hitops

I would say taking credit when global conditions are favorable, and blaming global conditions when they are not, is exactly what I would expect from any politician on the national stage.

Those aren't my claims, they are the claims of Islam's founder who explicitly endorsed them.

People who agree with that manifesto never think about things like that. They, I believe, honestly have no idea that what they are proposing would effectively starve millions and impoverish most of the society. In any case, what they suggest, the ideas within it, have been tried on large scale in a number places in the last 70 years, resulting in human catastrophe without exception. In short, they have no idea what they are talking about. But of course, they are free to talk about it.

Most Muslims I've gotten to know in any way personally, at the end of the day are sympathetic to Sharia law type ideas, and even in many cases to ISIS type groups. I have been told by Muslims, in Canada, in university, that they hate Jews and that Jews are like animals. This is not in debates, this is in casual conversations with people I have befriended. These are students doing normal, challenging university programs who can otherwise function just fine and give you a nice smile and make normal-looking small talk. The ideology is their, and it doesn't go away just because you live in a secular democracy. I don't think we want more of that. What we want more of is people like the Vietnamese, Indians or Philippines who see us as equals and see the society as one of meritocracy.

I'm just not sure about this manifesto......sure it has some big stars.....but I still don't know what Britney Spears or lil' Wayne think about the issue, so can't make a decision yet.....

It's a false analogy. Sure you can find people that that hate each and rationalize reasons to kill each other among many religious and non-religious groups on the planet. Stalin for example, overtly anti-religious, is the largest mass murderer in history, possibly rivaled in second place by Mao, also overtly anti-religious. And no shortage of religious groups have wages war and persecution as well. The question is not about whether humans are capable of holding x, y or z beliefs, and also doing evil. Conclusively, they are. The question is about the core founding beliefs. You raise protestants so use that example. It's difficult to impossible to rationalize that approach from the Jesus teachings. It's quite easy to do so from Mohammed's teachings. There is nothing in Jesus life to use as a precedent for that type of thinking, but plenty in Mohammed's. The violent 'we are better than you and therefore justified in doing harm to you' is intrinsic to the the Muslim faith, inseparable from it's founder and his teaching. While that exists (which will be forever), there will be Muslims who want to be the real-deal, Mohammed-emulating kind, who will endorse, perform, or at least sympathize with those ideas. Mohammed said unbelievers have lower status, should be ruled by Muslims, and should have to pay Muslims to live with them. This is the way people coming from that part of the world think. Not like Vietnamese, not like Ukrainians, not like Indians (the large majority non-muslim), not like Philippinos, not like Chinese. Somalians have been a huge problem in the US, Nigerians and Kenyans have not. What you believe, where you come from matters, and it should matter to us on immigration.

In the most general sense, yes if you export more your dollar goes up. That played a pretty small role in our story. 1) Our dollar is tied to natural resources, the biggest of which is oil as we all know. When the price went up, so did the CDN. It doesn't mean we were selling any more of it, or any more of anything necessarily, but it was more expensive for others to buy. To buy it they need CDN, which means more demand for it, which means value of CDN goes up. 2) The value is relative to the USD. The US was having a huge crisis, and our economy was relatively ok, so in relative terms the CDN gained a lot. 3) Resources in general are considered safe in bad times. After and during the crisis, money went to stable places with resources, Canada is the poster child for that. This is separate factor than selling resources to consume, it is a safe haven to store money in bad times. Just like when things are shaky, people buy gold. Australia is the exact same story, for the same reasons, except they are even slightly more dependent on resources than us. Correspondingly, during the bad times our dollar came to parity with the USD and even briefly surpassed it. At the same time, so did the Aussia dollar, actually doing 2-3 cents better than the CDN. Now that things are normalizing, predictably, the CDN and Aussie is back at historic levels vs the USD, with the Aussie a few cents under the CDN. Basically both our dollars fluctuated directly reflecting our relative exposure to natural resources, as expected.

In the long term, businesses want a predictable, stable tax environment on which they reliable do long term planning. The question is what kind of planning. If the tax rate is high and stable - you can reliably know it is time to move your plants out of the country. If it is low and stable, obviously this is more encouraging to stay. If it is volatile, then a wait and see attitude makes the most sense. In general, businesses like less regulations and less complicated tax code. But even more than that, business like to beat their competitors. As such, big business actually loves really complicated tax laws because that gives them a big advantage over small business. Big business already employ full-time experts to manage and deal with that, where in small business it is often the ownner who has to deal with it, or pay much higher marginal costs to an accountant (relative to the size of the business). More regs, more taxation complexity, entrenches the position of big business vs small and new entrants.

Forgot to use chrome, IE for me sometimes just makes any quote or edit automatically quote the most recent post instead of the one you want.

