cannuck

Just as I said, the Yanks not able to tell the difference between business and social services.

I can hear the Yanks screaming their heads off about socialism, but big pharma, big med, big finance and big law have consistently proven to be unworthy of public trust. The general public deserves protection from their treachery. However, this goes a step beyond. Where the US is so screwed up, and Canada mimics their mistakes is in thinking sick care is a business. It is not. It is a social service. It is a crucial service to having a productive economy, and there is no GOOD reason that government shouldn;t be using their muscle to bulk purchase and deliver drugs to its citizens. All ideological BS aside, that just good business.

My solution is that you stop robbing my back pocket to do a piss poor job. It should be MY choice to use the money I pay to decide how and where my children get educated on my nickel. "The system" as you call it, is broken. Why should someone raising a family have to wait several generations to fix it? Kids need good education when they are borne, not when they are half way to social security.

I measure that by the applications we get for new hires, and the new hires we don't keep for very long. Even the EETs and EEs we retain I have a constant struggle with since they simply don't understand the high school or even grade school science in what they do. I have three teachers under my roof and 10 graduate and post graduate degrees (none of which are mine, I will add), so I can tell you from anecdotal evidence that public education is far more concerned with paycheques, days off, moving students through the system than it is with inspiring children to want to learn and most of all, determining if they actually understand the concepts being taught. When people have to go to the extreme of citing "slipping on ice" as the kind of job risks that put teachers at peril to the extent of law enforcement officers and firefighters, you know the arguments for how much reward vs. how much work...and most of all, how much accountability for the lack of results...is a huge stretch. On the other hand, the idea that school is there for child care is ludicrous. That's what a family's job is. If you want to have children, to expect the school system (which is not particularly good even at education) to do that for you is truly idiotic. Only a FULL TIME parent (or grandparent) can ever be expected to do what it takes to give a child the kind of background, care, EDUCATION, self-awareness, confidence, etc. that it takes to hand them over to a public school teacher to add the tiny bit of social skills it takes to round out their education. Truth is, you can't feed a young child's mind enough in their waking hours to even come close to satiating their ability to learn. If you really want to see how inept public education can be, just hand a really bright kid to one of those schools and watch how the love of learning can be beat out of them in a hurry. A GOOD teacher would never contribute to that, but I doubt that 5% of those hidden behind the unions would even come close to being called that. The right way to deal with this whole question is very simple: give me a voucher for my children's education and I will put it where I feel it is most effective (and supplement that cost if I so choose). Why would you give a monopoly to a broken system to do one of the most important jobs in a child's life? We spent a small fortune getting our children educated in music, sport, science, etc. OUTSIDE of the public system, as did a large number of other parents who we encountered at many venues. We chose the public (separate) system for their "basic" daily routine simply because it would give them the skills to deal with the full range of social skills to interface with those who would be their clients, patients, etc. later in life, including comprehension of what mediocrity was out there. Yes, they DID have a few exceptionally good teachers, but mostly they encountered just what one would expect - mediocre skills, intellect and infrastructure.

ah....my bad...your good. We good??

You are falling for the bureaucrat's argument - that they can do more or less with more or less (always MORE) money. The real question is what the frick are they doing at ALL! 90% of what government does it should have no business in doing. They don't need to be accountable, they need to be out looking for a job in the real world where they can be productive instead of simply very expensive welfare cases.

I would like to know what you feel is being subsidized to the fossil fuel businesses? Most of all, why would you expect government to be in the business of picking winners and losers in business? Until we realize that the business of government SHOULD be to govern. That means to provide unbiased regulation and enforcement and to keep their nose the hell out of business and my back pocket.

Too many things going on around here, or I guess I am getting senile!!!! Yes, the ambulance chasing league (that includes the insurance component) is one of the things that makes US (and to a lesser extent Canadian) business un-competitive. I used to be in the aviation business, and when Cessna stopped producing light singles in 1986, over half of the cost of a 172 (most produced airplane in history) was nothing but insurance premiums. Our slightly better situation up here - but still complicated by sharing a lot of the insurance side of the markeplace - is that it is now far cheaper to build in Canada than US (Diamond a good example). Thanks for catching that.

