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Based on history, expecting Canadians to show low support for defence spending is the safest bet. As much as some people gripe in the abstract about the cost of OAS, I can guess that a large number of people will very concretely have at least one relative or know one recently departed who...

I didn't propose those things. I shall restate what I wrote more explicitly, since implied bits may not have been obvious: "US-favouring foreign policy and procurement [on the part of others] aren't reasonable expectations [on the part of the US]".

Of course they are. Binders full of studies to prove it. When the Boomers are gone, each generation in succession is likely to be equally selfish. It's not as if conservative parties in Canada are overthrowing Liberal and NDP governments everywhere on the strength of voters under 60, and most...

Absolutely unacceptable that it's not reasonable for the US to expect others to fall in line with US foreign policy and buy American? Why?

US-favouring foreign policy and procurement aren't reasonable expectations. As for use, "Please spend a bunch of money establishing facilities in our country. We reserve the right to prevent you from using the facilities" is a difficult proposition to sell.

It'd be refreshing if any of the OAS critics would dig into the data and identify the fraction of the spending which ought to be retained for people in need, and the fraction which is going to people who reasonably do not need it. It'd be more refreshing if they proposed ways to shrink more...

That applies to the Soviet Union as far back as approximately the end of WW II. More of the same, which is why I probably come across as insufficiently excited about these things. There were probably many more people sympathetic in a multitude of ways more directly to the USSR in the early...

Depends. Any region of Canada that allowed itself to depend on and exploit the structure of EI is a relative "failure", and it's a cultural problem if that became a mode of thinking for any sizeable fraction of the residents. Provinces make their own choices about the entitlements and the...

Sure. In a few more years there will be a presidential election, and Trump will not be a candidate let alone the victor. If the Democrats manage to nominate someone sober (who could probably not be any of the candidates currently amusing the prediction markets), they will most likely win...

I don't believe all nations do. I believe there are a lot of cultural impediments. I believe a lot of the people who get into high positions are driven by ideologies that are sub-optimal, and are (even worse) driven by an impulse to impose their sub-optimal ideologies on others. Lots of...

To paraphrase Churchill, the USA does capitalism imperfectly, but not as imperfectly as pretty much everyone else. The closest countries to the ideal have a lot of advantages. Describing "this administration" as somehow being more cozy than its predecessors is an amusing idea.

Everything up to this point is just decoration, because after all the excuse-making we are left with... ...with or without another parting shot at exhortations to do better using the USA as a milestone - a self-crippling exercise, because that's the benchmark to aim for. We have to do better...

What they're doing is sometimes called "crony capitalism", but it isn't capitalism. Borrowing the word doesn't change the fact that it's something else which, with its flaws, is not evidence to support some kind of denunciation of capitalism.

Underpay and overpay are meaningless words without a cost measure, and the only mechanism we have for reliably measuring cost in a way that favours efficient allocation of resources is market pricing. Without putting all employees in the same market pricing situation, we almost can't know which...

A country really depends on its top 10% of achievers (it might only be about 5%) to keep it moving forward. Canada has one problem for being next door to the USA and having to compete with it, and then another kind of problem with the tranche of Canadians who think the problem can be ignored.

This is one of the reasons Canada fails. Misplaced arrogance about some kind of imagined superiorities.

See above. Fascism or any other kind of authoritarianism is not descending on the USA; almost all the bickering is at root a matter of policy choices, particularly policy changes that cut off government teats. Trump's administration has overturned a lot of rice bowls.

It matters. The groups receiving foreign money probably don't care as much as those not receiving foreign money. I'm not really sure about how the anti-American left - the people who basically go on record about what a rotten country they think the USA is, and how they want to tear parts of it...

And, apparently, failed. The country is still there, in one piece. So the next question is, who is funding the DSA?

Democrats poll well in TX senate race and fall short. Film at 11.