CPCFTW

None of that infrastructure is dependent on hand outs to the poor, lazy, and unemployed. Let people keep that money and invest it into corporate stocks and bonds to fund job creation or production improvements. I believe that, outside of the handicapped (mentally and physically), people should be working regardless of whatever arbitrary notion of a "living wage" the lefties have. There's no reason Japan should be making most of the world's cars and Taiwan and Korea should be making most of the world's computer parts, and China should be making most of everything else while 10% of Americans are unemployed and living off of borrowed money from the Chinese. It's just ridiculous. We pay them to make our shit and take our jobs, then borrow that money back to pay for our unemployed. Let the people work!

Who said anything about victimized and deprived? I said we punish the wealthy by demonizing them and increasing taxes on them pursuing more success. Of course they're still better off than the poor no matter how much people like you try to change that. See, I think that the wealthy would do a better job of allocating their wealth than the government. The left believes in the divine hand of the government, I believe in the impartial hand of the market. Give 50 billion to government and spend 20 billion on government bureaucratic jobs and 30 billion on handouts to the unemployed (and then borrow another 50 billion to create more government jobs and fund more handouts). Give 50 billion to the market and maybe 10 billion will go to the capital allocators (financial advisors, portfolio managers, etc.), and 40 billion will go to creating jobs or increasing productivity through capital expenditure. There are no free lunches in the market.

Yes, the poor in western societies are flourishing by taxing the rich and borrowing from China. That is the world we live in. Have you been living under a rock?

Not that I believe the numbers of your source aren't manipulated, but this is something conservatives have known for a long time. Conservatives have always been called for spending cuts. The thing the left doesn't understand is that complete equality itself isn't sustainable. The society we live in punishes the successful and wealthy to prop up the poor. It's completely contrary to the darwinism and evolution that the left champions so much. We have created a reverse darwinism society where the poor propagate and flourish off of the wealth of the rich, and we borrow from China to sustain this broken model. As much as it makes you warm and fuzzy to think about a society where every person has equal opportunity to succeed, the reality is that kind of society is unsustainable. In fact, we are propping up a bastardization of that society off the borderline slave labour of billions of foreign workers. It's so hypocritical, it's comical.

Maybe because we believe that society is better off that way? They are doing their jobs and they are paid well to do it. I know you think you're a white knight sticking up for the little guy, but conservatives don't have the same jealousy and envy of CEOs and executives as you. Conservatives dream of being a wealthy CEO themselves and want to protect the freedom to reach that goal or to pursue their own success. Conservatives admire the CEOs and executives. Liberals jealously want to reap the rewards of the hard work of others and to have a comfortable life handed to everyone out of thin air. Anyone who succeeds is demonized in the socialist world.

The grass is always greener for the socialists. If it weren't for the greedy CEOs there would be no poverty in Africa, and cancer + HIV would be cured... like in Europe and Japan. Educate your damn self fool!

Ok now let's say your landscaping company became huge and was making you 2.2mil/yr, do you expect me to believe you would pass on all that profit to your employees? You could hire a manager for 200k/yr, and give all your 20 landscapers 100k/yr. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Or is it more likely that you pay your manager 200k, your employees 50k/yr, and pocket 1mil/yr while drinking mojitas in the caribbean? What if the manager you hired was exceptional and you wound up retired with a 50 million nest egg and 3 kids. Would you leave the money to your kids, or would you donate half of it to charity cuz there was slavery 150 years ago? Nope the difference between liberals and conservatives is that I would applaud you for taking the business risk and creating jobs for people. If the roles were reversed however, you would call me an evil elite and covet my wealth.

Canada "went into negative GDP"? Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE7815FN20110902 I suppose the hippies don't mind these corporate tax breaks because they are funding the "arts"? Stop the evil corporate elites and the race to the bottom!!! Give the US its jobs back!!

