Glassnoser
3mo ago
Glassnoser
3mo ago
I don't see how they're relevant. The law prohibits abridgments of freedom of speech. This abridges freedom of speech. Therefore, it is unconstitutional unless someone can explain how it falls under one of the established exempted forms of speech.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Controlling what language people speak is abridging freedom of speech. People are not free to use whatever language they want to use.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
They disallow English in employment offer letters and promotion letters.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Yes. They specifically have a law prohibiting students who do not have a parent who was not taught in English at a school in Canada from being taught in English at public schools.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_v._Nebraska
Not necessarily a first amendment violation in this case, but still unconstitutional.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
The first amendment prohibits state governments from passing laws abridging the freedom of speech, unless it falls under a few exempted categories of speech restriction, such as laws against obscenity, defamation, and threats. Forcing people to speak French is not in one of those categories. So you explain to me why those other concepts are relevant and why this is a case where abridging freedom of speech would be allowed.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
I'm not sure what the 1A argument is, though.
It's a law that controls what people say and write.
Do such laws prevent store signs from also having other languages, or do they just mandate that French must be present?
It can have other languages, but French has to be more prominent.
If just the latter, it's not so clear to me. There is some compelled nature to the speech, but the standards there are different, especially if it's just commercial regulation or gov't-run schools. So yeah, I'd really appreciate if anyone could put out at least a sketch of the argument.
You and I are talking. You are my employee. That means you can demand that I speak French and it is enforced by the government, so the government is controlling what I say. I cannot send an email to you in English if you have asked that I speak in French to you.
I'm a doctor and you're my patient. The government can force me to speak French to you if you want.
I'm an engineer and you're my client. The government can require that I speak to you in French.
I want to hire you for a job. We both speak English. We both want to speak English. The employment offer letter has to be in French.
I have a business and I want the name of the business to contain an English word. The government will force me to translate it to French.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
There are law that forbid the use of languages other than French in many situations. For example, businesses must be able to communicate to employees in French. Employees have the right to demand that all communication be in French. Employment offer letters must be in French. Engineers and doctors must speak French.
There is no scenario where Canada becomes part of the US voluntarily. It just isn't politically possible. Canada has a deep-seated anti-Americanism, which doesn't normally manifest as hate towards the US, but it does manifest as a deep conviction to never be part of the US.
Remember, Canada was largely founded by Americans who were loyal to the Crown during the American Revolution and established new settlements in a freezing cold theretofore sparsely populated territory. It is the only country that was founded in explicit opposition to the founding principles of the US. And then followed two hundred and seventy years of selective migration of Canadians who did not care about this out of the country into the more prosperous and warmer US.
Today, the politics are very different, but not being American is still the single core defining feature of our national identity, which we latch onto because we are culturally so similar. Quebec is another story, in that they have a different ethnic origin and a separate national identity, but they only make voluntary annexation more certainly impossible, because a change to the constitution of this kind would require unanimous agreement by all ten provinces. And if English Canada defines itself by not being American, modern Quebec defines itself by its French language and there is no more sacred political principle in Quebec than the belief that the French language must be protected by law. These laws would undoubtedly violate the first amendment. They violate Canada's own constitutionally protected freedom of expression, but Quebec sidesteps that using the notorious notwithstanding clause. Quebec will not join the US and be forced to give them up.
No amount of economic pressure is going to make Canadians want to give up these cherished identities. For most of our country's history, Canadians have been able to increase their incomes substantially by moving to the US. The profesional class in Canada can still do this, and there is still a significant brain drain. As irrational as it may seem, the ones who remain do not care as much about their material well-being as they do about preserving their independence and national identity, even if they associate it with ideas about peacekeeping and free healthcare rather than loyalty to the British Crown.
Annexation is extremely unpopular and there is an absolute determination not to get stuck with what is regarded here as a seriously dysfunctional political culture.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
The tariffs the US just announced are about 10 to 20 times larger than the tariffs that most other countries have on US goods.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Firms that sell goods at the marginal cost of production deserve to survive.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
All voters know is that they're not corporations.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Unless the market expected the tariffs to be worse and is reacting negatively to the badly to the news that they're lower than expected. Of course, I don't really think that's what's going on.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
GDP per household is $224,000 per year.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Companies may wish to domicile in your country (especially if you have low corporate income tax rates) in order to access your consumers and/or workforce.
Foreign companies will sell less, not more to Americans, unless they crowd out domestic production (which tariffs necessarily reduce) to sell domestic goods instead of imports, but since overall domestic production would be lower, you don't benefit from this. Tariffs can in no way move production into the country on net. They only change what is produced (e.g. replace services with manufacturing)
If everyone else is doing tariffs except you, then the economy is already distorted; and implementing reciprocal tariffs may "un-distort" the global economy.
No, they can't. They can only add to the trade barriers and add to the distortion. The only way to undistort the economy is by subsidizing trade, effectively paying tariffs for foreign companies, but that just allows other countries to extort you.
If you want to raise revenue and you don't fear a trade war, tariffs may have less of an impact on GDP as other methods of taxation (eg, income tax).
The income tax certainly has a greater impact on GDP because it is easier to avoid buying imported goods than to not work.
If you are going to do protectionism, tariffs are better than subsidies.
Tariffs will change the relative cost of goods, but being a tax they should be net deflationary rather than inflationary.
There is, in effect, very little difference. Subsidies send money to other countries whereas taxes take money from other countries, but most of the tax is incident on the consumers within your country, so the difference is small.
Tariffs allow other taxes to be reduced whole subsidies require other taxes to be raised, so the effect on purchasing power is about the same. If one is more inflationary than the other is unimportant.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
What makes this classified information? The actual targets were not specified.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
I agree with this.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Why has the rule enforcement been so lax ever since we moved from /r/themotte? Or is that a false impression?
Glassnoser
3mo ago
Why is it a problem at all?
Glassnoser
3mo ago
I think you're missing the point which is that this violates her first amendment right to freedom of speech.
Glassnoser
3mo ago
We are taught about it as one of the reasons for the War of 1812, when the US tried and failed to conquer what would become Canada.
Glassnoser
4mo ago
I think his intelligence is greatly overrated. What is this high opinion many have of him based on? He made an incredibly stupid comment about how a job is worth a million cheap toasters or something and from that point on, I have not thought he is particularly smart. Sure, he might be a bit smarter than your average politician, but that is a low bar.
He seems to me like someone who is interested in ideas and has some half-decent debating skills, but he is not especially good at actually thinking.
It might take more than that because there is actually a fair bit of support among Democrats for what Trump is doing.
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