CPCFTW

What you're forgetting is that teachers work 175-190 days per year vs 235-250 in other jobs. So multiply the teacher salary by about 1.33 for their effective salary. Effectively they start at 60-73k and after 10 years they're making 100-125k with a defined benefit pension plan. Not bad for a BA... Let me rephrase that: excessively high for a BA.

What type of professional liability do teachers have compared to lawyers and doctors? Their wages are commensurate with their education and risk. Also they don't get pensions, job security, or sick days, which are all factors of total compensation. I'm not sure why you think it's fair to only look at wages.

The point of business is to grow after-tax profits. If labour and tax costs are too high for business to reinvest its pre-tax profits in growth opportunities, it will grow its profit through cost reductions (automation, outsourcing, relocation, etc.) Demand can be stimulated by incenting business and entrepreneurs to establish operations in Ontario.

It's not just starting salary.. It's total compensation (benefits) and the rate of wage increases that drives our cost of education through the roof. FYI the peer group you are referring to also have debt/deficit issues and stagnant growth.. So not exactly the standard for efficiency.

Go read the polls yourself through Wikipedia. They came up with a likely voter model probably a day before their old methodology would have shown the PCs taking a lead. Three hundred eight is almost fully weighted by these ekos polls. Anyway we'll see in two days so no point debating it.

Tax cuts for corporations have proven to be very effective at creating jobs actually. Just because companies are profitable and have cash doesn't mean jobs aren't being created. Refer to the bottom of this link for a list of studies on the effects of taxes on gdp growth: http://taxfoundation.org/article/what-evidence-taxes-and-growth

That's kind of funny. I would think it is because Arts grads put themselves above working a minimum wage position, whereas a high school grad will usually soldier on in a menial minimum wage until they become a supervisor or manager or make some connections and find a career they are underqualified for. What I was saying though is that if there is less demand then prices are lower, so saying we have to tax free enterprise to dole out to a public sector to support demand doesn't really make sense... it just inflates prices. But, in support of your position, a large public sector does flatten the business cycle (trade off less variance in growth for slower growth - like buying bonds instead of stocks). But at some point, someone has to come in and stop the public sector from bankrupting itself.

Fortunately we don't base our policy decisions on feel-good economics like this.. Well for the most part. The thing you neglect is that if there were no public sector jobs with inflated salaries and demand was reduced, then prices would also be reduced. That's basic economics. Rather than creating a privileged class of workers that brings down the standard of living of the poor who aren't fortunate enough to get a public service job, we'd have a larger class of private sector "poor" with a much higher standard of living (because of reduced prices). I'm not arguing for no public sector jobs BTW.. Just following your hypothetical.

Really? Home sales and bank revenues seem to disagree with you.

Ekos made up a new likely voter model a few days ago because the old model had hudak ahead of wynne. Three hundred eight is using their new model which suggests liberals have the lead in likely voters (contrary to all other polling firms).

What are you talking about? We're talking about the corporate cash reserves after the recession, not during. You seem lost. Banks are happily lending again and all the corporation's stockpiled cash is being lent through banks to consumers who are able to buy cars and houses and start businesses at record low interest rates. When the corporations find projects that they want to spend that cash on (pipelines perhaps?), they will draw down on that capital and there will be a little less money for banks to lend so their revenues might be squeezed (except that they will likely be financiers for most large capital projects). The point is that corporate cash stockpiles aren't sitting idle any more than your bank deposits or GICs are. The corporations/you are lending that money to others through the banking system.

Money that corporations hold is invested in money market funds and cash instruments. Banks utilize those funds to make consumer loans so that people can buy houses and cars. Lesson: any money that companies are "sitting on" is reinvested into the economy several times through bank lending. FYI most of the money that companies are sitting on could not delever the company (pay off all their debt). So when you reaf your progressive blogs about how much money corporations are sitting on, remember that they have ongoing debt and interest obligations to satisfy with that cash and they could simply delever their companies if they believed there were no future growth opportunities.

Lol. It's science guys!

Why are you asking me? I'm just reporting the results of a scientific poll. You can believe the Huffpost unscientific poll if you'd prefer.

Here's another more scientific poll with a different knockout punch: http://www.cp24.com/news/hudak-winner-of-ontario-election-leaders-debate-poll-shows-1.1851955

Um you mean the poll about who will win the debate? Also it's 2000.

No we don't. We just don't accuse them of assault and battery for forcibly removing protesters who are forcibly restricting other private citizens from going about their daily lives. It's what we pay them for.Fwiw I don't really like cops or protesters but they both serve a function in a free and democratic society.

You must have missed the quote I provided from the article which states: "For example, tax credits for children cost Canadians $2.74 billion. But a month or two of childcare in Ontario is equal to the total after-tax savings from these tax credits, while an affordable national childcare program would cost less to implement -- and saves families thousands of dollars." That is wrong. It wouldn't take $2B to implement. It would take hundreds of billions. I don't know how to make it any clearer. It is intentionally misleading to readers to suggest that an affordable national childcare program could have been "implemented" with $2B.

Also one thing to note, Quebec has an "affordable child care program" and it costs almost $3B/yr. So to suggest we could implement a national one for just $2B/yr is laughable.

The rest of the stuff listed is meaningless... "Invest in A,B,C,D". We could invest in a lot of things with more revenue.. it's pretty pointless to say what we can invest in, but I suppose it is accurate that with more revenue we could invest into more things. We could also invest in Solyndra (or a $350M downtown Toronto office building for government staff). The important question is, is it worth seizing capital from the private sector to make these investments? But what is inaccurate in the article is this: The article cites where it got the numbers from, which is this alternate budget: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2014/02/AFB2014_MainDocument.pdf Page 50 of the alternate budget outlines that it plans to invest $1B, $2B, $3B, $4B, then $5B over the next 5 years towards a universal ECEC system, then it will evaluate how well spent that $15B was and the goal is to eventually invest at least 1% of GDP/yr on a national childcare program. Canada's GDP is $1.8 trillion, so the budget says that a national childcare program will cost approx $18B+/yr to implement (closer to $20B+ after 5 years), not $2B. The article is being disingenuous or just plain lying... and that's ignoring the fact that the "alternate budget" basically just assumes that a national childcare program can be implemented for 1% of GDP.. it would probably be double that if its workers are unionized.

The article is wrong. Go read the "alternate budget" that is mentioned in the asterisk. The national child care program is supposed to cost at least 1% of GDP annually.. Which at this point would be over $18B annually.

Woah $33 every 5 years? How will I afford that!??! And this is coming from the poster who is dismissing over $1000/yr in tax savings to every Canadian as a pittance.

Yeah I was going to go this route but to be fair much of the tax savings is from the reduction in hst, which most citizens pay. So I think my estimate of a bit more than $1000 PER YEAR is fair.

It's $30B per year in savings... That's over $1000/yr. It's basic math and you're wrong.Here's a link in case you don't believe me: http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/tax-cuts-saving-canadians-30b-budget-watchdog-1.1840004 OTTAWA -- Canadians are saving more than $30 billion in federal taxes-- or a little less than $1,000 per person -- due to tax changes introduced in the past decade, Canada's budget watchdog says in a new report.

Your math skills need a little work. $30B/30M = $1000 Also there are significantly less than 30M taxpayers.. So it's really more like $100+/mo.