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Oct. 22, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:05
3107 What Pisses Me Off About Justin Trudeau and the Canadian Elections
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
I've got to be honest, I felt this strange reluctance to work on Canadian electoral politics over the 78-day political Iditarod mad race to the frozen power centers of the far north.
I'm not sure why exactly.
It's not so much that Canadian politics are boring, Maybe it's without nearly as much of the constant race-baiting that occurs in American politics, the political strategies up here are just so relentlessly predictable.
For my friends and listeners outside of Canada, there are three major parties here.
The until recently oxymoronically named progressive conservatives, the semi-Marxist New Democratic Party, and the liberals, who are willing to take on whatever shape they need in order to sneak-pick the marble doors of power.
Now this adaptability the Liberals have to changing circumstances make them called the natural ruling party of Canada for almost 70 years, that's more time in power, than any other party in any other Western democracy.
Like most centrists, the Liberals constantly wet finger the wind, then concentrate and amplify whatever prejudices are currently running like a hot intellectual fever through the masses.
In other words, they see which way the crowd is heading, then jump in front and pretend to lead.
During the socialist 1960s, the liberals expanded the welfare state, created government health care, and cut spending on the military.
Good leftist goals, right?
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, under Pierre Trudeau, the new Prime Minister's father, the Liberals relaxed government controls over sexual matters, decriminalizing homosexuality, legalizing abortion under some circumstances, and liberalizing divorce.
Since Pierre Trudeau, at the age of 51, married a hot 22-year-old bipolar hippie girl, it was a bit tough for him to get all traditional and conservative about these matters.
The liberals also jacked up taxes and borrowing, and again, cut spending on the military.
So far, so good, as far as left-of-center predictability goes.
Now, in the 1980s, the progressive conservatives got into power, because the liberal government was paying ridiculous amounts of interest on the national debt, which had, inevitably, exploded during the orgy of socialist spending under Pierre Trudeau.
Interest rates peaked in 1981 at a whopping 18%.
Under Trudeau, the elder federal debt ballooned from $18 billion to $206 billion, over a 1000% increase, and debt to GDP rose from 26% to 46%.
Again, almost doubling.
Now that the Liberals were in opposition, of course, they fought like hell against any spending cuts.
And since the Conservatives didn't want to increase taxes, this meant that the debt got even worse.
Even though the Conservatives cut some spending, the debt ballooned entirely as a result of the debt legacy of the free-spending liberals.
After Pierre Trudeau's intergenerational visa spree of rampant vote-buying insanity slashing, Canada has never again returned to the concepts of limited government, fiscal reality, or basic solvency.
Now, In the 90s, the Liberals got back into power and were paying at that time more than a third of their sizeable tax revenues just on interest on the national debt.
Ouch!
Paul Martin, the Liberal Finance Minister, cut government spending savagely, slashed welfare, closed entire government departments and did what was mathematically necessary to at least Begin to put Canada's fiscal house in some semblance of order.
You see?
Rank pragmatists to the marrow.
All the backbone of a baby jellyfish being poured into a shot glass.
These spending cuts, viciously rejected in the 1980s by the exact same party that enacted them in the 1990s, proved that the Conservatives had at least something of value to offer.
The Canadian population, flush with cash from the high resource prices that came from Chinese and Indian economic growth, decided to stop doing conservatism by proxy and voted in the real deal.
Stephen Harper, a master's level trained economist, thus got into power for about a decade.
During Hopper's tenure, national growth was fairly anemic, but at least the Canadian economy as a whole did not do that Florida sinkhole tunnel to hell itself collapse that characterized the post-2007 American experience.
Child poverty declined under his reign, and the Canadian banking system remained relatively solvent at a time when most Western banking systems needed so much government money that bailouts escalated from a blood transfusion to a full-body replacement.
However, Harper the Conservative also ran six straight deficits.
Canadian household debt has risen from $1.31 to $1.64 per dollar of disposable income.
That's not good.
