CPCFTW

Pretty obvious what ford is doing. Cut revenues to get the public of board with slashing the excessive salaries and benefits of municipal employees. Then just raise taxes to balance the budget and use the surpluses from the lowered service costs toprovide goodies before the next election. I don't care as long as the city stops paying ttc token collectors 50k with pensions and subsidizing people on welfare to live in lakeside mansions. Cut all that crap, bring compensation and benefit back down to acceptable levels, then spend whatever surpluses exist on expanding services.

The world population is almost 7 billion and the world gdp is $60 trillion. That's $8500 - $9000 per person in the world. I sure as hell don't want to do my job for $8500/yr... do you? Obviously the owners of the companies who took on the investment risk to help generate that GDP would have to be relieved of their ownership interest and gladly accept their handsome $8500/yr cheque. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet sure seem to want to cause poverty in 99 percent of the population: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation You people are sick. Like I said in my first post of the thread, you guys live in a fantasy world where everyone who makes money is "evil".

The solution is for the nanny state to save us all from the boogeymen.

And that's the problem. The left lives in a fantasy world where there is unlimited wealth to be redistributed. Like another poster said earlier in the thread, what if we raised taxed to 90% so that we could redistribute wealth to africa? How hard would people work? What would unemployment be like? I'm guessing slave labour would have to be used to get people to work while only taking home 10% of their income. Paint it whichever way you like, there is no greater tyranny than taxation. I'm not saying we should have 0% tax, but it's undeniable that higher taxation = lower freedom and overall wealth. The right is forward-looking and wants to get to the point where there is actually enough wealth in the world to eliminate poverty. (eg. A rising tide lifts all boats). The left wants the future now (eg. no child left behind, unions, living wage) and looks for boogeymen like corporations and ceos to blame for poverty.

If it's so easy why don't you just invent something? This is the crux of the left's position: jealousy. Anyone who is more successful than them is "evil".

How has Barrack Obama been a great thing? He's charismatic as hell but that's about it.

Topaz is a girl?!?! Down with Flaherty!!!

I must have struck a nerve with you. Is Topaz your 'partner'?

And where did I request "a non-threatening, non-bashing thread for Jim Flaherty and, by extension, Prime Minister Harper and the entire CPC government"?

What a clever and insightful post. Another Chemical Topaz gem.

I did no such thing. Grow up.

How about create a thread when he actually does something worth mentioning? Not write another editorial and then link to an outdated and irrelevant article?

Ok another useless Harper Cabinet bashing thread.

Nice month old article bro. The entire article is complaining that there are no cuts in the budget when we've already witnessed the cuts commencing. Another useless Topaz Harper-bashing thread.

I'll more than pay my "share" to all that while making 6 figures in the private sector. Don't worry, the missing taxes from the 6 months I worked as a courier won't make or break your DB pension plan. Your extortion of the Canadian taxpayer will go on without it! Next on Shwa's hit list: Single mothers not reporting the tips they earn as waitresses.

Poor public servants didn't get to tax my full income to pay for their DB pension plans!

You're paid by the paper + inserts and you only work 2 hours a day. It was about 5 years ago (I'm under 30). The good thing is that it's under the table (tax free... shhhh). So if you are working a 40k job and deliver papers in the mornings for another 10k, that incremental 10k is tax free. Of course this forum of public servants wouldn't understand working hard for your money.

I guess if you don't mind being a male housewife your whole life you can just elope with a rich heiress. Some of want to do something with our lives though. Also you only really work 2hrs a day, at the time it was more than min wage and could fit around the schedule of a ft job. 600/mo is enough to pay for most of the rent if your girfriend's dad and the Canadian taxpayer aren't doing it for you.

I've been both a courier for a newspaper and a worker at a fast food chain, and I can tell you that being a courier is far more enjoyable even given the 3am wakeup times. As a courier you get to be outside and breath fresh air and walk/jog about with nothing but time breathing down your neck/stressing you out. As a fast food worker, you barely move 5 feet for 8hrs inside with customers being rude at you and an uptight high school dropout manager breathing down your neck for coming into work 5 mins late. I made something like 150/wk as a courier (with no benefits and waking up at 3am 6 days a week.. Got to sleep in until 5am on Sundays!). Letter carriers make around 4-5 times that with 7 weeks vacation, bankable sick days, one of the best pension plans in the country, and (correct me if I'm wrong) don't really have to start their route until 9-10am or even later. Poor guys.

Well it is where he'll be living for at least the next 4 years. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/home home    1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household.

"As much in fixed income as possible" is still usually a minority of the portfolio. A "conservative" portfolio might have 30-40% invested in FI. See: http://www.thedividendguyblog.com/pension-fund-asset-allocations-you-can-use/ Why are you still talking about now bankrupt companies? We are talking about public service unions that are bankrupting and oppressing the Canadian taxpayer and private sector. The argument is to stop giving DB pension plans out to new hires. No one is saying we should renege on the current DB plans.

What are you talking about? The TSX board wanted this deal. It was the rest of the Canadian financial industry (and apparently TMX Group shareholders) who were against it. I think most people (myself included) are happy about the deal falling through.

It has very little to do with interest rates and everything to do with stock market performance. The problem is that DB plans put the risk of market underperformance on the guarantor... in this case the Canadian taxpayer. If we were in a bull market indefinitely, then the DB pension plans would be sustainable. The problem is that the types of return they assume are completely unrealistic. In the last 10 years, S&P 500 returns have been around 0%. When return expectations of the equity portion of a DB pension plan portfolio are in the neighborhood of 10% and equity markets are going nowhere or backwards, then the guarantors of these plans (including the Canadian taxpayer) go bankrupt. An interest rate increase would lower the price of issued bonds (the only asset class in portfolios that had done well), and also lower equity returns as investors move funds into new higher yield bonds. Higher interest rates would actually further reduce portfolio performance. The only thing they will do is increase the discount rate on future pension obligations. But that is just an actuarial or paper gain. It's irrelevant if portfolios continue to stagnant.

Harper can renovate his home when he wants to. I dunno the relevance of or even wtf you are saying with this: "I think, since Harper has had the PMO, the stampede had gotten money every year and last year, the Tories said events are only allowed for 3 years and events were denied. If I'm wrong on that, I certainly apologize, but I don't think I am." Some kind of crazy lefty babble I assume.

No one thinks 50k is a huge wage. People think 50k + a DB pension plan + benefits For newly hired mailmen, cashiers, and letter sorters is. Even 50k is a lot for the aforementioned occupations. As people have mentioned the DB pension plus benefits probably nearly doubles the value of total compensation. If you think high school dropouts in the oppressed underclass can get 100k compensation jobs, then you have no grasp on reality. You guys either just have no idea how much value there is these DB pension plans, or don't realize that they are non-existant in the underclass private sector. Here's a great article on how greedy and out of touch with reality these public service unions are: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/postal-dispute-was-never-about-pensions-new-hires/article2076243/ They wanted to extort the Canadian taxpayer into hiring more workers with no work to do at 50k + DB pension plans. They would find work to do by checking up on the elderly and refusing to use automated letter sorting technology. If there was a shortfall of revenue, they would use their legislated monopoly to charge higher postal rates for the elderly check-ups. Sickening entitlement mentality among this class of "elites".