Moonbox

The reference to "Scandinavia" as this magical fantasy socialist utopia is getting old. These clichéd references not only grossly exaggerate the success of their systems, they also ignore a huge host of underlying advantages that they have over larger and more diverse nations like Canada or even Australia. That's just another toothless piece of paper that both the world's worst offenders and main producers aren't signing anyways. What, specifically, was different about Rwanda? You don't think people have tried to replicate successful examples elsewhere? Fact is that no single country has the same problems, so certain methods may succeed in one place and fail miserably in the next. Realistically, outside money isn't going to turn things around in failed/failing states. Go eat more granola. The fact that you even brought this up in a question of Canadian pride/identity is ridiculous. While I think fighting in hockey is stupid and silly, these guys are willing participants and they're getting paid to do it. The risk is their own and if the league decides to ban it I wouldn't mind. It is not, however, something worth discussing here lol.

This isn't a new trend. A lot of suburban developments going back to the 1980's have this. They're also not that far apart. My folks (seniors) have to walk about 5 houses down to get their mail. At worst, someone will have to walk maybe 10 houses to get their mail in that neighborhood. Regular post is practically dead. There's barely any reason to open your mail now, so wasting millions on a service that's a nuisance to most people these days and completely unavailable to the majority just isn't smart. All of the people who don't have door-to-door delivery are surviving somehow , so the idea that this is going to be some sort of catastrophe is far fetched.

Are you equally disdainful of the Dairy Board?

That's why Sony outsources so much work to Foxconn in Taiwan, right? For national interest? You've also never heard of the Buy American Act, nor related provisions either, I see. The Japanese, like everyone else, outsource when it makes sense.

Umm...it's not just attack ads. It's all political advertisement. It's going to apply for all political parties. Your frothing rhetoric, however, is noted.

After reading the article it seems literally insane that the government has to 'negotiate' recalls for potentially unsafe drugs with the pharmaceutical companies. Like you said, this is a good example of the government doing the objectively right thing. I wish it was less rare.

Do you generally consider Fox News a reliable source for criticism of Barack Obama? If so, carry on. If not, consider that maybe the National Post and Mr. Coyne are about as reliable for anti-Trudeau criticism as the Toronto Star is for criticism of Harper. I'm not saying Trudeau is a great candidate for Prime Minister. I'm just suggesting that there's a fair amount of bias in these sources.

*yawn* Right Argus... My 'frantic' need.... The logs went overseas because it was more cost effective for the Japanese to mill the wood themselves. The fact that the unions lobbied the government to block this common-sense trade relationship is an obvious example of the type of games the unions like to play (ie. the influence they exert, or at least try to, on the economy and government). I said no such thing. This is another example of your efforts at misquoting and misrepresenting what other people say. I said sawmill workers are generally low-skilled. 100% didn't say that at all. Your lack of intellectual integrity is on open display! Thanks! What we know is that a union in Canada tried to block the export of raw logs to Japan with the ill-conceived goal of forcing the Japanese to buy the processed lumber that they were producing. Had they been successful, they'd have not only failed to acquire the business they were seeking, they would have also contributed to lost jobs on the raw timber export side. It's no wonder that private sector unions have imploded in North America with that sort of genius at work.

Canada's hardly going in the right direction. The middle class continues to shrink while the lower class expands and the upper class gets wealthier. All of this has been accomplished through a recession and fairly anemic economic growth. Something is not right. The problem here, as you and I have discussed many times, is finding someone to vote for that will make things better rather than worse. I'll take the status quo over worse, but I'd take better over the status quo.

The conclusion you're drawing here is feeble. Transporting processed lumber vs raw timber yields minimal cost benefits, particularly by sea. Considering Japan is significantly less unionized and that sawmill workers aren't particularly high-skilled, they likely had significant labor cost advantages in addition to the benefits of processing the logs at home. The protests of the union were 100% pointless in this case. Regardless of whether Canada banned the export, its sawmills weren't going to get Japanese business. What's worse, the ban would also kill Canadian jobs harvesting the logs. From your position, this example at best does absolutely nothing to support your argument. At worst, it can serve as an example of Canadian unions driving jobs overseas. As usual, your logic is exemplary.

