CPCFTW

what I'm saying is that we likely need at least a 10yr freeze on the wages of every public servant at every level of government for the value of their labour to even remotely approach their wages. The worker's revolution went too far and now it is the public service workers oppressing the rich. quote]

Boohoo your father was stuck making 60k with 3 months vacation for telling kids to read a textbook. Rise up against the man!

Oh right like sitting in a chair making sure people put the token in the right slot. I'm talking about ttc workers right now. Don't get me started on other public service jobs. The starting wage in the federal govt is like 45k. Work 30 yrs at 45k as an office admin reading emails and organizing bake sales, with a 2% increase per year for inflation you are making 81k. Then get a promotion and work 5 more yrs at 110k, and you get a lifelong pension of over 70k. Thanks for all your hard work organizing bake sales and telling us about your kids soccer games.quote]

Lmao I can't believe you guys are trying to defend litter pickers making 40k off the hard work of people who really contribute to the economy. If you are picking litter for a living then you shouldn't be making a "living wage" let alone 40k. And what relevance does the vancouver cost of living for homeowners have? If you are picking litter for a living, don't buy a home in one of the most expensive places in the world to do so. You guys need to get out into the real world.

Hahahahaha you can't be serious. $20/hr is around 40k. Wtf is "living" to you?

Private companies already pay the minimum wage they can get away with without the interference of unions. If it is an unskilled job, they pay minimum wage. If they want to retain the employee because they have unique skills, they pay a wage comparable to others that possess those unique skills. I won't lose any sleep if litter pickers aren't making 40k anymore. Taxpayer money isn't charity.

Go ahead and demand it or change your own oil. Then the mechanic will be out of business or be forced reduce prices. People are demanding the mechanic's services at that rate. No one is demanding $20/hr litter pickers and $26/hr token collectors for the TTC other than the unions. I pay $121/mo for a TTC pass because I have to pay some guy to sleep on a chair and make 6 figures (after OT), and for high school drop outs to make 40k picking up discarded wrappers. A private company could hire a college student to do these jobs for minimum wage. Do you think that the market demanded those services at that price when cashiers in the private sector make minimum wage? Funny thing is that most cashiers are friendlier and more courteous than any TTC employee I've ever met. Why? Because they can be fired for being consistently rude. TTC employees are basically untouchable. The unions exploit a natural monopoly to hold us hostage for our money and reduce the productivity of our society. They must go. Down with public service unions!!! :angry:

Why do public service unions even exist? It's not like the governments are going to take advantage of workers and pocket excess profits. Public service unions exist only to extort the canadian taxpayer out of his/her hard earned money. Why are ttc token collectors and litter pickers making $20-30/hr for tgheir unskilled labour? Not only are taxpayers being extorted, jobs are being destroyed by paying ridiculous wages for subpar service. We can hire twice as many people for minimum wage to pick litter and watch people put tokens in a bucket. Or hire the same amount of people and use the savings to upgrade the subway line.

Actually deficits are more like a business operating at a loss and using debt to finance operations (rather than investment).

"Wait a PM can have a majority government with 40% of the popular vote?? The PM gets to appoint senators rather than have them elected?!? That's not fair (anymore)!!!"

Canadians elected the man who gets to appoint Senators. Canadians elected to give Harper the power to appoint these senators, hence they were elected. It's only an undemocratic process when a conservative PM gets to do it. Try to keep up.

And who voted for the other senators? These senators were elected to their positions when Canada elected Harper as PM. It's too bad the left hates democracy when it doesn't benefit the liberals or NDP.

That's where you're wrong, the US is currently in a debt crisis and has to vote to raise the debt ceiling again or it will be insolvent before the end of the year. Greece's bond rating was recently downgraded to junk status and they will have to roll over their debt with 10+% interest rate bonds when the market risk free interest rate is around 2%. In order to secure loans from the IMF, they required severe cutbacks or "austerity measures". Keep in mind, that is the 4th round of cutbacks only. That is the effect of Greece adopting your brilliant idea to borrow now and tax later. Now an entire generation of Greeks are stuck with the tab for their parents and grandparents greed. That happened barely a year ago, where have you been? Edit: Greece just doubled the cutbacks to secure more loans from the EU and IMF since it can't borrow from "the german bond market" (ie. capital markets) anymore: http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110518-710378.html

Source? I doubt that very much given the size of the rental market. Most homeowners also have a mortgage that far outweighs the value of their equity. And the government doesn't tax you out of your home equity. And your equity is invested in your home, not a "risk free" asset like Canadian government bonds. That $10,000 could be worth $1000 in 7 years if there is a collapse in the real estate market. You just have no legs to stand on in this argument.

I'm not talking about the right to secede, I'm talking about the right to NOT secede. That land was granted to the Cree nation, they have the right to decide if they want to be a part of a joke nation like Quebec or a part of Canada. If the people of Montreal and Gatineau don't want to be a part of Quebec, then Canada won't turn its back on its countrymen because some 2-3 million European wannabes in Quebec City and rural farmers on the East coast voted to create their own country.