Thread should have ended here. It's sad that people try to compare this to protests against dictatorships. Some people complain just for the sake of complaining. If you don't want to invest in wall street, then just store your cash under your mattress or manage your own self-directed accounts. The sad thing is that the recession was caused by poor people defaulting on their mortgages and wiping out billions in collaterallized assets. Yes wall street fucked up in valuing those assets, but the error caused a market correction which the wealthy bore the brunt of anyway. How were people impacted by the credit crisis? Poor people who couldn't afford their homes defaulted and declared bankruptcy. They can no longer borrow hundreds of thousands that they can't afford to repay. The wealthy lost billions upon billions of asset value from the resulting stock market and real estate market crash. What exactly are we protesting here? What did wall street do? Is it that some hedge fund profited by taking short positions against the CMO exposure? So what? Wall street isn't a single entity. Some people make money and some people lose money. If you don't want to lose then don't play the game. The thing about our society is that people are free to do whatever they want. Become self-employed and sell your labour, take the cash from your labour and buy some land then learn carpentry, plumbing, etc. And build yourself a damn home. What does setting up tents and kitchens on wall st accomplish? Just gives hippies an excuse to waste more time thinking they are helping society by loafing around smoking pot and hating on corporations in tinfoil hats. What a joke.

Your posts are always so sickening. Do you actually believe any of the crap you write? People need food, so why do people work at mcdonalds when they can just cook some hamburgers on a bbq and sell them? Probably because the person would need to charge about $50 per burger to cover the costs of advertising and producing the burgers plus paying themselves a living wage. There's this thing called economies of scale which allows McDonald's to sell you a $3 burger and employ millions of people who have very little employable skills. So since you believe people should be entitled to the full profit of their labour, please tell me that you run your own business. If you don't, then why not? Your skills are so valuable and are being exploited! Become self-employed and stick it to the man! Once you're established, you can hire employees and managers to run your business for you. Make sure they get all your profits though!

By the time the next election rolls around, the economy rebounds, and the "tyrannical conservative majority" has been proven to be responsible and pragmatic, I think Harper could be looking at close to 50% of the vote. Other than that, the premise of this thread is retarded. It's sad that the left actually believes this kind of stuff. You have to be extremely detached from reality to come up with something like this. Almost every liberal voter I know would never vote for the NDP. The recent election is proof of that, the cons gained 600k votes and libs lost 800k from 2007. Where do you suppose most of the conservative gains came from? Most liberal voters think of the political spectrum as something like this: ....................Cons...Center...Libs................NDP...Soviet Union I don't know where they would place the "Liberal Democrat" party, but you can be sure that such a party won't be receiving 100% of liberal votes.

I also enjoyed the 2nd video because Daphne Wysham's arguments were so laughably weak. "We do need to be talking about job creation, and lets look at the numbers in terms of green energy jobs, the amount of good paying jobs that you could create for the long-term, not for the short-term, as would be the case with the tar sands, because the tar sands will eventually run out. What we need is a long term economic growth opportunity..." There's 'at least 1.7 trillion recoverable barrels of oil in Canada's tar sands... they won't be running out any time soon. And then there's the laughable argument that if USA backs out then China will follow the leadership of the US... come on, do people actually believe this stuff?

The people below the wealthy get many of their jobs and livelihoods from the wealthy. The poorest are the ones that benefit disproportionately from the existence of society, laws, military, infrastructure, and just enough misguided hippy votes to make sure they can keep milking the system. Please rename yourself middleclasssocialist, you're one of the furthest left on these boards. Oh and by the way, the wealthy would still pay th emost under a flast tax system. So what's your point?

Thank you for providing a perfect example to my argument. I don't know why people keep bringing up part time jobs and investing as counterpoints. I was clearly talking about starting a business. If people in strong financial situations like yourself were more encouraged to start up businesses employing 10-15 people then our economy would be in a much better situation. But who's gonna take on that kind of risk when each dollar they earn is taxed close to 50%? Instead, the wealthy are encouraged to keep the best corporate jobs and horde/invest their money in corporate stocks and bonds (in rrsps and tfsas). Result: less jobs and lower job mobility. Progressive taxation does a great job of keeping the lower/middle class down. Like I said at the start, I'm not against progressive taxation, but I think that anyone who creates jobs should be getting massive tax credits. Their employees pay taxes for them anyway (or at least are not consuming tax revenue via EI, welfare, etc.) The combination of progressive taxation and massive tax credits for job creation would be a huge incentive for the upper class to pursue business ventures to create jobs/competition.

