Cardy laid out five policy planks on which he says the new party will be campaigning: reforming government programs, increasing Canada’s defence spending to two per cent of its gross domestic product, reforming immigration through “better gatekeepers,” making life more affordable by “dismantling protectionism” and increasing competition in the airline, telecommunications and agricultural sectors.
Climate change? Cost of living? The housing crisis? Collapsing healthcare?
“Increasing competition” without lowering prices is meaningless. Protectionism is fine, so long as we generally benefit from it.
Government-controlled protectionism is supposed to be good - and in a functioning democracy should benefit the people over businesses all of the time. The problem we have is far-(self)-righteous parties whose members only care about themselves and those who pad their pockets with bribes and “donations”.
Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.
That’s how markets work.
There’s value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that’s a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.
The two things are only loosely connected. The unprecedented wealth and income disparity shows that there are no improvements in efficiency that cannot be clawed back and stolen from the public purse.
There are other options. If the government operated a store where there were guaranteed prices on certain goods and they were available in sufficient quantities, it would effectively peg the price of those goods in the rest of the market as well. This could be a cooperative or something similar.
“Increasing competition” without lowering prices is meaningless.
Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.
Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that “increasing competition” meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I’m really surprised that a party called “Canada future” is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you’re coming from.
Climate change? Cost of living? The housing crisis? Collapsing healthcare?
“Increasing competition” without lowering prices is meaningless. Protectionism is fine, so long as we generally benefit from it.
Government-controlled protectionism is supposed to be good - and in a functioning democracy should benefit the people over businesses all of the time. The problem we have is far-(self)-righteous parties whose members only care about themselves and those who pad their pockets with bribes and “donations”.
Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.
That’s how markets work.
There’s value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that’s a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.
The two things are only loosely connected. The unprecedented wealth and income disparity shows that there are no improvements in efficiency that cannot be clawed back and stolen from the public purse.
If the market isn’t performing its function then that is when the government needs to step in and change the rules.
In this case our grocers aren’t competing on price enough, so they’d be adding more.
There are other options. If the government operated a store where there were guaranteed prices on certain goods and they were available in sufficient quantities, it would effectively peg the price of those goods in the rest of the market as well. This could be a cooperative or something similar.
Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.
Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that “increasing competition” meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I’m really surprised that a party called “Canada future” is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you’re coming from.