That's about where the U.S. was before its housing market crash wiped out 40% of national wealth.
Now, a lot of this debt was driven by Mr.
Harper's finance minister's introduction of a 40-year mortgage with zero down payment.
No problems with that.
Hey, getting people into houses they can't afford in the long run, when's that ever been a problem in the past, except every time it's been tried?
Now, this policy has since been reversed, but a lot of the damage has been done.
Now, despite increased deficits and debt, Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio is inching slowly downwards.
It's the same thing that we see with the Republicans in the United States.
Conservatives are generally better when they're in the opposition.
They yell at leftists to cut debt.
But once conservatives get control of spending, the hollow-eyed ring of power does its inevitable damage.
Since 2008, the conservative Stephen Harper has amassed 24% of the total debt accumulated since Confederation.
In America, social program spending goes up faster under Republicans than Democrats, because Democrats don't really oppose it.
So, at a time when Canadians were relatively flush with cash, Canada surpasses America in the growing wealth of its middle class, they voted for smaller government and lower taxes.
What a shock!
Now, Ontario, where I'm currently tax-formed, is under Liberal rule.
And it's been very exciting.
New roads paved with the economic bones of the unborn!
Ontario is in fact, hey, number one, the world's most indebted sub-sovereign borrower.
Twice the debt of California, despite having only one-third of the population.
Infrastructure, spending, it's a magic phrase for bribing government unions and private corporations, will lead to what Standard& Poor generously referred to as a very high 267% debt-to-revenue level in the next two years.
You know, I... I wouldn't actually mind imitating Greece and California so much if the weather was better.
Ah, well.
See, better roads mean more driving.
That means more CO2. That means we get a good climate eventually, if we're not underwater.
That's good, because taxes at that point will be taken in kidneys, so we won't actually be able to afford basic heating.
It'll be good that we're warmer.
Alright, who else voted for the liberal landslide?
Well, Canada's eastern provinces run off natural resources too, you know, in the same way that Roman slave ships ran off natural resources, in that the eastern provinces colluded with the federal government to destroy the oceans by overfishing and then started harpooning taxpayers instead.
The eastern provinces are the welfare states of Canada and voted solidly liberal.
There's actually an apocryphal story in Canada.
There's a Canadian lottery called Lotto 642, and at some point in the past, a beer company got in trouble for promoting something called Lotto 1042.
So they put these little coupons randomly in 24s of Canadian beer.
And that, they say, well, we'll hire someone on the East Coast for 10 weeks.
Lotto 1042.
10 weeks of work on the East Coast at the time made you eligible for 42 weeks of government unemployment payments.
Strangely enough, these people...
Not wildly into the free market, personal responsibility, or the economic futures that their children say.
So about a fifth of the Canadian economy runs off natural resources.
Canada is in fact the largest oil supplier to the United States.
But!
Fewer beheadings.
Now that means that Canadian incomes are closely tied to world economic trends.
When natural resource incomes declined recently due to slowdowns in the aforementioned Indian and Chinese economies and the resulting crash in oil prices, what a shocker!
Lower income!
Don't have as much money, can't get taxed as much, and Canadians again turn to the party of free money and higher taxes.
Also, the more unemployed people lived in a particular voting district, the more likely that district was to vote liberal.
Shockingly, most people are relatively comfortable raising taxes on other people's incomes.
You know, in the same way that vampire bats are happy to take your blood.
This recent liberal landslide also occurred for some fairly significant demographic reasons.
The semi-Marxist New Democratic Party draws most of its support, again shockingly unsurprisingly, from young people who like free stuff and don't pay taxes.
But Canada's increasingly aging population has robbed these socialists of their adoring, economically illiterate, grabby-handed youth zombie army.
Also, mystifyingly, the head of the NDP, Thomas Mulcair, promised balanced budgets, which is totally appropriate for socialists in opposite worlds.
I tell you, listening to socialists promise fiscal restraint is like watching elderly conservatives at a gay pride parade.
