Renegade

Memo to you, John Stewart, George Clooney et al...the cold war is over dude - you lost. huh? WTF are you talking about?

Well apparently myself and other parents are willing to pay it because the income generated by putting a child in daycare is outweighed by income generated by the parent who is now able to work. (Looking it from a purely financial perspective for a moment) Well there you go!! It IS about price isn't it? Earlier you bemoned (quite rightly) the meagre income the daycare provider was making, yet at the same time you seem unwilling to allow rates to be charged which would open up spaces and provide childcare providers with additional income. You can't have it both ways.

Drea, thanks for the explaination. What I don't understand in the scenario above, if as you state there is a demand from parent for spaces, whay didn't the friend of yours charge more? Surely if parents are on 3 year waitlists they are willing to pay much more than $400 per child. This in turn would incent others to run home daycare, opening more spaces. For comparison when my daughter was in Daycare I paid about $750 per month.

Drea, yes your points are valid. Both CPP and healtcare are structured as huge Ponzi schemes where the future generations are forced to fund the expenses of the current. This depends upon ever increasing population bases. In my view this is financial madness. At some point it will collapse as our healthcare system seems to be doing now. What we should be focused on is changing these Ponzi schemes, not using them as justification to promote further inequities. It would much more viable if instead of the crazy healthcare schemes, we instead had something like mandatory RRSP for healthcare, where you forced to overcontribute when you are young and minimaly use the systems, and those overcontributions are drawn-down as you age and make more intensive use of the system. CPP as is today should be replaced with mandatory RRSP contributions.

Birth rates have dropped as our standard of living has increased, contraceptive options became available, attitudes changed, and women had more options than to just stay home and give birth. Many of the countries you cite as having negative natural rates of population growth also have comparatively generous social programs. Personally I don't give a damn if people do or don't have children. Its their choice, there are more than enough people in the world and there will be for the forseeable future. What's the big issue if we use immigration to address labour shortages instead of artificially bribing people to have kids. What exactly do you think sex is if not a biological urge to procreate? You cite studies, care to provide a reference or is it more of your bullshit? Frankly if your explaination is that people are too stupid to see the connection between sex and having kids, I'm pretty sure I know where the stupidity lies. Anyone over the age of 8 made the connection a long time ago, yet many continued to have sex. Why?

Maybe someone can explain this because I'm not getting it. When I was looking for daycare, I had no problem finding available daycare spaces. Mind you, they didn't come cheap. What cities have a lack of daycare and what is the obstacle in creating more? Surely if parents were willing to pay the price for purely profit reasons, more spots would open up. Why is this different than other demand which needs to be filled?

Sam, first you solicit for opinions. Then you resort to name-calling to those who have a different opinion than your own. Interesting way to encourage debate. If what you had wanted a bunch of cheerleaders echoing your opinion, you should have stated so explicitly.

Yes it is costly to raise kids. Having kids of my own I know exactly how much. The equation is simple if it is too costly for you to have kids, DON'T HAVE ANY. You have a choice to make, but if you choose to have kids, stop whining about how you would have become poor because of it, and stop expecting a government handout for the choice YOU made.

Perhaps you should spend some time to ponder before you type. Clearly the world's population has been growing without any subsidy required. People will have children regardless if someone pays them to do so. They will do so because nature have created biological urges and needs for them to do so. Frankly your argument that if we don't pay for people to raise kids, they won't is absurd. The almost unfettered growth of the world population proves this. Where are you getting that we will be faced with massive labour shortages? Care to post any references?

The younger working generation will produce the food, and treat the retired generation because they will be PAID to do so. There are numerous industries from retirement homes to geriatric care which cater to taking care of the aged. These are not charity industries. Where there is a need an industry will fulfill it. I for one am not expecting the younger generation to fund my retirement, nor am I expecting that I shoud have to foot the bill for the care and feeding of children other than my own.

I can't believe how nearsighted, greedy and plain stupid you neo-cons are. It's simple: Paying people to stay home costs money! Paying people to stay home means fewer workers in the job market. Too few workers in the job market makes it more expensive and difficult to run a business. When it's difficult to run a business, business moves to China. Bussiness moving to China is bad news for the Canadian economy! Bad economy means that you are out of work. Being out of work is worse than paying taxes. It's that simple. If you took a single course in Economics it would be obvious to you. But you clearly didn't and you don't even have the common sense to realize that paying people to waste their potential and talents at home cannot be good for the economy. If this is too complicated for you to see, will you argue that closing primary and secondary schools in favour of paying people to home-school their children would be a good thing too? I saw nothing mcqueen625's post which said that he advocated PAYING people to stay home.

A little one-sided in our view aren't we?

What you hear are different opinions, we are not all saying the same thing. IMO one parent (either one) should stay home and raise the children if that is what they choose to do and can afford to do so. If not they will need to find a childcare solution. In any case they should be fully responsible for the financial burden of child rearing. I certainly understand that not everyone has the luxury of being a stay-at-home parent and certainly I am not judgemental to those parents who cannot or choose not to stay home. Responsible parenting would suggest that the breadwinner's income should be protected against loss by taking life insurance. I'm not sure if that happened in your case, but wouldn't you agree that the parent bears responsiblity for providing for their dependant children in case of their demise? This argument is a red herring. The jobs exist to supply a demand. If that demand no longer exist, then labour must adapt to where demand does exist. You statement implies backwards logic. I can understand the logic of the young person who didn't see why she was required to financially support children whom she didn't create nor was provided input into the decision to create. Maybe it would help if you articulated your position on why you think everyone else should shoulder the financial burden of your kids and why it should not be exclusively the parent's responsibliity.

