When People Laugh At You For Mentioning That Communism is A Real Threat To Canada. Ask Them What is The Difference Between Total Equity and Communism?

taxslave

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Entry into what, poverty ? Is it unreasonable to think that a job and "making a living" should be somewhat similar ? The point is that cost of living has risen steadily for decades while wages have remained stagnant in adjusted dollars. Workers are simply responding by refusing to work in jobs that don't offer any level of subsistence at all. They don't care that some people don't think they are entitled to a living wage, they are just saying no to shit wages, and I don't blame them one bit.
So why don't these people get an education, so they can get a decent job. Another question is why is it so hard to get employees in camps where they can make $100 000 + a year? No one is owed a living. You have to work for it.
 
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taxslave

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Another problem with jobs really is that companies want to have employees part time or casual, and reduce full time hours. Sure they may hire a ton of employees, but no one is making full time wages and the hours are spread out over X people so that no one gets that full time hour.

The old tropes of "McDonald's is for teens" doesn't apply anymore, hasn't for years. Sure it started that way, then it was seniors no longer working just to make a few bucks extra, now it's the only job some people can get because other jobs are out of reach.

And on the flip side, Governments are doing their damnest to screw everyone, union and non, out of fair wages. I expect NB to go on strike (though TBH we should be right now) because Government doesn't give a flying fuck about us at all. Higgs is out to destroy NB worse than any Liberal or previous Con we've ever had.

Like a lot of things, wages are more than just "people sitting home to do nothing".

If Canada does go like China and North Korea (not that I think it will, I mean come the fuck on...), it's not due to workers just trying to fucking exist but due to asshole corporations and people who support them.
You were doing so well until the last paragraph. Then you lost it, as usual. How about just keeping governments out of our pockets?
 
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taxslave

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Yours and my ideas of how things should be are not the point at the moment, it's the reality of the numbers involved. A full time, minimum wage job earns just over $31K/yr before taxes. Current cost of living estimates for an individual in my area of the country (Okanagan Valley) range from $45K to $50K/yr. It's not a matter of how much that fry cook should make, to him it's a matter of what he needs to make to live here. It's up to the owner of the franchise to decide whether or not it's important to him to keep a stable, experienced staff or put up with the high turnover of a basically transient staff. In terms of labour these days, it's a seller's market.
That is more than double what a senior that paid into CPP for 50+ years gets. And that is our own money.
 
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pgs

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Totally unreasonable. If all the staff at places like rotten ronnies made a "living wage" the price of a cup of coffee would be $5.oo. And then if those people make $25/hr tradespeople like me have to make at least $60 to justify the training and tools. So in effect all you are doing is creating rampant inflation and the people at the low end will still be poor. Actually trades should be making $50+ now to justify the bother.
The real answer is to cut taxes and government spending. Then cut all the rules and regulations that drive up costs for no reason. Currently it takes 12+ weeks just to get a building permit around here. That is totally unreasonable.
Only twelve weeks , try it in the big city .
 

taxslave

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Only twelve weeks , try it in the big city .
That is the minimum. If you want to do something reasonable like building a retaining wall to keep your property on your property, it is even longer plus needing engineers report and an engineered retaining wall despite the fact that every one I have built in the past year has had exactly the same criteria. It is so predictable that it might as well just be in the building code.
 
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Serryah

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You were doing so well until the last paragraph. Then you lost it, as usual. How about just keeping governments out of our pockets?

Well that made no sense. I said nothing about government being in our pockets, I was commenting that you seem to think Canada would become like North Korea and China which is absolute bullshit fearmongering. My last paragraph was about asshole corporations caring more for their bottom line and $, rather than the employees that work for them. Which is true. It has nothing to do with workers who just want to make enough money to fucking live.

IMO, we pay too MUCH in a lot of things and a lot of the taxes should be cut. But then I'm also in favour of people designating where their taxes are spent every year instead of Government saying it. Example, I don't have any kids, so why should so much of my taxes go to education; what if I want more of it to go to health care or social services?
 