So again great, but again are you wanting to talk about immigrants generally, or are you responding to my point about Indo-canadians? Great, still old data. That was collected in the decades right after the main early group of them migrated. They are always poorer in the first generation. But the kids are doing very well, just like the kids of most Asian immigrants. This is responding to what you said about immigrants having literacy, quoted immediately above that comment. Still don't see how that is an insult, or having anything to do with you at all. You implied that immigrants don't have basic literally. I informed you that with a much higher than average rate of university degrees, Indo Canadians are likely quite literate. Then you got insulted, evidently. Your speculation about somebody's high horse could honestly not be less relevant to the discussion. You love to imagine that people get offended, that you get offended, that somebody gets on their high horse etc. I supposed this image makes you happy somehow. Enjoy. I figured you would dismiss it without reading it based on some insubstantial reason. Obviously, it must be wrong if written by the community, I guess.......for the same reason that because you have never heard of the author of that book, it must be wrong? Airtight logic. Also no need to do any work. If statesman is the holy grail of everything to you, you should note that even in the old data you worship, indocanadians are noted to have far more education than Canadians, and lower unemployment. IN a generation, this predictably translates into better incomes as well. Here's another website again saying the same thing. http://www.garamchai.com/canada/ But of course, it obviously can't be trusted as it is written by an IndoCanadian.......right? Indians form a part of the higher echelons of the socio-economic spectrum in the Canada, earning an average of $69,000 versus a national average of $49000 per annum.

You can't demonstrate your point about the Sikhs. Your point is however, a good reason not to accept too many Sunni Arabs from Syria. Their founder and the person they supposedly want to be like (Mohammed), both practiced and endorsed exactly the problem domestic behavior you would allegedly like to avoid. No serious person disputes that the place of women in the Arab world is what we would call acceptable here.

Well ya actually it does, since it is data from that time they are using as comparison. We simply don't have recent data from statscan. The census does not collect as much info as it used to. The statscan page on indocanadians has not been updated since 2007. That doesn't mean we should rely on outdated data. We have more current information. You just don't like it. I note that you did not address my last source at all, a book on the subject, probably because you cannot. It's a moot point though, since your references are about immigrants in general. But you were responding to my point about Indo-Canadians, so those links are irrelevant. Obviously different immigrant groups do differently, that's my point. The 'more recent study', is quoting the exact same data as the statscan chart. The data itself is not 9 years old, the census is 9 years old. The data collected is even older. When did I insult you? Great, again irrelevant to my statement about Indo-Canadians. I remind you that this was the statement you quoted and responded to. I didn't think anything like that. You have an amazing capacity to perceive insult on both our sides, when none occurred. I reference Indians because I am very familiar with that community, being married into it. Even before that I knew many, as an academic it was impossible to avoid as the academic scientific world is disproportionately overrun with them. Hence the large percentage of well educated, high earning members. Somehow you are not aware of this. Relevance? We are obviously talking about Indians in Canada, not India. I have given you multiple references from the last several years demonstrating Indo-Canadian outperform average Canadians. You have responded ineffectively with statements and sources about immigrants in general. Those are obviously not applicable. Please tell me I don't need to explain why that is. Indo-Canadian do better. The data shows it. Anecdotally after many years with the Indian community, it is obvious. Will you continue to obtinately try to claim differently?

Requiring any kind of data is unwelcome, I take it?

As others have mentioned, the US effective rate is lower than the Canadians, whatever the official rate is. However, we at least came close and a few years ago, Forbes rated Canada the best place to invest in the world. The tax rate does make a difference. But ultimately your question is about getting businesses to invest. Businesses spend their money for the same reason you or I do - if it looks like they will get good value or good ROI on the money. Obviously during the crisis everybody tightened up, afraid that investments would go bad. In the last few years things have improved in the US, but in Canada while we did ok during the crisis, lately we are doing poorly. But why is this confusing? If I was a business looking at the Canadian economy as a whole, I would not expand. Firstly their is popular clamor to raise taxes and punish corporations. Nobody would be eager to risk investment until they see how that plays out. If you are looking at an election with possible increases, it makes more sense to wait, see what the rate is, then decided whether to move the jobs out or stay depending. Secondly there is plenty of volatility in the market right now worldwide. Volatility always chills investment. Just put yourself into their shoes, and it is not hard to figure their thinking. I can say this because I keep money in a personal corp and invest it, and I just did exactly what I described above. It's obvious Canada is doing poorly, so I put my invested money about 70% to the US, 10% Canada, and the rest elsewhere. And that has played out as predicted. When it's you, you make rational decisions. You seem to believe that others should make irrational ones, I supposed to satisfy something that you want? If 2 cars are the same price and utility to you, but one falls in value twice as fast as the other, you will pick the one that retains value. Why would you expect a large corporations, who hires people far smarter than you or me, who do nothing but think about investment returns full time, to behave differently?

