what you talking about?

to whom are you talking?

And where did you took the numbers? The population is actually estimated between 20k and 24k

LOL.  Do you even know where the wealth of the US (or Canada) comes from?

It ain't from mining or farming.

What has stopped Canada from being a leader in the technology industry?

Canada is poorer than the United States for the same reasons as Western Europe - there is less motivation to take risks because those who are successful are parasited on by the welfare state.

if it is not from primary and secondary industries that built up during the 19th and 20th century, then no, enlighten me.

Every financial business is simply a by-product of the above.

Probably not luck -- he bought the ranch as a campaign prop before his first run for Texas governor Please post where we can read on this. This sounds like more liberal bs. --Karma Girl

I was just posting on hearsay, not an article I read, but I think it checks out. Except that it was for running for President, not governor. He purchased it in 1999. Of course he may have just needed somewhere to stay after the governor's mansion. The ranch was definitely used as a campaign prop -- photo ops in front of the old barn, TV crews invited to film Bush "clearing brush." It would be hard to prove that's the only reason he bought it. But why else would you want to live in Crawford, Texas? It's like 400 people. Why not go live in Houston where you can live by your friends and mom Barbara? Go live in River Oaks with other rich people like Ken Lay. But saying you hail from "Crawford" does a lot more for your Texas brand identity than saying you're from "River Oaks." Few people know you've only been from Crawford for twelve months.

I just have to say, though, as a campaign prop, it's an ideal one. It's only 4,000 square feet and it's so eco-friendly Link, it just says, "This guy really cares about the environment in his personal life." Al Gore's house says, "This guy only cares about the environment on TV."

Cikomyr, I went to the trouble of looking up each industry's contribution to GDP at this Link on page 8, Table 1. But when I tried to imagine whether it would add anything to the discussion I realized this argument could never possibly go anywhere. But the table was hard to find so I'm giving you the link anyway.

Just as George and Laura Bush chose Crawford as a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of Austin and now Washington D.C., many of the town residents are professionals working in Waco who make Crawford their own getaway. However, this quiet country town will never be the same now that the "The Southwest Wing" of the White House has arrived.

Good link, danielost. How'd you find that? I didn't see it with the search terms I used. Still, "professionals working in Waco" is a different economic class than Bush. I'd be surprised if Gore or Teresa Kerry had any of those kind of people in their chosen neighborhoods.

Why should I spend my time to educate you when you will simply find excuses to ignore what's staring at you in the face:

Canada and the US have similar backgrounds and advantages. Even states that border Canada have a higher GDP.

Heck, even Montana, one of the poorest, most desolate states in the US has a higher per capita GDP than Quebec.

Economic systems have a lot more to do with the success of a nation state than natural resources.  Otherwise, Japan would be dirt poor and Russia would be incredibly rich.

 

Draginol,

Yes, our GDP is lower than that of the U.S, but still ranks pretty high in the overall picture in comparison to the rest of the globe. As an aside, the GDP numbers are debatable depending on your source, and how the numbers get crunched. The other day I was reading one report saying that Canada's GDP was closer to 38 K not 35 K. But anyway, if you say 35 that's fine. A few reasons why our overall GDP is lower... and yes, I am going to pull the population card!

Our nation is geographically larger than the U.S, but we have approximately 10% of the population the U.S does. This means we have to spend a LOT of money just to keep infrastructure, roads, communications links operational over great distances, serving a relatively small populus. This requires a massive infusion of capital from the government just to make the country run. If we were to privatize a lot of these industries and try to run them "for profit" there would be no viable business case, and the country would literally fall apart into a bunch of small nation states.

For example, let's examine offering phone service to communities in northern canada-say you have a community of 1000 people in a remote area, there are no terestrial facilities over which communications can be run (no buried cable or radio relays) so if that community wants phone and internet it's going to have to be done over satellite. So that means that the community needs an earth station facility, RF equipment and sat modems installed, plus some transponder space on the satellite itself. Then the town needs to get a switch to take the traffic that comes off the satellite, which is a pretty penny too. All of that is very expensive, and for a community of 1000 people the cost of the equipment, plus the recurring costs of paying for transponder space and maintaining the equipment far outstrips the revenue that will ever be collected from the town. The only way that the cost of putting in that communication infrastructure could ever be recovered is if the people in that town were charged 300 or 400 dollars a month for basic phone service, which most people can not pay.

