The Critical Compass Podcast - Inflation, Capital Gains, & 2024 Tax Changes ｜ A Critical Compass Discussion

00:00:00.000 This is a four-step program for those stupid poor people. 1.00

00:00:03.660 Step one, print a lot of money. 1.00

00:00:05.080 Step two, asset and good prices skyrocket.

00:00:07.780 Step three, tax as much of the capital gain as possible.

00:00:10.760 Quote-unquote capital gain.

00:00:12.260 Step four, blame Loblaws.

00:00:15.600 That's the...

00:00:17.120 Well, they gotta pay their share.

00:00:20.300 Yeah, that's right.

00:00:21.360 The Jagmeet Singh School of Economics, I guess.

00:00:25.580 There's a very frightening graph of the Canadian money supply from 1955 to the current day.

00:00:35.520 Normally it curves, but that is a right angle.

00:00:39.620 That is a complete right angle.

00:00:41.340 Yeah, that is not nice to look at.

00:00:44.000 Being able to store your wealth becomes harder and harder.

00:00:47.540 Yeah.

00:00:48.620 As you're basically gambling to beat inflation.

00:00:54.780 Yeah.

00:00:55.000 The government is actively devaluing your hard-earned work, and we're trying to escape that.

00:01:01.300 Which makes this the capital gains tax.

00:01:05.340 Any changes in that, that's very much...

00:01:08.640 It's sold as a tax on the rich.

00:01:11.420 Again, that's capital gains within a year.

00:01:14.760 So maybe you have somebody with a small business who's selling part of their business off or exchanging.

00:01:21.240 Like, $600,000 in a year for somebody's decades of accumulation of hard-earned work.

00:01:29.180 That's actually not as much as people think.

00:01:32.060 Hello, and welcome back to The Critical Compass.

00:01:51.360 My name is Mike, and this is James with me today.

00:01:53.520 As every day, because we're the only two people on this podcast.

00:01:59.200 Today, we've got a couple topics that we want to discuss.

00:02:03.740 James is going to start us off.

00:02:05.700 We're going to talk about its tax season in Canada, and I think probably the U.S.

00:02:09.120 In Canada, we've gotten some new tax burdens this year.

00:02:16.220 A lot of people are unhappy with the new budget release and some of the tax changes and additions that have come with it.

00:02:25.500 James is going to give us a bit of a background on some concepts here, and then we'll talk about the particulars after that.

00:02:30.540 Yeah, I guess it's worth understanding just a few things about the stealth tax that exist, and inflation is one of them.

00:02:43.640 But a lot of people think it's a greed-driven inflation, where prices are just increasing because of companies just wanting more and more money.

00:02:52.340 But you get these ripple effects, but the primary driver is going to be the expansion of the money supply.

00:02:59.660 And this is where every year our government's in more and more debt, which means it's issuing bonds, and then banks issue out debt for its lending at certain rates for mortgages or auto loans.

00:03:15.060 And anything where somebody just needs financing, this is money issued through new debt.

00:03:21.380 And every time new debt is created, the value of your money is decreased.

00:03:27.800 And we can think of that as just a representation of our hard-earned time.

00:03:35.860 We put in the hours of labor, and we try to store that value in a piece of paper or in our digital bank account so we can exchange that for somebody else's labor in the future.

00:03:47.920 As the monetary, like as the supply increases, the value of our hard-earned work decreases as well.

00:03:57.240 So we can't really store value right now.

00:04:02.420 And that's problem number one, because there's no way of saving.

00:04:06.860 So what we're forced to do is we're forced to gamble.

00:04:11.340 We are forced to invest in something that may or may not have a percent return that outpaces inflation.

00:04:20.360 And now when we invest and we make money, there's capital gains on that as well.

00:04:27.920 We will touch on the capital gains in a second.

00:04:31.960 But we have tax brackets, and the one thing that's never really talked about or hasn't been talked about as much is do our tax brackets adjust according to inflation?

00:04:47.840 Does it always match inflation?

00:04:51.080 And one of the problems is how we measure inflation is our CPI, Consumer Price Index.

00:05:01.460 Notoriously problematic, right?

00:05:03.040 It's problematic because all it reflects is a basket of goods, and that basket of goods can change year to year.

00:05:10.940 And what they do is they sample, for example, they'll take 10 items, and they'll compare those 10 items and see, and they'll average within those 10.

00:05:22.200 But not all items change year to year.

00:05:25.660 You may have something like, well, maybe you have a 30% increase in some food item, but maybe they will include in that basket of items,

00:05:38.300 like a computer GPU or a CPU, that decreases is in price.

00:05:44.220 So you can fudge the numbers, and it doesn't always reflect real inflation.

00:05:49.220 So we've already got a skewed idea there.

00:05:52.520 And right now we don't know if tax brackets, how well they match with inflation.