Don't worry, he comes back on Easter.

I'll ignore your ridiculous math (I'm pretty sure someone making 150k buys more than $15 worth of stuff) and ask you this: Do you think someone making 150k consumes the same as someone making 50k and just pockets the remaining 100k and cackles maniacally at the lowly peasants? Nope, he consumes more and therefore pays more taxes. The credit card and consumerism model of the economy has failed. Consumption taxes are a step in the right direction away from the type of society that the lefties crave. "Hey government, can you borrow more from creditor nations and raise taxes on the boogeymen (aka corporations and the wealthy) to pay for our welfare, universal healthcare, cozy government jobs, and pension plans?? While you're at it, can you legislate lower interest rates on credit cards, and reduce consumption taxes, so that we can borrow even more from other people to pay for our consumption and other noble... ahem.. I mean 'human rights'??" The height of hypocrisy and greed. If you don't want to pay 13% tax on your income, invest/save it instead of buying yourself a new pair of $200 nike shoes and a $1000 led TV...

The obvious irreconcilable difference in our arguments is that you seem to believe in the (in my opinion fabricated) "emotional ground" that they are on from "losing a beloved politician". If the foundation of your argument lies on the premise that I am completely at odds with, obviously it will not be very convincing to me. I happen to believe that after all the crocodile tears are shed for a few days, these people will go on merrily with their lives looking for the next cause that they can use to seek attention. There hasn't been an environmental protest in a while, I'm sure we'll see some familiar faces crying over the baby seals and other cuddly critters soon enough.

And how would you know if I should be repulsed by the whole thing? If you're going to argue that I have no right to determine that the flamboyant emotions displayed over Layton's death are unnecessary, then you probably shouldn't be dictating that my repulsion is unwarranted.

I meant more the rioting of the 2011 Olympics variety (not so much rioting as exuberant jubilation and partying). You're the one who insisted on bringing sports into the discussion so I'm just making the analogy that the wailing/bawling is like when Montreal fans started rioting over a 1st round series win. It's unneccessary and attention-seeking. And Layton wasn't "beloved" until like 3 months ago. He was the Ralph Nader of Canadian politics until then. Would you not think it odd if Ralph Nader were given a state funeral and covered on the news 24/7 for a week after his death?

Do I really have to back up the fact that people will have more incentive to work for $1 of each dollar earned than $0.50? That people will work harder if they're entitled to more of the fruits of their labour? Does the Soviet Union ring a bell? If you need me to prove that statement, then I think we're done here.

The point I'm trying to make is that the reaction over Layton's death is akin to Canadiens fans rioting over a first round playoff win. The wailing/bawling or screaming/rioting should be reserved for the deaths of family and close friends or for a stanley cup win, not for the death of a likeable politician or a 1st round playoff win. Both are distasteful and attention-seeking.

So is your argument only going to be more anecdotal evidence? Saddam Hussein made a lot of money under Iraq's form of government, why don't we imitate that too? You don't need to worry about pre-emptively preparing defenses against a strawman argument when you haven't even presented a coherent argument for me to bother using a strawman in the first place.

1. I'm talking about people making 100-150k who can choose between relaxing while living a comfortable, moderately wealthy life, or risking some capital to try starting a business on the side to get to the next level of wealth. All the red tape and barely being able to earn $0.50 of the next marginal dollar earned severely discourages this. There is very little incentive for Canadians to try to start the next google or facebook or apple, etc. I'm not talking about billionaires. 2. Buffet was delivering papers when he was barely out of diapers and investing in stock markets by the time he was in high school.. He's not exactly a normal case. 3. For all his wealth, Buffet hasn't done much innovating to create more jobs. He simply finds the best innovators and provides capital to them so that they can generate jobs.