Coming from someone who was calling me out earlier as a nerdy internet warrior, it's pretty damn funny seeing you thump your chest about real life accomplishments that nobody here could possibly verify or disprove. That's the true sign of a nerdy forum crusader!

Yes, all my posts are there for you to review. Please go back and look. At no point did I deny your 'basic statements' as a fundamental concept. Instead, I explained how your application of them was perverted economic theory and, if you'll recall, how you were taking only the economic principles that suited your argument and leaving out the parts that proved them unsound. I provided analogies, extensions of your own logic as well as explicit explanations of HOW your argument/statement was faulty (twice explaining diminishing returns), but either this all went over your head (likely) or you're trying to worm your way out of embarrassment. LOL! There's no altered statement. I sweepingly ridiculed your 'statement of fact' because it isn't actually a fact. The argument that you've peddled in this thread, stating higher wages = better workers/higher productivity, is about as true as saying that more vitamin C is good for you. While more vitamin C can be good for you, after a certain point any extra will just get pissed away or cause diarrhea. Uhh, because you absolutely did not prove anything of the sort. On one hand, we have the PBO's published findings. In opposition, we have Argus' feeble offerings of personal testimonials and vague explanations of how the RCMP and Canadian Forces are skewing the averages upwards (despite only being a small fraction of the federal public service). I think I'll stick with the PBO's findings. Here: https://emploisfp-psjobs.cfp-psc.gc.ca/psrs-srfp/applicant/page1800?poster=244886&toggleLanguage=en&psrsMode=1&noBackBtn=true The earth shattering requirements for a $45,000/year entry-level salary + federal benefits being: -2 years post-secondary -Experience in using technology (e.g. e-mail, Internet and word processing) (LOL!) -Experience in delivering services or programs to the general public involving obtaining and providing information requiring explanation or clarification. (WOW!) Your insults aren't alleged. They're fairly explicit, and usually expressed when your arguments start looking stupid and you get frustrated.

He's not going to come out with anything. His platform will be as comfortable and as vague as he can possibly get away with. Heck, he can probably go with 'change' as his platform. He has the looks and the charisma to pull it off too. Derek you're probably right about the numbers as they stand today, but as we've seen countless times before, voter intentions leading up to an election are completely different than for the actual election. People are MUCH more pragmatic and cynical during an election than when they're being polled a year in advance. You can quote me right now and bring it up late, but I can almost promise you much of the NDP vote is going to vanish in the next election. Short of Trudeau saying something unforgivably stupid (which his handlers are probably going to be able to prevent), he'll be a figure that the anti-Harper vote will rally behind. Take Quebec, for instance. Decades of divisive and ineffective Bloc representation, along with a Prime Minister most of the province reviles, will likely have most of the province look to whoever can provide the most likely alternative. That alternative will not be the NDP. Too much of the country (particularly Ontario) wants absolutely nothing to do with them. It will (by default) be Trudeau who rallies the anti-Harper vote and despite the history of the Trudeau name in that province, I highly doubt they'll turn their backs on a francophone PM candidate. As for Ontario, the name Trudeau is much revered in this province. I do not share that sentiment, believing he was probably our worst PM ever, but people here are still in love his passion and his flare. His dramatic flare and all of the wishy-washy stuff he did apparently made up for him sending us down the road to near-insolvency.

I think you underestimate the benefits of a pretty face and an famous name. The votes will come from Ontario and Quebec. NDP support in the last election was a flash in the pan and will largely go poof as all but the most ardently left-wing NDP supporters will flock to Trudeau. A huge transfer of NDP -> Liberal votes (almost assured IMO), an increase in Quebec due to a francophone Liberal leader (and the weakness of the bloc/ndp) as well as some minor gains in Ontario is all that it's going to take. That might sound like a lot, but it really isn't.