00:05:57.220 So if anything, right now $50,000 a year, which used to be a decent amount, and within that tax bracket,

00:06:08.000 it feels like people are getting taxed a little bit higher to begin with, or it's also changing the threshold of how many people are concerted in poverty.

00:06:17.280 So these are very arbitrary numbers, and they keep on adjusting.

00:06:20.980 So with that being said, we've got a very distorted idea of price signals.

00:06:26.280 It's changing every year.

00:06:27.680 We have a distorted idea of how much of our labor and our time is actually being maintained.

00:06:37.140 And, well, I guess we kind of mentioned before, Mike, do you want to kind of explain how money gets diluted every time,

00:06:50.420 like from income tax to sales tax to...

00:06:54.380 Yeah, it's more than just a number.

00:06:55.900 And it misses the amount of times that you, you know, you're getting, you get taxed on your earnings,

00:07:02.120 which you use to buy goods and services that are taxed.

00:07:06.020 The goods and services from whom you buy, those people are also paying tax on those earnings.

00:07:14.480 And so what you see is you see a devaluation of the dollar for every purchase that gets made along the chain.

00:07:23.080 So when you have people talking a lot about a circular economy, you know, the benefits of a circular economy,

00:07:28.380 and that would be something that's very traceable on a smaller scale.

00:07:32.080 So if you have something like, you have a small town and you have a farmer and a blacksmith.

00:07:38.960 This is a small town from the 1800s.

00:07:41.120 You have a farmer and a blacksmith and a baker and a candlestick maker.

00:07:45.740 And each one of them goes to the other when they need something.

00:07:49.020 They pay in cash and that person uses that cash to buy something else that they need to supplement whatever they don't make for themselves.

00:07:54.820 That's a good example of an economy that's that would have long term stability because of because at each part of the chain,

00:08:03.640 the purchasing power of the money used retains its value.

00:08:08.960 When you have there is a good example of this made by somebody popular in who knows more about the economy than I do.

00:08:19.080 That shows the actual percentages that you lose by, you know, to use an example of a, you know, a modern example.

00:08:28.160 When you tap your credit card somewhere, the cash, the like Moneris or whoever the payment processor is takes a portion off the top.

00:08:38.820 Visa or MasterCard takes a portion off the top.

00:08:41.380 The money that the business that you're, you've just bought something from, they lose that to, they lose a portion to GST and the taxes that they pay as a business at the end of the year.

00:08:50.920 And so it's at you, you, like I said, you devalue the dollar at every time you use it in this type of economy.

00:08:59.420 Yeah. And whatever amount we start with is just less and less and less that, and there are accounts of like, well, at the end of the day, you're sitting at like, well, 60% of what you actually earned from the start is actually usable at the end of the day in even less.

00:09:21.420 So like, it can be up like down to, down to 50%.

00:09:25.100 So, um, I, I think it relies on the ignorance of the average person to, for this kind of, this tomfoolery to continue to exist.

00:09:39.800 Well, you have, um, I watched a video recently, if I can find it, we'll link to it, of a, of a woman explaining how her, her six figure income is not enough to sustain her family of, I think they had three kids.

00:09:53.320 It was her and her husband.

00:09:54.420 Oh, that was in Toronto.

00:09:56.900 Yeah.

00:09:57.400 Um, if I remember, if we're thinking of the same, I think it is.

00:10:01.820 Yeah.

00:10:02.460 And she was explaining her like, and she, and she's not living outside of her means.

00:10:05.860 Like you see sometimes these like flat lays of groceries that people buy and like, Oh, this is how much $200 gets you at a grocery store. 0.99

00:10:13.900 And it's all crap. 0.83

00:10:14.680 Like it's all like high priced, you know, snacks and things like that. 0.99

00:10:18.020 And not, not a lot of, you know, real food you could say, but no, this is like, this was, this was legit.

00:10:23.540 You know, her, her rent and her car payment in order to get to and from work and her, uh, you know, the, the food bills for the family and all kinds of things, you know?

00:10:31.700 And so it adds up to a point where on paper, she's got a, a really quite a lucrative job.

00:10:38.040 Uh, but that is, that is not translating to any ability to move forward.

00:10:44.140 Uh, she, she doesn't, I think she said of her, you know, 102 or $104, $104,000 salary.

00:10:51.080 Um, she was left with, I think on an average month between two and $400 that, that wasn't. 0.97

00:10:56.700 Yeah. And that was with kids and a stay at home father at that point.

00:11:02.160 So the, the whole idea of is like a single parent income is becoming less and less attainable.

00:11:10.500 Also the being able to store your wealth becomes harder and harder as you're, you're basically gambling to beat inflation.

00:11:22.160 Um, the government is actively devaluing your hard-earned work and we're trying to escape that and which makes this, the capital gains tax, um, any changes in that, that's very much, it's, it's sold as a tax on the rich again, almost like, well, if somebody's earned money, it's not within, well, it's not because they did anything to earn it.

00:11:49.200 It's, it's, it's feels like it's very much a class punishment at that point.

