Cian

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All the responses to the 2011/12 provincial budget in the April 13 Winnipeg Free Press speak with one voice that is critical of this year’s budget and the NDP government that tabled it. That so many well-known political pundits (Messrs. Craig, Martin, Brown and Kelcey) would speak with such commonality may make one think that these voices represent some sort of “conventional wisdom”. In the true sense of the term, they do.

The term “conventional wisdom” was made famous by renowned Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Affluent Society. He used the expression ironically to describe the prevailing, but wrong-headed thinking of the day. Conventional wisdom in this sense is not wisdom at all, but stylized facts repeated over and over in order to convince an audience of the truthfulness of a particular message. The message of course originates with a group that stands to benefit greatly from having the public accept the idea as “wisdom”. Repeat an idea – no matter how questionable - enough times, and eventually it becomes the “truth.”

The “truth” according to the collection of analyses in the Winnipeg Free Press is that all government debt is harmful; all government spending is wasteful; the NDP is particularly wasteful and irresponsible; and that Manitoba is a have-not (second rate) province because of poor policy choices. But as with all conventional wisdom, this collection of pronouncements deserves a critical look.

Is government debt always harmful? On the contrary, government deficits are necessary in recessionary times. When lack of spending in business investment, consumption and exports drag the economy down and cause unemployment to grow, government spending is the only force strong enough to alleviate that drag. Without government stimulus spending following the events of 2008, the recession would have been deeper and longer.
Is government spending necessarily wasteful? Absolutely not. To read the words of the pundits one would think that every dollar spent by government goes into a black hole. In fact, the average per capita benefit from public services in Canada in 2006 came to $16,952, and around 56% of that benefit comes from our access to health care, education and personal transfer payments. Canadians in median income households benefit from public services in the amount of $41,000 — equivalent to roughly 63% of their total income. Furthermore, when the government spends on healthcare, education, childcare, infrastructure and cities there are long-term benefits that increase productivity and economic wellbeing for Canadian businesses and citizens.

Is the NDP is particularly wasteful and irresponsible? This is one of the stranger of the contentions given that the obvious comparator to the NDP’s recent economic performance is that of the previous Conservative government. Let’s look at the facts. Before the global recession necessitated a deficit, Manitoba’s debt/GDP ratio was around 24.7%, compared to 32.9% when, in 1999, the NDP took over from the Conservatives. Current stimulus spending will cause this year’s ratio to increase to 26.2%, still one of the lowest in Canada and the world. Furthermore, debt servicing costs have decreased from 13.2¢/dollar of revenue under the Conservatives to 6¢/dollar of revenue.

Mr. Martin, of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in Manitoba believes that Manitoba needs to compete with its Western neighbours in the tax-reduction game, stating that our personal exemption is almost 70% lower. But raising the personal income tax exemption to match Saskatchewan’s would remove an estimated $72 million from provincial revenues. Given concerns around paying down the debt, would that be responsible? And lest you think that this move would help low-income Manitobans, think again. Of the $72 million, just over a quarter would benefit individuals with incomes of less than $25,000; less than one half would benefit those making between $25,000 and $50,000, and a little more than a quarter would accrue to those earning more than $50,000. Regular and measured increases in minimum wages, a staple of this government, do more to help low-income people while keeping the revenue stream flowing.

Is Manitoba a second-rate province? The tendency is to compare to Alberta and Saskatchewan, especially with respect to taxes. But these provinces do not spend less per capita than Manitoba. They earn more than we do from their natural resource royalties: in 2008, 33% of Saskatchewan’s and 24% of Alberta’s revenues came from royalties. High royalties equals lower taxes, not less spending.

Manitoba may not have lucked out as much on the natural resource lottery, but that’s what makes our performance all the more impressive. Manitoba’s average rate of GDP growth for the past 3 years was 2.67%; Canada’s was 1.85%. Manitoba has weathered the recession better than the rest of Canada. In 2009, Manitoba was showing positive growth at 0.05%, while Canada’s economy shrank by nearly 2.5%. Our unemployment rate remains amongst the best in the country at 5.4%, average wages are increasing, our population is growing and our gini coefficient – a measure of equality – is better than Canada’s overall.

Finally, do the commentators speak with one voice? Yes they do, and that voice is male, conservative and pro-business. Too bad we couldn’t have heard from others outside the realm of conventional wisdom.

Lynne Fernandez is a political economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Mb.
April 15, 2011

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7.
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
And the tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

....

But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got £1 out of the £20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got £10!”

....

So, the nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. Funnily enough, the next month the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him.

But when it came to pay for their drinks, they discovered something important – they didn’t have enough money between all of them to pay for even half the bill.

That’s how non-contributory democracy led to the credit crisis in a nutshell.