The Liberals want nothing to do with the NDP because the majority of Canadians want nothing to do with the NDP. Trudeauwill win a majority next election and he'll need no help from the NDP to do it.

I guess we can add a lack of intellectual integrity to your perverted sense of reasoning. First, you oversimplify an economic concept specifically to suit your argument, and then you attempt to misrepresent my objection to the oversimplification as me denying the concept altogether. Hilariously, you then call me a liar, only to follow up in the VERY NEXT sentence by acknowledging that what I was saying is true. Argus the mental gymnastics your brain must go through to come up with some of this reasoning is truly bizarre and entertaining. At least, however, you've finally acknowledged my objection of your grossly oversimplified economic theory. It certainly makes a lot of your remarks concerning my apparent lack of economic understanding look pretty stupid! We've shown plenty of evidence. We have the average cost of federal public servant compensation clocking in (according to the PBO) at $114,000/year. We can also see by looking at federal public service postings that entry-level jobs (a CSO for example, that require no skills and nothing but a 2-year college diploma), earns just short of $60,000/year when benefits are accounted for ($45k + 30% benefits). The average recent 4-year university grad earns significantly less. A similar position in the private sector would pay, at best, 2/3 as much. According to you, $60,000/year for customer service clerks is money well spent! Surely there must be TONS of evidence to suggest they're 50% more productive than the average private sector clerk, right!?? Please show us! and as I've said before, your automatic and consistent fall-back on personal attacks is the telltale sign of a struggling intellect. The hypocrisy you so consistently display is clearly going over your head too. Your 24,000+ posts on this forum, along with your penchant for insults, makes your nerdy net warriors comment particularly ironic!

That's rich coming from you, considering you blatantly refused to do so yourself when I asked you to a short awhile ago. Oh the hypocrisy.

The fault in this logic is easily proven simply by considering what the economy would look like if all of our unemployed or under-employed were given high paying jobs digging holes and filling them back in. Sure, they'd be earning wages, paying taxes and spending their money in the economy, but they're not actually contributing to productivity. Money that the government collects and holds to pay these useless wages would be money removed from actually productive enterprises.

No, my response was that you have a feeble understanding of this concept, and I gave you detailed explanations of why along with examples and illustrations of your juvenile logic. You see there's this OTHER economic concept that you're lamely struggling with. It states there comes a point in any input/output relationship that further increases in an input factor (ie. wages) no longer provide any net benefit. Beyond that point, increases to that input factor lead to a net loss. This is called the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns and, like I said pages ago, is something that first year ECON students learn. Since this has already been explained to you several times, however, and since you've been spoon-fed several examples illustrating this basic rule of economics, I can only conclude now that you're trying desperately hard to pretend it's not true because it makes a shamble out of your vapid argument. I accept it, it's just that I actually understand what it means as well as the economic framework and rules it applies under. I understand the logical, factual and endlessly documented limitations of this most basic tenet of economics. You, on the other hand, are just witlessly quoting something you read/heard somewhere and have a hopelessly vague understanding of. Whatever makes you feel better about yourself pal. I can't help but laugh, however, since you so horribly butchered any attempt to discuss economics yourself and resolutely refused to engage in any discussion or defense of your statements after having them debunked. Your only defense has been to repeat it over and over, as if that somehow strengthens your argument. No, it's pretty clear you're embarrassing yourself now. Your feeble deflection and goal-post moving is an old and tired tactic, but I can't say I'd expect anything more considering your generally junky reasoning. As for unpleasantness, it was you who started very early with the childish personal insults, and as we see here these have continued throughout your posts. While it may be unpleasant for you to have your doddering arguments picked apart and shown for the sad jokes that they are, I'd suggest that insulting people who disagree with you is not going to lead to a pleasant debate. Again, however, I don't expect you to have any perspective on your baffling hypocrisy. For someone who's been keen to insult my (according to you) lack of education, your obviously weak critical reasoning skills and resulting tendency to resort to insults and deflection makes it seem very unlikely that you yourself have any.

