The Result of Coddling the Children

This week, I had the opportunity to volunteer for a science field trip at my daughter’s school.  The prospect of spending the day with a group of 13 and 14 year olds filled me with some trepidation as this is a difficult age.  And while there was much juvenile behaviour and lack of focus on …

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Hollande is terribly mistaken

The new President of France, Francois Hollande, has stated that he is against the severe austerity that European governments have been adopted and forced into by the EU, ECB and most notably, by Berlin.  He has stated that the solution to France (and Europe’s) economic problems is more government spending.  He is calling for the …

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On Jobs and EI

I fully support the statements by Finance Minister Flaherty regarding the idea that there is no bad job, and that people on EI should have reduced opportunity to refuse to take jobs that are “unsuitable”. It is ridiculous for Thomas Mulcair and Peggy Nash of the NDP to argue that “skilled workers” who have education …

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On CO2 Emissions in the Oil Sands

In today’s National Post, John Ivison and Andrew Coyne provide an interesting dichotomy about the debta surrounding climate change, the oil sands, CO2 emissions and the politics of perception. Ivison starts by stating that Ottawa (i.e. the government of Canada) must act to reign in oil sands emissions, or else the critics will be proven correct …

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Jeff Rubin is a misguided Malthusian

Jeff Rubin, former economist at CIBC, has in the past few years, turned into a modern Malthus, proclaiming the end of the world as we know it.  However, his writings are lacking in the breadth of analysis truly required to understand the problems we face, and he underestimates the ingenuity of humanity to solve problems. …

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The Result of Coddling the ChildrenHollande is terribly mistakenOn Jobs and EIOn CO2 Emissions in the Oil SandsJeff Rubin is a misguided Malthusian

Aug 06

On Infrastructure Spending in Calgary

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Economics, Municipal, Politics

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Although it has passed from the daily news in the City of Calgary, we still have a budget problem.  The municipal government is spending too much money and is having to raise property taxes steeply to pay for it all.   Municipal politicians, such as Mayor Nenshi, continue complain that cities should be given more money by the province, or the feds, or the fiscal balance needs to be corrected.  I don’t disagree with him on that one – I think the level of government that provides a service should raise the money for that service.

But the subject of my post today is on the selection of capital projects in the City of Calgary and whether they make any sense – because if they don’t, then we are wasting money on something of dubious value. Read the rest of this entry »

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Aug 06

An excellent rant on why business doesn’t trust Obama or Congress

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American, Business, Economics, Politics

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h/t sda

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Jul 11

Santelli on the US Debt Ceiling

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American, Canadian, Economics, Politics

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Rick Santelli goes on a classic rant:

He clearly points out that the US Government must start to live within the revenue it has, and not just reduce the growth in government spending, but actually reduce spending and come up with a real plan to balance the budget.

The other folks in that vi

deo don’t get it – they think Santelli is demanding default and wants a “hard reset”. He just wants the government to figure out how to pay the bills within it’s means. And he is right that if they don’t now, the pain will simply be worse next year or the year after.

Canada should not be smug.  We will suffer when the US hits the wall.   And we aren’t in much better shape – while the feds are reducing the deficit, many provinces are still in dire straits and no province can default without hurting the whole country – and do you think Ottawa will stand by while Ontario or Quebec goes broke???

 

h/t sda

 

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Jun 19

Could be about Canadian Health care

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Canadian, Economics, Politics

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Small Dead Animals points us to an excellent column in the Telegraph, which points out that we need honesty and hard decisions on the health care system – and that while right leaning politicians know the right answer, they are too afraid to speak to us like adults.  I raised this during the 2011 federal election campaign, but alas it was completely bypassed in the court of public opinion.

While Janet Daley‘s column is specific to the UK situation, it would apply even more so to Canada, where we don’t have anything even close to the parallel private system that exists in the UK.  But she is right – we need to look to continental Europe for ideas, not America.

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Jun 16

A Lesson for Canada’s Dairy Industry

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Canadian, Economics, Freedom, Politics

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And for the Government of Canada.  The Economist, in the Monday 20 June 2011 print edition, has an article on the success of New Zealand’s agricultural exports.

Some 25 years ago, the NZ government, in a spate of government cuts, dismantled the supply management system that had coddled various agricultural businesses for decades.  The result?

In April it recorded its biggest trade surplus in history: NZ$1.1 billion ($890m), or about 7% of GDP at an annual rate. Strong overseas demand has pushed its terms of trade (the price it fetches for its exports, relative to the price it must pay for imports) to a 37-year high (see chart).

Looming large in this surplus are dairy products—butter, cheese and especially milk powder—which accounted for over a quarter of New Zealand’s merchandise exports. With its swathes of rain-fed pastures, New Zealand now claims a third of world dairy exports. For comparison, that is twice Saudi Arabia’s share of world oil exports.

