Moonbox
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Posts posted by Moonbox
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No; my point is that if the governemnt belieevs these cuts are necessary, for the reasons they (and you) have been stating, then they should have been initiated a long time ago.
Yes, but like I said, it's politics. There are optics to concern yourself with, particularly the running of a minority government during a recession. Cutting public sector jobs would have looked bad at that time, and would have probably helped the opposition, regardless of its merits.
It's not to apply double standards; it's to apply the government's own supporters' standards.
If the cuts are necessary now...because of "wasteful fat"...then they were necessary a long time ago.
What's your point though? It's being done now and the opposition is protesting. If you're just trying to score points against the current government, then sure, you have scored a point. If you want to argue the merits of proposed and ongoing cuts, however, this has little relevance.
The decisions of powereful, poilitically-connected ownners and shareholderrs, wholly in it for their individual personal benefit only...are preferable to dealing with unions?
Better than public-sector unions?? Absolutely! A unionized public-sector monopoly, particularly in an essential service, is an abomination. Healthcare, teaching, waste-collection, postal service etc are all things that we pretty much cannot do without. When those workers go on strike, they basically hold taxpayers hostage for higher wages and benefits which those taxpayers themselves have no chance of getting.
As for the 'greedy corporations' that screw everyone over, that is, perhaps, something the government could take more of a roll in. Higher minimum wages, import tarrifs, more aggressive anti-combine laws etc can all do more to make the labour markets more competitive.
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If we're to take all this at face value, then the Conservative Government has been seriously remiss for a long time...incontrovertibly so since winning a majority.
Why haven't they already done it?
First, you have to understand that everything works at the government level at a snail's pace. Even with the government limiting debate in the House it's a huge, complex beast and is going to take way more time than most people wouldn't like.
And the anticipated response--better late than never--is true enough, but doesn't absolve them of the unwarranted waste which they have wilfully allowed...in fact, embraced...for years now.
That's irrelevant to the discussion. If you're interested in having an honest, non-partisan debate, you can't argue against the government's initiative in the first place and then also complain that they didn't do it sooner.
Why aren't they being held to account for years of waste--years of waste which is plainly implied by the ability to cut ten-twenty thousand jobs?
It's not enough to say that other governments can and have been guilty of the same thing; that's true, under this paradigm, this austerity notion. But that doesn't absolve the conservatives. It indicts them.
Sure! I'll not argue that at all. We are talking about politics, however, and it's a science of comparison. The government is held accountable at election time, and in the absence of a reasonable and superior alternative, it's going to get re-elected. The NDP was certainly not offering these cuts in their platform, so what are we going to do? Are we going to hold the present government accountable for NOT cutting spending earlier by electing a government that declared itself against these cuts???
Because the other question is this: what fat? Who decides? Some cuts, I suspect, will at least sound like no-brainers (to people like myself, I mean, who perhaps lack the deeper knowledge and understanding of what many of these employees actually do); but are we to assume, a priori, that they're all going to be correct?
We'd have to assume that the expensive consultants the government has hired over the last few years would be the ones finding inefficiencies and redundancies. It's more or less worthless for you and I to speculate, because there's no way for us to know.
And (related) what of Civil Servant Argus's position: that much of the waste is the result of the way things are done, not of the number of people involved...so that the cuts might actually increase inefficiences, and so cost us more money?
Like any organization, public or private, the cuts aren't likely to be made blind. Most managers would hopefully know enough about their operations to see what they can get by without and what isn't necessary. Again, however, it serves no purpose for you and I to speculate whether or not the cuts will all be done right. Indeed, probably not all of them will be. Cutting costs in general, however, is probably a good idea at this point.
As for the wages...I get this, but the assumption that Private Sector wages are inherently just and rational, and so the "proper" measurement of how things should be done, is a fairly extremist ideological position, not something derived from "natural law," as some would have it; at any rate, it's a separate, philosophical argument as much as (more than, really) an economic one.
The private sector, however, usually doesn't leave the taxpayer holding the bag. The inefficiencies there are, at least to some extend, sorted out by competition. Over-staffed, unproductive units eventually get shut/trimmed down by virtue of the market. It's not perfect, no, as we've seen with the Big Three automakers and the Telecom industry, but it's better than having to deal with the Public Sector Unions.
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Ok, I'll bite:
Do you honestly believe--through your study of economics--that a complex national economy (or the public sector aspect of it) is a simple zero-sum game of wages earned versus taxes paid?