I never said they did. I just said they're overpaid and a simple comparison of their compensation package vs low-level clerks in the private sector would confirm this. I'd suggest maybe that YOU don't understand averages. If you inflate the wages of the lowest earners on the scale, you push the average upwards in two ways. First, the increased salary of the lowest earners directly pushes the average up by simple mathematics. Second, you generally have to pay the people in more senior positions more to give them a reason to take on more responsibility. Thanks for coming by though Peter. Your goof contributions are always insightful....

You posted an INCORRECT example of the CAF wage for an officer position (the figure you quoted was for a flight-rank captain). That ONE mid/high level position comprises a tiny fraction of the overall military staff and therefore provides literally NO useful information for an aggregate comparison of military vs CPA compensation. If you ACTUALLY had a worthwhile point to make, you'd provide some evidence that military (add the RCMP if you like) compensation packages are so much higher than in the CPA that the small percentage their combined work forces present in the federal public service are responsible for skewing the numbers up. Unfortunately, you can't, because you're categorically full of crap.

Argus I suggested no such thing. Rather, I was literally spoon-feeding you the reasoning that should have led you to the conclusion that wages and performance/productivity are NOT correlated in a straight line. Not only have I explicitly stated that diminishing returns start to take effect when wages go too high or too low (economics!), I actually gave you a no-brainer illustration of the concept with your oft-mentioned burger-flippers. The fact that all of this went over your head (the direct explanation of the economics, the tongue-in-cheek mockery of your logic AND the gift-wrapped and painfully simple analogy) is an extremely worrying sign for the type of minds we have employed in the federal public service. Good thing the union had your back! Case in point there. Having been embarrassed on a variety of topics regarding public sector entitlements, you've erected the comic and tragically dumb defence that none of it is relevant because people were talking about sick leave pay 10-15 pages ago on this thread. It doesn't matter that you and I have spent over half a dozen pages arguing whether federal public servants are overpaid, you've decided you can save face by pretending we weren't. Except the PBO explicitly stated they do. Perhaps your years of inactivity collecting a public pension (most of it funded by taxpayers), has dulled your reasoning. Your continued insistence on presenting YOUR personal testimonials defending the justification for YOUR benefits is a shining example of foolishness.

Nice try. I didn't deliberately delete them, I just didn't need to pick them apart until now. Your insistence to discuss them strongly highlights the bizarre and amusing logic you employ for your argument. First off, why does including the military and RCMP in the figures change anything? Are they not public servants, and therefore part of the discussion? Second, do you have any evidence to suggest that they're significantly skewing the average upwards? If not, we can safely conclude that this is more gobbledygook - more crap you've tossed around hoping that something will stick. Speaking of things people won't address, would you care to go back to my previous summary of our discussion, where we were able to conclude from your own words that the vast majority of federal public servants are clerks and such, yet somehow the average compensation for federal servants is $114,000/year?

DART is there to ensure basic survival needs are met for people living in a disaster zone. They make sure that people are looked after when their critical infrastructure is compromised/destroyed/overloaded. That means basic medical relief, clean water and treating malnourishment, hypothermia, common infections etc. An earthquake/flood/typhoon/tsunami often kills more people indirectly in the days/weeks after the disaster than when it originally hits. DART is there to provide relief for that.

DART's medical platoon capabilities are described as: (operating) a medical aid station, a small tented facility offering laboratory, pharmacy, rehydration, preventive medicine and limited obstetrics services. It does not provide surgical or trauma care services. The health care centre can serve 250 to 300 outpatients and 10 inpatients per day, depending on their needs. The Ebola outbreak requires ID specialists, immunologists and epidemiologists. Sending a military relief unit specializing in pharmacy, preventative medicine and baby-delivering is not a smart move.