I don't see how you can fault any one political party for the price of houses in Vancouver. Many global cities of similar size have housing costs which are higher than Vancouver or Toronto. House prices are driven up by demand. Everyone seems to expect a house with a yard and two cars. To meet that level of expectation two income earners are probably needed, however if expectations are lowered, so will the need for high incomes to sustain such a lifestyle.

It is really up to parents to choose the best option on how to raise kids for their circumstances. I don't think that advocating a "one solution fits all" is viable. Of course there are limits. We wouldn't let parents leave young kids home alone, however within limits parents should be free to choose if they stay home or arrange an alternate care provider.

Rogers and Bell Canada Ink National Broadband Wireless Deal Actually its not true that state ownership is the only viable way to go. The story above proves that competitors can also cooperate when it is in their interest. In this case it is in both of their interest to build one network and share bandwidth however still sell it separately. No state ownership or government intervention is necessary.

Because, having children is not a financially rational decision. Biological urges for sex and to procreate as well as societal pressures are far more important influences in people having kids. It would seem that the people who are better off financially, are more motivated by other influences (such as a persuit of a career) than beiing fulfilled raising children. So in general, the people who opt not to have children are financiall better off because not only do they save on the cost of raising kids, but they also have more time and energy to persue endevours which will enhance their income.

Why do you think we tax tabacco and alcohol so that the retail price is many times more than the actual cost. It is to discourage one behaviour while implicitly encouraging another. Same idea.

Actually it wouldn't cost anything. Just make childcare more expensive and then it becomes more ecomically beneficial for someone to stay home instead of working. Just to be clear, I'm not actually advocating increasing childcare cost. I'm just pointing out that if you stated benefit is the betterment of society, an economically punitative measure may also "better" society. We don't need economic intervention to insure that people will have kids. Nature has done that for us by giving people sexual urges. Its worked for all of human history and will continue to work quite well. If economically we actually need more people we can make that up with immigration. It is hard to understand why the taxpaying population at large should be forced to subsidize what is essentially your "preference" for a domestically grown population.

I'm not really convinced that it is in the country's benefit, afterall, the children will be cared for anyway. Is Quebec which provides subsidized childcare any better off than other provinces? If so, by what measure? To turn your argument around, perhaps it is in the country's benefit to encourage more parents to stay home and look after their children. To that end, perhaps they shoudl tax childcare to make it prohibitively expensive so that more parents are encouraged to stay home. I'd be just fine with people having no or less kids. Who says we need kids?

Are you opposed to public schools? Because they've worked out very well for our country and, one could argue, contributed greatly to its overall wealth. If it were up to me I wouldn't have funded public schools the way they are today. Either the parents should fund their kids education, or the public education should be considered an "investment" which should be repaid.

If your asking to be convinced that the Liberal proposal is in your self-interest than it is no contest. No doubt the Conservative plan is in your best interest. But is it fair? In my view neither the Liberal nor the Conservative plan should be adopted. They are both subsidies one direct and to a broad target, the other indirect to a narrow target. The Conservative daycare proposal is a subsidy which contravenes their philosophy of self-reliance. In my view it was simply an election ploy, albiet a successful one. In the end I agree with those who feel that if it is your kids then it should be your financial responsiblity, and the government should have no business redistributing income from everyone else to those who choose to raise kids.

I have suggested raising the GST to 10%, and eliminating income tax as the best way to help those in the lower tax brackets. If one makes minimum wage, who cares how a 1-2% reduction in GST affects the price of a mink, a jaguar and a pail of caviar. (Just don't let the mink and the Jaguar fight over the pail of fish eggs) A GST reduction doesn't affect the price of caviar since it is considerd a food item and thus is GST exempt.

Animals DO enjoy protection the law. We pass laws on animal cruelty and do charge and punish people who trangress such laws. I think what you mean is that animals do not enjoy the same rights protection as humans do in our charter. This is true, but it doesn't prevent us from passing laws to protect them, in the same way we would pass laws to protect the environment even though the environment is not an entity which is protected under the charter of rights. I do believe that there is a moral basis for society even in a non-religious one. There are some principles which we can basicly agree are wrong. Cruelty to animals is one of those and bestality would fall into that category because the animal is incapable of consent, and as such to inflict such an act would be indeed cruel. Even when we allow ourselves to consume animals for sustinance, we still enforce laws to prevent unnecessary cruelty in their killing.

There have been certain practices which society has stereotyped as taboos. Two examples are incest and suicide. The reason that these have evolved into taboos is simply societal self-preservation. A society, which endorsed incest, was likely to yield offspring that (because of the constrained gene pool) was more likely to amplify genetic defects. Similarly a society, which shunned incest, was more likely to have offspring with fewer genetic defects. In my view this is the reason why incest is a taboo in virtually all societies. Having said that, I don't believe there is anything morally wrong with incest between consenting adults. Our revulsion is a conditioned response which if we really thought about we would see as irrational.