Yeah, they can be there, but it's not very good to picture the motivation.
Now the liberal landslide also occurred because women who don't get married like to imagine pretty boy Trastafari and Justin Trudeau getting down on one knee, gazing soulfully at them with his big dewy puppy eyes and promising to take care of them forever.
The leftist liberals and NDP largely dominated in areas where the marriage rate was below 50%.
See, this is how it works.
Men vote conservative.
Richer men definitely vote conservative.
And married women also vote conservative.
The young vote socialist because it's immature fun to exercise your idiot conscience at other people's expense.
And unmarried, middle-aged women vote liberal.
Because, you see, having kids is hard work.
Having a husband requires compromise.
And old age looms bleak, expensive, and lonely.
There was an old deal.
It's been a deal that's been around for a couple of hundred thousand years, and this is the old deal.
Okay, you have kids, that costs you a lot of money.
But hey, then those kids will take care of you in your old age.
You've got a place to live, people to help you drive around, pay your bills, and so on.
Now, this deal has the added benefit of encouraging parents to treat their kids well.
Otherwise, it's cats in the cradle going round and round in your head as ancient tears roll back and forth through your squeezed crow feet.
Now, if you don't have kids, you save a lot of money.
Which, in a rational world, you would put aside for your old age.
But hey!
I got a great deal for you, courtesy of socialism.
Don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars raising your children, but don't save that money either.
Spend the money!
Have fun!
Buy lots of useless crap and foreign sunburns and self-help books and cat litter.
And then, when you get old, scream at the government to take care of you.
That way, I have to pay for my kids, my retirement and your retirement too.
And people wonder why the birth rates among smart people are declining.
I can give you a hint.
It's because we can count.
I mean, it's a fantastic deal for you.
All you have to do is rely on other people to actually have the children who will be forced to pay for your retirement and your medical treatments for the toxoplasmosis you got from having 17 cats squirming in the room your babies should have grown up in.
Remember, if you don't have kids, your government pension Pretty much stolen from my kids.
Now, Justin Trudeau is in charge of Canada.
A complex modern economy which relies on a wide variety of natural resources, high technology, goods and services of near infinite complexity and multicultural issues that would send King Solomon to an early grave.
But don't worry everyone, Justin Trudeau was born super wealthy, super famous, super pretty.
He has never had to work an honest day his whole life.
He is recognized, welcomed and adored everywhere he goes.
And he used to be a snowboard and bungee jumping instructor.
Oh!
Forgot to say, he also has a degree in literature because, as we all know, managing a highly technological economy often requires a detailed knowledge of iambic pentameter and Beowulf.
Also, Justin smokes pot and wants to legalize pot, something we happen to agree on, but has the nerve to say, after spending his entire youth bathing in gold in private schools, that the current Prime Minister was, like, totally out of touch with the Canadian people.
Sidebar.
If you like a political dynasty, call it a legacy.
If you don't, please refer to it by its proper name, nepotism.
Now, Justin Trudeau has promised to use deficit financing to double infrastructure spending and believes that this will magically erase the deficit, you know, in the same way that you end up much wealthier because you've got a cavity filled at the dentist.
Spending money fixing a bridge is a net loss to society.
We only do it because the alternative is an even greater loss.
Stuff wears out, apparently including my patience for Canadian political self-delusion, so we have to spend money to repair it.
This is not economic growth.
Otherwise, we could all become wildly wealthy by stabbing our tires with the stilettos of expensive shoes.
You don't get wealthy by repairing things.
You get wealthy by making new things of high value.
Of course, it's much easier for the government to spend money on infrastructure than it is for people in the government to come up with, you know, really cool new products and services that make other people's lives better, because spending other people's money pounding in nails only requires the intelligence of, say, the hammer that's in your hand, while being an entrepreneur requires significant intelligence, creativity, and skill.
So, Justin Trudeau's business plan for Canada is basically this.
Hey!