00:11:54.160 But what people don't realize is that that's capital gains within a year.

00:12:01.040 So maybe you have somebody with a small business who's selling part of their business off or exchanging like $600,000 in a year for somebody's decades of accumulation.

00:12:13.340 Of hard-earned work, that's actually not as much as people think there are more people that might either let, let's say they bought a second home as an investment again, to try to store some of their wealth in something that they were thinking that would maintain value.

00:12:32.940 Like a house is a house, no matter what, um, where other investments may or may not do well, a company may go under, but a house is still, it can still be lived in.

00:12:43.860 You can still sell it.

00:12:44.340 It's always at least on a piece of land too.

00:12:46.940 Yeah.

00:12:47.280 So, um, yeah, I think you had some links on kind of explaining some of the taxes that have popped up.

00:12:55.640 Yeah, and I have just an example here, um, I won't link to the tweet, I'll just read it here, um, from my phone.

00:13:02.640 But, uh, this is an illustrative example on small, small dollars that people can make sense of, of what this capital gains tax change really looks like.

00:13:12.020 So here's the, here's the, the simplified version.

00:13:15.620 Assume a $200 income at a 50% tax rate, you can invest and make 20% in a year.

00:13:22.860 So in the current system, you've got, you've got a $200 income, you get $100 of that after tax.

00:13:29.360 You get $120 of that after investment and $110 after the capital gains tax, the, the old, the old capital gain tax.

00:13:38.120 You've essentially turned $100 into $110.

00:13:40.520 In a system where you're taxed once at the end of the year on all income and capital gains, $200 income becomes $240 after investment becomes $120 after all taxes.

00:13:54.940 So that's, does that make sense?

00:13:58.660 Yeah, it's the, the capital gains is above your set income.

00:14:05.780 It's everything on top, uh, with, and then a portion of that income, um, is taxed.

00:14:14.840 Mm-hmm.

00:14:16.140 Mm-hmm.

00:14:17.400 Uh, I'm going to share a, uh, screen here from Scott Stevenson on X.

00:14:23.060 So he says, uh, the dark secret of capital gains tax during inflation, it taxes you for gaining nothing.

00:14:29.320 If you have $400,000 in retirement assets and 25% more money is printed, your assets are now worth $500,000, but you are no richer.

00:14:37.460 The dollar just became 25% less valuable.

00:14:40.300 Although you are no richer, you will be taxed as if you made $50,000 to $66,000.

00:14:45.140 You really made nothing.

00:14:46.660 You just became poorer and experienced no upside.

00:14:49.040 This is an effect that can impact every middle-class person saving for retirement, owning a cottage, running a small business, a startup, stock options, et cetera.

00:14:58.900 I think that really shows the reality of, um, as we're seeing a, a change of like the small percentage of the world getting richer and richer and people getting poorer and poorer, um, the,

00:15:18.560 the best way to look at that is that the people who are able to maintain some value in hard assets will be able to maintain the, their assets will increase in value.

00:15:31.620 And then if somebody is barely able to get a few dollars in their bank account every year, they're, they're being taxed with a stealth tax and don't even realize it.

00:15:43.320 Or they borrow money and now they're paying massive amounts of interest.

00:15:48.820 Um, yeah.

00:15:50.260 And I can understand why like so many people would, they, they would get themselves in debt right away.

00:15:57.360 Like, well, cause it gets them something now, which just means they are indebted.

00:16:02.560 Their labor is indebted for more years after that.

00:16:05.920 Um, well, and Scott Stevenson's also has a, um, a, uh, a post on that and, uh, share that as well. 1.00

00:16:18.140 This is a four step program for those stupid poor people. 1.00

00:16:21.300 Step one, print a lot of money. 1.00

00:16:22.920 Step two, asset and good prices skyrocket.

00:16:25.780 Step three, tax as much of the capital gain as possible.

00:16:28.760 Quote unquote capital gain.

00:16:30.280 Step four, blame Loblaws.

00:16:32.200 That's, that's, that's the, that's the, uh, the jug meat sing, uh, uh, school of economics, I guess. 0.96

00:16:44.200 It's such a, it's such a silly thing.

00:16:45.880 Every time I see it, I wonder, is there going to come a time when Galen Wesson just decides to sue the entire federal NDP?

00:16:52.640 But I don't know.

00:16:54.480 It's, uh, there's a, there's a very frightening graph of the, uh, Canadian money supply.

00:16:59.680 Anyway, and, uh, from 1955 to the current day and, uh.

00:17:04.980 Normally it curves, but that is a, that is a right angle.

00:17:08.900 That is a complete right angle.

00:17:10.620 Yeah, that is, that is not nice to look at.

00:17:13.620 So I've also got here, uh, we'll just, uh, we'll, we'll go into the, um, basically the full, the full scope of the, the.

00:17:22.680 The changes?

00:17:23.640 The tax changes, yeah.

