J.C. Bourque wrote in "A warning for Ontario: government-led innovation rarely works" Globe and Mail, Dec.4, 2012:
"Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has presided over a precipitous economic decline – a fact confirmed by Roger Martin’s most recent Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity report. The province is experiencing a long-term drop in prosperity vis-a-vis its North American peers. Five years on from the financial crisis and more than a month after the announcement of his resignation, Premier McGuinty’s Jobs and Prosperity Council is set to offer up ideas on how to reverse the province’s economic decline.
Like the Drummond report, this document may prove decisive in framing the public policy debate for the current Liberal leadership race and, more important, the next election. Judging from a recent TVO panel, intervention may become the order of the day. Twentieth-century policy shorthands such as “industrial policy” and “sector supports” are being resurrected. The promotion of fuzzy policies around “innovation” and “clusters” continues unabated.
Government-led economic development and innovation initiatives usually fail and, in fact, often cause more harm than good. As the Ontario government finally turns its attention to the economy, here is a list of the biggest reasons why such government initiatives are so unsuccessful and frequently damaging..."
"...Many governments, looking for ideas to spur economic growth, cast an eye to successful examples of government action around the globe. Understanding successful government initiatives is certainly a good part of public policy development. However, copying other governments can often be a recipe for failure. It should not be forgotten that the genesis for the McGuinty government’s Green Energy Act was a 2008 tour of Europe by then-energy-minister George Smitherman. He was impressed with the apparent economic success of green energy policies in Germany and other European countries. The newspaper accounts at the time are interesting to read in light of the policy’s uncertain future and failure to engender “green jobs”:
“Imagine a world where we could emulate their success?” asks an animated Mr. Smitherman, 44, who later turns to Amy Tang, an adviser sitting across the table. “Sorry, now I’m getting all worked up. Am I frothing at the mouth?”
And “emulate” the province did. What the province failed to understand was that other European nations had a full decade head start over Ontario, that the economic/energy structure of Germany was not at all analogous to that of Ontario and that China was about to enter the renewables market in a big way. Understanding the key drivers of our own jurisdiction’s success is far more important than grafting on a strategy developed elsewhere. Instead of travelling to Germany for his policies, the then-minister should have strolled not 20 minutes down University Avenue from Queen’s Park, where a huge statue honoring Sir Adam Beck, the father of our hydro-electric system, is inscribed to remind us of his genius in allowing Ontario to “enjoy the benefits of low-cost electrical energy.” Hopefully, we have finally learned that aping other jurisdictions rarely works.
Rent seeking
Perhaps the most insidious effect of government interventions in the economy is “rent seeking.” Rent seeking occurs when actors gain a share of economic value through setting the political and economic rules, rather than through innovation or growing economic activity. These efforts create significant distortions in the broader economy, destroying value and economic potential throughout.
Industry structure is an important determinant to whether “rents” can be extracted. Telecom and the airline industry are examples of industry structures that keep economic value in the hands of a few firms, rather than spreading the fruits of productivity to consumers and the broader economy. As the Globe and Mail has pointed out, the structure of these industries has acted as a substantial drag on Canadian productivity.
A specific example in Ontario is when municipalities and the broader public sector are forced into “closed tendering” because of labour agreements. The results are predictable: when only one group has a monopoly on government contracts, the cost of services skyrockets. One City of Hamilton report estimated the extra construction costs due to being forced into “closed tendering” were as high as 40 per cent.
Often, the rationale for granting economic rents is to “protect” jobs and economic activity; the reality is far different..."
*
We all remember Dalton McGuinty smugly lecturing us how his statist Liberals would be the ones proudly picking the 'winners' and (consequently) creating the 'losers'.
We remember the whole 'Niagara is the Green (fear) Capital of Canada' propaganda campaign, don't we?! Rent seekers - what rent seekers, eh?!
Green jobs - what green jobs?! Green tax-debt-subsidized state-orchestrated make-work projects, y'mean?!
Ask Liberal MPP (Ontario's Environment Minister) Jim Bradley where specifically those 50,000 Liberal green jobs are, which he and his lying Ontario Liberals claim they have created!! Oh... and if you do manage to see secretive Jimmy, ask him (...because, no St.Catharines Standard reporter ever will...) how many net jobs he has created, after accounting for all the jobs which were lost directly due to Jim Bradley's GreenFear-paranonoia-induced Liberal ideology!
It was nice of Bourque to point out George Smitherman back in 2008, frothing at the mouth about 'green energy', plotzing happily in his diapers at the thought of having the state direct an entire industry, solely through Smitherman's own hallucinogenic vision. And yet that Grit stink Smitherman had the audacity to pop up from obscurity to lecture Rob Ford about "accountability" - considering that whatever Smitherman had touched in office, immediately turned into an incompetent, costly disaster! George Smitherman: Touchdown For Hypocrisy!
Voila: Smitherman's secret Samsung deal, lauded with praise - by unaccountable Liberals!!
Voila: Wind turbines forced onto rural land, with municipalities unable to fight back!
Voila: McGuinty - billions in the red!