Unfortunately no, the police are allowed to stop anyone for committing the act of driving. This was true before C-51. However, if they for example stopped you for no reason and then decided to give you the breathalyzer, that would not be allowed unless there was reason to suspect impairment.

No but it means you can't claim it is. Pianos are falling from the sky. What, we aren't measuring how many are falling? Well then obviously you can't say they are not, can you?

Thanks for the decade-old references, with two-decade-old data. Did you even read those links yourself? They focus on data from the 80's and 90's. Quite irrelevant, the situation is very different today. Something current: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Canadians "Indo-Canadians are significantly more likely than the Canadian average to have a university degree, and most Indians in Canada are socio-economically middle class.[2] 54% of Indo-Canadians have household incomes greater than $60,000, compared to the Canadian average of 46%." My guess is that if you have a university degree, you have basic literacy. Anybody who has recently been to university, knows it is disproportionately packed with kids of Asian immigrant parents. As a doc I can tell you Indians are massively over-represented relative to their population in that line of work. In my department it is roughly a third. That is massively beyond their represented population. it is the same in nearly every hospital in any city I've worked or studied at, and same in the US. http://www.profitguide.com/opportunity/from-india-with-money-30247 "....average household incomes of $95,000, or 14% above the Canadian average" A book about it published in 2014: https://books.google.ca/books?id=vo_HBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=statistics+on+indo+canadians+incomes&source=bl&ots=pVMO_d2b0O&sig=5eczPT53dbXuaG9fE_HJswXJ5Po&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCGoVChMIs931wYv4xwIVDHuSCh3dlQa7#v=onepage&q=statistics%20on%20indo%20canadians%20incomes&f=false "The average annual income of Indo-Canadian is 20% more than the national average income in Canada" My wife is Indian so I know tons. The universal joke among the kids is of success-driven parents who kick their butts until they are getting 100% in everything and becoming doctors. Then tons become doctors or other high-paying professions. This is the normal path for Indian immigrants today.

You realize that without that, you have no point right?

Well nobody said anything about savages, but I guess you need to throw that in in order to demonize whoever you want to demonize. And none of that rise contradicts the plain fact that human lives are far better today. You don't need any bells and whistles, you just need to look the basics like health, life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, literacy etc. All vastly better in modern times. You romanticism of past time ignores the fact that life was far harder, and filled with far more tragedy, with far fewer choices in life. Where you started was where you ended up, which was poverty for all but a few. Again you ignore, willfully no doubt, the alternatives. They are not better. They are far worse, and Bangladesh which you believe argues for your point, is actually the ultimate example against it. Just check incomes and life expectancy for a start. It's not even close, the current situation is far superior. But why would we want any silly bells and whistles like lifespans increasing or fewer new babies dying, right?

It's a sad story. But before globalization and industrialization of places like Bangladesh, 95% of the world's population had every sadder, more brutal lives and stories. The alternative.......is what matters. It is less important that people died in a fire, than that vast swaths of the population can now live something resembling a decent existence compared to abject, always on the verge of starvation existence, like their parents. Bleeding hearts over here would shut down the factories, not realizing that by saving a few thousand factory deaths on the next decade, they would be indirectly killing millions by the dramatic impoverishment of the whole country (in other words, returning the country to what it was before the factories). People die in cars every day. Let's ban them then. Try to even calculate in your mind the human cost of that. It's the same argument.

What's that now, 6 in a row, soon to be 7.....years since the financial crisis? And every developed nation in the world having similar problems during that time..... Waiting for the connection to form in your brain........

The fact that I have a conscience is exactly why I want those jobs to stay - they are so much better than the alternative for those people. You are literally advocating they starve to death, rather than work those jobs. That is the alternative. Not because of anything anyone in the west has done, but because that is how life was before the west did business there Without those factories, that is their reality. One day this might penetrate the fog of your self imposed blindness.

That's an argument for the system, not against it. If the corp has a bad exec, it will do poorly. If times are good now, when lean times come those companies will suffer. The board will need to turf the doofus or face losing market share. The fact that you have a bad exec and your lunch is being eaten, is exactly how it is supposed to work. The natural response since you know much better than him, is to start your own company and do it better.

You need a link for Stalin, Mao, the Viet Cong, or North Korea? Stalin alone, is the largest mass murderer in history.

Before capitalism, the world was 99% poor as dirt. Everyone in the world, including the absolute most destitute, are far better off with capitalism. The wealthiest nations are also the ones that trade most with the US. If the US leaves you alone, you are probably one of the worst places to live on earth. And in those countries without property rights, the way it worked was you killed and died for what you needed, you life average expectancy was about 30-40 years (assuming you survived childbirth), and most of it spent hungry and in pain. If you were a woman, you were probably considered property, or at least treated that way. Socialists love making the poorest people absolutely destitute (or in fact starving to death), as long as that also makes rich people a little less rich. Somehow this makes them feel good. That is the reality of socialism when practiced in the largest historical experiments.