The official story, according to the average Internet goer like the guy in the video below, is that It’s the peaches and cream of the world. Thanks to the glorious leadership of our social democracy, we have outdone those evil greedy Capitalist pigs!
As rotten as this smells, being used for the sake of nationalist and statist flexing, I want some economic clarification. In addition, a contrast and comparison analysis would do just fine.
Email Walter Block. He lives in Canada for a portion of the year and is himself an economist.
It seems better than in the US because there was no CRA equivalent and most of the things that led up to the credit crunch weren’t really happening in Canada. House prices in Canada are pretty much back to their all-time highs, though. There’s going to be another bust (especially since the economy here reacted to the decrease in interest rates)
Is this about banking or health care?
I live in Canada and the health care system sucks pretty hard. For example, going to a walk-in clinic you’ll be lucky to be finished in less than four hours. Just shows that non-price rationing is usually rationing by waiting.
A lot of people like socialized health care because they think it provides some “guarantee” of minimum care that they can always fall back on. But this runs into the inescapable problem of scarcity: Sure, you can go to the hospital for free, but entering a hospital and receiving medical care are not the same thing. The result is that the quantity is increased, but only by greatly reducing the quality.
For example, I know someone who’s been to emergency ~10 times over the last few months because they can’t diagnose her; and now she’s thinking of going to the U.S. to get treated.(Keep in mind the U.S. also has a government system, just with the veneer of a market.)
Molyneux has a good discussion of health care here, p.107.
Edit: Okay, I had only seen the video title when I posted this, so… socialized banking sucks too!
A large part of the Canadian economy is based on commodities. The markets for most commodities have been strong recently, resulting in the relative strength of the Canadian economy.
The Bank of Canada targets a monetary inflation rate, much like the Bank of England and the European Central Bank do. The Federal Reserve targets a federal funds rate. B of E is in worse shape than the Fed, so there doesn’t seem to be any inherent advantage in targeting a monetary inflation rate. Paul Volker brought the U.S. back from the brink when he was Fed chairman by targeting a money supply. If we have to have a central bank, I’d say that this is probably the best way to run it.