I'm gonna steal some money, buy some paint, and then, well, paint things that might need painting.
RESULT WEALTH! Now, the existing conservative government tripled infrastructure spending, but why only triple something when you can double that tripling?
This is the kind of economic, well, I guess you could say thinking, that you can get from someone well-versed in the feminist nuances of 18th century Samuel Richardson novels.
Now, some of the challenges facing Canadians is that our tax bills are currently higher than our spending on food, shelter and clothing combined.
Since 1961, our total family tax bill has increased over 18,000%.
Canada's economy depends upon resource consumption from emerging economies.
Given the fiscal black hole sucking the beams out of China's dying economic sun, this might be a bit of a rocky ride.
Canada's insanely anti-male divorce laws combined with absurdly high taxes, man-hating feminist propaganda at all levels of education and about 10,000 other factors means men aren't becoming fathers at anywhere close to sustainable rates.
Like Europe, Canada is fast becoming a geriatric society of tottering, entitled desperate cryptkeepers, who both need and resent the young in equal measures.
They never bothered to have their own kids, so now they need to feed on mine.
The niqab debate had a substantial impact on the race to power.
Can a Muslim woman keep her face veiled when she swears an oath to the distant queen?
Not only does this sound like a quest item from Dungeons and Dragons, it was also one of the first instances of rank leftist race-baiting in Canadian politics.
But don't worry, my friends, there'll be a lot more of that in the future.
The pattern goes something like this.
A situation erupts of cultural incompatibility.
Leftists can then use that to make conservatives look racist.
Because to the left, all human beings are interchangeable.
They're like photocopied pawns to be taxed and bribed.
Therefore, any preference must be bigotry.
The liberals then use everyone's sentimental thirst for empty egalitarianism to drown conservatives in accusations of xenophobia.
This happens in America as well, but let's just say that the previous PM, Stephen Harper, was no Donald Trump.
Justin Trudeau wants to take in more and more and more and more Middle Eastern refugees, not out of compassion, but out of the tried and true lefty trap of importing incompatible cultures, both as a reliable voting bloc and as a weapon against intolerant, xenophobic, racist, bigoted conservatives.
Now, To be fair, Stephen Harper could, I guess, credibly be accused of more than a smidgen of hypocrisy for opposing certain Muslim cultural practices while at the same time selling 15 billion dollars worth of weaponry to the government of Saudi Arabia.
See, I'm an atheist.
I must say that it dampens my enthusiasm just a little bit for my government when it takes my tax money by force, then uses it to buy weapons to sell to a government that regularly whips and slaughters atheists in a public square.
And this, this is the true horror of politics.
Not just Canadian politics, politics all around the world.
Everyone is maneuvering to steal other people's stuff or keep their stuff from being stolen.
It's a junkyard knife fight with crisp ties and shellacked or pleasantly tousled hair.
The people who want to steal from others drone on about compassion and caring, those who want to dodge the pickpockets all about hard work and economic growth.
Those who want immigrants to vote for them talk about inclusiveness while railing against conservatives, which is not very inclusive, of course.
Those who won't get votes from immigrants talk about tradition and caution.
What fundamentally decays the moral sense of a people the most is not open immorality, but the slippery falsehoods of distracting hypocrisy.
I get it.
People with less money would rather steal money from richer people.
But see, simple muggings, they're risky, so they wrap themselves in the flags of compassion and egalitarianism.
But everybody knows it just comes down to the check in the mail.
Rich people are scared of the power that poorer people have through the tax system.
But they can't talk about that openly, so they have to create big windbag cathedrals of some common economic good for blah blah blah.
I get it.
You worked hard.
You want to keep your stuff.
Politics is so unsightly because it is so false.
This gruesome parade of selfish self-deception is pretty repulsive to observe.
Unless your idea of a good time is to go to a seedy bar and watch all the drunks pompously denying their addictions, it's best to keep a safe distance from this brain contagion.
Canada, yeah, it's a pretty nice place to live, all things considered.
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