The way he is able to address even the current financial situation with a dose of humor is an encouraging comment on today's intellectualism. Setting style aside, the content of Zakaria's article is also incredibly engaging. The fact that Canada, alone out of the entire industrialized world, is not facing any bank failures or other major symptoms of the financial crisis, is very surprising to me. I guess this is mostly because I do not hear a lot about -- or pay attention to -- Canadian news.
This might be because, according to this article, there is little news to report coming from Canada when compared to the major turbulent events going on in the rest of the world. I -- and perhaps the rest of the nation along with me -- do not tend to think that much about our neighbor to the north; when I do, I generally assume that their lifestyle, social structure, and government is much like ours (with the exception of healthcare, which...
The differences in their mortgage structures and the still-present regulations on their financial industry that Zakaria mentions seem like no-brainers to me, and I am amazed that none of the other industrialized nations followed Canada's example on these issues and protected their citizens from the current situation.
Zakaria's mention of the immigration issue also struck a nerve with me; this country has a history of mass immigration and mass xenophobia, and it seems like we will never grow up enough as a country to see the folly of this cycle. The illegal immigrats who get in are generally unskilled -- and somewhat less economically productive, the thinking goes -- so why not let in more of the skilled and highly educated laborers we need to offset this? Open borders are not very practical, I agree, but there must be a happy medium.
