Moonlight Graham
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Posts posted by Moonlight Graham
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I have some magic beans to sell you.
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10 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:
I googled "Block Jewish students" and only came back with Twitter accounts alleging this. That said, there are plenty of reputable sources that are documenting anti Semitic incidents and indeed even in Canada, they protest in Jewish neighbourhoods.
I don't think that the public is charged with condemning terrorists but we are charged with holding our fellow citizens to account for such racist behaviour.
There's a few videos on Twitter
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36 minutes ago, robosmith said:
Which is the student being "blocked"? I don't see anyone trying to get past the "chain."
LOL are you serious? There's chains being formed to block Jewish students across different US campuses. We don't know exactly why this chain was formed or where the Jewish student was trying to access, but it's very clear they're trying to block that Jewish student from going somewhere.
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2 hours ago, CdnFox said:
well they do if that's what the land and labour costs to make them.
And we just hit upon a large hunk of the problem. .It takes ages to get land approved for development - and there's not enough workers to effectively stustain building at the rate necessary to support current immigration.
And the idea that you can bring in people to build more homes is as stupid as saying if you eat fast enough you'll get thin.
If we slow down immigration to a lower pace AND we make it easier for developers to build homes then we go a long way towards solving the problem. As demand goes down, the land sells for less. Which makes it cheaper to build homes. Which means you can sell them for less than a million and still make a profit.
We can always build more homes but we're at a near record fit be builds. think by far the 2 biggest problems with the housing crisis is the huge increase in immigration and foreign audiences and students and the big increase in housing speculation by investors. You go to any big city and every other person seeks to have an investment property. That's a home that someone can't own and has to rent because they can't afford it.
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3 hours ago, blackbird said:
I agree supply and demand affects the prices of everything. But government interfering by taxing is not the solution. You are asking for government to intervene in the economy and put higher taxes on people that invest in homes or rental properties as if that is a big sin. That will not increase the housing supply or make lower prices for homes.
Free enterprise has to be free, not government-controlled, i.e. Socialist. You can't pick and choose. The reason why the economy is in a mess and why there is such a shortage of housing is because of government intervention at all levels.
I agree there is too much immigration.
But if you want lower priced homes, taxing people that invest in homes is not the way to do it. That leads down the wrong road completely. Government interfering and taxing is harmful not helpful to the economy in a free enterprise system.
Every successful economy needs some regulation where appropriate. Laissez-faire economics doesn't work and the deregulation that led to the 2008 housing crash and recession is proof. Regulation isn't socialism.
You're dealing in gross generalities based on ideology. Yes it is a sin if housing speculation is part of what is raising housing prices dramatically and people can't afford to live.
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20 minutes ago, blackbird said:
You don't understand how the system works. It's not people investing in a home to rent it out and then re-sell it that is driving the price of homes up.
It's all levels of government that drives the prices of homes up. The costs of building homes is high and the cost of real estate is high. There are excessive regulations, taxes on everything that push up the price of materials and everything.
When you put more taxes on people such as the capital gains tax, you reduce the amount of investment which creates jobs. Capital gains taxes reduce the amount of investment in corporations, businesses and that reduces the number of jobs available for people. That harms the economy. Taxation is the worst possible thing the government could do now.
Price of homes is determined by supply and demand. You don't have to build older homes since they already exist, and yet they are also higher in cost. Sorry but more people bidding on homes because there's a lot of people wanting to buy them as investment properties is part of driving up the price because that increases the demand. There are other factors involved in supply and demand for housing, but if you lower demand you will lower the price of homes. IMO they should also lower the annual immigration intake that has spiked under the Liberals to lower demand. The number of new builds is near historic highs, I see it as more of a demand issue than supply issue since demand has vastly increased while supply also has risen, just not enough to match the larger increase in demand.
Also, I am aware that capital gains hikes as proposed by the Liberals will very likely inhibit investment and economic growth, which is why I only agree with raising capital gains for 2nd properties besides cottages. It will also make more people invest in the Canadian stock market rather than investment properties since they'll still want to invest their money somewhere.
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7 hours ago, blackbird said:
Why? Investing in homes or real estate is no different than investing in any other businesses if the purpose is to earn a return on investment. It won't solve the housing crisis by taxing people more. More taxes is the wrong approach to help the economy. We need investment and more economic growth and less government intervention and taxation.
Incorrect in this case in regards to housing. We have far too much demand for housing and it's making life unaffordable and destroying the rest of the economy because if a lot more of people's paychecks are going to towards housing their standard of living is decreasing and they're unable to afford other goods/services, which hurts every other form of business.
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7 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:
So you think it’s more efficient and cost effective, and better for the wealth creation of citizens, to let governments run and own all rental housing? Ah!!!!! That’s why we left the Soviet Union.
No, I think it's better for citizens when housing and rental prices are low. On the demand side lower foreign students, immigration back to sane levels.
