Rational World

This is a fascinating article about Canada and its policies and successes. For the first time the net worth of the average Canadian is higher than that of the average American. Additionally, the unemployment rate in Canada is around seven percent. How did Canada achieve this? According to the author, Stephen Marche, “The Canadian system is working; the American system is not…Since the 1990s, Canada has pursued a hardheaded (even ruthless), fiscally conservative form of socialism…Social programs and robust capitalism are not, as so many would have you believe, inherently opposed propositions. Both are required for meaningful national prosperity.”

The author describes Canada’s policies as “neither “liberal” nor “conservative” in the American political sense. It just works.”

Hardheaded socialism, what a phrase. I love it.

Really interesting read. My first reaction was: Wow, they ruined their króna and now they want in on the Canadian dollar. But, actually there is a good case to be made here.

This also gives rise to an interesting school of thought: that integration should be based on economic similarities and not regional proximity (as in the EU).

(via writingcapital)

“Consider a couple of landmark rulings on who gets to spend how much money to gain political influence in North America. The world has looked on open-jawed at the impact of the US Supreme Court’s staggering 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which overturned decades of US legal and electoral tradition by striking down any limits on what corporations and unions spend on TV commercials seeking to influence political campaigns.

Far less widely known, naturally, is the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2004 decision in Harper v. Canada, which found that while third-party spending limits during political campaigns do infringe on the right to free expression, that infringement is justified to prevent the affluent from dominating political discourse. And allowing the rich to buy that dominance would, the court rules, undermine another Charter-protected right, the guarantee of meaningful participation for all in elections.”

-John Geddes, GlobalPost.com