Nick Danger

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So why don't these people get an education, so they can get a decent job.
That's a big part of the problem, the cost of post secondary education and the mountainous task of covering that cost. A dead-end job in the service sector just doesn't offer that option. Unless Daddy has deep pockets. There are places on this planet where post secondary education is free, and entry is based on intelligence and aptitude, not financial privilege. That has the effect of making sure that our future movers and shakers are our brightest and our best, not such a horrible concept in my mind.
 
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pgs

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That's a big part of the problem, the cost of post secondary education and the mountainous task of covering that cost. A dead-end job in the service sector just doesn't offer that option. Unless Daddy has deep pockets. There are places on this planet where post secondary education is free, and entry is based on intelligence and aptitude, not financial privilege. That has the effect of making sure that our future movers and shakers are our brightest and our best, not such a horrible concept in my mind.
Yup , they once told us to raise the pay of our politicians to attract the brightest and the best , look at where that has taken us .
 

taxslave

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That's a big part of the problem, the cost of post secondary education and the mountainous task of covering that cost. A dead-end job in the service sector just doesn't offer that option. Unless Daddy has deep pockets. There are places on this planet where post secondary education is free, and entry is based on intelligence and aptitude, not financial privilege. That has the effect of making sure that our future movers and shakers are our brightest and our best, not such a horrible concept in my mind.
One can collect EI while going to trade school. Some other college courses as well. The problem with free education is the lack of focus. Kids take stupid shit like Medieval literature. I would support free education for medicine and engineering, with a satisfactory highschool record, not just because someone feels like staying in school to party. There are other places to get a decent paying job as well, for example my union has its own operating school where members can get certified on any machine for free.
 
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taxslave

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Well that made no sense. I said nothing about government being in our pockets, I was commenting that you seem to think Canada would become like North Korea and China which is absolute bullshit fearmongering. My last paragraph was about asshole corporations caring more for their bottom line and $, rather than the employees that work for them. Which is true. It has nothing to do with workers who just want to make enough money to fucking live.

IMO, we pay too MUCH in a lot of things and a lot of the taxes should be cut. But then I'm also in favour of people designating where their taxes are spent every year instead of Government saying it. Example, I don't have any kids, so why should so much of my taxes go to education; what if I want more of it to go to health care or social services?
Canada will become a third world dictatorship if the left gets complete control. Bad enough that turdOWE is a commie lover.
It is the legal responsibility for corporations to make money for their shareholders. Good companies pay good workers well. The unfortunate part of a union operation is that everyone has to be paid the same regardless of input, usually resulting in pulling the best workers down to the lowest common denominator, or they leave for someplace where they are paid for what they produce. It is kind of a double edged sword.
Your idea of how your taxes are spent is simplistic and unworkable. Budgeting would be impossible.
 

Nick Danger

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One can collect EI while going to trade school. Some other college courses as well. The problem with free education is the lack of focus. Kids take stupid shit like Medieval literature. I would support free education for medicine and engineering, with a satisfactory highschool record, not just because someone feels like staying in school to party. There are other places to get a decent paying job as well, for example my union has its own operating school where members can get certified on any machine for free.
True, I did a carpentry apprenticeship in the eighties and actually made better money in school than on the job, but whiule there are significant shortages forecast in the trades, these opportunities only appeal to a few. I'm thinking that any program of free tuition would have to be careful to ensure that the money spent would not go to waste on frivolous pursuits, and would work towards providing skills that are actually in demand, and providing those skills to people with sufficient intelligence and aptitude.
 
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taxslave

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True, I did a carpentry apprenticeship in the eighties and actually made better money in school than on the job, but whiule there are significant shortages forecast in the trades, these opportunities only appeal to a few. I'm thinking that any program of free tuition would have to be careful to ensure that the money spent would not go to waste on frivolous pursuits, and would work towards providing skills that are actually in demand, and providing those skills to people with sufficient intelligence and aptitude.
In order to work I think there would still have to be a means test so that the rich, that can afford to pay for their education do, leaving more money to help those that can't. One other option would be to stay with student loans but make them interest free upon graduation.
 
