Good lord, there are still cities just getting to universal? I was with Calgary Waterworks through our long period of getting people to switch. What a long game that was - decades.
Russil, misusing this for a question right to you. My anti-military-spending crank-issue got me into a very cranky post at fellow Canuck Dan Gardner this morn:
...and it crosses my mind to take that $40B "ask" for the military even further, as a housing comparison. I was about right to round out a "house" (well, decent dwelling, if not SFD) at $500K? I think that was the rough number for those boilerplate 6-unit plans you brought up a few weeks ago? And wouldn't they be cheaper if we built 80,000 of them a year?
Further, what would the uptake be if we built 160,000 and sold them for $250K each? Could we say "We could simply end the whole housing crisis for well under $40B a year" ?
I was actually thinking of about $10B - $2B on "remediating brownfields into developable land" and $8B on 32,000 of those half-million-dollar dwellings, sold at half price.
And, while I'm thinking big, has anybody suggested building cheap housing for people who cannot work - the mentally and physically disabled, old people wanting to age at home - in all those emptying-out small towns? Then they'd have jobs providing care services...
I know your blog is local, doesn't normally talk in tens of billions of direct government spending, because it's considered politically hopeless, but the military guys always get me going...
$500K per home seems reasonable, so then $40B/year would indeed be enough to build 80,000 homes/year - if you can get local permission.
I don't actually think that capital is the limiting factor here. Rents are high, so there's private capital that's willing to build. The two major bottlenecks are red tape and taxes.
The federal government has already allocated $55B in low-cost long-term loans to fund new purpose-built rentals through the RCFI (recently renamed the ALCP or Apartment Loan Construction Program, to make it clearer that these are loans).
I actually do think that in a more dangerous and uncertain world, Canada does need to spend more on soldiers, spies, and diplomats. The key divide in international politics isn't between good and evil. Rather, it's between powers which support the status quo (currently the US and its allies), and those which are opposed and want to overturn it (currently China, Russia, and Iran).
Canada depends on international trade and stability, so we have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. China's rapid economic growth in the last couple of decades means that the balance is shifting away from the status quo powers towards the revisionist powers, and we can expect trouble. Immediately after WWII, the US accounted for 50% of world GDP. It's now more like 25%; China's is comparable. So the US really does need its allies, like Canada, to take on some of the burden. It's a collective action problem, like global warming.
I think the federal government has a few levers to get "local permission"; just listen to Poilievre's and Trump's naked threats against their enemies, the cities. It's not like they care about stomped privileges and hurt feelings.
As for the United States needing help, they're spending $900B a year and getting their ass whupped by rice paddy farmers, afghan shepherds, and Baghdad shopkeepers. I would commend to your bookshelf both Jim Burton's "The Pentagon Wars", for how staggering levels of waste, fraud, and abuse were exacerbated by Reagan handing the Pentagon money it didn't even ask for, the Star Wars program that even they didn't believe in, and wars of choice.
Then there's their illegal war, some $6T wasted, along with 7000 lives, by breaking "international law" (i.e. their own laws against breaking a treaty, the UN Charter).
The most important read is fellow substacker Andrew Cockburn's "The Spoils of War" about how military spending is siphoned off, but for important Canadian context, Gwynne Dyer's "Canada in the Great Power Game", how all we do, militarily, is to please our (quasi)colonial masters, once Britain, and now the USA.
Which is what you are really advocating, that we keep pleasing the USA, and to a far, far smaller extent, Europe, by showing ourselves to be unquestioningly loyal to their global ambitions to dominate. That is in fact a good, if cynical strategy, and I agree with it, but think it should be done with open eyes that we are cynically bribing them for favours, not providing "Stability". Weapons and threats of their use don't stabilize any situation; it remains on a knife-edge until the weapons are put down.
We should drop this, Russil, this isn't your topic. But I was disappointed to read that.
No worries, I'll just add one key point. If Canadians distrust the US and want to be more independent, we need *more* military spending, not less. (Like Sweden during the Cold War, since it was neutral.)
Good lord, there are still cities just getting to universal? I was with Calgary Waterworks through our long period of getting people to switch. What a long game that was - decades.
