Dude if you thought like an economist you wouldn’t say such stupid things. Go talk to an actual economist and you will get a clearer understanding of where Canadian productivity actually lags, what reasonable approaches there are to fixing productivity growth (you think the Canadian public service / central bank aren’t AWARE of this ?! Get real! The analysis is out there!) and what the sources of our lags are.
Meanwhile - annex a country? Follow the U.S. lead in extorting poor countries for their minerals (hello there are hella minerals in Canada without embarrassing ourselves abroad). What are you *talking* about?! Thiel fellowships? You think those fellowships are the font of American productivity gains? Get real. Read the Draghi Report, as it also identifies how much of the U.S.’s comparative productivity gains are driven entirely by Silicon Valley and Wall Street (and incidentally, wildly geographically concentrated).
There are loads of great things we could be doing and I agree that Canadians have been too timid and complacent, but honestly you need to talk with some actually informed people to help dislodge this sophomoric drivel. You need to actually have a serious person’s understanding of the sources of both American and Canadian productivity before you can say anything meaningful about either.
Lastly and least importantly, I’m afraid that your own ambivalence about sport means you’ve misunderstood why Canadians are still savouring the hockey game. Symbolism in sports matters. Trump phoned the team the day of the game and in the same breath spoke of annexing Canada. The U.S. has a similar number of (not-quite-as-rabid) hockey fans but spread out over a far greater population. U.S. sports media were highly invested in the tournament, especially for the final. If the U.S. had won we’d never hear the end of it from those fans. (There was A LOT of talk after they won their first encounter, if you recall.) Their silence is the silence of defeat. Canadians still talk about it because they are savouring how delicious a moment it was- they are as loud as the cowed Americans are silent. Canada absolutely needs to get its economic house in order, but 20 million hockey fans on both sides of the border know that when it comes to hockey, Canada is still daddy.
Great analysis of the strange Canadian cope recently. I like the slant of your ideas for Canadian prosperity but I'm forced to wonder why the government undertaking massive soviet style mega projects is the answer? Simply follow the Austrian school: Abolish taxes. Canada can be put on the track to immense wealth overnight. I guarantee highly capable entrepreneurs will immigrate (and you don't even have to take hundreds of thousands from the people to make them.) Anyways, great article.
Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it. I think most mega projects do end up having more costs than benefits because governments overestimate their abilities, but charter cities are one that I think could have high returns since it's all about government taking a hands off approach, in effect creating mini Austrian paradises (seeing as turning all of Canada into one isn't very feasible right now). The space one isn't as realistic I'll give you that.
Having read some of your other articles, I think this one is not up to your usual standard.
I think this article suffers from a conflation of national value and economic growth. The United States has grown exponentially faster than Canada in terms of GDP and total wealth, but this is a bit of a silly way to judge a nation (if you ignore other factors). For instance, Canada has a significantly higher median wealth per adult, and while wages are lower, income equality is higher here. Similarly, the OECD shows that while Canada is doing slightly worse on most economic measures, we have substantially better statistics for health, safety, and education. My point here is that if we measure the value of a country by power and wealth, the US is winning. However, if we take into account things that affect the quality of life for the average person, Canada is doing at least as well (or at least similarly well, punching above our weight for our smaller economy). Basically, while we should always be looking to improve our economy, copying the US is not necessarily the way forward.
Moreover, you mischaracterize the reason for Canadian celebration of our hockey win. Nationalism and patriotism always latch onto specific moments as representations of the national feeling. In this case, that was hockey, with added importance to many Canadians because it is seen as "our game." Was it a significant geopolitical victory? No, of course not. But the hockey game was a symbol of national defiance in the face of American aggression, giving Canadians something to rally behind.
In summary, the article seems to characterize Canada as an increasingly backwater nation, a place where no one in their right mind would choose to live when presented with the choice between it and the US. This view does not take into account all the factors impacting quality of life. Second, your criticism of the rhetoric surrounding the Canadian hockey victory misinterprets its place in the modern political zeitgeist.
I appreciate the comment Charlie, but I think we might be arguing past each other. I understand Canada is doing better when the criteria you care about are safety or education or median wealth (mostly a function of housing prices), but I'm not so interested in those criteria. I'm interested in how dynamic and innovative a society is. It's hard to quantify that of course, but like I said in the article, Canada's falling entrepreneur per capita rate, its almost complete absence of newish internationally competitive companies, and its failure to compete culturally with the US (in any dimension, music, film, art) is disappointing to me and downstream of a marginally less adventurous national character. Just look at the number of unicorns per country. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/unicorns-by-country
Do I think Canada is a terrible place to live, of course not. Could Canada ever be what the US is, probably not because a lot of the US's magic stems from its large population. But could Canada move closer in that direction? I think so. Would I feel more patriotic about Canada if it implemented some of the policies I wrote about above? Absolutely. But that's why I said we might be arguing past each other, because perhaps you disagree, you'd rather trade off, for example, better healthcare and income equality for worse musical creativity and technological achievement. And I think lots of smart people would agree with you, I definitely understand where you're coming from. I just prioritize different metrics.