00:17:24.760 Uh, so this is TD leaker on, on, uh, X, uh, here are the top 10 ways in which costs or taxes will increase according to budget 2024.

00:17:32.540 So capital gains tax, as we said, so the inclusion rate for capital gains rises from one half to two thirds.

00:17:38.720 Uh, digital services tax, luxury tax.

00:17:42.300 That's a fun one because guess who gets to decide what luxury means?

00:17:45.260 Uh, number four, uh, tobacco and vaping products as if they weren't taxed enough.

00:17:51.200 Public debt charges, GST on carbon emissions.

00:17:54.800 That's, uh, that could be, you know, a whole, a whole series of episodes unto themselves.

00:17:59.400 Uh, increase in public sector wage costs.

00:18:02.220 Shocking that they would continue to make the government, the, uh, the primary employer of Canadians.

00:18:08.760 Uh, number eight, environmental compliance costs.

00:18:11.340 That's another good one that links to number six, uh, air travel, air traveler security charge and an alcohol excise tax.

00:18:19.580 So, uh, basically you've got a whole lot of, uh, of, uh, vice taxes here.

00:18:26.400 You've got, uh, dubious environmental, uh, environment related taxes and, uh, and just compliance just environmentally could mean many things.

00:18:38.840 So that, that's something that could be, depends on how you define it and that, that could be, it could be tricky.

00:18:46.900 So those are all taxes on if it's things that are bought or sold, that's, that's one side of things.

00:18:56.860 But another thing that can affect prices is like, obviously the expansion of the monetary supply is the main driver, but as you get an increasing government size and they, they brag about how many new jobs there are.

00:19:14.360 And then you look at the numbers in the mostly public sector jobs, um, as you get an increased government size and you have more regulations and more red tape to go through, uh, let's say you have a building, like a development company and they're building a bunch of houses.

00:19:33.300 And to get all the permits takes another two months and that's two months.

00:19:38.480 They could not be finishing up that project and starting another project.

00:19:42.420 And that's two months of, well, they, they haven't made money from that yet.

00:19:45.680 And those delays, those costs get transferred to the consumer because at some point they got to cover their, their business expenses.

00:19:55.040 They're already taxed for whatever they got to make money.

00:19:57.940 Therefore, any slowdown in the process will increase costs as well.

00:20:03.400 So it's, it's like additive, everything on top of everything.

00:20:09.180 Like it's no surprise that you would have such changes in price year to year.

00:20:14.500 Well, that's right.

00:20:15.480 And then it, it also, it also disincentivizes, um, people, um, builders, even, even getting into these projects at all.

00:20:24.200 And it ensures that only the wealthiest, uh, land developers will, will be the ones that can weather that, um, administrative cost.

00:20:34.160 You don't get, you know, little startup companies.

00:20:36.300 You don't get little communities being built by, by small local or provincial builders.

00:20:41.280 It becomes something that only, you know, nationalized, you know, two or three or four companies can do.

00:20:47.720 And then what's to like, everyone knows what happens long-term for that is that you just, you end up in creating, creating a, um, you know, a triopoly or, you know, a similar type of structure as we see in our, um, uh, our telecom industry, which is, has become the same thing.

00:21:05.200 It was regulated to hell, no one can enter our market and it, and it just becomes another thing that Canadians get to pay for, for no good reason.

00:21:13.020 Other than, uh, we've decided that the, the red tape involved is, you know, ostensibly for the betterment of something.

00:21:21.000 Yeah.

00:21:22.400 Yeah.

00:21:22.660 And I guess we haven't really, we don't have the accountability to really see, to really reflect on what red tape is necessary.

00:21:32.800 What is actually doing.

00:21:34.460 Yeah.

00:21:35.240 Doing what we, what it's supposed to, because it's hard to argue that like zero regulations would be beneficial.

00:21:43.960 Like that, you'd want some, you'd want enough constraints to like make sure that a company is just not dumping raw, like raw sewage into drinking water.

00:21:57.020 Like there, there's basic things like that where like, yeah, it's easy to make a case for some like basic regulations there.

00:22:05.060 But if a drink, like if a water assessment took four years where like maybe in the free market, they would have all the testing itself and writing up a report would only take a month.

00:22:18.560 And if the amount of hands it had, maybe got passed between three different departments and they all had to like send it off for another referral and then they needed, like, you can see how something that started in a good place could just get progressively worse and worse and worse.

00:22:38.780 And there isn't the accountability to, to really adapt or improve that.

00:22:45.060 Yeah.

00:22:45.260 And in fact, there's, there's, that's disincentivized too, because you've created this, uh, bureaucracy of administrative roles that exist solely to facilitate the red tape that was put in place to, to do the initial task.

00:23:02.120 So now the people who are, are running those departments and those bureaucracies have absolutely no incentive to make themselves redundant.

00:23:10.340 Why would they do that?

00:23:11.360 They would, they would increase further red tape on that to ensure that there's more people along the chain to ensure that their role becomes progressively higher and higher in the hierarchy of nonsense jobs that don't do anything.