Voila: Hydro rates sky-high, while Jim Bradley sells subsidized power to the Americans, to... um... ahh... "save the Planet From Peril"...!!
Voila: Liberal cowards ran away from Parliament - and also prorogued it! - when Ontarians finally demanded answers regarding McGuinty's and Jim Bradley's disastrous long-con Big Green Lie.
*
Fast forward to July 20, 2013, to Jim Merriam's column in the St.Catharines Standard, "Lots of spin by supporters of turbines", where Merriam writes of how on July 15, 2013 (during the heat wave, hour 17) Ontario's wind turbines were producing 47 MW of power - in other words: they were contributing less than 0.2% of peak demand of 24,025 MW.
It was a paltry, pathetic performance - and a supremely expensive one, at that.
It's funny how Merriam does not bother to mention that it was Dalton McGuinty's high-school-educated genius George Smitherman, who cooked up this green wind turbine fiasco. These are the numbers which a secretive Smitherman, in his haste to satiate his buddy Liberal colleague Jim Bradley's global-warming Greenfear-mongering, neglected to tell Ontario's taxpayers about.
These nutters went on a bender with their green binge windy fiasco, in order (according to their green delusions) to supposedly 'save the planet from doom' - as seen by Dalton McGuinty's bald-faced GreenFear-induced lies, openly peddled on television to Sean Mallen in 2009.
Merriam, in his July 20, 2013 story, doesn't bother to examine the clear links [evident for over a decade, even before McGuinty's first election] between the subject of his column, and the GreenFear lies spewed by Liberal doom-spreaders such as Dalton McGuinty, Jim Bradley, George Smitherman, and the entire Ontario Liberal Party.
(Merriam doesn't even mention the word "Liberal" in his story!!! Wow: it's as if it was some other party which ran Ontario into the ground for the last decade!!!)
Merriam didn't bother to examine how a decade's worth of Ontario Liberal Party GreenFear-based climate-lies directly led to the Ontario GreenFear-induced energy disaster we now have.
Merriam (like the Standard's Wendy Metcalfe; like legions of wrong-righting media hacks before and since) failed to detail St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's decades of GreenFear activism, and failed to ask for, and examine, Jim Bradley's specific "evidence" that climate change is man-made, and that socialism is the cure.
After all, Jim Bradley is only Ontario's Liberal environment minister (!!) - so, teehee, what relevance could Bradley's decades of GreenFear-peddling have, to articles such as Merriam's, which end up telling us half the story about the expensive half-baked GreenFear-based delusions of Ontario's Liberal climate-lying machine - right?!!
*
"Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has presided over a precipitous economic decline – a fact confirmed by Roger Martin’s most recent Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity report. The province is experiencing a long-term drop in prosperity vis-a-vis its North American peers. Five years on from the financial crisis and more than a month after the announcement of his resignation, Premier McGuinty’s Jobs and Prosperity Council is set to offer up ideas on how to reverse the province’s economic decline.
Like the Drummond report, this document may prove decisive in framing the public policy debate for the current Liberal leadership race and, more important, the next election. Judging from a recent TVO panel, intervention may become the order of the day. Twentieth-century policy shorthands such as “industrial policy” and “sector supports” are being resurrected. The promotion of fuzzy policies around “innovation” and “clusters” continues unabated.
Government-led economic development and innovation initiatives usually fail and, in fact, often cause more harm than good. As the Ontario government finally turns its attention to the economy, here is a list of the biggest reasons why such government initiatives are so unsuccessful and frequently damaging..."
"...Many governments, looking for ideas to spur economic growth, cast an eye to successful examples of government action around the globe. Understanding successful government initiatives is certainly a good part of public policy development. However, copying other governments can often be a recipe for failure. It should not be forgotten that the genesis for the McGuinty government’s Green Energy Act was a 2008 tour of Europe by then-energy-minister George Smitherman. He was impressed with the apparent economic success of green energy policies in Germany and other European countries. The newspaper accounts at the time are interesting to read in light of the policy’s uncertain future and failure to engender “green jobs”:
“Imagine a world where we could emulate their success?” asks an animated Mr. Smitherman, 44, who later turns to Amy Tang, an adviser sitting across the table. “Sorry, now I’m getting all worked up. Am I frothing at the mouth?”
And “emulate” the province did. What the province failed to understand was that other European nations had a full decade head start over Ontario, that the economic/energy structure of Germany was not at all analogous to that of Ontario and that China was about to enter the renewables market in a big way. Understanding the key drivers of our own jurisdiction’s success is far more important than grafting on a strategy developed elsewhere. Instead of travelling to Germany for his policies, the then-minister should have strolled not 20 minutes down University Avenue from Queen’s Park, where a huge statue honoring Sir Adam Beck, the father of our hydro-electric system, is inscribed to remind us of his genius in allowing Ontario to “enjoy the benefits of low-cost electrical energy.” Hopefully, we have finally learned that aping other jurisdictions rarely works.