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12 hours ago, Aristides said:
If building homes as investments (rentals) is made unprofitable, why build them?
I’ve never heard of a tax on something that encouraged anyone to produce it.
So people can buy them to live in them. Homes don't need to sell for a million dollars to be profitable for developers.
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2 hours ago, eyeball said:
Strap 'em to a gurney so to speak?
And they thought I was being cruel for suggesting an annual 1% wealth tax on anything over $10 to $100 million, 2% on $100 million to $1 billion and 3% on everything over $10 billion.
I think I read that would affect some 80000 households, makes it sound like regular folks eh...households...
But it would generate some $500 billion in 20 years.
Of course we'd need an exit tax for bolters...say 40%?
No. I don't have any interest in punishing wealthy people in general or taxing them more for all capital gains. I'm more interested in fixing the housing market. So if you want more homes on the market and reduce demand to lower housing prices, it would be a good idea to eliminate the incentives of buying/owning homes among people that have bought them up as investment properties and don't live in them. A way to do that is to increase the capital gains on homes that aren't primary residences.
This capital gains hike probably isn't going to do that very much. I've heard it being talked about for a year or 2, the gov want the revenue to pay for their goodies. Fortunately many of the evil people in this government will be unemployed soon.
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The new capital gains tax should only be aimed at people selling non-primary residences, besides cottages. All housing speculation should be disincentivized.
But that would only prevent the new buying of 2nd properties. There should also be some kind of mechanism to get current 2nd home owners to sell those homes instead of holding them. Just tax the crap out of the ownership of those homes until they sell so its no longer profitable.
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Uh oh spaghetti oh's
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On the weekend I took an elderly family member to the emergency room, they were having some heart issues. They have several other substantial health issues as risk factors and a new scary heart issue suddenly flared up, so their family doc told them to head to the ER. I drove and waited with them.
I packed some water & snacks since waits in the ER are typically always long. We got there around 6pm and expected to be there all evening, maybe 8-10 hours as has been typical in past years. Unfortunately it took 18 hours from the time we registered to the time we saw a doctor! Plus another several hours to get tests run etc, so about 22 hours total. We arrived at 6pm and left at 3pm the next day.
They had only 1 doctor on staff in the ER the entire time we were there, and the province had recently cut back the # of ER doctors at that hospital, which was in a major Canadian city, not some small town joint. The ER was steady but wasn't super busy at all. It was so long that we were there overnight and we all had to sleep in our chairs. I didn't sleep a wink. Nobody was being seen, we were all there a very long time, it was moving so slow, it took them 3 hours just to see a single patient at times. Everyone was PO'd. We all started making friends with each other, there was nothing else to do. Some people said they came because they couldn't get a family doctor. There were lots of nurses at least, but they could only give out non-prescription meds like tylenol and took people's blood pressure to make sure nobody was dying.
It was a tragic sight seeing people suffering and waiting as long as we all were. In the waiting room I saw:
- a disabled man fall out of his wheelchair onto the ground choking on his own saliva.
-a woman occasionally vomiting into a plastic bag
-A woman crying while holding her head because she kept getting very dizzy while waiting for hours with a head injury
- a man continually screaming in agony while laying on a stretcher, i'm not sure what happened to him
Our healthcare system is completely broken. It makes me PO'd that this elderly family member paid into the system their entire life and now when they have to use it it's not there for them. Disgraceful.
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On 4/13/2024 at 5:41 AM, blackbird said:
Your argument is false from the start. The theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory are pure speculation, not science to begin with. There is no "observable evidence that's tested and re-tested". You have bought into the great lie. It is impossible to observe something that supposedly happened millions of years ago. It's not science. I rest my case.
Those theories are the best explanation we have based on the observable evidence. They are called theories because science is about probability of truth. People just didn't make this stuff up out of thin air, like in the Bible. Every single person who believes in Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark over the theory of evolution is a gullible fool.
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17 hours ago, Queenmandy85 said:
In order to defend this country, we need a viable military. That requires conscription and an annual trillion dollar budget. Try selling that to Canadian voters / taxpayers.
They sold it to the American public, and we and Europe get to afford free healthcare, pharma, daycare, and other goodies. Moochocracy.
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On 4/12/2024 at 3:29 AM, August1991 said:
With all that said, wars usually involve foolish young men, between the ages of 17 and 21.
Who is in Gaza now? In Donetsk?
You owe everything you have to those "fools". Learn some respect, you'd be dead or conquered without these brave patriots who want to serve and protect their country. Looks like there's not very many of them anymore, no thanks to people like you.
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On 4/12/2024 at 3:07 AM, August1991 said:
Misleading title.
With Navy, Air Force -our military has about 50,000.
By comparison, the US with 10x our population has about 1.4 million active military. IOW, the US has about 3x our numbers.
