Renegade

I certainly don't see them reflecting my spending priorities. I suspect a large part of the population feels the same. I don't see that we've really given the taxpaying population input outside of the election process. If they did, my guess many programs which certain polititians favoured would fall by the wayside (eg official bilinguilism). Well that's where we disagree in perspective. You believe that the rich are rich because society has given them the riches, I believe they have earned it themselves. For the most part what Society has done is demand a cut in return for not forcibly extacting more. I don't think that democracy demands that all people have an equal voice in everything and there are many examples in our society of unequal voices. People can have an equal voices in one area (eg social policy such as the legality of abortion) however can have an unequal voices in other (eg spending priorities as above).

I disagree. The "latest fad" as you put it is the people's will. Part of the reason we have not seen funding for areas which people want, is because politicians think they know better. I've seen their spending choices. These are the same chief bureaucrats which ran up huge debts in the 70s and 80s. I'll take my chances with the people. In my view this does not distort democracy at all. The people who pay should get more say in what the money is spent on.

For the moment, let us take as a given that society needs a population increase in order to keep the funding of social programs intact, and that this is the purpose of society providing a stimulus to parents for having children. Consider the following: 1. The incentive is inefficient and costly. It targets all parents both current and potential parents. There is no real need to incent current parents as they have already made the decision to have a child and that child will grow up to be part of the workforce. So in that sense the incentive is wasted. It would far more efficient to incent only new children with an incentive (eg a baby bonus). Further, since many of these children were going to be born anyway, we can be narrow the target by for example only targeting the 3rd child or more. If we wanted to be even more coercive, we should only give the bonus to children born in wedlock, so as not to encourage single mothers to have children. 2. If we were trying to engineer a population increase we should encourage only the groups who society would encourage to have kids. For example, it may make sense to encourage a wealthy couple to have a child, where it may not make sense to encourage a low-income single parent to have a child. This make sense to society because it would need to contribute less to the child's upbringing if the parents were able to afford it themselves. Similarly it may make sense to encourage a family in a high-employment area to have a child, but not in an area of high unemployment. 3. Immigration may be a more cost effective substitute for population growth than organic population growth. The delay between stimulus and desired effect is considerable in encouraging the population to reproduce. That delay is considerably reduced with immigration. In addition, society (ours anyway) doesn't have to bear the burden of educating and skilling the immigrant (assuming selective immigration) in the same way as we would a newborn.

I for one have not been complaining that voters make poor choices. In my view the government needs to be in service of the population, not the other way around. In any case the taxpayer should have a say in how their taxes are spent. Also, I never suggested taht we should decide how much tax we pay. What I suggested is we should decide how the taxes we pay are allocated. Meaning that let's say it was calculated that your tax bill was $10000. You should have a say in what programs the $10000 goes to fund. I don't follow what you mean by this, and how it relates to the topic we are discussing.

Liquor is a physical product that can be taxed directly. This means gov't still has the ability to get the lion's share of revenue sales and, more importantly, can limit demand by increasing the price.With gambling the gov't could take part of the profits from private operators but it has no way to limit demand for gambling by increasing the 'price'. Are you saying that your distinction is based upon the fact that with liquor the government taxes revenue but with gambling the government taxes profit? So why can't the government tax gambling revenue instead of profit?

An election is too coarse-grained a tool. It only permits a "all or none" choice of a party's platform (assuming they even get around to implementing it). Elections were fine in an age where it was too cumbersome to collect people's feedback on their spending priorites, but in today's world those priorities can be collected with very little overhead. As to your second point, they fact is like it or not the buger flippers have a say in who runs the enterprise via their vote in an election. I don't think it is any more of a stretch to ask them to choose how their tax dollars shoudl be spent. You are asking do I trust the people to decide? My answer is yes I do, because although there will be burger-flippers who have no clue, in aggreate, the population will be able to decide. It's basic fairness, its the people's money, let them decide where to spend it.

Would it be interesting democratic exercise, if as part of completing your tax return, you were able to assign what categories your tax dollars are allocated to. Perhaps a certain portion is mandatiorially allocated to fixed costs, but the rest can be left to the taxpayer to decide. Then it can form the basis of the following years budget which the governmetn would be obligated to follow.

