hitops

I see your point here and it is valid, but what's missing is that the banks do not live in that kind of a free market. It would be one thing if they were truly private companies succeeding or failing by their own merits. But they are not, they have guarantees from government and have previously received bailouts from government. They run a pseudo-oligopoly in their sector. Because government has protected and helped them (read: taxpayers have done this with their money), they do owe that back to taxpayers. I wish this was not the situation, I wish it was a real free market and I would be the first to say they can run their business however they want. But it's not, and if I'm forced to bail them out, then you can be damn sure I'll be ticked when they take my money and hire outside. If they were taking my money by my choice, as an investment, that would be a different story. The best case scenario would be if government withdrew their guarantees of support and let banks fail if they act foolishly. The first step in this direction would be removing the CMHC, but that's a different topic.

You are mistaking an economically active area with economically active natives. We have plenty of the former, and very little to none of the latter. I would love it if natives were working in the natural resource sector, doing those skilled labor jobs and taking home a paycheck, paying taxes and contributing to Canada. But they are by and large not, and you and I both know this. Being born by sheer dumb luck near a diamond reserve, does not make you economically active or a contributor to Canada. Here is why so called 'native' land yielding wealth does not mean natives are - because without the rest of Canada, the natives would have absolutely no clue, nor any ability, to extract or benefit from that wealth. It would just be land. If we left them alone, they would not extract the minerals, they would just starve. We however do not need their contribution, we are more than capable to exploiting the resources and benefiting Canada. If they were not there, it would make literally no difference whatsoever to our ability to do that. So it's not a two way street, it's a one way street. We do the work, we pay the taxes, and they sit there. Where you are sadly mistaken is that native autonomy is not the solution, it is the cause of native poverty and dependency. Why? Because it's not real autonomy. Real autonomy means you have authority, and also responsibility. They don't have, or want the responsibility. They want gov to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars, and not have to give anything in return. Gov gives all of us services......because we pay taxes to gov. Native reserves do not, they only lose money every single year. This is not a situation of equals. Tax status, educational discounts, special programs are the reason natives remain poor, not the solution. There has been no group in history that has risen up out of poverty and misery as a result of special programs and handouts. It has never happened. Plenty of groups however, have risen up from poverty without them and learned to join Canada like normal contribution members. My wife's family for example, a visible minority, actually outperforms white people as an ethnic group. They came with nothing, but rose up because their value system led them to depend on themselves, not the breast of government. Another group, the Jewish people, were actively prejudiced against in people minds. But they didn't get special treatment and they didn't let the attitudes stop them either. Today they are the most successful ethnic group in north america. We have SO MANY immigrants who come and accomplish the same, arriving with nothing and families to care for. The native who have more opportunities, more perks and benefits on the government dime than perhaps any ethnic group in the world, cannot do this. Treat them like equal human beings. Not like stupid little children who need their hand held. Get rid of status, get rid of tax benefits. You will quickly see they will adapt to the expectations. Right now our expectations are they will fail and be inferior, and they are fulfilling them. That needs to change.

It's really sad actually. I feel sorry for these people, our system keeps them hopeless and dependent generation after generation. They cannot get out because we approach the situation with heart-on-sleeve instead of intelligence and common sense. I have paid many thousands of dollars in taxes and none of that has helped them. They are more dependent and poverty striken than ever. Hundreds of millions after hundreds of millions, it is doing nothing. The only thing it guarantees is that our children will be there paying it next generation. And the native lot will be no better. The best thing that could possibly happen to these people is to get cut off and have the same expectations put on them as any other Canadian in a modern society. Soft racism.....amazing term. That's exactly what it is, a hidden malignant form of racism that sells out the natives people's future for votes playing on people's emotions.

Yep we do. There will be a balance between people getting upset about terrible service and wanting cheap stuff. I think that balance is actually shifting away from the distant call center model. The issue here is more to do with the blatant job replacement, and possible illegal abuse of the foreign worker program, rather than just call centers in general. The above two posters said it well. Service is brutal using India call centers. Nothing against Indians, but the English sucks, they don't give a sh_t about your problem beyond reading their script, and often don't have power to solve it anyway. The only people that suffer more than the customer from the as_-quality call center, are the other people in that company trying to do their own jobs.

Exactly. And the free ride is exactly why they remain poor and underprivileged today. Nothing has done them more harm or contributed more to their cultural decay than the handouts.

That has absolutely nothing to do with the incentives problem. Maybe you are not answering it because you are just to stubborn to understand it. There are only so many ways we can try to ask this.

The majority don't contribute a dime. Is this a joke? If we didn't support them with the trough of government, they would literally starve to death. It's actually our fault though, for letting this go on for so long. We should have treated them like everyone else a long time ago and cut off the freebee addiction.

When support is provided by India, it is usually horrendous. Not just the bank obviously, all kinds of companies do this. Having people that can speak basic English, have some inclination towards trying to solve your problem and have some authority to do so, is invaluable. You point out that Canadians are unaware. I supposed this is true, but I'm not sure how that is an argument for continued inaction. They don't know much, so when they learn something they should continue acting as if they did not?

And.......still no answer to the incentives problem. What a shock. It's humorous watching you lob the insults, and in the process label yourself with them.

No you couldn't, that's the sad part. All your best comedy has been used up. And still no answer.

