The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

What Happens When Liberals ‘Succeed’

Posted on | February 20, 2026 | No Comments

Liberalism is about winning elections. Whatever the actual results of liberal policies may be, in terms of the well-being of the people who vote for liberals, are of no real consequence. So long as liberals keep winning elections, they consider their policies successful. We see this all the time in places like Baltimore, Philadelphia and St. Louis where, no matter how objectively bad things get — no matter how much poverty, misery and violence prevail — Democrats keep getting re-elected.

The Chicago Bears are reportedly ready to relocate to Hammond, Indiana, because Illinois has been controlled so long by Democrats that not even relocating from Chicago to the suburbs would have saved the franchise; the only hope for the Bears was to leave the state entirely. Businesses and people are fleeing the state; such companies as Boeing, Caterpillar and Tyson Foods have pulled their headquarters out of Illinois. One reason that Democrats in Illinois are so desperate to stop the deportation of illegal aliens is because without foreigners, the state would be losing population. Despite the deepening crisis in Illinois, however, the people there keep voting for Democrats — Kamala Harris got 54% of the vote there in 2024. There is no incentive for change if Democrats keep winning no matter what. And something similar is underway north of the border, which brings us to the news that has shocked Canada:

For eons, Canadians have viewed Alabama as a small state that, save for a few pockets, is dirt poor. All anybody seems to know about Alabama is that Montgomery and Birmingham were the centre of the civil rights movement. In 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he called Birmingham “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.”
So, it was a shock when Canadian economist Trevor Tombe and the International Monetary Fund ran the numbers in 2023 and 2024 and concluded that Canada had, in fact, become poorer than Alabama. . . .
After adjusting for foreign exchange and some cost differences in both countries, the average for Canada’s 10 provinces was estimated at at US$55,000 in 2022, the same as Alabama. Shortly after, the IMF found Canada had actually fallen behind the southern state. (Canada has since edged ever-so-slightly higher than Alabama; the numbers are volatile from year to year.)
The timing was terrible for the Canadian psyche. Home prices were on an astronomical trajectory, inflation made everyday items such as groceries far more expensive and there was deep resentment toward Ottawa. Canadians could probably stomach having their living standards slip relative to the broader U.S., the epicentre of the world’s tech revolution. But Alabama? . . .

Yes, Alabama! If anyone wonders why Canada is now lagging behind Alabama, let me make a digression. About 30 years ago, I noticed an emerging theme in Democratic messaging. Our problem, they said, was a “growing gap between rich and poor.” This was the theme of numerous newspaper columns and a talking point in speeches by Democratic politicians, and it got me to wondering why this gap was growing.

Was it a matter of economic policy? Was racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — somehow a factor in this growing gap? And after some study, itn finally hit me: Immigration! It turns out that an influx of cheap labor from the Third World increases poverty. You don’t need a Harvard Ph.D. to figure this out. Every year during the 1990s, at least a million immigrants (both legal and illegal) were being added to the U.S. population. Most of these immigrants came from countries much poorer than the United States, lacked specialized work skills and arrived with few if any assets.

Most were not fluent in English, and quite a few of them were completely illiterate, even in their own native languages. No matter what other policy the government might pursue, the constant addition of so many immigrants — a million this year, a million next year, and so on, year after year — would inevitably increase the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line. But liberals were ignoring this obvious factor in economic trends, instead focusing on statistical changes that got translated to “a growing gap between rich and poor.”

Well, guess why Canada has fallen behind Alabama?

In the 2015 election, Canada’s Liberal Party defeated the Conservative Party, and Justin Trudeau was the Prime Minister for the next 10 years before being succeeded by another Liberal, Mark Carney. So during a decade when the United States has rocked back and forth — Obama, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump again — Canada has been governed the whole time by the Liberal Party. And as long as the Liberals keep winning elections, that’s success, even though they’re falling behind Alabama.



 

Category: Alabama, Canada, Economics, Immigration, Liberals

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