00:23:26.520 So I, um, I did have a question for you though, and we didn't talk about this before or prepare for this, but, um,

00:23:32.940 what would your response be to somebody who said, referring to the, the rapid inflation of the money supply in the last four years that, well, Canada, the government of Canada needed to do that because people were losing their jobs due to COVID or some such related argument.

00:23:52.380 Yeah, no, I've definitely heard of that one more than once.

00:23:56.640 Um, so Canada created a problem that they solved with COVID checks and, well, the strict restrictions on, on shutting down.

00:24:12.940 And I, I know it's, it wasn't just federally mandated, but you did have kind of people walking within law, like you, you had the provincial governments following the lead of federal, which followed the lead of kind of these, uh, what, what other non-government organizations were suggesting to be done.

00:24:34.940 Um, despite evidence of lockdowns not being an effective tool, um, and maybe at some point we follow up on all the great Barrington declaration and some of these key, these, it was a collection of data painting the case of why lockdowns do more harm than good.

00:24:57.380 So, um, given that is, you can't say that, um, um, they didn't have the information that wasn't ignored, it was more dogmatic in the sense of they believed that it was necessary.

00:25:11.920 Also, you could paint the case of like, in a leadership role, um, you are almost required to do something rather than not do something.

00:25:27.380 Lest you look weak or.

00:25:28.380 Lest you look weak or.

00:25:29.380 A wait and see report.

00:25:30.380 Yeah.

00:25:30.880 Yeah.

00:25:30.980 Yeah.

00:25:31.440 It, it either makes sense like you're not doing anything, therefore you're not doing a job, therefore you're not worthy of re-election or you'll get scorned for not doing enough.

00:25:42.060 And there's a plenty of people, they were so scared, they were calling for more shutdowns while complaining that life is hard because like nobody's making money because jobs are being affected or you can't.

00:25:57.380 Um, business can't survive because they can't open their doors.

00:26:01.580 So it was a problem created by the government with the solution of the government, which now it's feels like it's the problem and solution all in one place.

00:26:14.260 Yeah.

00:26:14.900 Well, that's, that's a good response.

00:26:16.160 And I would say as well, um, Constantine Kissin talked about this, uh, in a recent, I think maybe, maybe a month old or so debate where they were talking about immigration, the UK.

00:26:26.620 And a lot of the policy, the immigration policies in the UK mirror, uh, Canada's policy mirrors them.

00:26:34.960 And what we don't talk often enough about when we talk about immigration and the rapidly increased, uh, numbers that we're seeing entering the country of, of, uh, of, uh, newcomers.

00:26:46.440 Is what this serves to do is it serves to lower productivity.

00:26:52.580 And the reason why it does that is because you have a group of people who are coming from such dire circumstances that any job that they could possibly get in this, in their new country, in the first world is going to be an upgrade.

00:27:06.940 So there is no, so when we talk about drop in productivity, countries like Canada and the UK are very quick to, um, talk about their GDP and the growth of the GDP.

00:27:21.400 What they don't talk about is GDP per capita.

00:27:24.320 Uh, and the reason is because if they've reported it that way, you would see that productivity as a whole is dropping year over year as a nation, because you have so many people working low skilled jobs for low pay willingly that there is no incentive to increase, increase the job, the, the, um, the pay for those jobs or to move people into the higher earning echelons of the workforce.

00:27:50.740 Uh, so when we talk about the inflated money supply, we also need to talk about in the same sentence, how much our money is being devalued by the, the, the extreme drop in productivity that we're seeing as a country.

00:28:06.320 We're not growing the economy.

00:28:08.280 We're just growing the amount of people earning less in the economy.

00:28:13.160 Yeah.

00:28:13.760 I think that goes hand in hand of like, well, we've restricted like domestic oil production.

00:28:18.840 We've restricted these other things.

00:28:20.740 While importing more, which as more people enter Canada and Canada being a little bit more socialized when it comes to our kind of social safety net.

00:28:35.840 I don't think our social safety net, these like our hospitals, education systems.

00:28:42.500 We don't have any mechanism in place to really robustly grow those at the same rate of the same quality.

00:28:53.560 Um, and then if you bring people in that come from dire circumstances and they're going to need some of these services.

00:29:02.720 So again, we're diluting, well, this is why our wait times are so high.

00:29:07.660 Um, ultimately like there's a rate of, of like actual manageable immigration and, or a demographic, which is like more sustainable than others.

00:29:19.800 Um, and, and, and even if somebody like doesn't agree with this, you could, you could press them and you could find a number value of like, well, Canada has 40 million people.

00:29:31.560 What would happen?

00:29:32.660 And they're saying like, well, a million's fine.

00:29:35.280 That's fine.

00:29:35.960 It's no problem.

00:29:36.720 It's like, well, what happens if you, if tomorrow you brought in 5 million people all in one day, what about 10 million?

