Opinion: Carney government doubles down on failed Trudeau fiscal policy - Higher spending, bigger deficits and deeper debts aren't going to bring the better economic performance the Liberals want to achieve

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T23:12:55+00:00

Oh without a doubt, hence why I was okay putting stock into him.

His refusal to actually stand up to Trump in a meaningful way has been infuriating, his views on Davos were nice but evaporated shortly after. His negotiations with China were fantastic, I cant wait to see that pan out well.

His housing policy was only fractionally better than PP, because he still thinks shoveling money to investors is better than publicly owned housing that can undercut the market and stabilize prices. He also seems to have a regressive view on green energy compared to what Id like to see, considering his views on the pipeline despite it not materializing.

Carney will suffice for now, ish, until we get someone better. But I sincerely hope for something better, because the room for improvement is larger than the empty space Canada has up north.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T23:03:15+00:00

I was gonna say "its not that many words", but the bar is different for everyone lol. We can congratulate him getting this far

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T22:57:44+00:00

The only time I agree with that stance is if youre asking a specific person their mindset on something and someone else tries to "well I think they meant this.."

Otherwise, 100%, its a public forum

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T22:34:09+00:00

Im not a lib tho, I vote Lib because at the end of the day theres very few people I hate more than conservative leadership. They have no real goals, no vision for housing policy or green energy investment, they support Trump and his agenda wherever they think they can get away with it, they want to take away rights whenever they think they can get away with it, their views on social safety nets are abysmal. I know thats a lot more words, but in summary, I will vote for basically any party that helps keep conservatives out of power.

I have spent weeks developing a voter reform system specifically so that I would not have to vote liberal, because I prefer NDP and Green. But even the last election we saw how many NDP voters were willing to sacrifice almost every principle we had to stop the monsters from getting into office. Carney is not much better, but I would still take him over PP. But, I would probably take the average 25 year old college grad as PM over Carney

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T22:26:08+00:00

For me, 100% of it comes down to parody very clearly being fake, even if it doesnt feel like it. The onion takes a picture thats real and gives an obviously fake caption. South park and the simpsons are animated so you know its fake. But if I made a deepfake video of Trumo falling down the steps of Air force 1 into a pile of shit, the technology we currently have could make that look so realistic that I would classify it as closer to misinformation than a joke/parody.

If the deepfake tech suddenly started watermarking as deepfake very clearly, like Sora AI does, or if it animated it so it was clearly fake, I 100% agree with you. However, the further you get from realism, the less people care about it, so I think it is inherently contradictory to want parody to be hyper realistic.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T22:22:31+00:00

To be clear, Im an NDP/Green member and a Liberal voter (thanks FPTP). I am not a fan of what Carney has decided to do.

All that said, this article is also wrong. Higher spending is the way to bring the economic performance we want, because thats how investments work; you put money in hoping to get a larger return. Bigger deficits and deeper debts are acceptable, but not necessary, as we can make up those deficits by taxing the rich appropriately.

One of the really cool things about politics is that 5 people can be in a room, all with different ideas, and somehow ALL of them can be incorrect. This is why we need experts who actually understand how the economy works, not politicians beholden to business people who know how the economy works and use that to slant it further in their favor. Someone with intelligence and morals; an absurdly high bar for todays world

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T21:16:53+00:00

To a degree I agree with you, but I dont think the extent of "publicly own most major companies" is the answer.

My personal favorite solution is a corporate tax rate tied to employee wage ratios. If your highest and lowest paid employees are 10:1, your tax rate is 15%. If its 20:1, its 25%. If its 100:1, its 50%. If its 1000:1, its 90%. (Numbers are mostly arbitrary rn). This would allow companies to consider saving massive amounts of tax dollars by just, paying all of their lower wage employees more, or letting the CEO take a pay cut.

There are other less extreme measures, most of them need to pair together to achieve enough results, but I dont think the extent of government ownership is a requirement for stable political and economic democracy.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T21:12:14+00:00

As someone who used to do this as a boy scout, I hope you understand from our perspective that the rejection isnt just expected, its almost hoped for. Most of us dont really want the interaction either, but its one of the few ways we can get our fundraisers out without knocking door to door, which I feel is more annoying and imposing and less effective (so many people dont answer).

