How many education jobs did professional economist Don Drummond advise cutting when we paid him to recommend ways for the province to save money? Around 10,000 I think. In 2009 smart people who supposedly know a ton about economics told us that we couldn't deficit spend to stimulate the economy because interest rates would shoot back up and we'd be left holding the bag for massive interest payments. It didn't happen. Five years later, why should we think it's about to happen now? Interest rates are at historic lows. For a long time they were actually lower than inflation, which meant people were paying the government to hold onto their money for them when they bought government bonds (that may still be the case, I don't know the exact yield rates and inflation as of this moment). It is objectively correct economic policy to take advantage of this opportunity to make investments in infrastructure that our province has needed for decades, and that will simultaneously stimulate the economy. If you're so worried about the deficit (which you really shouldn't be, because Ontario is not Greece and investors have shown no signs of not trusting us to pay back our loans, which is what inflated Greek interest rates), then you probably shouldn't support the party that is campaigning on policies that have been tried, and failed, in other countries during this exact recession. Service cuts and public sector layoffs to fund tax cuts are exactly what Britain's Conservative-Lib Dem coalition tried when they were elected, and instead of cutting the deficit it ballooned and drove the country into a new recession. Each year the deficit got bigger and their projections for how long it would take to balance the budget got longer, because each year they just doubled down on austerity and imposed more and more cuts, which strangled the economy. By comparison, the United States pushed through a massive (though quite possibly not massive enough) stimulus bill, raised taxes on the rich to pay for social programs, and have seen a slow but steady recovery and, and this is crucial, no meaningful rise in interest rates on government debt. Despite running historically large deficits, interest rates on government bonds stayed as low as they have ever been. Even when the US credit rating was downgraded due to political turmoil, interest rates didn't budge. Put simply, the austerity narrative that we need to balance the budget so that investors won't demand higher interest rates and bankrupt the country is a lie. It's a lie that's used to justify the shrinking of the state. Furthermore, austerity doesn't even balance the budget, it exacerbates it by constraining economic growth and shrinking government revenues. The US, which did not adopt austerity, has seen its budget deficit shrinking dramatically over the past year because of economic growth, while European countries that adopted austerity have seen their economies contract and their budget deficits not actually get that much smaller, because service cuts are cancelled out by tax cuts, and then the economy doesn't grow the way it would have with the government stimulus so it's a net loss. If you want to balance the budget because you're worried about the deficit, the way to do it is government stimulus funding offset by tax increases on the wealthy who are currently hoarding their money rather than investing it. Put simply, that is money that could and should be being used to invest in the economy, and if they're not willing to invest it then the government should be. Also, that Dwight Duncan quote requires context. $500M, or $3.5B over four years, seems like a huge amount of money, and it is, but it pales in comparison to the total $119B of Wynne's proposed 2014 budget.
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May 13, 2014 23:01
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I'm not an expert in bond markets, but is that how it works? I thought the vast majority of it was bought at a fixed rate and servicing the interest happens at that rate only.
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May 13, 2014 23:01
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Kafka Esq. posted:I'm not an expert in bond markets, but is that how it works? I thought the vast majority of it was bought at a fixed rate and servicing the interest happens at that rate only. This is how it works on the vast majority of government debt. You buy a GIC, generally at a fixed rate, and it cashes out when it says it cashes out for the interest rate you agreed to when you bought it. If interest rates go up during that time, too bad. If you want to cash out early, too bad. It's not like a variable rate mortgage where increasing interest rates can screw you if your income isn't also increasing. The austerity theory is that governments will become addicted to spending, and if interest rates go up they'll just accept paying the new costs of borrowing money rather than cut spending at that time, and so we should preemptively cut spending, even in times with the lowest interest rates in history, just in case that happens later. It's seriously stupid.
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May 13, 2014 23:05
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Ikantski posted:I disagree with Hudak cutting 100,000 jobs right away, it's too sudden, especially in education. I can't believe he came out with that number and didn't specifically say where they would come from, he's such a turd. You do realize a substantial portion of the jobs being 'created' right now are minimum wage McJobs right? Or else jobs that are a few bucks above minimum wage. Firing 100,000 people, especially people who are concentrated in a mostly government provided form of employment, is going to leave a big hole in the economy that the private sector is in no position to fill. The idea that they'll all just find equivalent private sector positions after a few months is absurd.
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May 13, 2014 23:10
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I don't see where the 75,000 jobs are going to come from? It isn't as though the manufacturing sector is going to suddenly come back from the dead.
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May 13, 2014 23:23
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This whole campaign so far makes jobs feel like some sort of commodity in a board game. "I'm going to play the Corporate Tax Cut card, give me 50,000 jobs, please!"