Where to begin with this, uh, metaphor? Firstly, paying taxes is not voluntary. The 10th man cannot simply up and leave, or decide not to pay his portion. If he were a corporation he could try to do offshore banking, but that's getting harder and harder. Chances are his customers would find out and stop buying his products. Which leads me into the next point -

The 10th man is likely rich because of the other men - he possibly owns shares in the bar or something like that. If in fact he did up and leave, and stopped buying the rest of the men drinks, they would probably drink somewhere cheaper, perhaps with strippers. Maybe somewhere they could wash dishes in return for beer. They don't need him. In fact - I'd suggest that the rich need the poor, more than the other way around (where would I be with my mortgages without my tenants? Without me - they would simply be somewhere else. Without them - I'd be bankrupt)

And finally the credit crisis was in fact created by a disproportionate amount of power being given to those who were in charge of credit, insurance, banking, etc. ie those who are classified as wealthy. They played with an extremely complex system, invented even more complicated transactions that allowed them to create more middlemen in an industry that really did not need them, in order to siphon off more money, faster than ever. Of course they didn't know that it would cause issues, unless of course they read economic history books, and the reasons there were restrictions on things like insurance in the banking industry. But weather or not they knew is irrelevant - the fact of the matter is that they were given the power to make these changes because of their influence and money. Now that they've screwed up, they blame welfare cases? If welfare cases had not been allowed to vote - the credit crises would never have happened? Using the same article and reasoning I could conclude that one must take a test that covered logic, history, economics and mathematics in order to vote; and it would still be as wrong a conclusion.

We need to separate the position between power and money, more, not combine them closer together. The rise of lobbies, special interest groups and the simple rising costs of running for office I think are the real problems that need to be addressed. There was such a time as when politicians were not career politicians, but they were men with jobs, who put their jobs in hold for 5 or so years while they did 'public service'. No longer is this the case, as under the guise of creating fairness, we have created rules that restrict how campaign funds are raised, at the same time as making campaigns cost millions of dollars. The effect of this has created an environment where one must seek assistance from lobbies, special interest groups, and corporations in order to have a chance at winning. Once you've won though, it's time to pay up. Now I know that it would be difficult to change this, but there must be a way to reduce the cost of running a campaign, and reduce the need to rely on groups of people inside power structures (who are insane by their very nature) and instead rely on individuals of like minds, who agree with platforms rather than sound bites.

I've often thought a novel solution to this might be to disallow television and radio based campaigns. They are part of the mechanism that creates the large cost to those campaigns, and also gives the main stream media a lot of control over the results. If people were forced to actually go to fundraisers, and events to meet their politicians, and conversely politicians were forced to meet more people in person because otherwise no one would know who they were, then it may level the playing field more. Also, not allowing these messages to be passed over MSM would force people to leverage their social networks (the real ones) in order to obtain information. The neat thing about people's social networks is that they act like an information filter. The people that one actually listens to and trust, are the ones that they would get their information from. These people would likely pass on information that was relevant to them based on their belief system. Groups of people would stop being influenced by a central power, and be more influenced by their peers.

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Much of the development and prosperity that cities experience can be linked to the amount of new people that are either born, or move there. In Manitoba, immigration makes up for about 70% of our growth, while deaths account for 65% of our births (Stats Can).

The amount of immigrants who come here to live with their families and work, pay taxes, etc, is very important to ensure we always have positive growth.  "In the long-term, the economic growth depends on the extent to which productive capacity (including physical capital, human capital, and economic institutions) is able to grow" (William G Gale).  Immigration of skilled labour helps with each these, migrants are usually skilled and add to our ability to produce (Migration between Countries).

The Conservatives this year made a plan that would limit that growth from immigration in such a way that it would effectively stifle the Manitoba economy, perhaps even back to where we were over a decade ago. The larger city centers won't feel that nearly as bad as we will here, as they have positive growth from local migration.

If you plan to stay in Winnipeg for any amount of time, I'd recommend voting for someone who has a chance to defeat the Conservatives, and looks positively on immigration.  Who that is will highly depend on your local choices...

I went to see a great speaker this week.  His name was Shy Kurtz. I won't get into the premise of his speech, but some of the background he gave reminded me of a very important concept, which we often forget in today's busy, consumer world.

He started talking about the term 'Indian Giver', where it came from, and why in fact when it was intended as a insult, it rather should have been a compliment.

The term came from a misunderstanding, through a difference of cultures.  In the Native American culture, a gift has a life of it's own.  When you give a gift, you are creating something that will live on forever.  Why? Because it is expected that when one receives a gift, that it is not kept - the gift must be passed on. Not necessarily the same physical object, it's more metaphysical than that - the gift itself must be passed on, and that is how it stays alive!  Imagine, every time you start a gift chain, it could be passed all around the world, through thousands of people, only to come back to you!

The term Indian Giver appears to have come about when the Native Americans realized that their new neighbors did not subscribe to that way of thinking.  It seems that some took offense to that, and took their gifts back, not wanting them to die.

And that is where the term Indian giver came from.  A clash of cultures.

This holiday season, let’s all keep the gifts alive, and bring a little more light into the world!

The video is about 40 mins.

Work Smart from Cian Whalley on Vimeo.

• Interacting with the OS, learning what an Activity, and Service are
• Interacting with the GPS/Network location provider, learning how to 'smooth' the data feed from it
• Interacting with the Google API, used to identify Locality, and Long / Lat
• Interacting with the outside world directly, eg. Winnipeg Transit's API

In order to make this project able to work with many other Transit API's, I'm designing it to be modular, selecting the appropriate module based on the currently detected city. What this means is that I need to build a model that will standardize the flow of information between the presentation layer (UI) and the data access layer (API).

