When you cite Taibbi quoting Krugman about the fact that the US economy has been relatively healthy (until the last month or two as it heads to the hoped for "soft landing", which no doubt precedes the imminent downturn of 2024), I was hoping you'd get to the unequal distribution of this wealth and, in a word, inequality. And you did, along with laying out some of the problems associated with it including rising food and real estate prices and growing homelessness. Apparently poverty was cut by half during the pandemic as people received Government CERB and CRB benefits and now poverty has returned with a vengeance. Doesn't this prove the necessity of something like a guaranteed annual income. Yes, unemployment is officially just under 6% but the participation rate in the labour force is very low. And yes, there is a growing gap between what the people are thinking (2/3rds of Americans want a ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians--even higher in Canada) yet Biden, Trudeau and many white Western European countries have refused to demand that Netanyahu impose a ceasefire. This gap between public opinion and government policy seems a yawning gap. Your tennis partner is right. We have a societal problem!
The housing problem really isn't something the Trudeau government can do anything about. Not because of any territorial pissings about jurisdiction, but because no amount of tinkering around the edges - building more of it, introducing some kind of a throttle on rent gouging, EVEN A GUARANTEED BASIC INCOME - won't change a bloody thing if housing remains a commodity, and we, whether punters or renters or landlords, are at the mercy of Capital.
Which brings me to my second point. We are being gaslighted, but the reason clowns like Trudeau and Krugman seem so dim is because they're being gaslighted too. It's not - or not only - self-serving calculation, but an inability to see any other way to go about this. No matter how "progressive" they are, their frightened little minds can't conceive of a way of constructing a society in such a way that prices, which they think is the same thing as value, are determined by market forces. If the answer to "How much for this?" is always "How much you got?" then they really can't fix it, or even bloviate about it with any real insight.
When you cite Taibbi quoting Krugman about the fact that the US economy has been relatively healthy (until the last month or two as it heads to the hoped for "soft landing", which no doubt precedes the imminent downturn of 2024), I was hoping you'd get to the unequal distribution of this wealth and, in a word, inequality. And you did, along with laying out some of the problems associated with it including rising food and real estate prices and growing homelessness. Apparently poverty was cut by half during the pandemic as people received Government CERB and CRB benefits and now poverty has returned with a vengeance. Doesn't this prove the necessity of something like a guaranteed annual income. Yes, unemployment is officially just under 6% but the participation rate in the labour force is very low. And yes, there is a growing gap between what the people are thinking (2/3rds of Americans want a ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians--even higher in Canada) yet Biden, Trudeau and many white Western European countries have refused to demand that Netanyahu impose a ceasefire. This gap between public opinion and government policy seems a yawning gap. Your tennis partner is right. We have a societal problem!
Good Read, I enjoyed it
Two points to add to your astute analysis:
The housing problem really isn't something the Trudeau government can do anything about. Not because of any territorial pissings about jurisdiction, but because no amount of tinkering around the edges - building more of it, introducing some kind of a throttle on rent gouging, EVEN A GUARANTEED BASIC INCOME - won't change a bloody thing if housing remains a commodity, and we, whether punters or renters or landlords, are at the mercy of Capital.
Which brings me to my second point. We are being gaslighted, but the reason clowns like Trudeau and Krugman seem so dim is because they're being gaslighted too. It's not - or not only - self-serving calculation, but an inability to see any other way to go about this. No matter how "progressive" they are, their frightened little minds can't conceive of a way of constructing a society in such a way that prices, which they think is the same thing as value, are determined by market forces. If the answer to "How much for this?" is always "How much you got?" then they really can't fix it, or even bloviate about it with any real insight.
And, uh, private property is theft.