And as for the hockey game, yeah, I probably was a bit liberal in my analysis of it. But the kernel of truth is that I would be more patriotic about the hockey game if I thought Canada had something to actually make me proud besides "we're polite and have more stable lives". I think that "does it" for a lot of Canadians but it just doesn't do it for me, so I felt a large disconnection between the patriotism and reality. But again, that's because my pride is positively correlated with the dimensions I talked about above, and maybe for a lot of people those dimensions are much less relevant, maybe completely irrelevant to their national pride.
Yeah fair. I do think the way you describe this is a bit broad though, especially with regards to dynamism. The unicorn statistics you posted are very interesting, especially because the USA's stats are nearly 150 more than the sum of the next 23 nations. Not only is the US higher than Canada, they are far higher than the rest of the developed world combined. In fact, we seem to be punching above our weight when we compare ourselves to Western Europe.
I haven't done much reading on the topic, but after reading a paper or two, there does seem to be a correlation between cultural traits and innovation, but research shows that culture is far from the only factor, and that it's extraordinarily hard to demonstrate with consistency just how correlative it is.
My issue here is also that seeking technological advancement at the expense of human quality of life seems a little like putting the cart before the horse. Technological advancement is certainly good, don't get me wrong, but if the vast majority of the people cannot make use of that advancement, it seems like a reassessment of priorities are in order.
Of course, one can conceivably have both technological advancement and healthcare, but that's besides the point.
I do agree that the hockey game is not really something to get nationalistic about on its own (at least no more than any other sports win). This is just a moment that captured the feeling of resistance to American threats of annexation, reinforcing a feeling of Canada being defiant. Moments of national pride are often things that are pretty innocuous, but have greater meaning later attached to them (one that comes to mind is that Rosa Parks not giving up her seat is actually not a very big deal, but it symbolizes a larger movement, which is why it is important). Still though, I do agree it would be nice to have more concrete things to be proud of, but we make do with what we have.
Dude if you thought like an economist you wouldn’t say such stupid things. Go talk to an actual economist and you will get a clearer understanding of where Canadian productivity actually lags, what reasonable approaches there are to fixing productivity growth (you think the Canadian public service / central bank aren’t AWARE of this ?! Get real! The analysis is out there!) and what the sources of our lags are.
Meanwhile - annex a country? Follow the U.S. lead in extorting poor countries for their minerals (hello there are hella minerals in Canada without embarrassing ourselves abroad). What are you *talking* about?! Thiel fellowships? You think those fellowships are the font of American productivity gains? Get real. Read the Draghi Report, as it also identifies how much of the U.S.’s comparative productivity gains are driven entirely by Silicon Valley and Wall Street (and incidentally, wildly geographically concentrated).
There are loads of great things we could be doing and I agree that Canadians have been too timid and complacent, but honestly you need to talk with some actually informed people to help dislodge this sophomoric drivel. You need to actually have a serious person’s understanding of the sources of both American and Canadian productivity before you can say anything meaningful about either.
Lastly and least importantly, I’m afraid that your own ambivalence about sport means you’ve misunderstood why Canadians are still savouring the hockey game. Symbolism in sports matters. Trump phoned the team the day of the game and in the same breath spoke of annexing Canada. The U.S. has a similar number of (not-quite-as-rabid) hockey fans but spread out over a far greater population. U.S. sports media were highly invested in the tournament, especially for the final. If the U.S. had won we’d never hear the end of it from those fans. (There was A LOT of talk after they won their first encounter, if you recall.) Their silence is the silence of defeat. Canadians still talk about it because they are savouring how delicious a moment it was- they are as loud as the cowed Americans are silent. Canada absolutely needs to get its economic house in order, but 20 million hockey fans on both sides of the border know that when it comes to hockey, Canada is still daddy.
Great analysis of the strange Canadian cope recently. I like the slant of your ideas for Canadian prosperity but I'm forced to wonder why the government undertaking massive soviet style mega projects is the answer? Simply follow the Austrian school: Abolish taxes. Canada can be put on the track to immense wealth overnight. I guarantee highly capable entrepreneurs will immigrate (and you don't even have to take hundreds of thousands from the people to make them.) Anyways, great article.
Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it. I think most mega projects do end up having more costs than benefits because governments overestimate their abilities, but charter cities are one that I think could have high returns since it's all about government taking a hands off approach, in effect creating mini Austrian paradises (seeing as turning all of Canada into one isn't very feasible right now). The space one isn't as realistic I'll give you that.
Having read some of your other articles, I think this one is not up to your usual standard.
I think this article suffers from a conflation of national value and economic growth. The United States has grown exponentially faster than Canada in terms of GDP and total wealth, but this is a bit of a silly way to judge a nation (if you ignore other factors). For instance, Canada has a significantly higher median wealth per adult, and while wages are lower, income equality is higher here. Similarly, the OECD shows that while Canada is doing slightly worse on most economic measures, we have substantially better statistics for health, safety, and education. My point here is that if we measure the value of a country by power and wealth, the US is winning. However, if we take into account things that affect the quality of life for the average person, Canada is doing at least as well (or at least similarly well, punching above our weight for our smaller economy). Basically, while we should always be looking to improve our economy, copying the US is not necessarily the way forward.
Moreover, you mischaracterize the reason for Canadian celebration of our hockey win. Nationalism and patriotism always latch onto specific moments as representations of the national feeling. In this case, that was hockey, with added importance to many Canadians because it is seen as "our game." Was it a significant geopolitical victory? No, of course not. But the hockey game was a symbol of national defiance in the face of American aggression, giving Canadians something to rally behind.
In summary, the article seems to characterize Canada as an increasingly backwater nation, a place where no one in their right mind would choose to live when presented with the choice between it and the US. This view does not take into account all the factors impacting quality of life. Second, your criticism of the rhetoric surrounding the Canadian hockey victory misinterprets its place in the modern political zeitgeist.
I appreciate the comment Charlie, but I think we might be arguing past each other. I understand Canada is doing better when the criteria you care about are safety or education or median wealth (mostly a function of housing prices), but I'm not so interested in those criteria. I'm interested in how dynamic and innovative a society is. It's hard to quantify that of course, but like I said in the article, Canada's falling entrepreneur per capita rate, its almost complete absence of newish internationally competitive companies, and its failure to compete culturally with the US (in any dimension, music, film, art) is disappointing to me and downstream of a marginally less adventurous national character. Just look at the number of unicorns per country. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/unicorns-by-country
Do I think Canada is a terrible place to live, of course not. Could Canada ever be what the US is, probably not because a lot of the US's magic stems from its large population. But could Canada move closer in that direction? I think so. Would I feel more patriotic about Canada if it implemented some of the policies I wrote about above? Absolutely. But that's why I said we might be arguing past each other, because perhaps you disagree, you'd rather trade off, for example, better healthcare and income equality for worse musical creativity and technological achievement. And I think lots of smart people would agree with you, I definitely understand where you're coming from. I just prioritize different metrics.
And as for the hockey game, yeah, I probably was a bit liberal in my analysis of it. But the kernel of truth is that I would be more patriotic about the hockey game if I thought Canada had something to actually make me proud besides "we're polite and have more stable lives". I think that "does it" for a lot of Canadians but it just doesn't do it for me, so I felt a large disconnection between the patriotism and reality. But again, that's because my pride is positively correlated with the dimensions I talked about above, and maybe for a lot of people those dimensions are much less relevant, maybe completely irrelevant to their national pride.
Yeah fair. I do think the way you describe this is a bit broad though, especially with regards to dynamism. The unicorn statistics you posted are very interesting, especially because the USA's stats are nearly 150 more than the sum of the next 23 nations. Not only is the US higher than Canada, they are far higher than the rest of the developed world combined. In fact, we seem to be punching above our weight when we compare ourselves to Western Europe.
I haven't done much reading on the topic, but after reading a paper or two, there does seem to be a correlation between cultural traits and innovation, but research shows that culture is far from the only factor, and that it's extraordinarily hard to demonstrate with consistency just how correlative it is.
My issue here is also that seeking technological advancement at the expense of human quality of life seems a little like putting the cart before the horse. Technological advancement is certainly good, don't get me wrong, but if the vast majority of the people cannot make use of that advancement, it seems like a reassessment of priorities are in order.
Of course, one can conceivably have both technological advancement and healthcare, but that's besides the point.
I do agree that the hockey game is not really something to get nationalistic about on its own (at least no more than any other sports win). This is just a moment that captured the feeling of resistance to American threats of annexation, reinforcing a feeling of Canada being defiant. Moments of national pride are often things that are pretty innocuous, but have greater meaning later attached to them (one that comes to mind is that Rosa Parks not giving up her seat is actually not a very big deal, but it symbolizes a larger movement, which is why it is important). Still though, I do agree it would be nice to have more concrete things to be proud of, but we make do with what we have.