I thought that would be self-evident. Let's take corporate governance: in North America (especially US) the world of finance now controls massive blocks of publicly traded equities, so they have the right to appoint bank/finance friendly boards. Those in turn, being OPM addicts (Other People's Money) install governance that are also bank/finance friendly. The whole lot in turn award themselves huge blocks of stock diluting shareholders and become filthy rich doing nothing but an employee's job that any number of millions of people could and would gladly do for what the job really deserves - maybe 10x average employee pay. As a result, we end up with extremely poor corporate governance by people who are seldom even aware, never mind focused on product, customer or long term shareholder interests. Take a look at pro sport money. Sorry to say, but they really produce diddly squat, just add a lot of cost to consumers for what you could see for free at the corner high school. When you see the highest paid employees of American Universities being the sports coaches, it explains the shift away from good academic culture that has occurred. Then think about government. The bureaucrat's argument is how much more or less they can do with more or less money. The real question for probably 1/2 or more of ALL government employees is "why the frick do I pay you at ALL????" You may not have noticed, but the governments of Canada and the US have run up enough debt to beggar the next several generations - mostly doing things they have no business doing - at a price infinitely higher than any responsible individual would ever pay. Siphon all of this money out of companies, institutions, etc. and where do you think the money is coming from? It is the guy with the tool in his hand, the entrepreneur who sees a new product or service and will put his time and money on the line to make it happen, the lady feeding the workers or taking care of their kids, etc. who are productive. We tend to reward their efforts and productivity the least since we have pissed away the bulk of the cash on the army of useless tits who are sinking our economy. AND: before you get off on some idea about me being a workers' fellow traveler - I AM the senior member of boards of directors and corporate governance of several companies in several countries.

It is not just in Hogtown. When I am on construction sites out West, it is obvious that everyone there is making well over $100k (our CETs expect that in second year out of school - takes some overtime to get there though) and those with a really sweet deal (thinking of some ironworkers doing 28 x 12s on, 4 off are raking in a quarter a year - for no education, no real skills, no risk, just a bit of time and work). Starting wage for a medical specialist is about that same level ($20k a month). What you probably DON'T see is what contract employees at Banks in Toronto are being charged out for and how much they are being paid. $400 and hour for 10 hour days is not unusual, and many can get 50% of that back in their compensation contract. The real estate bubble is both the feed and the result of this kind of really stupid remuneration. The inverse I see in the scientific and research communities. One of my closest friends finally left applied nuclear physics engineering since pretty much anywhere he has gone in the world, his PhD won't earn him enough money to live decently (Canada, US, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Russia). When our eldest was in academia, she could earn a living, but seeing what business offered for her skillset (3x to 4x academic earnings) was an eye opener. Then, of course, we have the sports coach wages in the world of academia, and those look more like the truly idiotic payments within corporate governance these days. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that today, we pay the least productive people the highest rewards.

ANYTHING that codifies or even recognizes religious nonsense has no business in Parliament. Religion has proved to be a disaster for anyone or any place that let's it dictate their laws, life or customs, so let's just do what good government should do and separate church completely from state. Who gives a flying purple frick what the hell someone says about another's "religion" - whatever the hell (word chosen carefully) that is supposed to be. Look: we have 7 billion people living on a nice, little one billion room planet. If the religious fruitcakes want to call each other names and kill each other, it is simply Darwin's observation of the weak cleaning out the mentally deficient if we are to have any chance of surviving as a species.

Junior may be a certified lightweight, and falling somewhat from grace, but the old man was exceedingly dangerous as he actually DID things that screwed up Canada for decades. The kid is just a reflection of Liberal and liberal in all senses, but it was his Father who shifted Liberal politics WAAAAYYYYY over to the left (helps if one recalls he was a card carrying Communist during his days at the Sorbonne).

Obviously, you have spent very little if any time dealing with reserves and aboriginals. We spend far more than enough to give each and every person with a treaty number a very comfortable middle class lifestyle. Unfortunately, much of that money dissappears into the hands of the "Indian industry", i.e. the bureaucrats, consultants, etc. who hand what is left over to band and council to be squandered with little regard for those for whom it was intended. I have so many times listened to people gripe about the condition of housing, public facilities, poor water, etc. in an environment of 90%+ unemployment. All that is needed is to use the endless funding that is doled out and get off one's rear end and fix one's own problems. It isn't that hard to figure out. Of course, I have a solution: let's send all of these new immigrants to live on reserves! They can do what we need - set an example of how to work for things and appreciate the incredible good fortune of living in Canada.

Failed????? I think you are missing the point. Bombardier last I heard was the recipient of more federal largess (loans that don't get repaid are hardly loans at all!!!) than EVERY other business in their respective sectors combined. You really don't need to be able to RUN the business, just reach out and get the cash that everyone in Quebec feels they are entitled to receive and funnel enough of it back as political contributions and live like a king on the backside of the deals. A very successful business model that every first nation leader in Canada has learned to copy.