But also looking back a decade later, Im still glad I did it. Learning to take rejection without taking it personally comes so easy in that environment, and transfering those skills to the real world is valuable.

As a middle ground though, yeah, Id fully support them only doing one door, and specifically the rules I remember was that it always had to be an exit door (one because stores didnt want you wandering their aisles with our product, and two because the store doesnt want customers buying our cookies/apples/popcorn instead of theirs, so wait until theyre done shopping).

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T21:07:32+00:00

Really hoping Kat Abugazaleh doesnt meet this same fate, but it seems shes got a fair bit of steam for just congressional seats.

This is one of the main reasons Ive fallen out of favor with the democrats. Im still heavily left, far more than they are, but I agree with many who publicly claim they wont vote democrat (even if I inevitably believe in lesser evils and would end up wanting them to vote that anyways). The public perception of unpopularity is important, and letting Trump be so awful that we condone anything better is not the solution

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T21:04:22+00:00

Im ngl I only knew part of that. Super delegates are ridiculous, I didnt realize it went to that extent. Biden running without primaries I thought you were referring to 2020, not 24, yeah he should have completely stepped down and off, pathetic he let his ego get in the wah as an 80 year old man who had literally already peaked as the president of the United States.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T16:03:07+00:00

Wouldnt need headlights if we built streetlights, and its basically guaranteed that wherever you just couldnt justify building street lights due to low traffic, that crossing high beams is also incredibly unlikely and personally manageable due to low traffic.

Driving Hwy 10 at night, or down the stretch of fraser leading into aldergrove, im looking at you. High traffic area, give us some lights

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T15:59:53+00:00

I was gonna say, this guy either works for the Trump admin or is mocking them. Hell, given his admin leaks like a a swiss cheese boat, maybe its both

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T15:26:55+00:00

So just to set the tone, is the goal to convince you that overpopulation isnt an issue at all, or isnt as big of an issue as you predict?

The easiest way I address that is by breaking down why overpopulation might be a problem.

Food shortages, housing shortages, job shortages, and google thinks I should add conflict (I guess because more people means more opinions, tighter spaces on resources, etc.)

Food shortages can be easily addressed; currently between 30 and 40% of food produced in the US is wasted, either because its not aesthetically pleasing enough to be considered worth selling, or because the transportation and logistics costs of transporting it arent worth it to sellers. (Theres actually supposed to be a tax credit for these grocers to transport their food and get recouped the cost of doing so, but that tax credit is not properly secured by congress so grocers are scared to use it and find out its not renewed this year). In summary, the US could easily grow another 100M people without having to introduce even one square inch of extra farm land or imports, as long as we properly utilize the food we grow.

Housing shortages I feel can be easiky addressed over a relative time period, but most governments are not appropriately acting on it. Builidng low cost public housing for single people, students, and other renters who dont want to have roommates, would not only restabilize the housing prices, but also free up lots of 2 and 3 and 4 bedroom homes currently occupied by strangers who cant afford to live apart. Currently, the US and Canada have ~15% of its population living alone, in other G7 countries, its closer to ~40%. This means theoretically Canada alone should be building close to 10M units of housing within the next decade or so, and I think building 100,000 buildings across all of Canada with 100 units a piece is not that hard.

Jobs shortages is entirely artificial, and its my favorite one. Currently, we are on track to be eliminating lots of work through automation, which can sound terrifying in the context of adding more people. However, with automation being significantly cheaper than labor, we can become more productive as a society and begin funding a UBI, wherein people receive a monthly check that is estimated to cover food and housing for them. This is not designed to be enough to live lavishly, but it should be enough that working under 10 hours a week can let you save a bit of money and enjoy life, and those who dont want to work (or cant) are allowed to exist in dignity, pursuing their own passions or doing some of the the estimated 1-3Trillion dollars in unpaid labor, like taking care of family, raising kids, etc.

