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Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

washingtonstatestandard.com

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Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#301

Post by rayiner »

diggan wrote: post #280
xyzzyz wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but why exactly should we care about what some random score that some people invented and named Democracy Index says? It’s not like there is some universal agreement that maximizing the score in these people’s quiz is good or proper.

At least they provide justification and reasoning behind the numbers they assign, they're not throwing darts to see what to score things. Read through the report yourself, then come back if there are specific things you disagree with. Or maybe even better, find some better research and link it here. Just saying "USA is the most democratic country in the world" feels like worse than at least trying to look at things o…

I didn’t say the U.S. was the most democratic country in the world—I wasn’t comparing the U.S. to Norway or Denmark. But the U.S. achieved in the 18th century something that Germany, France, Spain, etc., didn’t achieve until the mid-20th century. That’s an achievement.

And the lack of universal suffrage back in the day doesn’t diminish America’s achievement. India and Bangladesh and Iraq and many places have universal suffrage but they’re not as democratic as the U.S. was in 1789. Getting to that point is the 0 to 1 of democracy. Expanding the franchise from there is incremental development.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#302

Post by giardini »

curt15 wrote: post #115
FredPret wrote: post #56

I've seen two apocalyptic North American scenarios in fiction, and have previously dismissed both as ridiculous. 1. In the Fallout universe, the USA annexes Canada 2. In at least two Neal Stephenson novels (Snowcrash and Termination Shock), the USA has collapsed. I've never before thought that either of these would have a semi-realistic path to actually happening.

What about 3. Climate change renders large swaths of the US uninhabitable, leading to an exodus into Canada?

That would be good for Canada - better weather, more laborers and capital and more reasons to complain about their friendly neighbors to the south.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#303

Post by giardini »

Given the numerous crazy possible pasts, presents, futures and conspiracies spoken of in this conversation alone, should any one of the potential outcomes vented here (they do seem to be ventings, indeed of a gaseous nature) should come true I will be amazed. Reminds me of an old joke...

Q. What is time for? "Time is nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once".

Attributed to John Archibald Wheeler.

Yet reading here, one might conclude that all things bad are occurring as we speak!

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#304

Post by xyzzyz »

psychlops wrote: post #292
xyzzyz wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany doesn't protect its production with tariffs any more than, say, North Carolina does. There are no German tariffs, because Germany is part of European Union, which sets up common, shared tariff regime, and tariff-free goods movement within EU. Germany can lobby within EU to propose tariffs that it considers beneficial to it, just like North Carolina can in US, but if other EU members don't like it enough, it w…

Thank you for clarifying, it did not occur to me that member states paid VATs. From outside the EU, the VAT is no different than a tariff. They are both taxes which inflate the cost to do business. From your example, I think it's fair to sum the state taxes into US tariffs for comparison. You did send me down a research rabbit hole trying to better understand VAT. It's complex so I picked a car as a test product. As…

To import the same German car into France the cost is (cough) 20%.

No, the cost to import is 0%. The 20% VAT you are talking about here applies equally, regardless of whether the car is imported, or (cough) French. Again, VAT is just a kind of sales tax, and you pay sales tax for all goods, imported and domestic.

To import an American car into France the same 20% is paid plus a 10% import fee for a total of 30%.

No. Importing an American car to EU is 10%, regardless of which country you import it to, and then it's 0% to move it between EU countries. As I repeatedly said, you pay 20% VAT on any car, imported or not. Often, you actually pay additional registration taxes on top of that. For example, to import a car to Poland, on top of 10% EU customs duty and 23% Polish VAT, on a car with engine over 2000cc, you'll pay additional 18.6% excise tax upon registration. So, a $25k Chevrolet Malibu imported from US will cost $38k to buy in Poland.

To answer your question about protection using the numbers above, companies outside the eu that want to compete at an equal price with an equivalent German car would need to do so with a product that is at least 10% cheaper.

Yes, EU does apply protectionist tariffs, but my point is that they are not German tariffs, they're EU-wide. Germany might benefit from these more than countries without car industries, but most large EU countries have substantial car industry. For example, Poland exports $40B of vehicles and vehicle parts each year.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#305

Post by rayiner »

xyzzyz wrote: post #304
psychlops wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for clarifying, it did not occur to me that member states paid VATs. From outside the EU, the VAT is no different than a tariff. They are both taxes which inflate the cost to do business. From your example, I think it's fair to sum the state taxes into US tariffs for comparison. You did send me down a research rabbit hole trying to better understand VAT. It's complex so I picked a car as a test product. As…

To import the same German car into France the cost is (cough) 20%. No, the cost to import is 0%. The 20% VAT you are talking about here applies equally, regardless of whether the car is imported, or (cough) French. Again, VAT is just a kind of sales tax, and you pay sales tax for all goods, imported and domestic. To import an American car into France the same 20% is paid plus a 10% import fee for a total of 30%. No.…

Why is importing an american car into the EU 10% but importing a car into the U.S. is 2.5%?

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#306

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

throw16180339 wrote: post #296
machomaster wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you asking questions instead of easily reading about the index criteria?

He's just sealioning again.

Or maybe these democracy index things are entirely arbitrary

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#307

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

diggan wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil rights is orthogonal to democracy. Creating a democratic country like the U.S. is the real achievement. Most countries never come close to accomplishing that.

According to the Democracy Index (article about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/democracy-index-dat... ) there are about 25 "Full Democracies", 107 Non-authoritarian regimes, and 60 authoritarian regimes. Fun fact: The US isn't counted as a "Full Democracy" by that index, so seems it's not as a great of an achievement as you seem to think. I'm looking forward to see how the ranking of the US changes…

This index unironically puts countries that practice government censorship in the category of full democracies. Sorry but this isn't a democracy index - it's just a progressive index.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#308

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

machomaster wrote: post #278
rayiner wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the basis of that index. Are they alleging US elections are rigged?

Why are you asking questions instead of easily reading about the index criteria?

[flagged]

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#309

Post by rayiner »

pcwalton wrote: post #191
rayiner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You should visit Canada sometime. It's quite a nice country. British Columbia in particular is gorgeous.

I have been visiting Canada for decades—quite a bit of my family lives there. I was just there in 2022 for a wedding reception. It’s a nice place that seems like it won’t be a nice place in 50 years. Cops watched me like a hawk—I assume they have good reasons. Punjabi Uber driver told me he doesn’t even have to speak English because everyone at the bank, store, etc., speaks Punjabi. For some reason his elderly, past working age parents were immigrating to join him. Had to defend my being married to an American to some family friend at the wedding—there’s so many Bangladeshis there it’s possible to maintain endogenous marriage. Tried to charge my rented Tesla in a part of town that was all Indians. I let one Indian lady cut in front of me, which pissed off the Indian lady behind me, who started yelling at me “why are you letting her do that?” Not Canadian nice, certainly.

In the 1990s, Canada was a phenomenally well run and efficient country. More federalized than the U.S. (with 80% of spending run through the provinces). Canada had universal healthcare while having non-military per-capita government spending lower than the U.S. Now you’re running a sociologist experiment about what really causes prosperity and orderliness in western countries.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#310

Post by cwillu »

cwillu wrote: post #122
amanwithnoplan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://angusreid.org/trump-carney-51st-state-canada-usa/ ~10% support overall. However, that's 21% of Conservative voters and 1-3% everyone else. So it's beyond fringe for everyone else, but maybe not as much for Conservatives.

1-3% is lizardman constant territory, yeah.

https://brainlenses.substack.com/p/lizardmans-constant
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