Martin Regg Cohn: Doug Ford ist angesichts einer stotternden Wirtschaft machtlos
https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/doug-ford-is-powerless-in-the-face-of-a-sputtering-economy/article_2341bc6f-32d5-4ce9-a73c-05b5fca8c4f1.html
Martin Regg Cohn: Doug Ford ist angesichts einer stotternden Wirtschaft machtlos
https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/doug-ford-is-powerless-in-the-face-of-a-sputtering-economy/article_2341bc6f-32d5-4ce9-a73c-05b5fca8c4f1.html
3 Kommentare
Paywalled, and the story doesn’t appear to be on Apple News yet.
But, no, Doug Ford isn’t powerless. He doesn’t deserve that break from responsibility. Doug Ford is an incompetent corrupt politician that simply chooses to do either nothing, or to push policy that actively hurts the general population.
For example, Doug Ford could focus on large scale infrastructure investment to spur the economy, similar to how Carney is. However, instead he chooses to expand highways in the GTA, build unnecessary tunnels under highways, or spend tax dollars to subsidize mega spas. While these projects may result in short-term construction jobs, they don’t then lead to long-term careers/jobs in the regions that they’re completed.
Productivity is also a major factor for the degrading economy. Part of the productivity problem is degrading education, and a rising cost-of-living crisis, particularly around housing. People simply aren’t going to work hard if they feel their efforts will never pay off, especially if reasonable goal like home ownership feels unobtainable. Ford could push policy to combat the cost-of-living crisis and bring down the cost of homes, but he won’t do that either. Ford’s own actions and words show that he’s actually pushing to increase the cost of housing, not decrease it.
So, no, Ford is not powerless. He could actually make a huge difference. He just doesn’t care, doesn’t want to, and is too incompetent to actually do anything.
Let’s not give politicians the break from responsibility when they deserve it. Additionally, we have to hold responsibility ourselves for repeatedly electing an idiot that is actively trying to harm us. At this point, we deserve anything we get.
What do you mean powerless? He already put a sign on the border saying „Open for Business“ which double our GDP overnight since nobody before had realized that you can increase your economy with appropriate signage. Now that we have also changed our license plates blue to turbo-charge our economy, I think the next thing this government should focus on (after ripping out all the bike lanes and speed cameras to increase car accidents and cyclist and pedestrian injuries and child deaths), should be to put a a blue sign (it needs to match our PC party blue licence plates) in a field that says „Solving the Housing Crisis“, I think that would lead to more homes and solve the housing crisis. I think also we should spent more tax payer money on commercials about things the government should be doing but isn’t to make it feel like something is happening. I think the billions of dollars this government have spent on advertising have been really effective at making more adverts to watch on TV.
The dirty secret that all politicians hate is that they all have very limited ability to influence the economy. It moves in the same direction across all jurisdictions, and even the most competent and well-meaning can make only subtle tweaks.
But here’s one:
>Unemployment has increased inexorably over the past year and is destined to worsen to 7.8 per cent this year…
It’s not inexorable. We directly increase or decrease unemployment with our decisions regarding temporary foreign workers. That has other effects, but it’s stupid or deceptive to say that it’s inexorable.