Moonbox

Lower drag is great, but knowing that your primary fighter has similar energy/maneuverability diagrams to the F-18 is worrisome, considering that's a +35 year old design now and wasn't a premier air-superiority platform even in its time. Once detected, the F-35 is going to have a huge disadvantage in BVR combat as well as dogfighting against dedicated air-superiority fighters like the Typhoon, or even the F-15 or SU-35. If it's detected too early, those fighters will launch their missiles from further out, at higher speeds (F-35's supersonic acceleration is horrible), and in the unlikely scenario where they actually dogfight, simple weight/thrust and wing-loading are going to strongly be against the F-35. It has fantastic transonic acceleration, I know that, but I find it unlikely that it's going to be agile like the A-4 at low speeds. The A-4 was tiny and had wing-loading comparable to the Raptor, whereas the F-35 is large and has worse wing-loading than the 1950's era Voodoo.

Low-level-stealth-attack-on-the-ground bomber? What the heck does that even mean? The F-35 is a multi-role fighter/strike craft. We don't want or need a strictly air defense platform. The idea of requiring an interceptor to turn away Russian bears or whatever else might fly over one of our oceans is about 40 years obsolete. We have a small air force, and with a small air force you need to purchase platforms that can fulfill as many roles as possible. The ground attack and interdiction capabilities of the F-35 are the ones most likely to be needed, since NATO enjoys an enormous air superiority (technically and by the numbers) and will continue to for at least the next 20 years. Regardless, someone needs to put to bed the notion that this plane is unable to defend itself in the air. I don't think that anyone would argue that it's going to be a good dog fighter, but it's tiny radar signature is going to give it a huge advantage in BVR combat (where virtually all combat takes place now). I don't like the F-35 and think the program is a disaster. I even created this thread. Unfortunately, I don't think we have a good alternative. Right now, however, it's the only game in town. Hopefully it teaches a lesson to other western military procurement programs.

I thought it was around $60M, but I don't really follow it.

Because the Gripen has a single engine, and if being single-engine is a reason we shouldn't buy the F-35, the Gripen should be a non-starter. Either way, the Gripen is already approaching 20 years old as a platform and its effectiveness (already eclipsed by a number of existing platforms) is only going to continue to fall. It's a budget plane developed uniquely with a Russian/Soviet threat in mind, and the logic behind its suggestion as a replacement for our current fleet is not really any better than advocating the purchase of modernized F-16's. It's cheap. We get it. There's a reason for that. It's not a bad plane, but the Swedes didn't just come up with a genius design that ended up cheap AND more effective than the competition. It's cheaper for a reason.

I never said they all were. There's definitely some forward-thinking unions interested in long-term partnerships with their companies, but there are also a lot of antagonistic and self-destructive ones too. As for the public sector, there MAY be some reasonable ones out there, but I don't know of any. When being antagonistic and greedy invariably leads to long term and positive results, that's the behavior that we're going to see from them. Generally there's a reasonable comparison that can be made, whether it's an identical or similar position in the private sector (ie. bureaucrats, electricians etc), or we look to privatized versions of the same job south of the border. We can also look at that person's education and training (cost and time thereof) and compare it to someone with a similar background. Finally, we can also look at the available work force in that particular industry. Teachers would be an excellent example. When you have a glut of trained and aspiring teachers who would be willing to do the same job, in the same place, for much less money, that has to be taken into consideration when negotiating contracts as well. That's not to say you axe your current teachers making 90k+ a year with golden benefits, but it's definitely something you can bring up when they start crying at the bargaining table.

I know it's more expensive, but I really recommend the iPad. There are cheaper and older models available (I'm using the iPad 3 - the first one with retinal display) and it completely replaced my laptop and I don't buy physical books anymore unless they're ridiculously good and I just want it on my bookshelf. I read books on it, check the news on it, watch movies on it and listen to music etc...It does everything. If you're looking to read books, I'd probably recommend the Kobo. My parents and sister both have them and they're cheap and probably even better to just read books on. They're really simply designed and the letters are just magnetic black and white images on the screen, which is much easier on the eyes (the white space on the page doesn't shine in your eyes like it does on a computer screen or tablet). This also forces you to read with the light on, which is good, because I murder my eyes reading in the dark with my iPad.