Rent seeking
Perhaps the most insidious effect of government interventions in the economy is “rent seeking.” Rent seeking occurs when actors gain a share of economic value through setting the political and economic rules, rather than through innovation or growing economic activity. These efforts create significant distortions in the broader economy, destroying value and economic potential throughout.
Industry structure is an important determinant to whether “rents” can be extracted. Telecom and the airline industry are examples of industry structures that keep economic value in the hands of a few firms, rather than spreading the fruits of productivity to consumers and the broader economy. As the Globe and Mail has pointed out, the structure of these industries has acted as a substantial drag on Canadian productivity.
A specific example in Ontario is when municipalities and the broader public sector are forced into “closed tendering” because of labour agreements. The results are predictable: when only one group has a monopoly on government contracts, the cost of services skyrockets. One City of Hamilton report estimated the extra construction costs due to being forced into “closed tendering” were as high as 40 per cent.
Often, the rationale for granting economic rents is to “protect” jobs and economic activity; the reality is far different..."
*
We all remember Dalton McGuinty smugly lecturing us how his statist Liberals would be the ones proudly picking the 'winners' and (consequently) creating the 'losers'.
We remember the whole 'Niagara is the Green (fear) Capital of Canada' propaganda campaign, don't we?! Rent seekers - what rent seekers, eh?!
Green jobs - what green jobs?! Green tax-debt-subsidized state-orchestrated make-work projects, y'mean?!
Ask Liberal MPP (Ontario's Environment Minister) Jim Bradley where specifically those 50,000 Liberal green jobs are, which he and his lying Ontario Liberals claim they have created!! Oh... and if you do manage to see secretive Jimmy, ask him (...because, no St.Catharines Standard reporter ever will...) how many net jobs he has created, after accounting for all the jobs which were lost directly due to Jim Bradley's GreenFear-paranonoia-induced Liberal ideology!
It was nice of Bourque to point out George Smitherman back in 2008, frothing at the mouth about 'green energy', plotzing happily in his diapers at the thought of having the state direct an entire industry, solely through Smitherman's own hallucinogenic vision. And yet that Grit stink Smitherman had the audacity to pop up from obscurity to lecture Rob Ford about "accountability" - considering that whatever Smitherman had touched in office, immediately turned into an incompetent, costly disaster! George Smitherman: Touchdown For Hypocrisy!
Voila: Smitherman's secret Samsung deal, lauded with praise - by unaccountable Liberals!!
Voila: Wind turbines forced onto rural land, with municipalities unable to fight back!
Voila: McGuinty - billions in the red!
Voila: Hydro rates sky-high, while Jim Bradley sells subsidized power to the Americans, to... um... ahh... "save the Planet From Peril"...!!
Voila: Liberal cowards ran away from Parliament - and also prorogued it! - when Ontarians finally demanded answers regarding McGuinty's and Jim Bradley's disastrous long-con Big Green Lie.
*
Fast forward to July 20, 2013, to Jim Merriam's column in the St.Catharines Standard, "Lots of spin by supporters of turbines", where Merriam writes of how on July 15, 2013 (during the heat wave, hour 17) Ontario's wind turbines were producing 47 MW of power - in other words: they were contributing less than 0.2% of peak demand of 24,025 MW.
It was a paltry, pathetic performance - and a supremely expensive one, at that.
It's funny how Merriam does not bother to mention that it was Dalton McGuinty's high-school-educated genius George Smitherman, who cooked up this green wind turbine fiasco. These are the numbers which a secretive Smitherman, in his haste to satiate his buddy Liberal colleague Jim Bradley's global-warming Greenfear-mongering, neglected to tell Ontario's taxpayers about.
These nutters went on a bender with their green binge windy fiasco, in order (according to their green delusions) to supposedly 'save the planet from doom' - as seen by Dalton McGuinty's bald-faced GreenFear-induced lies, openly peddled on television to Sean Mallen in 2009.
Merriam, in his July 20, 2013 story, doesn't bother to examine the clear links [evident for over a decade, even before McGuinty's first election] between the subject of his column, and the GreenFear lies spewed by Liberal doom-spreaders such as Dalton McGuinty, Jim Bradley, George Smitherman, and the entire Ontario Liberal Party.
(Merriam doesn't even mention the word "Liberal" in his story!!! Wow: it's as if it was some other party which ran Ontario into the ground for the last decade!!!)
Merriam didn't bother to examine how a decade's worth of Ontario Liberal Party GreenFear-based climate-lies directly led to the Ontario GreenFear-induced energy disaster we now have.
Merriam (like the Standard's Wendy Metcalfe; like legions of wrong-righting media hacks before and since) failed to detail St.Catharines Liberal MPP Jim Bradley's decades of GreenFear activism, and failed to ask for, and examine, Jim Bradley's specific "evidence" that climate change is man-made, and that socialism is the cure.
After all, Jim Bradley is only Ontario's Liberal environment minister (!!) - so, teehee, what relevance could Bradley's decades of GreenFear-peddling have, to articles such as Merriam's, which end up telling us half the story about the expensive half-baked GreenFear-based delusions of Ontario's Liberal climate-lying machine - right?!!
*
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