Tue, and I have not done that. You are not understanding the data which has been presented. The debt to PDI ratio is a standard metric used by banks, economists, reporters, the CMHC, everyone, and it takes into account the household income and debt. Let me try a different approach. From the Bank of Canada: "Canadian household debt has been rising steadily in recent years—to a record high" "An aggregate debt-to-income ratio of, say, 160 per cent tells us that the accumulated debt of an average Canadian household significantly exceeds one year’s worth of its income. Put another way, a debt-to-income ratio of 160 says that it would take more than one and a half times the annual income of an average household to fully pay off its debt." Here's another way to look at it: So when the mortgage rates grow by 150% over 10 years, and the incomes grow by only 50%.......do the math.

After 11 pages. You rant you rave, but you don't have an answer. It's funny you keep having a seizure and have nothing but insults. Because you have no argument.

But the natives on reserves don't really want to be left alone to their own ways and culture. They want to live modern western lives, and have the rest of us foot the bill for them. It's insanely expensive to live up north, when you want to have a modern Canadian lifestyle and live beyond the age of 35. I have no problem with people doing that if they want. I have a HUGE problem being forced to pay for them to do so however.

And not a single person agreed with you. I'm guessing you just passed that part over. That's because it doesn't make sense to anybody. Keep calling people trolls, if you do it long enough, maybe your idea will magically become sensible. The most recent participant, just like everyone else, has the same problem. He wants you to answer some of these challenges. Why? Because until now you have not done so in any way resembling coherence. TimG strongly disagrees with me on housing. But we are united in recognize what an unworkable idea your plan is: He recognizes the incentive problem. He gave you an example proving exactly that. We don't to wonder, we can just look around us to see how that works. You can't see it, and it's too bad. Bonam gets it too It's just you. The funny part is you believe that having tried to explain it means you've answered it. You haven't, as shown by the fact that it doesn't make sense to anybody. I hope one day if I'm ever in politics, you are chosen by the opposite party to explain your platforms to Canadians. Actually come to think of it, would you mind joining the NDP?

I'm a little confused, that graph confirms exactly what I'm saying - that debt is far outpacing incomes. Notice the Canadian red line on your graph always going up......that means the ratio of debt/income is always going up. And if you check the most recent numbers (your graph only goes to 2011), we are actually far above that now, at about 165%. The US was at about 130% when they had their crash. But anyway I'll re-post the graph that shows the household and compared to PDI. Notice how long it lasted in the US. How long can we last? And here is household debt compared to incomes It's very clear that debt relative to household income (whether 1 or 2 incomes in the household) is going up, and is at never before seen levels. I realize historically we have been safe. Historically, we have never had this much debt. That's why it's different now. When the factors are way different, you can't assume the game will be the same.

I suppose the other dozen or people who questioned you, and who did not get an explanation are trolling as well. You either can't communicate or your idea is bad. The consensus seems to be about 20% of the former and 80% of the latter.

They require 5%. The problem is such a low down payment is not insurable in the real market, because it is more risky. This has created a huge problem.

Depending on the reaction to it, it's quite possible they will not. Don't forget banks only hold a tiny amount of their total deposits, and their overleveraging needs to be tied to this amount. It's conceivable that people closing accounts might actually make a difference. It has nothing to do with that, it's not a sudden rational reaction by thousands of people. It's happening because a news story brought it too light. Sometimes that's how things work in the internet age. People need to have a sudden event to clue in.

VERY interested to see how this turns out. I wonder if thousands of people will actually close their accounts tomorrow. I wonder if others will close their account simply out of fear of too many others doing it.

No you've never explained it once. You cannot explain away the bad incentives. Easier to just avoid it I guess.

Exactly, it's a schizophrenic position. We want the cheap stuff from India and China, but we don't want to contribute to employment there. I guarantee 100% of the people frothing over this buy 90-95% of their stuff from India and China. Well the other side of that trade coin is that not only are things cheaper there, jobs are too.

It seems like they might. I just checked out the RBC facebook page and it's 100% comments of shame, disgust and declarations of intent to close accounts. However I still think there is a sense out there that for some reason, just being born here means I deserve a better shot at something than somebody from another country. I'm honestly not sure where the government should draw the line. There are highly competent people all over the world able to do things and work very hard. I'm sure why I'm entitled to the job just because my passport says Canada. Odd to tell someone their position is dumb when you can't spell dumb. The world is changing and it's probably best not to stick our head in the sand and pretend it's still 1950.

I don't necessarily disagree with you but I sure hope the people who are enraged are also totally against foreign aid and accepting refugees since those are costs of our society as well. They would have to be, to be consistent with the 'Canada first' position.

Ok I can't resist. From the financial post story on this: "Despite posting healthy profits quarter after quarter, Canadian banks are under pressure to keep expenses in check as they face continued uncertainty in both the global and domestic economies and concerns about high household debt levels that could lead to defaults should low interest rates go up." In other words, the pressure that has caused RBC to make these moves is directly related to the housing bubble created by the CMHC.

I'm torn on this as well, but not about whether moving my cash out will help or hurt. I just wonder how upset we really should be getting. It's always interesting how we like to pretend we are some kind of great tolerant country that values diversity. But as soon as it comes to those bad brown people doing our jobs, the pitchforks come out. Pretty prejudiced actually. Those people have dreams and goals in life as well, and they want jobs and security just like we do. What right do you have to a good job that somebody else is willing to do for less, just because you happened to have tumbled out of a uterus within the borders of Canada? There is no question however, that if the law prohibits the replacing of Canadian workers, then they should be prosecuted under the law.