Two good questions. First, I didn't mention Ford because they didn't go bankrupt. They made changes well before the financial crisis hit an made sure they were solvent, and after watching GM and Chrysler go bankrupt and the union workers there being forced into large and necessary concessions, Ford employees saw the writing on the wall and had to negotiate similar concessions or be next. This was a very good example of market forces at work. As for my credentials, we both know that Rue, myself or you could say whatever they want. I've already explained my degree was business/econ and I've been working in finance ever since. I'm not an economist, but my knowledge of economics goes far beyond econ 101. It's what I get for criticizing grammar. I know better. I'm not against the public sector getting fair wages. I'm against them completely screwing us over in collective bargaining. Arbitration would be better, particularly if the arbitrators were using private sector comparisons instead of public ones as we currently see. Right now, even arbitration ends up being a joke sometimes, because the arbitrators often take ridiculous CB agreements from one public sector service and use it to support a similarly ridiculous arrangement with the other. Having similar wages and benefits as the private sector would be more than fair, particularly since public sector employees enjoy far better job security and less rigorous performance standards.

Sure, but it still has a single engine, so you can't complain about that feature on the F-35 and then go on to support the Gripen.

One thing that I find kind of funny is how people are knocking the F-35's single engine and then slamming its price at the same time, or even worse, saying the Gripen could be an alternative. That's funny.

Market forces did that. Honda/Toyota want a skilled work force, and they pay the salaries and benefits that ensure they maintain both a profitable operation and a satisfied, non-unionized work force. GM and Chrysler were paying salaries and benefits FAR beyond what market forces dictated Toyota employees would make, and they went bankrupt as a result. Honestly, it's not that complicated. I wonder why you're having so much trouble with the concept. http://i.word.com/idictionary/whinge "Ed-u-macation", its a hell of a thing. Maybe shouldn't have skipped 1st year English in that Econ diploma. My apologies for not knowing British English. I think it's pretty safe to say that 'whinge' is not a common term here. I've never read it in British literature, nor have I heard it on British television, but regardless, sorry for that. Well let's summarize what I've said so far Bob: I'm saying that the public sector gets paid far more in wages and benefits than similar positions/skill sets receive in the private sector, and it's because they exploit their closed market system I'm saying that public sector unions are an abomination in the free market, since they operate outside the free market system and exploit collective bargaining. they exploit their closed market system in the collective bargaining process at the taxpayer's expense. I'm not exactly being coy here. My language isn't unclear. It's concerning that you can't make the giant leap in logic (sarcasm) that my conclusion requires. I don't think that the public sector should have the right to collective bargaining, or at the very least the legislatures in Canada should curb their rights to strike. They abuse the system and rip off the taxpayers.

Media coverage and relevance might be one thing, but per capita population has literally nothing to do with it. Canadians and Americans know more about the geography of Australia than they do about China, despite China's far denser population and huge and notable cities. Australia is just more relevant to most of them.

From what little you've written it doesn't seem like you don't know much of anything about combat aircraft. Look up what an interceptor is and you'll see that air combat manoeuvres are not top on their list of priorities. As for the Gripen, it excels at little other than being cheap. it might be more agile than the F-35, but it has relatively awful BVR capabilities and a low payload, so for the type of missions Canada would use it for (ground attack and interception) it would under perform.

Neither of those statements really make any sense.

There are more than 50 of them, and they're tiny on a map. Regardless, I imagine that the majority of Canadians couldn't label more than a handful like California, Florida, Texas, Michigan, New York and perhaps a few others. Aside from that, they'd know all sorts of names to write down, but not really where they go. A lot of the Americans were able to label Ontario, Quebec and BC, however, which is 1/4 of the provinces essentially, and you're almost guaranteed most Canadians couldn't label 1/4 of the US states.