00:29:43.440 What if we increased by 50% of the population in like, you can see how at some point the problems are going to get like, they would be more and more dire.

00:29:57.280 Um, and you, you would create like a, a, a collapsing point of like the systems that you have cannot sustain with the people that coming in.

00:30:07.980 Um, there's also the time for people to actually become like actually integrated and there's less and less incentives to become integrated if people are able to kind of live within their own communities and don't learn the language.

00:30:26.140 And if they don't 100% reflect the values of Canada, then you're running into other issues of, well, can Canada, rather than being a melting pot, you just have a, a splatter of different cultures that at some point, and we're seeing more kind of, uh, race-based conflicts here.

00:30:46.700 Like you, you, you have disparity with kind of tribalism between groups, you're going to get an increasing like number of, uh, just people being at each other's throats that way.

00:31:02.140 So that's right.

00:31:04.160 Yeah.

00:31:04.500 Well, I mean, we talked about that last week with the, um, Hindu and the Kalistani protests.

00:31:09.460 Um, I just bring this up here because, um, the, uh, Victoria-based Aaron Gunn, he's, I think he's running for, uh, um, for, um, parliament now as a conservative.

00:31:24.860 Uh, yeah, Aaron, Aaron Gunn doing these amazing investigative, he will go around, interview, like some of the key individuals who are knowledgeable and or have good insight.

00:31:39.460 Uh, into these issues, so.

00:31:42.200 Yeah, this, and this Waiting to Die documentary is curious for me to see actually this view count compared to some of the other ones, especially this, you know, this, uh, this one is about essentially the fentanyl crisis in, uh, in BC.

00:31:53.880 Um, this one has the least views out of all of them, but this one arguably to me was the most poignant because people in Canada don't like to talk about, well, with, we like to think that our healthcare system is something to be envied.

00:32:07.720 Uh, and actually in the Western world, it's one of the worst, uh, and we're not ready to have that conversation as a country because we've, we've based so much of our, uh, national identity on this, this notion of free healthcare.

00:32:22.120 Um, without any real, um, people just don't have the, the context to understand how bad our healthcare is compared to most other civilized Western nations, specifically, uh, the Nordic countries in Europe.

00:32:38.120 So when, when you hear this, this, this documentary is definitely worth watching because he interviews a lot of people from, uh, from European health agencies where they talk about how, like a lot of people don't know, but, uh, most modern Western health agencies have a mixed private public system.

00:32:56.080 Uh, and this amongst other things, amongst other reasons, uh, serves to make both significantly better.

00:33:04.480 And so when we talk about, you know, even the notion sometimes of having any sort of, uh, dual system in Canada is, is poo-pooed immediately.

00:33:12.820 And you're, you're accused of wanting to bring, you know, American style healthcare to Canada.

00:33:17.140 And there's just, the reality is there's just so much, uh, in between those two systems, the U S system has its benefits for, for certain people.

00:33:25.380 If you, you know, Viva Fry talked about recently on a prod, on a podcast about how, you know, cause he lives part-time in Florida.

00:33:32.900 Now he says, well, you can, you can, you pay a lot of money for private health insurance in, in the U S, uh, and you get, you get decent care,

00:33:42.000 or you could pay a lot of money in taxes to fund a shitty healthcare system in Canada.

00:33:46.260 So it'll, it'll end up working out about the same, but the, specifically the, the Northern European countries with their, with their mixed private public system,

00:33:55.300 they are so, so superior to ours in, in almost every way that the public system functions so much better.

00:34:02.740 You get a base level of guaranteed coverage and then the overflows.

00:34:11.060 Um, I, I think the, the key part is that it's not, they have some restrictions on that.

00:34:18.320 Like a doctor cannot dedicate a hundred percent of their time to a private clinic.

00:34:23.180 They must balance out some of the hours.

00:34:25.020 So it's not like they're poaching talent.

00:34:26.940 They have, they're not punished for making some money in the private.

00:34:31.660 Um, there's still incentives for the, like for these small clinics to, to start up.

00:34:39.160 And now you have a expanded capacity because one of the restrictions in Canada right now is that you've got a certain amount of funding.

00:34:48.580 And if surgery beds, if you've funded all your surgery beds, you could have two open beds.

00:34:54.940 The beds are physically open.

00:34:56.600 You have somebody willing to do a surgery on that bed, but they can't fund it.

00:35:03.660 Therefore you have capacity that can't be met with the funding that you have.

00:35:08.000 Yeah.

00:35:08.440 And there are people that, well, they have to wait eight months for a surgery.

00:35:13.360 They would pay money to fund their own service.

00:35:17.600 So you, you have a mismatch between the demand and the supply and it's kind of just being blocked in the middle.

00:35:26.520 So there, there is some in between that could be approached.

00:35:30.740 And the problem is you mentioned that the conversation gets, gets distorted.