So, the government steps in, negotiates with industry, and works out a subsidized solution. That's not socialism by the way, but keynesianism which is what's called a mixed economy. It means that instead of the business making a big profit it might make a smaller profit, or absolute worst case scenario all operational costs are covered and the business breaks even- but in the end, the average joe can afford these things. Both Canada and the U.S are mixed economies, but currently the U.S is drifting away from that more toward a Milton Friedman-ized vision of a pure free market with no price controls. But that's another topic entirely. The point is we have to subsidize a lot of our industries because if we didn't, the country as is simply wouldn't exist.

Also, the GDP is not the be-all and end all indicator of economic health. For example the Canadian dollar has recently surpassed the American dollar in value- today the exchange rate is 1.02 I think, on Friday we almost hit 1.04.

Also of note, we have a modest trade surplus, which is a prime indicator of economic health. What this means is that more money enters our borders through trade than leaves- the U.S on the other hand, has a massive trade deficit, making your nation dependent on other countries buying your debt just so that you can continue to buy cheap junk from Asia. If it weren't for China and Japan (and the UK) buying up all those U.S treasuries you'd be in a world of hurt right now, and now that the U.S dollar is sinking like the titanic in comparison to the Euro and other world currencies, foreign creditors have been quietly dumping their reserves of U.S currency over the past few months... if you'll recall China's finance minister was making noise a few months back about the country engaging in "financial diversification" which really meant they were going to start dumping their glut of U.S dollars in favour of other currencies. This has consequently added to the speed with which the US greenback is falling in value, which could cause the dreaded cascade failure and a recession, or worst case depression!

guess he doesn't know where alaska and montana are.


alaska has one third the land of the 48 states. only has about 200,000 people in it. all of the oil is in the north.

there is only one place with a smaller pop. than northern alaska.

Don't mean to be nitpicky but what the hell, eh? Actually, Alaska has closer to 700,000 people, not 200,000. Bingo you're right, a lot of the oil that's on U.S soil is coming from Alaska, and it's that oil that provides the state with the lion's share of it's revenue, which means they tax their citizens less in comparison to other U.S states.

In comparison, northern Canda is comprised of the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut which is several times the size of Alaska and has a whopping 110 thousand people spread out amongst the three territories.

And yes I'm aware of Montana, it's a beautiful state! I grew up in Alberta which shares the border with Montana, there are a lot of similarities, cattle ranching and oil etc.

Oh.. what Artysim said.. He sure knows more about this topic than I.



I'd rather say you are simply in a state of denial, and you just can't see the other side of the argument. Trying to hammer your point with pretty numbers that fit your view of the world.

But anyway, I don't see how I could make you see things rationnaly about any topic you oppose. I mean, you turned the conversation about how we could efficiency - and in a conservative, business-friendly way - reduce CO2, and you started attacking Liberals economics view, cleary making a 90 degree turn of the topic, simply because you don't seem to like being proven wrong.

Artysim: Population density has very little bearing on GDP.

I am not sure you really thought through your argument before posting it.  Belgium, Denmark, etc. all have much lower GDP per capita than the United States despite having much higher population densitities.

Moreover, Alaska has a much MUCH higher per capita GDP than Quebec does despite having vast amounts of land (or Ontario for that matter).

The reason why these countries have lower GDP is pretty straight forward - your countries excessively tax your most productive class.  This leaves the most demonstratably productive people in your country with less capital to keep doing what they've already proven to do so well - generate wealth.

Also, feel free to explain how trade deficits/surpluses are a "prime indicator" of economic health. China has a tremendous trade surplus. Would you prefer to live there?

here is what is going on for the planet warming up.


WWW Link