So what you're saying essentially is that you posted a bunch of opinions with no substance in an attempt to bait criticism? That's pretty much the definition of trolling. What about it was uncalled for? monty literally said that his own opinions had no substance. Argus was asking him to confirm that's what he was saying. Maybe that's what he meant, but he actually referred to his own opinions as having no substance. Either way it's really funny. On the one hand, he's posted a bunch of hilarious nonsense and then tried to pretend people's mocking responses weren't worth responding to (lol). If, on the other hand, he's just confirming that his own opinions had no substance, that's also kind of funny and pretty clearly indicates he's trolling.

I'm saying Toyota/Honda's pension plan wasn't negotiated by a union, and is therefore barely a fraction of what GM/Chrysler employees were getting. Toyota/Honda workers didn't get paid nearly as much as GM/Ford/Chrysler did leading up to the auto bailout, yet thousands of potential employees STILL lined up when a handful of positions open up at Toyota's Cambridge plant. I'm saying that the exact opposite is happening, and it shouldn't be allowed to. I'm saying that public sector unions are an abomination in the free market, since they operate outside the free market system and exploit collective bargaining. I think my suggestion was obvious. Apparently you struggle with that, along with the proper spelling for whining. That's not even a typo, which I find really funny. I'm saying that the public sector gets paid far more in wages and benefits than similar positions/skill sets receive in the private sector, and it's because they exploit their closed market system in the collective bargaining process at the taxpayer's expense. It's no different than how our banks and telecoms screw us in fees. They're able to screw consumers over because they're operating in protected industry, just like the public sector unions do. All that's changing is that on one hand it's the unions and on the other hand it's the shareholders/execs who are doing it. Either way it costs everyone on the outside a LOT of money.

You're right. It isn't about you! It's about your post. Your childish grasp of... was a very clear indication that I was attacking your idea and what you wrote, particularly your inflammatory remarks and oversimplification of geo-political issues. You've already indicated that you are essentially baiting people and that this is 'a test thread'. Clearly you're less interested in having an intelligent discussion and more on provoking people. Ridiculing your ideas and line of thinking isn't the same thing as a personal attack. A really ignorant, poorly reasoned and inflammatory comment simply isn't going to provoke a cool-headed, rational, polite response. It's going to get a mocking reply and that's all it can hope for. Similarly, when you spout out blatant falsehoods, like the lack of ethnic diversity in Moscow being 'silly US propaganda', we can only assume that you're 100% ignorant on the subject, because easily researched Russian sources can prove that's not the case. Putting the US propaganda spin on it means you're willing to go even further, however, and put a pointless inflammatory spin on your denial of a simple fact. If you want to talk about forum rules and guidelines, you might want to review your posts in this thread for numerous violations, specifically about researching your posts and trolling.

They receive comparable wages and the pensions on top of that. They didn't concede on anything, because they didn't have to. It doesn't matter whether it's wages or benefits. You can calculate the value of both. The public sector employees in Canada end up with wages and benefit combinations significantly better and more valuable than the average private sector employee of similar skill and qualification.

Wait...what? Living off cat food? Could you tell me where, anywhere, that was even remotely implied? As for Finance 101, suffice it to say that my education was finance/econ and so is my career. Forgive me if I laugh at your attempt to educate me on beginner investing. and that's pure fantasy based on ignorance and broken logic. Whether or not the plans were under-funded, the cost of the employer contributing its portion to the pension plan moving forward was so costly that Toyota/Honda's labour cost advantage would have made it impossible to compete. Pretend, for example, that the government bailed out those pension plans. The pensions for current and future employees would continue to put their companies at such a competitive disadvantage in labour costs that they'd be driven out of business soon anyways. I propose that the concept of fair collective bargaining in the public sector is an oxymoron most of the time. Their employer literally can't go out of business, has infinitely deep pockets and no competition. There's virtually no incentive for them to bargain fairly.