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Nick Danger

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Canada will become a third world dictatorship if the left gets complete control. Bad enough that turdOWE is a commie lover.
It is the legal responsibility for corporations to make money for their shareholders.
We're on the edge of getting into economic policy and the prevailing theories we operate under, which is a wildy deep and complicated topic. Simply speaking around 1970 there was a shift in policy towards neo-liberal ideals brought on in large part by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Neo-liberal policy states the same as you but even more so. It said that the social responsibility of business is to generate profits, and all other considerations were secondary. We went from stakeholder capitalism, where employers and owners, employees, suppliers and customers were all equally important parts of a formula designed to benefit all, to shareholder capitalism where the owners/employers became the sole beneficiaries at the expense of all the others. Over the coming years we saw private sector unionization rates dwindle and the fading of our manufacturing sector as jobs were shipped offshore to prop up the bottom line. We have seen our environment decline as polluters avoided any responsibility to clean up after themselves and governments failed to correct that. We have seen the distrubution of wealth grown so out of whack that a very, very few at the top of the scale control the vast majority of available wealth, and they use that wealth to cement their control over the economy to benefit only themselves at the expense of all the rest.

We have returned to the old days of a ruling aristocracy who care little for the rest of society. In a way we are already under that dictatorship you fear so much, they rule from the shadows at the top of their palaces on Bay Street. Tossing out fear laden buzzwords like "communism" and "socialism" just exposes a lack of understanding as to just what is going on. Whther it's Trudeau or O'Toole in Ottawa doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day the corporate sector is pulling their strings. We don't need a wholesale shift in politics here, we just need to alter course towards something a little more inclusive, where owners and employees take on a little more responsibility for the welfare of those who actually produce the wealth they enjoy.
 

Nick Danger

Council Member
Jul 21, 2013
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In order to work I think there would still have to be a means test so that the rich, that can afford to pay for their education do, leaving more money to help those that can't. One other option would be to stay with student loans but make them interest free upon graduation.
Of course, and admission requirements in regards of intelligence and aptitude, would apply to all regardless of how deep Daddy's pockets are.

I agree, dumping the money-making aspect of student loans, as in interest, would be a huge step forward. It's not just the cost of the education itself, but foregone income while attending. Students have to eat too. Graduates these days will spend ten years paying off student debt when they could be saving for that first down payment.
 
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pgs

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We're on the edge of getting into economic policy and the prevailing theories we operate under, which is a wildy deep and complicated topic. Simply speaking around 1970 there was a shift in policy towards neo-liberal ideals brought on in large part by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Neo-liberal policy states the same as you but even more so. It said that the social responsibility of business is to generate profits, and all other considerations were secondary. We went from stakeholder capitalism, where employers and owners, employees, suppliers and customers were all equally important parts of a formula designed to benefit all, to shareholder capitalism where the owners/employers became the sole beneficiaries at the expense of all the others. Over the coming years we saw private sector unionization rates dwindle and the fading of our manufacturing sector as jobs were shipped offshore to prop up the bottom line. We have seen our environment decline as polluters avoided any responsibility to clean up after themselves and governments failed to correct that. We have seen the distrubution of wealth grown so out of whack that a very, very few at the top of the scale control the vast majority of available wealth, and they use that wealth to cement their control over the economy to benefit only themselves at the expense of all the rest.

