How many job losses since March 15th?

[woodland]

Woodland...

If you think irrigation will pay ...do some math on it ..not just from the money point but the work involved as well...

And if you think it pays ...why do you need government money?

The guys around here are still being subsidized 40 bucks an acre for the next 5 years and it will be longer...they say they can't afford the 120 an acre for water delivery....interestingly they can afford a shed full of dryland farming equipment every second year....

They are worse than dairy farmers...I don't want to put you in that category Woodland...

My idea for irrigation is get a bunch of guys together in a room that will benefit from it and then ask them to write a check for a non refundable subscription to infill the acres in a set time frame...see who will write the cheques for the study and the soil approval investigations....if you can't get that cheque....you can't afford irrigation...

The other problem with irrigation is they never put a performance standard on the government money invested ...like ensuring they will grow higher value crops than just canola flax peas lentils...yes that is right you read it here ...lentils under irrigation....so they wouldn't have to water...3500 acres out of a 10000 acre project in 2016 were lentils...

If a Nebraska farmer ever understands the value of lentils and less water use for their pivots in that area...I think you could kiss the pulse industry good bye in Canada ...

The irrigation comment was meant in sarcasm.............. I guess I’ll note that better next time. No interest in doing so since our growing season is short and even getting barley to maturity is a battle lately. I agree that if someone wants it they better “pony up”. I’d rather have more heat than water. I’d even pay for it if that was an option.

[checking]

I have a much different perspective of the human work force's future.

This is but a test run of the new normal, less the virus. Get use to it as total leisure time within the decade from AI is coming.

Let's see if we survive before, or after we get there.

[bucket]

The irrigation comment was meant in sarcasm.............. I guess I’ll note that better next time. No interest in doing so since our growing season is short and even getting barley to maturity is a battle lately. I agree that if someone wants it they better “pony up”. I’d rather have more heat than water. I’d even pay for it if that was an option.

Yes I know but I always like a soap box ....don't know why dryland farmers are not afforded the same 40 dollar an acre for 5 years subsidy....given all the current issues....

[woodland]

Funded by what? The money tree at 23 Sussex?

Various provincial utilities have already done the hydro dam thing. Now they are stuck with white elephants producing power that has to be sold at a loss. You propose to do more of the same?

The hydro dam thing hasn’t been done as much in Alberta. It could accomplish several goals like flood control for Edmonton and power generation which our province is very tight on currently and do so in a “green” way.

Why not use the despised carbon tax to build something instead of just a money shuffle from Peter to Paul? Would it be an easier sell to those of us who question climate change?

[the big wheel]

At some point you are going to have to let free market forces sort this all out. Spending money you don't have works for a while. The whole exercise of the past decade was to get out of the great recession by government intervention. It has now ended in failure. The US tried hard to normalize the process of setting interest rates by removing FED interventions and that has now failed as well unfortunately. If future generations have any chance at living standards above subsistence levels, free market economic will have to make a comeback and that will be bitter medicine.

What free market? Describe the parameters of a free market? For example When you lower oil companies fees or you raise crop insurance premiums to pay for those fees that isn’t free market. No health system all private?

Are you saying absolutely no government involvement in anything? No trade deals? Because those deals involve give And take
And we d be squashed by any of rhe big countries including the USA worse than we are now.

[bucket]

What free market? Describe the parameters of a free market? For example When you lower oil companies fees or you raise crop insurance premiums to pay for those fees that isn’t free market. No health system all private?

Are you saying absolutely no government involvement in anything? No trade deals? Because those deals involve give And take
And we d be squashed by any of rhe big countries including the USA worse than we are now.

I am not sure if we are on the same page but I think we are......

.but if Trump puts tariffs on foreign oil to protect domestic oil companies or if Trudeau or Kenney build pipelines or join a north American oil cartel...

That's no longer a open market that is a government subsidy IMHO...

If the Airlines are bailed out to the same way they have been in the states ...that is a subsidy


ETC ETC

Then someone can explain where the open market is ...other than a few dumbshit farmers who advise the conservative party thinking they want to put their farms against the treasuries of other nations...

We are now a communist country when everyone is getting their pay check from the government...people and business alike....

