Opinion: Canadians risk becoming addicted to keeping themselves and their families safe and fed during a pandemic.

Framing is everything. https://twitter.com/charlesadler/status/1296915854727106560

The published one intends to be inflammatory. It's disheartening.

There is no real positive connotation to the word "addicted".

This is literally intended to poison the public against a GMI/UBI.

Which is fine if the writer is against it. But still disheartening to see it framed that way.

So.

It starts out with this:

"Policy interventions in crises face the age-old challenge of moral hazard ..."

So you understand it's a conservative opinion. Fine. I like to know the landscape right up front.

An aspect of conservatism, IME, is that there is moral hazard attached to a government interfering too much in the normal course of a society's evolution and that the state must not attempt to alter human nature itself.

Changing behaviour is good. Changing nature is bad.

It's another discussion about the semantics and interconnections of those two things. But this basic tenet is the biggest window into conservative thought that I've ever discovered.

That's essentially what they mean by "big government" if you drill right down.

So, "moral hazard" is a code phrase for 'there be conservatism ahead'.

The argument will inevitably come around to "Are we really doing the best for Canadians by helping them too much? Is it moral to do this?"

...

The last line of the opening paragraph affirms the tenet expressed in the opening words.

Good writing so far, anyway.

"Without the proper safeguards, good intentions can lead to unintended outcomes."

By the end of the second paragraph, we discover that yes, moral hazard has been breached. That's the thesis of this piece.

A bit of word psychology quoting Trudeau's "we have your back" and then an actually interesting, attention grabbing fact.

"... transfers to households totalling $65.3-billion in the first half of this year – 150 per cent of the actual employment income losses of Canadians ($44.6-billion), according..."

Good thing we didn't just read the headline and get mad, eh?

So, I'm reading more closely now.

Can't wait for the next paragraph.

Wait. What? You're not going to explain WHY there's a discrepancy? You're just going to let it sit there like a virus, infecting my judgment? Because I'm kind of concerned now. That's a lot of money, right?

But it's a paragraph about why we need to restart the economy. And that maybe CERB was a disincentive.

WHAT? I want to know where the freaking money went.

Okay, next paragraph will tell me, I'm sure.

"However, that is what CERB and other transfers do. If workers can earn more ......"

My brain thinks, "Is that where the money went? People are making MORE? WHAT?"

But now they're just talking about how to wean people off. Why we must.

I'm so confused. Did those people scam us for 43 billion dollars? WTF

Now they're talking about all the expenses and liabilities the government is incurring. All very technical. I dunno, but it sounds super serious.

Then I'm reading about "the longer you take it, the greater the chance of addiction"

Which is true for drugs.

And we'll go broke at this rate.

And it's really wrong to let people get addicted to things, after all.

Oh my god, and now we're borrowing money, too!

To pay these scammers! They're getting MORE. And we're borrowing?

Jebus. This is bad.

I had no idea.

Oh my god! Another moral hazard! For our children! They will have to work in coal mines and live in tents to play for this!

Those fucking scammers. No better than addicts, needing a fix.

I've forgotten about where the money actually went. It's pretty clear, amirite?

Those addicts got it.

Yeah.

Now they're winding up, we need to get back to work. Fix our economy. Cut off these addicts for their own good. Tough love.

Moral hazard averted!

So, obviously the only important takeaway from this story is where *did* the money go.

All the other stuff was just to convince you that we're not helping the economy ... er ... people ... by giving them drugs ... er ... aid.

There's likely a fairly simple and rational answer to the "missing money" but anyone sharing this as anything except a shock and scare about the Trudeau economy is silly.

But the headline is crazy misleading. It's implying there's a story about that. There's not.

-30-

Oh. And this is an example of a deliberately misleading piece of writing. FYI.

The new narrative among the faithful will now be "they're getting more than they used to earn, that's why it has to stop".

I'm hopeful everyone understands that a lot of that thread was presented as satire.

https://twitter.com/Scribulatora/status/1297123521408229376?s=19