What does this mean? How is a family with one income subsidizing a two income family? I dont follow your logic. You think one income families don't pay taxes? Not at all. I think they do, but that doesn't mean they subsidize two income families, afterall two-income families pay taxes too.

What does this mean? How is a family with one income subsidizing a two income family? I dont follow your logic.

Mimas, aren't you the guy who said this? Now your arguing that the parent who stays home is lazy and shouldn't be paid by taxpayers for bearing and raising children? See any contradiction?

What I don't understand about your postion is that you favour the government being in the gambling business but not in the business of selling liquor. Why the distinction? Don't the issues you have stated apply just as much?

It is not my intent to debate the benefits of unionization in this thread. People can unionize if they feel it is in their interest to do so. I don't feel it is in mine and feel I can more than adequately represent myself in negotiations with my employer without a union. In addition, I would rather rely on having a diffrentiated and not easly replaced skills as my form of job protection rather than resorting to saftey in numbers.

For the most part I agree especially with the first reason you gave. It is precisely because governments lack the will to resist. Yes, but for many, many of these, they are administrators and office workers and can in fact be easily replaced. The "united we stand, devided we fall" argument is no different than for the private sector. Unfortunately the cost of being "united" is that individual talents and abilities become secondary to membership in the group with respect to gains from renumeration and benefits. I for one loath such a tradeoff.

So the standard of living has gone up, but most individuals aren't making real gains. So maybe now you can show some stats to demonstrate what you mean?

Yes this is exactly correct. We have created gains in our standard of living through free trade in goods, by the use of cheap labour in other countries. We can further extend gains by extending use of cheap labour domestically as there are many tasks the work for which, cannot be exported. Now this only works if the labour is in fact cheap. The pyramid doesn't work, if suddenly the imported labour is entitled to the high-wage and benefits the domestic population is used to. I couldn't agree more. In my view, if we don't do so we will face a situation where countries which do employ guest workers as cheap labour, will make standard of living gains which will be far above ours. Many legislators in the US see the benefit of the cheap labour has had on the US economy. That is one reason for a push to move them to legitmate status. They face the same arguments about protecting the domestic labour force as has been expressed in this thread.

I am guilty of phrasing badly what I meant. I don't dispute that associations and unions both have an objective to better wages and working conditions. What I dispute is that you can group them in response to my previous post. I didn't mean to imply that all unions are unions of unskilled and uneducated workers, but for those who are unskilled and uneducated, but nevertheless belong to a union, the union will provide some protection against job loss. The weakend power of the union means weakned protection for those who are unskilled and uneducated. I don't believe that is the reason for higher unionization rates in public sector. I believe it is because simply the government lacks the will or motivation to stand up to unionization in the same way a private enterprise would. No doubt there would probably be some public service trades unionized, but the penetration is far higher in the public service. This leads to the taxpayer having to fund artifically higher wage rates for those in the public sector.

Can we see a report on that statistic first ? How we measure Standard of living: linkMeasured in US Dollars the GDP/capta has gone from $10,503 in 1960 to $25,496 in 1998. 14 Nations: Gross Domestic Product Per Capita I don't have statistics for the union membership for Canada, but for the US: link

I would dispute that association is the same objective as a union. The vast majority of the examples you have pointed to are public service. Tell you anything?

Those jobs which once existed were well paid at the expense of the consumer. The consumer paid for relatively overpriced goods to subsidize high wage rates. As consumers were freed of this constraint, the well-paid low-skill jobs disappared. It is as it should be. Yes it has affected the "average" worker. In general the "average" worker's standard of living is better. In general the "average" unionized worker is no doubt worse off. The point is, if the domestic population expects to be buying ford explorers, they better be preparing themselves to do more than mcjobs. It is completely unrealistic to expect that mcjobs should geared to being able to afford the employee an explorer.

What makes ours less important? I didn't say they were less important. I view both as equally important, but if they are both equally important it is a not a reason to restrict the flow of labour. We can import the fruit. But I'll take a pass on the landscaping. Not all fruit is grown where the labour is. How many vineyards do you know in Mexico? And if we use grapes as an example, you sometimes need your domestic crop picked (eg for icewine).