None of those things have anything to do with actual pension plans. That's all just basic investment terminology you can get from a RSP brochure or from Finance 101. As for MY investments, I'm sophisticated enough to trade aggressively through my own brokerage account, for $7/trade, and have done extremely well over the last 10 years doing so. Thanks for the advice though. Pooled funds...*yawn* You don't seem to have a clue how the free market operates. I brought up GM and Chrysler a few quotes back to illustrate what happens when militant unions 'negotiate' for benefits that similarly qualified workers outside of unions don't get. They put their companies out of business. The ONLY circumstances where these ludicrous pension plans can be reality is in public sector services or in heavily regulated closed markets. You think they were fairly bargained for, but they weren't. They were done so on the back of taxpayers and consumers who don't have alternatives to turn to. Public sector unions are not operating on the free market. The free market depends on competition and public sector services don't have to compete with anyone.

How do you drive apartheid into the sea? I'm curious about what you're saying here. Perhaps in the strictest terms. I'm sure you could find a few. As to the actual demographics, the last published census in Moscow had around 92% of the population as ethnic Russians. Most of the remainder are white Slavic/Turkic people from former Soviet Republics, like Ukrainians, Georgians Belarusians and Armenians, or people identifying with separately distinguished (but fully Russianized) white ethnic groups like the Mordvins and Chuvash. This is Moscow census data., not US propaganda as you claim. I'm literally choking back laughter right now. As far as evil regimes go, Israel and South Africa are barely even on the radar for evil nastiness, even in their immediate region. Your "push into the sea" rhetoric is just brainless sloganeering and mirrors what Israel's frankly far more evil and vicious neighbors have been threatening for decades (and on several occasions have tried) to do. Your childish grasp of geo-politics is noted, however, and I commend your hilarious take on the subject. Please tell me when you are publishing your manifesto, because I'd surely like to read it.

My pension plan (and most private sector pension plans) are not things that you can retire on, or dream of it. Private sector pension plans are often either non-existent or just a token plans where 10 years of service would net out to the equivalent of perhaps 2-3 pay cheques annually. I left an employer after 8 years of service and cashed out my pension which equated to about 1/5th of ONE year's salary. After 40 years of service that would end up being ONE full year of income for me. That's normal. A pension you can retire on is simply not an option or reality for most people in the private sector. They've decided to take advantage of taxpayers and force them to match their savings contributions. Pooled or not, any plan that matches your personal contributions and practices basic diversification criteria works out to be virtually risk free. Even if the stock market tanks 25%, the fact that your employer (in this context the taxpayers) contributed half of what you put in means that you still netted a 25% basic RoI. That's a deal anything but an idiot would sign up for. The illusion that you're clearly operating under is that the average employee in the private sector even has the option of a pension plan as robust as the private sector does. They don't. Their pension plans are lousy, generally have extremely low contribution limits, and will NEVER, EVER get them to retirement.

It's an insanely lucrative pension plan, one that private sector employees can usually only dream of. The fact that they pay 50% into it doesn't change this basic fact. Paying 50% into a crummy pension is not the same thing as paying 50% into a golden ticket that ensures you never need to save for retirement. The union bargained for those benefits in a monopolistic market that enables them to hold the public sector hostage. It's a situation where the environment gives them way more bargaining power than they should have, and it's to the detriment of the public. In a private sector setting, companies that offer pensions like this go out of business. GM and Chrysler went bankrupt because something like 33% of the cost of each of their cars were due to paying bloated pension plans that their militant unions bargained for. For a long time this worked, because the Big Three didn't have much outside competition. When Toyota and Honda etc entered the market seriously, however, and were able to offer similar or even better cars for less money (and still have thousands of people line up for jobs at their factories), the gig was up. Unfortunately, we as consumers can't choose not to buy hydro, nor can we choose another provider.

Don't be a kill-joy. It was a goofy article and warrants nothing but a goofy discussion.

No, it's nothing like that at all. Blaming the system for apathy, laziness and stupidity is called just making excuses. The logic behind the idea that voters aren't voting because they don't like the options is completely idiotic. Voter turnout isn't standard across demographics. It's particularly low in particular groups, and their priorities (watching TV instead of voting, or learning the issues) ensures that their needs and interests are mostly ignored, which leads to their disenfranchisement and subsequent complaining. There's an easy fix to this. Take 10 minutes a day to read the news. Can't do that? Nobody's fault but yours.