Russil, misusing this for a question right to you. My anti-military-spending crank-issue got me into a very cranky post at fellow Canuck Dan Gardner this morn:
https://substack.com/profile/1998437-roy-brander/note/c-82252410
...and it crosses my mind to take that $40B "ask" for the military even further, as a housing comparison. I was about right to round out a "house" (well, decent dwelling, if not SFD) at $500K? I think that was the rough number for those boilerplate 6-unit plans you brought up a few weeks ago? And wouldn't they be cheaper if we built 80,000 of them a year?
Further, what would the uptake be if we built 160,000 and sold them for $250K each? Could we say "We could simply end the whole housing crisis for well under $40B a year" ?
I was actually thinking of about $10B - $2B on "remediating brownfields into developable land" and $8B on 32,000 of those half-million-dollar dwellings, sold at half price.
And, while I'm thinking big, has anybody suggested building cheap housing for people who cannot work - the mentally and physically disabled, old people wanting to age at home - in all those emptying-out small towns? Then they'd have jobs providing care services...
I know your blog is local, doesn't normally talk in tens of billions of direct government spending, because it's considered politically hopeless, but the military guys always get me going...
$500K per home seems reasonable, so then $40B/year would indeed be enough to build 80,000 homes/year - if you can get local permission.
I don't actually think that capital is the limiting factor here. Rents are high, so there's private capital that's willing to build. The two major bottlenecks are red tape and taxes.
The federal government has already allocated $55B in low-cost long-term loans to fund new purpose-built rentals through the RCFI (recently renamed the ALCP or Apartment Loan Construction Program, to make it clearer that these are loans).
I actually do think that in a more dangerous and uncertain world, Canada does need to spend more on soldiers, spies, and diplomats. The key divide in international politics isn't between good and evil. Rather, it's between powers which support the status quo (currently the US and its allies), and those which are opposed and want to overturn it (currently China, Russia, and Iran).
Canada depends on international trade and stability, so we have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo. China's rapid economic growth in the last couple of decades means that the balance is shifting away from the status quo powers towards the revisionist powers, and we can expect trouble. Immediately after WWII, the US accounted for 50% of world GDP. It's now more like 25%; China's is comparable. So the US really does need its allies, like Canada, to take on some of the burden. It's a collective action problem, like global warming.
Some discussion of Canada's military needs: https://vancouverkingsway.substack.com/p/remembrance-day-2024
I think the federal government has a few levers to get "local permission"; just listen to Poilievre's and Trump's naked threats against their enemies, the cities. It's not like they care about stomped privileges and hurt feelings.
As for the United States needing help, they're spending $900B a year and getting their ass whupped by rice paddy farmers, afghan shepherds, and Baghdad shopkeepers. I would commend to your bookshelf both Jim Burton's "The Pentagon Wars", for how staggering levels of waste, fraud, and abuse were exacerbated by Reagan handing the Pentagon money it didn't even ask for, the Star Wars program that even they didn't believe in, and wars of choice.
Then there's their illegal war, some $6T wasted, along with 7000 lives, by breaking "international law" (i.e. their own laws against breaking a treaty, the UN Charter).
The most important read is fellow substacker Andrew Cockburn's "The Spoils of War" about how military spending is siphoned off, but for important Canadian context, Gwynne Dyer's "Canada in the Great Power Game", how all we do, militarily, is to please our (quasi)colonial masters, once Britain, and now the USA.
Which is what you are really advocating, that we keep pleasing the USA, and to a far, far smaller extent, Europe, by showing ourselves to be unquestioningly loyal to their global ambitions to dominate. That is in fact a good, if cynical strategy, and I agree with it, but think it should be done with open eyes that we are cynically bribing them for favours, not providing "Stability". Weapons and threats of their use don't stabilize any situation; it remains on a knife-edge until the weapons are put down.
We should drop this, Russil, this isn't your topic. But I was disappointed to read that.
No worries, I'll just add one key point. If Canadians distrust the US and want to be more independent, we need *more* military spending, not less. (Like Sweden during the Cold War, since it was neutral.)