Rue pretty much nailed the important points in his opening post. Where the left/right split comes is that from the left, the "rights" of the individual trump (sorry if that choice of word offends anyone on the left) the right of the public to a reasonable effort to protect their/our safety. NOBODY who kills (and the possible complicating phrase here would be "intentionally kills") another human is "sane" by any standard, but reality is that as has been mentioned, many criminals are to some extent suffering from some mental illness. So, we jail those with a bit of mental illness, but let one with a genuinely homicidal affliction walk free with NO supervision to ensure he is medicated to a reasonable level of safety????? What is still missing from this discussion is that Vince Li CHOSE not to medicate. While the left may not wish to punish him for what he did not "sanely chose" to do (decapitate and canibalize innocent person) nobody is punishing him for what he DID freely chose to do that caused that death.

Absolutely agree with this.

End of the honeymoon for me. I thought Trump to be amusing in his ability to stuff it to the press, but had lingering doubts about his regard for Wall Street. After all, he has never actually made a product, just put his name on office towers, luxury condos, casinos, golf courses - all things that produce diddly squat. I can not approve of his use of Goldman-Sucks people - makes him no different from the rest of the Uniparty. But, and this is a big BUT: too much regulatory compliance cost is one of the things that is killing US industry's competitiveness. That being said, the way to control the incredibly destructive binge of greed on Wall Street is by taxation - most powerful influence of human financial behaviour. Solution is simple: tax the crap out of speculative gain and stay the hell away from taxing dividend income. That alone will make the way to get returns on investment to buy into productive and profitable companies, i.e. Main Street. Oh, that and making derivatives illegal.

To screw around with idiotic crap when we are in deep financial doo-doo with debt is typical of what we should expect from people who clearly have no grasp on reality at all. This is nothing but liberal/Liberal shifting of chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

Yeah, China has been real hard on him.

You have a very different idea of what is "right" vs. what is "left". If you get your wealth or privilege by luring the people into socialistic or communistic theories or policies, you are from the left in classical terms. You may be abusing that trust (OK, you ARE) but you are still using the privileges available only through socialistic or communistic practices to get it. If you are profiting from things people freely elect to do, be it politically or by policy (i.e. market economy) you are from the right - which ALSO can be abused. Now, one thing that usually proves pretty accurate, the linguistic opposite of "left" is not only "right" but also "wrong" has proven over time to be the case. At the root of it all, where the problem comes that you try to spin into "right" and "left" inappropriately is that abuse happens by dispensing privilege that benefits those who have access through "rule by special interest", not the underlying political philosophies. Obey the fundamentals of good government (NOT dispensing privilege to any one exceptional group) and ANY political philosophy could work just fine.

DUH!!!! The economy is ALREADY in the toilet. The only "recovery" and "regulatory reform" is to keep Wall Street fat and happy - all at the hands of a rather co-operative Uniparty and trillion$$ more of national debt. Main Street elected that orangutang, simply because they were sick and tired of getting screwed by those inside of the Beltway.

Chavez was as genuine "real left" as you can get. He alone was responsible for beggaring the economy of Venezuela by fashioning it after a true Bolivarian socialist model. AND, like so many other genuine socialists and communists, all of that misery and poverty crap is for the proletariat, not the leadership. I expect one of your other heros is Dear Leader of the Worker's Party, Kim Jong-Un - who you will also find is not exactly living in poverty (as is the rest of the country).

The dilema is that EVERY economy developed by abusing the environment - and workers. Problem is, the time under Chairman Mao meant that China is catching up decades later, so from our vantage point being irresponsible - as were we. What we NEEDED, but did not get, was a firm set of rules on day 1 whereby China (or ANYONE else) would have access to our markets ONLY when they were meeting our environmental and human rights standards - but maybe at an earlier stage than we are now and with a timetable knowing fully well when it was needed to move up the ladder. In China's case, we need to think of what could have evolved if they WEREN'T welcomed with open arms and no constraint into the modern era.