It will work something like this

Currently I'm working on the Model portion, I'm looking at various Transit API's and finding the most common data objects and attributes. Out of those I'm selecting the ones that I believe will be relevant to this project. Once I am complete, I can use this model as a common 'intermediary' to ensure that changes to the transit API's don't require User Interface changes, which should make this project much easier to maintain.

In case you're interested, I'm currently working in Eclipse 3.5, with Visual Paradigm as my modeling tool. The nice thing about this combination is the model-code-model loop is all integrated between the two, meaning changes in either my code or model are synced without data loss. Once I'm further along, I will post more, thanks for listening!

A snapshot of my development environment

The API is straightforward, and object oriented, below is a list of the objects that I will have access to:

• Locations
• Routes
• Service Advisories
• Statuses
• Stop Schedules
• Stops
• Streets
• System Messages
• Time
• Trip Planner
• Variants

Looking at the Stops object, it appears to be very simple to pass GPS long and lat co-ordinates to the object to retrieve a list of stops within the vicinity of the phone.  Once the user selects the stop (probably the closest one) I can query the stop schedules object, to get a list of routes and times.  Further selecting a single route will display a longer more detailed schedule for that route.

I'm confidant that this app will be fairly easy to create. Over the next few weeks I will be working on the use cases and object designs, and probably a lot of code.

One idea that was already passed to me (thanks Brian) was to ensure that the data access layer of the app was generic, enough such that it could easily be ported to other cities like Calgary, or Vancouver. Being that it will all be in Java, that should be fairly easy to do, if it's designed correctly. I'm thinking of having data access objects that could take a configuration file, and have the app select the appropriate one depending on the city that it is detected as being in.

If anyone has any ideas of features that they might like to see in this app, let me know and I will see if they fit with my vision. I'll get a Google Code site up soon, to manage bugs and feature requests. And yes, I will create it with the fact in mind that eventually it could be ported to the Blackberry.  And no, I don't care about the iPhone.

Reading through Wilson's plans, they are detailed, and all have solid logical reasons behind all the decisions made. Read this excerpt from the beginning:

Prior to the introduction of public transit service, cities of necessity were limited in size and greatly overcrowded. People were compelled to live close to their place of daily work, for few could afford the up-keep of private means of transportation.....But the motor vehicle has created its own problems namely ever increasing street congestion and insatiable need for parking space. The street system inherited from the past is now fully used. The improvement of traffic conditions, however accomplished, and the provision of additional parking space, has up to the present, resulted only in the "bringing out" of additional motor vehicles to at once load to capacity the new facilities, with relatively little if any improvement over previous conditions....The service provided by a transit vehicle that is locked in congestion for minutes at a time, and takes double its normal time to make its half-round trip, is far from being satisfactory service to the passengers on board it who at least have some idea as to the reason for the slow out-bound trip, and is most unsatisfactory service to would-be passengers waiting for that bus to arrive on its in-bound trip, with no reason visible for its being behind time...On an evening in November last I boarded an Osborne trolley bus about five o'clock at Dufferin Avenue and Salter Street. Two very competent-appearing business girls were in the seat ahead of mine. As the bus inched along Isabel Street in a very extended traffic jam, locked in a phalanx of motor vehicles, I overheard one girl say to the other, "This settles it. I am going to buy myself a car." No explanation was forthcoming as to how a car would expedite her home-going under the existing or similar circumstances.

Throughout the entire 80 or so page report there are tables, analysis of different technologies, and strategies for things like river crossings (above or below), and all are backed up with the mounds of research that Norman did for the city.

Shelved.

Apparently it hasn't been the only plan that was done for Winnipeg either, over the past 50 years there have been a few. I think what we are seeing today, with the flip flops, and lack of vision and real planning is a result of our Winnipeg culture. Winnipegers are proud about the fact that they find deals everywhere.  They want things cheap.

Rapid transit does not come cheap, but it can transform a city.  It makes travel into the city down town easier, faster, and much more convenient. If you're wondering why is the downtown effectively shut down at 5pm every day? Without rapid transit, and train stations there's not enough of a critical mass of people to keep it safe. So everyone just avoids it and spends time in other neighborhoods.

Think about the West End for a moment now. Part of the problem with that area is that there is very little in the way of primary residences, ie there are a lot of rentals. In Real Estate we have a rule called the 900meter rule.  This rule essentially states that when Rapid Transit is finally created in a city, wherever there are train stations planned, within 900m of those stations the property values will increase somewhere around 30%. All of the sudden places like the West End start to look very attractive to people who wish to own homes. Businesses spring up around the stations. Culture, and commerce push the criminal elements out of the neighborhood, further increasing property values, which also increases the taxes collected.  This could happen all over the city (look at the map, and where the stations had been planned).

In my mind, there's no reason not to start Rapid Transit NOW. But the way we've begun it is wrong. We're re-inventing the wheel on it, and, at the same time not planning it out carefully enough.

If these RT plans fail, I for one will be moving away from Winnipeg.