It's quite true that according to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that the government can simply create the money to build things like transit. But the political culture of Canada is that this can't possibly be true---so the Conservatives would fight tooth and nail against it. If something remains a Crown Corporation there is inevitably pressure to politicize it. But selling it to the private sector, the new owners get to own whatever anger comes from users--not the government.

This is the core problem with the Leftist idea of government ownership of everything. If we do that, then business decisions start getting made for political reasons--which destroys the efficiency of businesses. And this sucks the productivity out of the economy. And that makes workers poor. And that gets us back to the 'losing jobs' aspect of what Lewis was saying. I'm much more in favour of Social Democracy where business is business and government is government--and government is there to firmly regulate business and make sure that it doesn't abuse people or the environment.

All Carney has to do is put a tax on use of airports, and use that money to fund LRT.

The problem with that is there will be pressure from the Conservatives to cut the taxes and then the LRT ends up being stranded without a funding source. Does that sound plausible to you? It certainly does for me.

What about the sale of Petrocanada? Was that also a terrible idea? My understanding is it served its purpose and made a profit for the government.

The USA never attacked Saudi Arabia after 9/11. Instead, they attacked Iraq which seemed to have nothing at all to do with 9/11. So, I don't get your point.

Besides, the average citizen of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq didn't have anything to do with the attack either. Yet hundreds of thousands were killed. That's like being a hired hand or slave on a Norse farm and being killed or dragooned into killing someone else just because your chief got dissed by another chief. That's why we need to approach terrorism as a criminal justice issue instead of being a 'war' between different states.

That may be. But that doesn't mean you can't be suffering from the damage Facebook has done in the world. I dare say lots of people in England haven't either--and yet they are stuck with Brexit.

Quite right. You might be interested in my article where I explain how Britain got bamboozled into leaving Europe: https://billhulet.substack.com/p/the-stupid-and-the-gullible-19-08-02

I think it's important to understand what happened during the Industrial revolution. It involved a lot of booms, busts, and a tremendous amount of wasted investment. In Ontario, where I live, there are pieces of extremely expensive to build, but ultimately worthless infrastructure projects all over the place from this time. There was a tremendous over-build of railways and also some canals, for example. In Guelph Ontario, for example, the city owns a railway that it took over when it's parent went bankrupt and stranded local industry that depended on it. And in Perth Ontario, there's a dead canal that goes through the downtown and is a remnant of another failed infrastructure project. These are the 19th century equivalents of LLM data centers.

It's not a question of AI being a bubble or a new industrial revolution. It can be both. And governments have a responsibility to navigate this stuff to minimize risk to the ordinary citizens. Instead, it looks to me like the US is terrified by Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), so it's putting the deed to the farm on the table. This is a profound misallocation of the nation's resources.

What a surprise! Carney tells big business people what they want to hear.

I also listened to his BBC lectures about how economics is only of value if it is in service of the public good.

Carney couldn't be as successful as he has been without learning how to be 'all things to all people'. I'm not convinced that I know who he is. But I strongly suspect that other people who are absolutely convinced they do might not be right.

I voted for him because I was sure that he would be better than Poilievre. I still think he's better than anyone else on offer. Maybe you're right and he's a closet neo-liberal. But I don't want to dismiss him out of hand because I think you can also look at what he's done and see something else altogether.

I remember hearing once that F.D.R. was called 'a sphinx' because no one could tell what he really thought. I think Carney is a sphinx too.

Well that's the thing I point out at the end of the article. Carney doesn't have to say he follows MMT. In fact, I suggest it would be best not to mention it if he does. But if he does believe, then he's not going to be anywhere as concerned about the cost as he would otherwise. (And, as I point out, him having been in charge of two monetary systems uniquely prepares him to accept the basic premises of MMT.)

I'm not sure about the defense spending being the largest 'by a large margin'. There are details that need considering. A large fraction of getting to 2% of GDP was by making the Coast Guard part of the military--like it is almost everywhere else in the world. Also, a significant fraction of the defense spending can involve things like building a road, airport, and deep water port in Nunavut. The benefit would not primarily be for the military, but they are certainly something that increases the defense capabilities. Also, investing in building airplanes in Canada--like with both the Gripen Fighter and the Swedish AWACS plane--helps the entire economy. There's also the dramatic expansion of the reserves that's being proposed. What I've heard being proposed is more like a citizen-based emergency preparedness structure. Of course it would be useful in a war, but it would also have been really useful during COVID and fire and flood seasons. From what I've read, a lot of the proposed investment is going towards a very wide definition of 'national defense'.

So yes, the submarines are eye-wateringly expensive. But Canada does have the world's longest coastline. And we simply cannot trust the USA anymore. And if we want to have allies we can depend on (ie: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, etc), we have to be willing to 'do our bit'. But I'm not a pacifist. And I don't see all soldiers as being 'baby killers'.

Of course. That's why I focused on other projects.

That doesn't mean that I agree with you 100% about the oil pipelines, military spending, etc. I personally think, for example, Canada needs to spend more on defense. But these are separate issues from whether or not the country can afford to do them.

Thanks muchly!