Hey guys I just had a great idea! Stephen Harper borrows $300 trillion from the German bond market (at 10%) and blows the money on giving every Canadian 10 million dollars. You spend 1 million dollars on whatever you want and save $9 million at 10% interest. In 400 years, our great great great great great grandchildren pay the Germans back with the proceeds from our 9 million investment plus Stephen Harper (he is immortal right?) hikes taxes enough to cover the extra million we took. I ask every one of you to look at this simple arithmetic. It's foolproof!

The majority of Canadians don't have 10k in the bank to save at the risk free rate hovering around 1-3% right now when they have mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and other debt to pay off at 4-20% interest. Taxes don't come out of your savings, they come out of personal income which is subject to change over 7 years. Borrowing more will reduce the value of currency which will change the purchasing power of 18000 in those scenarios. You can buy a luxury car with 18000 British Pounds, you can buy a pair of Nike shoes with 18000 Yen. Jack Layton might be prime minister in 7 years and decide to borrow more and then Canada defaults on our loans and the Canadian economy collapses. The power of taxation is not limitless, we can't just borrow endlessly and then tax some random generation of Canadians 500% of their incomes so that we don't default on our loans. And there are countless other flaws with your 'model'.

Yes government spending should be reduced but your argument about the indifference between taxation and borrowing is laughable. It's not my "logic" that issuing more bonds would cause inflation and weaken the currency. It's basic economics. Higher supply of money = lower demand (demand being reflected by the value of the CAD). The bank of Canada's mission statement is to keep inflation low and stable, and it does this by reducing the supply of money. I don't know what you're talking about regarding Chretien and Martin paying off debt with a low dollar... Canadian debt is denominated in CAD, so it doesn't matter what the exchange rate is. Do you have any more nonsense to post?

I don't think even you know what you're arguing. You're just typing for the sake of typing.

Would love to see Quebec carved up to end this nonsense. First the Inuit lands can secede into Nunavut, then the Cree nation can form another province, while Montreal and Gatineau can be absorbed into Ontario. That would leave Quebec a nice weiner shaped passage along the St. Lawrence for all the weiner Francophones to collect and dream of being Europeans together.

Fine you can secede, but you'll have to leave Gatineau and Montreal to Canada since they voted strongly against secession: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quebecref.PNG They are close enough to the borders of Ontario that it will be no problem to redraw borders. They should have the right to self-determination too right? Oh and lets not forget the cree nation that voted 95% in favour of staying in Canada. You can keep the rest of Quebec and Quebec city and start your new utopian society of 2 million beggars. Good luck.

What makes you think a guy with the name CPCFTW wants higher taxes?

Here's another article: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2007/07/26/meet-the-salaries-of-the-workers-who-move-toronto.aspx Roll back wages by 30% and we'll still have litter pickers still making $15/hr, ttc collectors making $18-19/hr, bylaw officers making $20/hr. There are college and university students working at Starbucks, Subway, McDonalds, etc. for $10-11/hr who would love to have those jobs and save the city billions. Why not have some kind of arrangement with the province/schools whereby low income students are hired to work these unskilled TTC jobs and are paid minimum wage and another $5-6/hr towards their tuition or student loans as well? This would save taxpayers billions, reduce the debt burden of students, and create incentives for those who are "oppressed by the elites" to obtain higher education.

I'm referring to Canada's own overspending problems. Private sector unions are much less of a problem than public sector unions in a globalized environment. Corporations can just pack up and move in the face of an overbearing union. Globalization limits the power of private unions. We have given public sector unions an unwarranted power... IMO unskilled labour like garbagemen and bus drivers shouldn't be able to unionize and extort Canadian taxpayers into paying them 2-3x the value of their labour. Check out the salaries of TTC employees in this 2007 article: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2007/07/26/ttc-token-taker-wage-26-58-hour.aspx Should litter pickers be making 2x minimum wage, or token collectors 2.5x? Do you think they have earned the right to be paid more than twice as much as a Mcdonald's employee? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind working 15hrs/wk part time sitting in a chair collecting tokens. I could work 7.5/hrs a day on weekends and make 1500/mo on top of my salary. A full-time fare collector is making over 50k. Why should high school dropouts who are frequently rude, sometimes incompetent, and are alleged to have occasionally assaulted customers be making this kind of money? This type of overspending runs rampant in the public sector because of unionized unskilled labour.

I'm not saying I'm smarter than you. I just take offense to you saying I'm parroting anyone. I hardly follow politics, and when I did follow it heavily when I was 19-20, like I've said before, I was a borderline commie. I was a hardcore liberal, loved the daily show and colbert report, and thought communism could work if implemented properly. I don't watch fox news, or listen to rush limbaugh, or believe in lynching all gays, I'm just espousing my own political views which I've developed over the past 7-8 yrs and which happen to reflect the ideals of the right wing. I mean, I'm not the one with 7000 posts on a political forum... clearly you are more involved in, and have more exposure to political propaganda than I do. If anyone is doing any parroting, it is you.