00:35:37.500 And again, that you mentioned that thought terminating cliche of American style healthcare or American style politics, or when you build an ethos around these terms, um, it's easy to demonize.

00:35:54.620 And so now I was going to actually ask you, uh, cause you watched this right before, and this is really good, good example of the insanity that's happening in Canada right now is, uh, what are your thoughts on Diagonon and Jeremy McKenzie?

00:36:08.440 And, and this whole, the, the liberals have had five days in a row, like ragging on Diagonon, which I'm sure there's people who eat that up and they think, yeah, I, they think Diagonon's this, this bad, this alt-right, like accelerationist group.

00:36:29.860 Yeah. 0.96

00:36:30.840 They're like, uh, I, I feel like the people who, who have that image in their head, they view it as like a, like a biker gang or something like rolling through a town and causing mayhem, like as if it's anything more than a meme country made up by a shit poster online.

00:36:46.640 But, uh, I got, we, um, actually our, our Twitter got, uh, blocked by a, uh, a, uh, Canadian politician who I, uh, I asked the other day if the Diagonon was in the room with us right now.

00:36:58.820 And, uh, he didn't like that, uh, but, uh, yeah, it's, um, yeah, it's funny.

00:37:06.060 I, I actually don't know that much about Jeremy McKenzie, but I know that he has a podcast and I know that he is a, uh, you know, a, a political commentator of a type.

00:37:16.100 And, and, and I think you actually know more about the, the, the creation of it than I do.

00:37:22.320 But from what I understand, this was a, uh, somebody made an observation that essentially if you, if you drew a diagonal line from Alaska to Florida, it sort of intersects all of the more conservative type provinces and states in the U S and Canada.

00:37:43.080 Yeah, that was in the middle, interesting observation in the middle of the pandemic and the lockdowns are like, well, hmm, all these provinces and states seem to be like a little less restricted and a little more based in their way.

00:37:59.420 So that, that, that was definitely, it was the amount of thought put into it.

00:38:04.600 It was like, well, that was the, it was a brilliant thing.

00:38:07.180 They made a little flag with the slash flag and, and went from there.

00:38:11.320 Um, well, and I know, and I know too, that, uh, Rachel Gilmore, uh, one of our worst Canadian exports, and I'm so sorry for anyone outside of Canada who has to put up with her.

00:38:24.240 Um, this is the, this is the woman, by the way, who essentially, I don't think she was the source of it, but she certainly did spread the lie during the freedom convoy that, uh, members of the freedom convoy attempted to arson an apartment building and duct tape the door shut.

00:38:40.320 Of course it, it, it was, I don't even think it was an arson attempt.

00:38:44.120 I think it was just some kids screwing around, but it absolutely was not related to the freedom convoy.

00:38:50.540 She's never retracted it to over two years later.

00:38:54.600 She references it from time to time and she has no shame about doing it. 0.81

00:38:57.900 So she's, she's an awful person and she is obsessed with diagonal. 0.99

00:39:02.980 She, every, every opportunity she gets to, to reference this meme flag, she does.

00:39:09.120 And for whatever reason, the, uh, apparently the federal liberal party just does not fact check, uh, any of their talking points before they make them.

00:39:21.140 And they've made a thing out of polyevs, uh, stopping off at a roadside, like carbon tax.

00:39:27.560 There was a, there was a, some people, the little diagonal flag penciled in, like drawn on the side of a Winnebago or like a, you have a trailer door.

00:39:37.360 Right.

00:39:37.660 Yeah.

00:39:38.580 Um, and that was enough that here's the thing.

00:39:41.900 If they have legitimate things to talk about, they should, but right now this seems like it's such a stretch.

00:39:50.160 They have, they are in such dire need for just some sort of guilt by association, some sort of, yeah, they, they need something and they are grasping at straws and it's amazing to see them dive this hard into it.

00:40:07.600 And, um, and the funny thing is, uh, well, Jeremy McKenzie and the other people who are part of this diagonal group, they don't even like the CPC.

00:40:22.200 They are very, yeah, they're not, they're not even polyev fans.

00:40:25.260 Yeah, they, they are, well, they're very, they're like PPC adjacent, right?

00:40:34.560 A little bit.

00:40:36.780 They're not hard.

00:40:37.860 I don't think.

00:40:38.720 In as much as a made up flag country.

00:40:40.620 Yeah.

00:40:40.900 That's, that's the thing.

00:40:41.840 Well, like even they're pretty, like they've been, if Bernie or Maxime Bermier does something that they don't like, they'll call it out.

00:40:51.800 So they're pretty, pretty good at just calling out what they don't like.

00:40:55.100 Um, not to say that all their views are as savory as others.

00:40:58.640 Um, but you should be able to like, well, just address their views for what they are.

00:41:06.120 Don't play games of like the skilled by association.

00:41:09.720 Um, it's, it's like, well, we've got clown world politics going on right now.

00:41:17.340 Well, and the, and the RCMP even said, and this was, this was proven through a freedom of information.