[ajl]

Yes the free market has been AWOL so long nobody would recognize it. As far as trade deals are concerned, the only one worth bothering with is USMCA as the US BUYS 75% of our exports. No other market is planning to buy from us any time soon so trade deal not worth nuthin. Need to stop the money printing press so that hard work, innovation, and entrepreneurship gets rewarded again. Speculative assets like real estate, stocks, bonds, gold etc. will drop to 1/3 present levels and others will be able access them. Broke governments spending more of what they do not have will only serve to prolong the pain. However, everybody know which way this is going to go so the recession is now permanent. Even president Trump was on the wrong side of the market in the early 90's as he had built hotels and casinos in Atlantic city in the late 80's and rates rose on him. That is why be was broke in those days.

[bucket]

The very fact that Canada doesn't make something as simple as masks when have the raw material highlights the fact that the Dragon Den or Shark tank mentality is flawed....

And so is the Just in time delivery ....

[Austrian Economics]

The hydro dam thing hasn’t been done as much in Alberta. It could accomplish several goals like flood control for Edmonton and power generation which our province is very tight on currently and do so in a “green” way.

Why not use the despised carbon tax to build something instead of just a money shuffle from Peter to Paul? Would it be an easier sell to those of us who question climate change?

Why build a hydro dam in Alberta when it can buy all the hydro power it wants from Manitoba right now? The fact that this has not happened already indicates that the whole idea is a money loser.

What do you mean by "build something"? Define this term. The "something" that you build has to be profitable and produce goods that consumers are actually willing to pay for. Otherwise, the something just amounts to shuffling money between Peter and Paul.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

...
And we d be squashed by any of rhe big countries including the USA worse than we are now.

Exactly. The sooner we all accept that, the sooner we can quit pretending that this is a viable country, existing at anything more than the whim of our southern neighbors. What is left of Canada will most certainly be crushed by an America who is repatriating all of their industries. Our only hope is to join them while they still have some interest.

[Austrian Economics]

You cannot borrow your way out of this depression. We did not borrow our way out of any past ones either. What happened in the 30s was that debt service costs eventually consumed the budgets as spending increased. Since the spending was literally on make work projects which amounted to paying some people to dig holes and other people to fill them, the useless tasks were a net subtraction from the economy, not an addition.

The damage was compounded in the 30s by the failed attempts to make commodity prices go up through ruinous policies of crop and livestock destruction. Other attempts were made to cartelize industries by fixing prices, which just caused more businesses to fail.

The analogy to World War Two is also deeply flawed. Government debt soared during the war, and then abruptly fell the moment it was over. National governments did not start the war deeply in debt, and burdened by a string of bankrupt provincial governments and a heavily indebted private sector as we find ourselves faced with today.

The Depression of the 30s did not actually end until 1947. That was when wartime price controls, wage freezes and rationing were discontinued. Government spending fell by 60% and millions of government workers were fired. It was only then that the economy could recover because people could finally be put to work producing goods that consumers actually wanted, instead of building things whose only purpose is to get blown up.

[farming101]

You cannot borrow your way out of this depression. We did not borrow our way out of any past ones either. What happened in the 30s was that debt service costs eventually consumed the budgets as spending increased. Since the spending was literally on make work projects which amounted to paying some people to dig holes and other people to fill them, the useless tasks were a net subtraction from the economy, not an addition.

The damage was compounded in the 30s by the failed attempts to make commodity prices go up through ruinous policies of crop and livestock destruction. Other attempts were made to cartelize industries by fixing prices, which just caused more businesses to fail.

The analogy to World War Two is also deeply flawed. Government debt soared during the war, and then abruptly fell the moment it was over. National governments did not start the war deeply in debt, and burdened by a string of bankrupt provincial governments and a heavily indebted private sector as we find ourselves faced with today.

The Depression of the 30s did not actually end until 1947. That was when wartime price controls, wage freezes and rationing were discontinued. Government spending fell by 60% and millions of government workers were fired. It was only then that the economy could recover because people could finally be put to work producing goods that consumers actually wanted, instead of building things whose only purpose is to get blown up.

