Today, Stephane Dion blamed Stephen Harper for the downturn in the stock markets and the slowing of the Canadian Economy.
I’m sure Stephane Dion thinks Harper is responsible for the extinction of the Dodo, the explosion of the Hindenburg, and just maybe, Dion believes Harper shot JFK.
You see, to a Liberal, attempts to engineer the economy are a good thing. It is okay, to a Liberal, to tax people and use that money in all kinds of “social [engineering] programs” which “help” people.
What Dion fails to realize is that a government really has no control over an economy. Economies go through natural cycles of expansion and recession; and because the economy is pretty much globalized, any interventionalist action taken by a government will have little or no effect; and the natural laws of supply and demand ensure that an economy follows its own course.
Let me break down further. Consider the economy here in Calgary. Recently, the economy surged like crazy. People were working, and as a result, spending their money – on cars, houses, TVs, and so on. In fact, demand for products went so high that companies couldn’t keep up with their existing staff levels, so they tried to hire more people, but everyone was working, so wages started rising as business owners competed to keep their staff, with higher wages, more people were attracted to Calgary, so housing prices went up. With higher wages and demand, business owners needed to recoup the extra money spen ton employees, so prices went up…
So people stopped spending as much. The economy slowed down, wages didn’t necessarily drop, but companies stopped hiring, so people stopped moving to Calgary, and housing prices started to drop.
Supply and demand in action, and nothing a government could do would change it.
And that’s just the way it should be.
The fact that Stephane Dion fails to understand that means that he is fundamentally unfit to govern this country.