00:41:21.800 Act request that they are not even on the radar of any, any policing agency as a, uh, you know, a, a terrorist group or a, an extremist group or anything like that.

00:41:34.080 Their, their group does not meet the definitions of a structured organization.

00:41:39.000 Yeah.

00:41:39.760 Partially because they're, it's up, it's, it's like a, the equivalent of a, like podcast fan group.

00:41:47.040 Like, it's like, it's like, uh, they've had a few Rogan bros.

00:41:51.120 Yeah.

00:41:51.640 Yeah.

00:41:51.940 Yeah.

00:41:52.380 It's, it's, it's Joe Rogan bros, except like 100,000 percent.

00:41:57.880 Maybe at the elk meat club, like Joe Rogan fan club and they got together and some of them

00:42:06.280 love hunting.

00:42:06.860 So there's a few of them have guns and you could point to that and be like, look at those

00:42:10.420 accelerationists and their guns.

00:42:12.100 Like if you, if you try hard enough, you can demonize anything, um, and paint it and like,

00:42:20.840 so.

00:42:21.660 Well, and as with many things in the, uh, you know, the, the, the.

00:42:27.880 Culture wars that, that modern leftists try to involve themselves in and create, um, the,

00:42:33.320 the need for hate outstrips the supply. 0.96

00:42:36.520 And so they need to make up bullshit like this in order to seem like they're, uh, you 0.98

00:42:42.660 know, maintaining the proper level of social and cultural awareness and whatever, you know, 0.98

00:42:48.920 whatever, uh, uh, sensitivities they want to, to appear to be privy to as a, uh,

00:42:57.880 organization.

00:43:00.680 Yeah.

00:43:01.220 It's, uh, easiest to fight from the moral standpoint of you claim, you claim the moral

00:43:07.380 support priority, and then you just fill the gaps and try to justify your own position

00:43:12.260 with, you create evidence out of thin air.

00:43:15.840 Hmm.

00:43:16.240 And that's, that's the, that's the strategy we see in all, all kinds of places.

00:43:20.460 And, uh, and also, um, this'll, this'll come up, uh, later, but what bothers me the most

00:43:27.540 is the inability to like talk about issues in an honest way.

00:43:31.160 And, or I don't care what somebody's position is.

00:43:35.880 I care that they give valid reasons.

00:43:38.620 They understand all sides of the argument.

00:43:42.240 If somebody's unable to look at all sides and actually consider, or if somebody's arguing

00:43:48.440 against us and they misrepresent our point and frame it in a way that's just complete

00:43:56.700 BS.

00:43:58.100 That's, that's where I draw the line.

00:44:00.840 Like I'm, I'm happy to disagree with somebody in a perfectly rational debate, but when you

00:44:06.740 frame things in a way that it's like, you're missing the fundamental point and you're just

00:44:12.040 either you're fall falling into in your, your belief system talking points.

00:44:18.120 If you just regurgitate that rather than engaging in the actual points, you're not getting any

00:44:23.780 closer to understanding the world around us.

00:44:27.180 And that's what these conversations are.

00:44:29.040 We have to navigate the world and you have to understand what's going on and we have

00:44:33.760 to be able to like actually address the points.

00:44:37.300 Well, thanks so much as always, James.

00:44:39.020 I, I, I really appreciate your, your, uh, your thoughtful commentary on all this stuff

00:44:42.880 and, and, uh, always a pleasure to, to bounce ideas back and forth with you and, and love

00:44:47.940 these chats and thank you everyone who's watching.

00:44:50.600 Gets me thinking.

00:44:52.020 Yeah.

00:44:52.520 Yeah.

00:44:52.700 Well, you know, we've, we've sort of been, uh, we've been blessed to have some, some

00:44:57.040 good views and hits and likes in our, few of our videos recently.

00:45:00.700 And we really appreciate that.

00:45:01.880 And, and, uh, thanks everyone for watching and commenting.

00:45:04.720 Uh, even, even those, you know, who are commenting, who, who think that we're so wrong about everything

00:45:09.940 and, and, and have no idea what we're talking about.

00:45:12.180 We like that too.

00:45:12.940 Cause it, I want to know how we're wrong.

00:45:15.980 Exactly.

00:45:16.560 I, I, I love it.

00:45:17.480 So, uh, keep commenting and liking and, and thank you for everyone to, or who is watching

00:45:22.520 and, uh, we'll, we'll see you in an, in about a week.

00:45:25.160 All right.

00:45:26.000 See you in the next one.

00:45:27.540 Cheers.

00:45:28.200 Cheers.

00:45:28.400 Cheers.

00:45:43.000 Cheers.

00:45:43.400 Cheers.

00:45:44.280 Cheers.

00:45:44.460 Cheers.

00:45:45.340 Cheers.

The Critical Compass Podcast - May 05, 2024

Inflation, Capital Gains, & 2024 Tax Changes ｜ A Critical Compass Discussion

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