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May 13, 2014 23:39
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Kafka Esq. posted:I'm not an expert in bond markets, but is that how it works? I thought the vast majority of it was bought at a fixed rate and servicing the interest happens at that rate only. A lot of the debt rolls over every year. Right now, debt from around 2006-2009 is coming to term and needs to be rolled over to new borrowing, so while the deficit is only ~12 billion dollars, the province actually has to borrow 36 billion dollars from the markets because 24 billion of debt matured and needs to be reborrowed. A 1% increase in bond rates would be a 360 million dollars/year hit to the budget. The chapter on debt management is always the most fascinating of the budget.
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May 13, 2014 23:55
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If I'm reading the stats correctly, there are 555,000 unemployed people in Ontario. Has Hudak addressed where he will find the additional 345,000 workers needed to staff a Million Jobs?
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May 14, 2014 00:06
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sliderule posted:If I'm reading the stats correctly, there are 555,000 unemployed people in Ontario. Has Hudak addressed where he will find the additional 345,000 workers needed to staff a Million Jobs?
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May 14, 2014 00:08
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Kafka Esq. posted:It's over 20 years. Over 8, actually. But if the labour force grows by just 1% a year, that's ~600k new people entering the job market over those eight years. e: Ikantski posted:But you wouldn't compare it to the entire budget. How much are we spending more than we're making? 12 billion dollars. How much would we be spending more than we make if interest rates went up 1%, 15.5 billion dollars.
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May 14, 2014 00:13
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vyelkin posted:Also, that Dwight Duncan quote requires context. $500M, or $3.5B over four years, seems like a huge amount of money, and it is, but it pales in comparison to the total $119B of Wynne's proposed 2014 budget. But you wouldn't compare it to the entire budget. How much are we spending more than we're making? 12 billion dollars. How much would we be spending more than we make if interest rates went up 1%, 15.5 billion dollars. vyelkin posted:In 2009 smart people who supposedly know a ton about economics told us that we couldn't deficit spend to stimulate the economy because interest rates would shoot back up and we'd be left holding the bag for massive interest payments. It didn't happen. Five years later, why should we think it's about to happen now? I guess this is what makes me a conservative. Smart people tell me I should wear a seatbelt when I'm in a car, 30 years later I've never been in an accident so it's okay to ignore that risk now? The smart people probably didn't say that interest rates were definitely going to go up. They said that we were making ourselves vulnerable and we would be smart to put ourselves in a position where it wouldn't hurt as much if the rates do go up. Helsing posted:You do realize a substantial portion of the jobs being 'created' right now are minimum wage McJobs right? Or else jobs that are a few bucks above minimum wage. Firing 100,000 people, especially people who are concentrated in a mostly government provided form of employment, is going to leave a big hole in the economy that the private sector is in no position to fill. The idea that they'll all just find equivalent private sector positions after a few months is absurd. I'm sorry, that was tongue in cheek. The argument for government pensions and salaries being higher than the corresponding private sector job is that we need to hire only the best and brightest people into the public sector and that's obviously absurd. 100,000 middle management government workers most definitely won't find work in Ontario. I disagree that it will leave a big hole in the economy though. 100,000 people making an average of 60k a year is $6b. If half find equivalent jobs, the hit is 3 billion. That's half a percent of the province's GDP which is growing at around 2% per year so it basically stalls growth for 3 months. I'm much more worried about the quality of education suffering. I'm not even personally for austerity, it's not my big issue. I don't really want to see major cuts to any social services, health or education. I just think the current Liberal government is horribly incompetent at spending money properly. It bugs me that they've more than doubled the debt in 10 years from 130b to 280b without much to show for it and they're just going to keep borrowing as much as they can to help themselves stay in power. It's insulting. I look at our official Government of Ontario Progress Report on Helping People with their Everyday Lives and the very first thing on their list of accomplishments since 2003 is ... something they haven't even done yet and just came up with. quote:Key accomplishments since 2003 that are helping people alleviate everyday financial pressures include:
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May 14, 2014 00:14
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If I told you that Ontario government spending per capita is actually lower than in any province than Quebec, according to the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation of all sources, and despite the various Liberal scandals and mismanagement, would you agree that it might actually be a revenue problem and not a spending problem? On that topic, it's funny how a fairly recent article claims virtually the opposite - that Quebec is a profligate spender. It seems like they cherry-picked their data to make Quebec look bad, since Ontario boosted spending enormously after the 2009 date when the latter study was conducted. Either that or someone hosed up their numbers. Still, the conclusion is that Ontario doesn't have a more bloated bureaucracy, at least not more so than the other provinces. I'm sure there are issues related to municipal spending too, since the Harris government downloaded many costs onto cities and the GTA in particular, and the Liberals still haven't restored a lot of that funding. I'm not sure how the other provinces compare. There are probably better-researched studies out there so if anyone has them handy, post away.