One example is the construction industry in Alberta and Ontario. These are highly paid positons, yet the number of new construction is limited by the number of skilled workers. How is it these industries are not offering a "realistic" wage? There may be other positions which are the economic value of the work is less than minimium wage. If the home grown workforce is not willing to take these positions, why should I not be able to use foreign labour. As an example let's consider a domestic cleaning service. Currently only a small minority of households use such a service because the economic value is not worth the cost (ie they clean their houses themselves). If such positions were staffed with low wage workers, there would be a much higher uptake of such services, providing both opportunities to the foreign workers and making life more enjoyable to the employer. There's that word again that everyone likes to use without clarification. In the free and willing exchange of labour for wages, no one is exploited. Is the worker exploiting the employer by using the wages he is paid to "line his pockets". If what your referring to is that guest workers can threaten the entitlement of unskilled, unedcuated, and those unwilling to work hard, then I have no sympathy for the domestic segment that falls into that category, and in my view the guest worker who is much more deserving of that job. Do you have any evidence that there are a finite number of well paying jobs in the country? In fact the shortage of skills and the high labour rates in many professions show that the are many professions begging for canidates. This is nonsense. It may sometimes be in the best interest of the employer, but certainly there is no onus on the employer to do so. The onus is on individuals to find a profession which suits their skills and knowledge, and has suffient employment prospects, then they must undertake the training or education required to make themselves employable.

Education and skills don't mean much anymore. White collar jobs are being outsourced more and more. If you want to earn a good wage, get in a union or a job protected by a professional association. Really? How do you explain that our standard of living has been going up, despite the fact that union membership has been going down? True, that still unions provide job protection to the unskilled and uneducated, but as you can see by many examples where unions once dominated, union protection is disappearing as it is forced to deal with globalization.

Oh really? That's how you define "labour"?I think of "labour" as people - with hopes, desires, wishes, family, friends, language, habits and so on. An imported cellphone is just, well, an imported cellphone. I can see why we should allow cellphones to move freely across borders. I'm not so certain I would want to allow people to move freely across borders. I was speaking of labour in reference to free trade, however to your point that labour is people with hopes, desires, wishes, etc, is not the foreign labour people too? Do they not also have hopes, desires, wishes, etc? In people terms, what makes their hopes, desires, and wishes less important than those of the domestic population? I think you've got the chain of reasoning backwards. Because we have allowed free trade in goods and services, people don't have to migrate anymore. True for some products and services but not for others. Maybe you can tell me how I can offshore fruit picking, or landscaping and I'll agree that that free trade makes it irrevelant that we can put up barriers to labour.

If "thousands upon thousands of unspoiled young people" are thinking they can live the dream working McDonalds or picking fruit they truly are living in a dream world, and its time to burst their bubble. Unless people get the education and skills to differentiate themselves from an uneducated, unskilled worker, they will deserve the wage rates of the uneducated and unskilled (read poverty rates). The days of being able to get a great job, afford a house and one spouse at home, all with barely a high-school education are long gone. Everyone needs to get used to it.

True. I don't think the Canadian minimum wage standard should apply. In the context of free trade, we don't have an expectation that foreign made goods shoudl be priced at the same level as Canadian made goods do we? Second, don't confuse free trade in goods and free mobility in labour. The two ideas are distinct. I can see several legitimate reasons to restrict the free mobility of labour, but almost none for limitations on free trade. I disagree. Labour is simply the raw material resource to produce a good or service. The same reasons we think that there shoudl be the free flow of resources apply to labour and I don't see a need to distinguish. Since we have put artificial barriers preventing the free flow of labour, organizations are now working around that barrier by offshoring. Think of it this way, if in a capitialist society we believe that an enterprise (or individual) should be entitled to hire the best skilled worker at the most optimal price, why should that stop at our borders? To be honest, I think that despite what we try to do, our increased globalized world will force change. Increasingly call-centers, tax-returns, and IT development is done in India. As infrastructure develops, you will see a continued trend of the use of foreign labour applied to positions which were previously held domesticly. To summarize, if you won't let the labour in, the work will go out.