Hard for me to read this thread, as it is so full of miss-conceptions. First of all, I will state that I had an office in Guangzhou and later Shenzhen for many years until my Chinese borne, Canadian citizen (since 1954) partner died a few years back. He had worked in and with China for decades beginning in the '60s, and was actually very close with the Nationalists in Taiwan at the same time. While I am not an "expert", my experiences with China are first hand and from someone who knew the WHOLE country imminently (Chinese citizens did not have the travel freedom he enjoyed until very recently) who took me around and introduced me to several very noteable people - as well as thousands of "ordinary citizens". China is a predatory economy, period. In Chinese (and much of other Asian) cultures, it is the results that matter, not how you get them. What people say is extremely different from what they mean, as it is a contextual language, not literal. Westerners have no idea how to deal with this. Let me give you one real example: a good friend of mine writes some very specialized software, and about ten years ago, was sequestered to create a new suite of programmes to operate their kind of equipment in complete secrecy, totally off line. Two years into it, he had the final product ready for introduction, and their very Canadian company sent him to Guangzhou for their first foray into international IT shows - to introduce this product. Before he had a chance to get his booth set up and start schilling, he was offered SEVERAL TIMES to buy guess what? His exact programmes! You don't need to hire a Chinese IT engineer, the Red Army maintains a full time staff of them to do it for you. DO NOT believe economists' numbers for Chinese income, or anything else. China is still a communist country and many things included in a measure of consumer costs are either subsidized or regulated, and NEVER reported accurately. At an individual level, NOBODY trusts their (or any other) government, so they will never disclose anything more than they absolutely must - ESPECIALLY about income and wealth. The secret of Chinese success is not (just) "cheap" labour, it is that an awful lot of people will get up in the morning, and the WHOLE FAMILY will go to work for someone else or themselves, or BOTH to earn more money today than they did yesterday. They are not "getting ahead", just playing catch-up after a long and very failed experiment with communism (much like Saskatchewan, I might add). China is an extremely entrepreneurial place with a government savvy enough to bend the rules to cash in on that fact. We have a huge trade imbalance with China because we are horribly bad at marketing our resources, and worse at adding value to them. For instance: decades of having the Canadian Wheat Board left generations of farmers who believe it is the business of government to sell their commodities. From that perspective, the Liberal government (especially one containing Ralph Goodale) would be the very last to stand up for Canola producers and face down the Chinese. We can't sell them the crude oil that we have and they need, because our nitwits-in-power (insert ANY party name here, they all fit) have failed to produce a pipeline to tidewater and didn't and won't have the stones to insist we export only upgraded "synthetic crude" or better yet refined products. Finally, we have lost our national identity to the point of being so goddamned Yankee that we will go to the big box store and buy 10 pieces of pure crap instead of the Euro version of shopping for the best quality, longest lasting one that can be had at any price. The other problem I might mention is Chinese professionals and students coming to Canada (or anywhere else, for that matter). They all have perfect academic scores, perfect references and perfect experience. But, just as in making a product, those are the words presented to you because you asked for them. They seldom have ANY basis in fact. As a result it is extremely difficult to find the real McCoy (and they DO exist) among the sea of literally millions of imposters. Oh, the perfect references are real, just not true. This is not a new thing. I remember it on a much smaller scale in the '60s when I was a student, and Hong Kong Chinese in our school would lie and cheat on every exam, and seldom ever actually learn the material. Results. Pass the exam. Get the accredation. That was in engineering. So, should we just slam the door and walk away? As has been pointed out, that would simply deny reality. What we really need is a government with some spine and sense to limit predatory practices, but moreso business that can just get down to business and an investment culture that puts money into business, not banks (or if I can paraphrase from South of the 49th - put Main Street to work, not Wall Street). Main Streets in Shanghai and the Pearl Delta are fully funded and fully engaged. AND: they will very quickly and aggressively pursue ANY market with the full support of an extremely smart and predatory central government.

People who trade commodities add no value, they just increase the price. If someone doesn't take physical possession of the commodity, there are just in it to increase the price and IMHO have little reason to BE in the business. Yeah, yeah, yeah....they provide liquidity. I happen to BE in the business of producing resources, and can tell you that the presence of financial institution trade desks distorts the frick out of our markets and serves no purpose other than to separate the producer from the his customer due to the privilege of putting themselves in the middle and marking up each shipment by millions of dollars. Those dollars belong in the producer's hands or those of his actual clients, not on the table at the Casino. Trading an equity creates nothing but inflation (or in the special case of the Greenback, pent-up inflationary pressures). That's why I was very specific in referencing IPOs and POs - that are HELD. The simple way to identify what is and is not an actual investment, and the solution is tax 99% on day one, 95% in first year, taper down to nominal tax rate at 5% per year. Money won't "go away", as there is no place to go. If you wanted to be in North America, you would be simply better off to follow the rules (which is what people and money do now - just the the rules are frigging STUPID) and invest in business, not speculate on Wall Street. Very simply: Main Street is the economy. Wall Street is there to destroy it (as it did in '29 and as it SHOULD have been allowed to happen in '08 when they were rewarded for their treachery, not allow to do what an actual business would have done and simply gone down the drain where they belong). No time to dally, it is 05:30 here and have to go and get some of those resources out of the ground that the useless t1t part of the world will suck the lifeblood out of our economy by trading.