We have returned to the old days of a ruling aristocracy who care little for the rest of society. In a way we are already under that dictatorship you fear so much, they rule from the shadows at the top of their palaces on Bay Street. Tossing out fear laden buzzwords like "communism" and "socialism" just exposes a lack of understanding as to just what is going on. Whther it's Trudeau or O'Toole in Ottawa doesn't really matter, because at the end of the day the corporate sector is pulling their strings. We don't need a wholesale shift in politics here, we just need to alter course towards something a little more inclusive, where owners and employees take on a little more responsibility for the welfare of those who actually produce the wealth they enjoy.
Really . You need to jump through so many regulatory channels that it takes years for the corporate sector to get projects of the ground . Those regulations include restoration of the site after the project ends . Western governments and their regulatory agencies stifle growth . You are once again pointing fingers at the wrong enemy , it is not the corporate sector that is the problem , it is government taxation and regulatory hurdles .
 

Twin_Moose

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Well that made no sense. I said nothing about government being in our pockets, I was commenting that you seem to think Canada would become like North Korea and China which is absolute bullshit fearmongering. My last paragraph was about asshole corporations caring more for their bottom line and $, rather than the employees that work for them. Which is true. It has nothing to do with workers who just want to make enough money to fucking live.

IMO, we pay too MUCH in a lot of things and a lot of the taxes should be cut. But then I'm also in favour of people designating where their taxes are spent every year instead of Government saying it. Example, I don't have any kids, so why should so much of my taxes go to education; what if I want more of it to go to health care or social services?
Health care and School taxes are based on keeping the taxes as low as possible for the collective taxpayer to budget for current and future expenses on both Social programs. When you add CRT or public funded abortion or larger administration costs the tax base will obviously be raised to pay for it.

I don't think my tax dollars should pay for studies on rising sea levels on the East coast due to climate change, but erosion control on local creeks and non fish bearing rivers in Sask. have to be funded municipally hits me twice and you only once is that fair?
 
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Jinentonix

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Yours and my ideas of how things should be are not the point at the moment, it's the reality of the numbers involved. A full time, minimum wage job earns just over $31K/yr before taxes. Current cost of living estimates for an individual in my area of the country (Okanagan Valley) range from $45K to $50K/yr. It's not a matter of how much that fry cook should make, to him it's a matter of what he needs to make to live here. It's up to the owner of the franchise to decide whether or not it's important to him to keep a stable, experienced staff or put up with the high turnover of a basically transient staff. In terms of labour these days, it's a seller's market.
So the current cost of living is $45k to $50k in the Okanagan. A typical McDonald's franchise makes a NET profit of $150,000/yr. Guess the McDonalds in the Okanagan should be forced to decide which 7 of their employees will get that $45-$50K a year while the rest continue getting minimum wage, right?
Here's the math bro. You got X number of employees making $31k/yr if they're full time. That means to get them to $50k they would need a $20k raise. With $150,000 in net profits said franchisee can only afford to give a "living wage" to just 7 of their employees, leaving the franchisee with a whopping profit of $10K and a bunch of other pissed employees who didn't get a $20k raise.

You want to talk the "reality of numbers" when it's clear you know nothing about profit and the costs of running a business. including a franchise. Food costs are one thing a franchisee has zero control over. An independent restaurant can shop around for a lower cost supplier or even go buy the food themselves at a lower cost. With McDonalds and other franchises you HAVE to buy from corporate. So as a franchisee you have zero control over food costs. You also have zero control over equipment costs.
Maybe instead of pissing and moaning about the franchisee you should target your disappointment towards the parent corporation itself.
 

Hoof Hearted

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I really get tired of the Strawman Argument that a cup of coffee will cost $15.00 and a new TV will cost you hundreds more if we significantly raise the minimum wage.

It's simply fear mongering. If the minimum wage went up quite a few dollars over the last year or two, then why am I still paying a twoonie for my Tim Horton's cup of coffee??

My point is, if everyone has a larger piece of the pie they won't mind paying a little extra for these purchases. Like I stated the other day....it's become a race to the bottom. When people tell me I'm 'lucky' to have a well-paying Union job, I tell them..."If you privatize me and positions like mine, you'll have nothing to aspire to...you'll be shucking coffee or flipping pizzas for the rest of your working days.