It's not quite zero-sum, no, but the 'intangibles' that you and jacee etc would ask us to consider don't even come close to bridging the gap. This is not to say that we don't need a public sector, but the fact that it's already bloated and that it generally pays far better wages (for similar or even worse qualifications) means that would certainly be better off trimming the fat.
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No disrespect intended really, but clearly none of you guys have studied any economics. The fact that you're asserting that more government jobs = more taxes and therefore a stronger economy is pretty indicative of this. The exact opposite is true, in fact. The taxes public sector workers pay NEVER EVER equals what they earn in salaries. If the math escapes you, picture an economy where EVERYONE in Canada worked for some public service. The tax rate would be 100% and the government would still go bankrupt. I mean...this is just funny:
And they're not paying taxes either. 67% of their salary in EI, 20% won't be paid in taxes = 87% of their salary in costs to government. The fact that they'll be consuming less, thus paying less in sales/gas and other consumption taxes and it's a clear loss to the economy.
Wow. Let's pretend we have an income of $60k.
67% of 60k = 40k So we have savings per year of 20k
As for tax revenues lost, you'd see around 6k less tax revenue from this person per year total. So we're looking at 14k of savings now. Lastly, we have consumption taxes that we're missing out on, so let's pretend HST all goes to the federal government at 13% of consumption AND let's assume that the 20k in lost salary would have ALL been spent. 20k x 13% = 2600 in revenue.
14k-2.6k = 11,400 in annual savings for the government in the FIRST year, disregarding the fact that EI is temporary and that the former employee will have to find a (hopefully) private sector job which will provide net benefit to the economy or end up on welfare, where he/she will be MUCH less of a drag on the economy than they previously were.
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I agree and again the Minister of Finance and the pm are telling half truths for their own purpose. As the gentlemen said last night on CTV, countries LOAN money to the IMF and in return they help countries who need financially help. The IMF always pays back the loans to those countries that do loan them money. All Canadians should always question anything this government says to verify it is the truth.
I think this is a case of Topaz complaining about something the government has done simply because it's Harper and the Tories, and not the Liberals.
As for how this would cost us nothing, that's pure fantasy. To provide relief money to the IMF, we would have to borrow it, which costs us money. The IMF would of course promise to pay us back, but that's on the assumption that the countries that borrow pay THEM back...
The goal here, of course, is to have well-managed economies use their good credit ratings to secure low rate financing for badly managed economies. It's sort of like good debt chasing bad. If Europe is willing to take the steps necessary to reduce their deficits and spending, the crisis can be contained by Europe alone. If not, then I see no reason why economies who have, at best, minimal interest or trade with the problem economies should get involved.
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It's not all that naive or dense then, since you kind of admit it toward the end of your post. It just takes a certain amount of time, decades, for the effect to become apparent to the common man. So while on the one hand we enjoyed the fruits of virtual slave labour from a foreign workforce that lives below what we consider to be the poverty line, that's come back to bite us in the ass. We've become the consumers, not the producers.
I didn't mean to be insulting, but blaming globalization for the decline of the North American auto industry is both naive and dense. By far the major cause of this was poor value. North American auto makers have lost share over the last 20 years to German and Japanese auto makers, and more recently South Koreans. These countries are hardly 3rd world slave markets, particularly not Germany. Why is it that they succeed where our domestic producers fail? Because they didn't build shit cars for us or get locked into absolutely ridiculous union contracts that paid FAR beyond fair market value for their work. That's what the Big Three did, and it snowballed from there as the union contracts became more and more lavish. The more benefits that needed to be paid, the more the auto makers had to increase their margins and/or decrease quality.
My acknowledgement for the downsides of globalization was much more general and not really directed to the auto sector at all. There are certainly downsides, particularly involving the polarization of wealth in Canada, but as far as the auto-industry goes, Canadians are much better served being able to buy affordable, reliable cars today than they were buying gas-guzzling garbage that broke down every couple of years just so that auto-workers with minimal education could live well above the means of their average customers.
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No. My point is, as you well know, that anyone can blame anything on childhood experiences.
Clearly he doesn't know, else he wouldn't have responded that way. Are you, however, in any way surprised? I'm not.
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Globalization is the problem, not unions. It allows the elite upper class to search for goods and services around the world, but it decimates local first-world economies reducing them to an equal playing field with low tech undeveloped countries like Bangladesh. We "the people" accepted globalization, because we are naive.
It's naive and a bit dense to blame globalization for the problem. If anything, it's improved things for the average driver in North America. Prior to the more globalized economy, the cars made here were total shit. They were expensive, guzzled gas, broke down all the time and didn't last. Consumers were getting absolutely ripped off by the car companies, and the unions benefitted from this tremendously.