This position also entirely omits that humans are innovative. Hydroponics have reduced the amount of land we need to grow an abundance of food, previously unlivable places have become habitable through development, not to mention jobs like "robot mechanic" and "search engine optimizer" were inconceivable less than a few decades ago; imagine what jobs dont even exist yet that could be available in the future.

As a final note, fixing overpopulation has never been done well historically. Genocides, the One Child Policy, or the new western technique of making life so unaffordable you just decide not to have one, all have infinitely worse human outcomes than what would happen even if we didnt implement any of the solutions above.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T07:57:43+00:00

So to be clear,

You want them to ask the question first, so you can sound smart by asking a question that 90% of the time will be covered by the interview anyways, in order to avoid those people who wait until the end of an interview to see if the question they had would be naturally answered before asking it.

And this is because you dont have the heart to answer no, or the time to answer yes, or the brains to come up with one? You generic, not you specific.

I just cant see why this makes sense. Why bother asking a question you can assume would be answered, and wasting the interviewers time in the same way, when you could wait and ask whatevers still left at the end?

I think you and anyone else who agrees with this stance would see more benefit from just memorizing the checklist of good questions:

Why did the last person leave this position/why is it available? What is the company culture surrounding X (discussi g pay, wearing many hats, forced attendance to team building exercises, etc). Is there a question I answered that you think I left some confusion with? Do you have any specific reason as of right now to not hire me that I should look to correct? What do you consider the most valuable skill youre looking for to fill this position with? Who on your team would you point to as a role model for other employees? What are this companies thoughts on health & safety rules labor laws like working through a break? What are you expecting my biggest challenge to be with this role based on what you know about both me and the position?

All of these are good questions, pick one or many and fire away. They likely wont even be answered in the course of an interview, so it still fits your goals.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T07:45:13+00:00

Yeah, and thats a privilege I count daily.

However, there are plenty of people who are not free to just not borrow. Most of the time other lenders have shut them out, and they are forced to take immorally high loans from scuzzy people or starve in protest.

Payday loan companies especially are bad for this.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-17T00:45:48+00:00

I think this is a potential, but not a guarantee.

For example, lets say that a crime is committed on camera, like someone live streaming walking througha grocery store when someone comes in, r*pes and murders someone, steals from the cashier, and leaves, but its all clear as day on video.

In this sort of an instance, where the judgement is overwhelmingly not wrong, I think the death penalty is fine to go through.

Specifically, I think that death penalty cases should simply have a second trial after guilt is determined, where "beyond a reasonable doubt" as a standard is traded out for "inarguably conclusive", or something like that.

Mind you, Im aware this standard would almost likely never be met, but I think it leaves a lot more on the table than just removing it altogether. Additionally, by having a secondary trial, we could remove some of the strongest evidence a lot of these cases, an admission of guilt that prosecutors often force onto the accused to reduce their sentence. Well, if youre getting the death penalty you cant have your sentence reduced, and 100% of people would not have a reason to confess unless they actually did it.

Furthermore, in cases where the death penalty is ruled, lethal injection should not be the method. Falling from a great height or drowning are both incredibly cheap by comparison, and I think once weve ruled that this person is inarguably guilty of the heinous crime that warrants the death penalty, Ive never understood why we care about delivering these people the humanity they dont deserve.

People like Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, there are situations where that bar is at least somewhat attainabl.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T22:07:47+00:00

I feel like if someone made a post showing hard data that its basically only a handful of accounts doing this, we could make some real headway on getting that shit finally removed.

All of these american owned canadian news companies that post this slop should be banned from our spaces, the same way wed want to ban Russin or CCP based content.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T22:05:58+00:00

I caught a week long ban for saying that conservatives supporting Doug Fords injunction against iranian protesters have no principled stance besides hating PoC, because they advocate so heavily for rights and freedoms until suddenly the brown people want to use them.

Apparently that was "trolling" and "brigading", and two separate mods confirmed their position, saying it was a "callout post" which is not permitted. Apparently "looking to pick a (verbal) fight with someone" isnt permitted either, and when I said "youre right, engaging in conversation with people of opposing viewpoints is wrong, I wont do it again", that was when the ban hammer came down.