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May 14, 2014 00:30
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DStecks posted:Except that the people being fired will disproportionately be people trained in education, a field in which the overwhelming majority of jobs are, and always will be, provided by the government. It's simple: privatize education! That will eliminate a lot more than 100,000 government jobs but they'll get re-hired by the private sector for significantly less money. You can sell off the public assets like schools and school board offices for a massive cash injection. You take that money and cut taxes and the free market will magically create even more! It's a win-win situation! for rich people
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May 14, 2014 00:40
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Chicken posted:It's simple: privatize education! That will eliminate a lot more than 100,000 government jobs but they'll get re-hired by the private sector for significantly less money. You can sell off the public assets like schools and school board offices for a massive cash injection. You take that money and cut taxes and the free market will magically create even more! It's a win-win situation! for rich people And private schools mean you can have your ultra-fundy curriculum taught without any worry of interference by that pesky Ministry of Education!
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May 14, 2014 02:45
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Ikantski posted:I guess this is what makes me a conservative. Smart people tell me I should wear a seatbelt when I'm in a car, 30 years later I've never been in an accident so it's okay to ignore that risk now? The smart people probably didn't say that interest rates were definitely going to go up. They said that we were making ourselves vulnerable and we would be smart to put ourselves in a position where it wouldn't hurt as much if the rates do go up. This is really not a good comparison though. Deficit spending in a time of economic crisis is not the same thing as not wearing a seatbelt, because wearing or not wearing a seatbelt a) has no costs, and b) does not affect other people. It's more like being the primary income maker in a household and losing your high-paying job. While you're looking for a new job, do you tell your children that they can't go to university any more, tell your retired parents that they have to find jobs to help with the household finances, and sell your house? No, because it's a temporary change. If your unemployment becomes more long-term you might need to make some of those changes, but even then things like paying your children's way through school is an investment in the future that will have long-term consequences either way, and it might be worth borrowing some money to make that happen because it will increase your family's long-term income dramatically. This is all pointless though because comparing the government to a single person never actually lines up. My point about smart people and their predictions is that some people have been telling us the sky is falling for years and we need to initiate deficit reduction (see here for an excellent example, and their predictions have all been wrong. Meanwhile, other smart people (Paul Krugman is the most notable example) have been telling us the opposite, and their predictions have actually been right a lot of the time.Most importantly, one of these policy prescriptions (austerity) has dramatic negative effects on large swathes of the public, while the other actually helps improve the quality of life of our society as well as having tangible economic benefits. Ikantski posted:I'm not even personally for austerity, it's not my big issue. I don't really want to see major cuts to any social services, health or education. I just think the current Liberal government is horribly incompetent at spending money properly. It bugs me that they've more than doubled the debt in 10 years from 130b to 280b without much to show for it and they're just going to keep borrowing as much as they can to help themselves stay in power. It's insulting. You know there was a massive recession in 2009, right? Like, even if the Ontario government had not changed its spending habits at all (i.e. had maintained spending at the exact same level irrelevant of other changes in the economy), a massive deficit would have opened in the budget because of people losing their jobs and corporations going bust and the corresponding decline in tax revenue. But in a recession spending also has to increase--even leaving aside any kind of stimulus spending, the government has made promises to the workers who lose jobs, and if it fulfills those promises then spending increases. Things like someone paying into EI for 20 years, so when they lose their job in 2008 they file for EI, and the government has to pay for that. Turning around and saying "No, we're cutting EI because the deficit got too big" is not only bad policy because it leaves people to starve in the streets, it's also morally wrong and disingenuous because it's denying people programs that they have supported with their tax dollars and that they assumed would be there for them if they ever needed them, i.e. the social safety net. Can you at least recognize that a large amount of Ontario's new debt is not the Liberals spending money to help themselves stay in power, but rather them responding to the largest economic crisis since the 1930s and voters responding to that?
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May 14, 2014 06:45
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vyelkin posted:Things like someone paying into EI for 20 years, so when they lose their job in 2008 they file for EI, and the government has to pay for that. Turning around and saying "No, we're cutting EI because the deficit got too big" is not only bad policy because it leaves people to starve in the streets, it's also morally wrong and disingenuous because it's denying people programs that they have supported with their tax dollars and that they assumed would be there for them if they ever needed them, i.e. the social safety net. Can you at least recognize that a large amount of Ontario's new debt is not the Liberals spending money to help themselves stay in power, but rather them responding to the largest economic crisis since the 1930s and voters responding to that? You think a conservative government would cut EI if they were in charge during the recession?
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May 14, 2014 07:29
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It's hard to deal with hypotheticals, but during the recession, the American GOP has made some serious attacks on EI -- trying to block extensions of it, casting it as a moral hazard that discourages people from looking for work, that kind of rhetoric. Since the OPC looks to have quite an affinity for the Republican mindset, it's not terribly hard to imagine them taking a similar stance and threatening to kick people off of EI using the deficit as a pretext (the real purpose being downward pressure on wages and working conditions). Still, as vyelkin explained, a lot of post-recession government spending can be attributed not to conscious decisions to spend more, but rather on automatic stabilizers like EI, welfare, deferred student loan repayments by people who lost their job -- all that kind of spending.
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May 14, 2014 07:56
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