I favour our way of doing things.
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In Canada and the US, soldiers now choose to join. (In Canada, we have always had a voluntary military. Since Nixon, the US has not had conscription.)
IMHO, when a State resorts to military conscription, its leaders are imposing a tax - a weird tax.
We have 28k ground troops. That's what the army is. The army is a branch of the military. There's nothing misleading.
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@blackbird A science book is based on observable evidence that's tested and re-tested. A Bible is based on a bunch of heresay with zero evidence written thousands of years ago that only naive gullible people would take as fact.
If you don't know anything about science, which you don't, then zip it instead of spreading lies. If you want to spread lies then go convince people that Jesus rose from the dead and walked on water. The people who believe that nonsense shouldn't be anywhere near decision-making powers on things like climate policy or COVID vaccines or anything else science-related because if you can't tell fact from fiction then you've disqualified yourself.
And for people whose brains are too simple or untrained to understand science like vaccinations i'd highly recommend they stop trying to understand it and filling their brains with things they're incapable of understanding and just go to their doctor and ask their opinion on the vaccines and follow their medical advice, and then go home and STFU instead of trying to convince others of their stupid misinformed BS.
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Good golly Miss Molly
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18 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:
I think it's a starting point. They usually have cites and their articles are written for a broad audience.
The starting point, and end point, is blackbird.
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5 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:
1. Not 100% but I don't think people realize the differences.
2. Are they or do they THINK they are ? I think they are working inside their ideologies and assumptions to solve common challenges as they think they can.
3. There's no single interest there. It's about trade-offs This is what I refer to when I talk about 'trickle down'. Many examples there.
4. That's a very broad statement. Churchill's quote comes to mind “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried" But still, there are some that haven't been tried and maybe democracy that is beholden to a distracted and intellectually lazy public ISN'T the best ?
5. I was going to ask you what laws, but then you know I would only potshot whatever you came up with so I'll shrug agreement on this one.
My idea: make government services more autonomous and create online communities to monitor and give feedback onto their policies.1. Or the similarities. All these political finance rules in place and yet Doug Ford gives green belt access to developers, Trudeau Foundation accept a massive donation from some Chinese rich person, Trudeau gets free vacations from the Aga Khan, Morneau has WE Charity links, and countless other "leakages" that aren't noticed by the public or ever reported.
This is awesome, Parliament's worst-kept secrets:
2. Only sometimes. Their primary job is to get re-elected, which takes a lot of money and most don't care where they get it from. We're seeing that the Liberal Party doesn't have a real issue with a foreign government that means the country harm interfering in our elections if it benefits them. Time to get a little more cynical.
3. This is vague, I don't understand it.
4. The masses aren't the problem here, you have it completely backwards. Democracy controlled by corrupt individuals is the issue. Our democracy is dysfunctional, not enough oversight and regulation and accountability, its allowed to be too crooked and thus doesn't serve the people's interests enough. The current government is performing poorly and they're also unpopular with the public, the voters aren't as stupid as you think they are. I trust the judgement of the collective public more than that of politicians because the interests of the public are the same as mine and everyone else.
5. My idea: more referenda on policy. Greatly expand the auditor general's office.
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Trudeau and Telford are exchanging the blame game and throwing each other under the bus. This is very fun to watch.
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5 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
Sadly he can't be charged for anything he says there.
Why not?
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8 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:
1. I think the level of support in the US, from the so-called donors, and the basic idea of creating a good business environment are very different activities. There's no Canadian equivalent to the NRA helping Bernie Sanders defeat a Republican in 1990. But I'll bet Canadians don't appreciate that their representatives are not as beholden to business.
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2. Big picture: even in highly educated Canada, "the" public can't be expected to be informed on most topics. Our system of trickle down economics and advertising based democracy has led us to a point where Canadians feel politicians are not working in their interests. Pushed down economically, depressed by the aftermath of the pandemic, homelessness, drug problems, wars..
The natural cycle is for them to blame the government and throw them out. This is happening now.
3. But I see the problems facing us as rather huge. Politics and rhetoric are not going to fix them. Others disagree and think that a few tweaks, and getting rid of Trudeau's face will fix things. Maybe it will work, or maybe the natural economic cycle will work in our favor.
If that doesn't happen, then we could be in big trouble. And by that I mean we would need to upend the status quo to get through it, which is always very risky. I'm talking about historic change to our system. Who knows what form that would take.
1. Are you sure about this?
2. Do you think our politicians are working in our best interests? Do you think they're corrupted by money? How much do you think policy has to do with our problems?
3. The status quo isn't working. The politicians should be working in the interests of the masses and the country and nobody else. That's not happening. Our democracy isn't working. Policy can fix a lot of this, new laws and regulations and oversight and accountability on politicians and parties.
Anti semitism all the rage on US college campuses
in Federal Politics in the United States
Posted
Billions.