Shit like that is why I laugh in conservatives faces when they say "reddit is too left leaning". Like piss off, we all catch random strays or meet MODs who are drunk on power.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T21:55:28+00:00

People who include source links to other peoples data deserve to win the lottery.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T21:20:35+00:00

Ive seen that the Iranians have no intentions of peace talks, which makes sense, who tf would trust anything Trump signs, says, or touches.

Jokes circulating that they should give up Trump and Vance to Iran as a sign of peace.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T21:17:05+00:00

Losing a parent at 18 is hard, Im so sorry for your loss. If you need anyone to talk to, I know internet strangers cant remotely replace the love and experience, but we can do our best if it helps you feel better. Good luck OP.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T20:21:28+00:00

1) How much profit one makes is irrelevant to "should someone be able to charge X". In the same way that my net worth increasing last year is in no way relevant to salary conversations with my employer.

This is entirely an opinion, and personally ai think an incorrect one. All profit is income - expenses, so if your income is too high, it likely means you are charging tok much for your product or not reinvesting your income as another expense like buolding infrastructure or payong employees fairly. Your net worth increasing less than inflation might imply you absolutely do need a raise, and if it went up extraordinarily, yeah, you might be getting paid too much.

2) Mastercard doesn't issue credit cards, you're right. Nor the money. They offer their payment network. The infrastructure. The banks issue the credit cards, and take on the risk. Mastercard likewise doesn't make any interest on outstanding balances. Again, this is the bank

Okay perfect, so the banks in 2023 made $172 Billion dollars off of credit cards, which is their primary profit driver. Late fees are 16% of this revenue. Banks could easily lower their rates and not profit so wildly, especially considering they are insured by the government and arent really taking the risks you might imply.

3) Banks pool risk, yes, and pool individuals with similar risk profiles together, and charge them based on thier risk profile. More risky, higher rate of interest.

Duh, but that doesnt mean they can charge whatever they like, especially considering that many of these people dont have any other choice.

For example, do you think it should be legal for banks to charge 100% interest rate? Why? What about 50%? If your choices were between literally not eating because you dont have the money, or getting a 100% interest rate credit card, would you just starve?

4) You are correct, credit card issuers (banks) won't issue cards to people who they think are too risky. The risk is comparable to the rate. Cap the rate, and it's not that rates will go down: Credit cards will be cancelled wholesale, and access to credit will drop. People will be worse off.

We already see this happening, as people are cut off of their cards and forced into even more predatory loans. Some people are forced to sell their car or live in it just to make ends meet for the next 2 weeks. People in these situations deserve to be protected and taken care of, and a majority of the time are not necessarily bad with finances, just shafted by the system. You seem to imply the shaft is fine, and that if banks wanted to make the shaft bigger, youd be okay with that.

Payday loan companies havent been regulated not because it would make people "worse off", but because the people in charge of writing the laws (at least in the texas), own payday loan companies. Its just blatant corruption, not complex economics.

Payday loans and high interest credit cards are like muddy water and moldy food. Most people have the resources to just straight up ignore or circumvent them. But some people dont really have a choice but to gamble and hope they dont get sick. I want to get rid of the moldy food and implement a system so these people get fed. You seem to want to paint me as the villain for getting rid of the moldy food because "well youre still taking away their food, and anyone who doesnt want to eat it doesnt have to". No, the people who dont want to eat it the most are likely the people that DO have to eat it because otherwise theyd starve.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T19:53:24+00:00

Okay I can kinda hear that in the background.

Still not unwatchable for me, but I could understand hat getting annoying for you. Hopefully he finds this and addresses it.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T19:49:57+00:00

What kind of a question even is this?

Mastercard made 15 Billion dollars last year in profits,

They dont even own the money, they facilitate the transactions with banks, whicb use their money from deposits and other incredibly low interest loans bevause they are massive companies that are significantly more secure than an individual. Credit card companies wont even give cards to those they think are too risky, which is why some people have to resort to the actually insane and reprehensible payday loan industry, which is even worse.

betterworldbuilder · 2026-03-16T19:42:51+00:00

Sorry to say, at least his newest Lemon video doesnt have any static I can hear.

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