…New Zealand sells vast quantities of milk powder to Chinese consumers wary of local brands damaged by food-safety scandals.  Chinese tourists sometimes stock up on baby formula on their travels and sell the tins back home.

Perhaps Canada should do the same.  Our domestic milk market is crippled by low efficiency and high prices that penalize consumers for the sake of a few quota-holding farmers.  It prevents domestic farmers, cheesemakers and milk powder producers from competing in the global marketplace.  If little New Zealand, with it’s limited land area, can own that much of the world market in dairy exports – what could Canada do if unchained from the teat of state largesse?

Are you listening Mr. Harper?

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Jun 16

Little Ice Age, redux?

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Climate change, History, Science

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At the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference this week, three papers lead to the conclusions that Solar Cycle 24 is very weak and that Solar Cycle 25 may not really happen at all.  This is bad news for our climate.

The problem with a “quiet” sun, lacking sunspots, is that when it has happened before notably during the Maunder (1645-1715) and Dalton (1790-1830) Minimums, the climate of the earth got noticeably colder.  There are various theories for why this is, ranging from actual decline in solar output to decreased solar wind incident on the earth’s magnetic field, allowing more interstellar cosmic radiation to impact our atmosphere, creating more clouds and thus reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space.

Now, I am the first to agree that correlation does not equal causation, especially with two datapoints.  But if we look at the carbon-14 signal in trees (pre-1950 when nuclear testing contaminated the data), it appears that the solar activity is fairly well correlated to climate changes over the last 1200 years or so.    Some have said the Maunder minimum didn’t correlate well to the Little Ice Age period, which lasted from 1300-1700.  But if you consider the Spörer minimum as well, and the fact that the increase in solar activity between the Spörer and Maunder hardly reached the level of the Dalton minimum, then the solar “minimum” really lasted nearly 300 years.

If it comes to be that Solar Cycle 25 looks like the Maunder or Dalton periods, and the climate correlation holds, then next 20-50 years (or longer) could be chilly.  This would be bad from the perspective of food production and my enjoyment of golf.

Recall that during the Maunder and Dalton Minimum periods, rivers like the Thames froze regularly.  That hasn’t happened since 1815.  And if such a cooling event does happen in the next 10 years, I can’t see how anyone will be able to sell the world on the dangers of anthropogenic climate change/global warming.  So watch the news for late snow melts running into summer, early snowfalls, and record low temperatures for extended periods.   London may again see a Christmas like was describe in Dickens’ novels…

 

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Jun 16

IPCC fiction, again

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Climate change, Economics, Politics

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Steve McIntyre has again identified that the UN IPCC is making things up, and publishing them as “facts” when there is no supporting evidence whatsoever.  Further, he points out that this claim:

Close to 80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies a new report shows.

is simply a Greenpeace scenario and that a Greenpeace activist was made the lead author of an IPCC WG3 report and evaluated his own work…

Steve has gotten someone at IPCC to admit that this “scenario” was simply one of the most optimistic scenarios, and has no basis in a realistic, or economically feasible, future prediction.

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Jun 15

The failure to explain Capitalism

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Economics, Education

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I have noticed in recent years that some new graduates of university do not understand capitalism.  A recent posting by John Westover, entitled The Forgotten Member of the Triple Bottom Line, brought these thoughts forward in my mind.

John explains that our educational system has indoctrinated (my word, not his) our young people about the need to consider human and environmental drivers in everything society does, but has poisoned them against the idea of profit-making.   However, as John further explains, the students do understand, and when put to them in the correct way they come to understand why profit is necessary.

Some time ago, I referenced a similar story of educating young people about capitalism.  If one could get past the socialist bureaucracies of our educational system, I think that Atlas Shugged by Ayn Rand should be required reading for all high school seniors…

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Jun 07

On Computer Simulations and Reality

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Education, Engineering, Science, Technology

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Today, I was directed to a very good article, But It Worked in the Computer Model, on why complex computer models, of any subject, will usually contain errors and not provide a good analogue to reality without a lot of real world experimentation.

It also explains, tangentially, why many students coming out of universities with technical educations are woefully unprepared for the rigors and complexity of the real world.

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May 12

Rescind duties/taxes at the border

Categories:

Canadian, Economics, Politics, Uncategorized

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Matt Gurney has a good column in the National Post.  But he fails to point out the most obvious reason to rescind these duties/and taxes.  It costs more to enforce and collect them than it is worth to the state.  CBSA collects a small sum, estimated by some to be less than $200 million dollars per year.  The government is hoping that by maintaining these, Canadians will shop at home and thus domestic businesses will be making more money and paying more taxes.

It’s foolish.  The correct answer is to get out of the economy where you don’t need to be.  Lowering taxes and duties would result in lower prices in Canada and thus consumers would have more money in their pockets to spend on more stuff.  Or on investing in or growing a business.  All that these duties and taxes do is protect Canadians from lower prices, and that is not what our government should be doing.

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