Please check your history books.....thanks.
When you say national governments I assume you are including the US Government?
Ever heard of the Public Works Program? Over 34,000 projects. Check it out

[TASFarms]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-despite-the-biggest-deficit-since-the-second-world-war-canada-can/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-despite-the-biggest-deficit-since-the-second-world-war-canada-can/


Despite the biggest deficit since the Second World War, Canada can afford this crisis

John Ibbitson
Published 14 hours ago
Updated April 6, 2020

The close co-operation between the government of Justin Trudeau, seen here on March 29, 2020, and Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Ontario government is wondrous to behold.

In the space of a few long weeks, Canada has shifted from business-as-usual to a wartime economy, with the federal and provincial governments shutting down businesses and taking over direct control of many people’s wages, even as deficits head for levels not seen since the Second World War.

But here’s the good news: The debt that governments are piling on should be manageable, provided the new normal reverts to the old normal in a matter of months rather than years.

There will be bills to pay. But we should be able to pay them without sacrificing the quality of life of future generations.

That isn’t to understate the magnitude of what’s happened. The past few weeks roughly correspond to 1940, when Canada shifted suddenly from a peacetime economy trying to drag itself out of the Great Depression to a mobilizing wartime economy, with massive increases in government spending and government control.

“Our projected deficit this year, as a proportion of the size of government, will be roughly the same as the first full year of the war effort,” Drew ***an, a professor at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former Ontario deputy minister, said in an interview. He has written a paper for the Munk Centre comparing the pandemic to the war

Then, as now, Ottawa massively increased spending as part of the war effort. The difference, we all hope, is that the Second World War lasted for six years, from Germany’s invasion of Poland in September, 1939, to Japan’s surrender in August, 1945.

Yet despite the massive deficits and debts that financed the war, Ottawa was back to running surpluses within two years of its end. “One might hope for something of the same turnaround,” Prof. ***an said.

A surge in economic activity once governments release us from this national quasi-quarantine should also bring revenues up and deficits quickly down, though Prof. ***an added that the federal government would need to continue spending as the economy transitioned back to normal.

That doesn’t change the fact that by the time this is all over “we will be looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in debt that we did not anticipate six weeks ago,” said Kevin Milligan, a professor of economics at University of British Columbia.

The good news is that federal and provincial governments are taking on this unexpected debt “at a time when we have some of the lowest interest rates we have ever seen,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist of the Bank of Montreal.

It costs only about a billion dollars to service $100-billion in debt. “That’s not a trivial amount, but it’s affordable,” Mr. Porter said.

And this economic shock has forced us all to confront realities that we were trying to avoid: One way or another, maybe sooner or maybe later, the Canadian economy needs to transition away from oil and gas to cleaner forms of energy, especially with oil prices so low it’s hard to make a living off them.

And as many have already pointed out, our aging society was going to force up the cost of health care, even before the pandemic arrived.

The difficult but essential task will be to sustain the economy as it recovers after the pandemic, while also bringing public-sector spending under control. Prof. Milligan fully supports the government’s emergency spending measures, such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit and the Canada Emergency Wage Benefit.

But “the 'E’ part is the critical part to me," he said. "We cannot be paying $2,000 a month to anyone who checks a box forever.”

The best outcome would be a gradual ramping down of government spending and deficits as business and industries ramp up and life returns to normal.

We will also see the return of politics. Right now, opposing political parties are limiting their criticism of each other as governments struggle to respond to the greatest national emergency since the war. The close co-operation between the Justin Trudeau’s Liberal federal government and Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Ontario government is wondrous to behold.

But the day will come when politicians go back to wrangling over deficits and spending that are a tiny fraction of what we’re seeing now.

What a blessed day that will be.

When are the unicorns coming?

[seldomseen]

I listen to CBC radio more than i should and there is a idea that keeps popping up the last couple of weeks from the far left thinkers.

"Basic annual income for everyone"

I know what their idea is but have no idea how how they would stop the whole country from collapsing completely financially and personalty. I guess the cannabis industry would improve.

Maybe our left leaning buddies on here could explain this theory?

[cuban_assassin]

These far left thinkers should either walk into the ocean or check themselves into a mental health facility!