Toyota and Honda turned the industry upside-down by building quality cars and, as we saw, drove the Big Three to their knees. Now we get far more value for what we're buying and we actually have a choice. Oh the inhumanity...
Having said that, I do believe that Globalization may be going a bit too far. In North America, we've seen cheaper goods overall, but stagnant wages and the dwindling of our manufacturing sector. I wouldn't at all be averse to adding tarrifs to manufacturers from overseas in places like India and China, where dirt poor wages are their only competitive advantage. Having said that, I'd only be supportive of this if I knew the unions were out of the picture and we weren't going to get swindled like we did all the way up to the late 80's and early 90's.
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Look. For better or for worse thats tens of millions of women around the world that make a living off of men looking at their bodies. Models, strippers, actresses, etc. Its true! Some of them get exploited and theres criminals out there looking to find these women and pimp them out.
I'm all about the de-criminalizing prostitution. That's all fine and dandy. In my mind, there's nothing criminal about it at all and its prohibition is a relic of old puritanical days and, as you and others have mentioned, it forces women underground and into danger. Having said that, I still think it's a good idea to deny visas for strippers from overseas. It's not a 'right' for foreign women to be able to come to Canada for work, and the nature of this work, their lack of support from any family or friends, and their likely weak grasp of english puts them in EXTREMELY vulnerable positions where exploitation is far too easy to accomplish.
Right now, a criminal exploiter can bring a women in from overseas, isolate her and pimp her out from a strip joint. On the strip joints' side, everything looks legit. The woman is allowed in Canada and she has valid work, and if she does anything illegal the owner can just say he didn't condone it blah blah blah. By denying visas in the first place, the criminals have to smuggle women into the country in the first place (placing them at risk of arrest), they have to employ them illegally (placing them at risk of arrest for employing illegal immigrants) and their supply of naive women coming to Canada voluntarily for a better life dwindles considerably.
GO AFTER THE CRIMINALS! Theyre violating our laws and should be thrown in jail. But dont go after women who are simply trying to profit from offering a legal service. They have absolutely every right to do so.
We do go after the criminals, but under the current formula, it's far too easy for them to pretend what they're doing is legitimate, as I've explained above. We're not 'going after' the women either. They have no 'right' to come to Canada in the first place, and we're not harming them or imprisoning them or anything like that. The premise that we're somehow hurting them is just stupid. By that logic, we're going after everyone who we deny entry into Canada.
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I'm in my mid 20's. I think like a young, open minded person.
You do? Let's go back to the following:
It makes sense to me and that is what matters (to me). Not everybody has to think like you, Jack.
All that matters is what makes sense to you...right. I'm starting to get a picture of how your brain works now...or doesn't. This sort of comment is strikingly similar to, "The aliens are real in my brain."
common sense does not exist.
You're outdoing even yourself! Common sense doesn't exist! WOW! I think I need to put that in my signature! Look up the definition of common sense and get back to us please. Holy mother...
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I'm going to place this thread under the category "Yawn".
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It's not hard to win an argument against you, especially with dumb responses like this. Add something reasonable to the discussion or stop posting. Posts like the above are good examples of trolling.
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I have yet to see anything that shows foreign strippers are forced into Canada using work visas provided by pimps.
That is your point to prove. So lets see it.
What are you even talking about??? First of all, if you had an ounce of reason you'd know that nobody here can provide proof from our computers that it either is or isn't happening, nor would the effort of doing so be worthwhile to satisfy the brainless arguments of an irrational forum poster like yourself.
We're arguing the pros and cons of the proposal, and as of yet I have really heard of any good cons. The argument that denying them work visas, thus forcing themselves to enter as illegal aliens, therefore putting them in even more danger, is ludicrous. Someone has to come up with something better than that.
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The most common money laundering front is a strip club, yes.
The most common reasons for needing to launder money are prostitution and drugs.
Instead of throwing everyone in prison they use them for information, willingly & unwillingly.
Most pedal drugs, yes. Not all are in prostitution. Prostitution is very risky these days. Smuggling stolen guns & goods, yes.
Except sexual exploitation is not really a petty crime at all. In a lot of cases it's more like slavery. It doesn't seem like you were really get at anything with this point, however. Now you're just nattering for the sake of it.
Christ. First you use the analogy of "strippers = cocaine dealers," and now you analogize them with rapists.
As you say: "Weak."
I'll agree with that. It's unfortunate being on the same side of an argument as CPCFTW. He tends to dumb things down pretty hard.
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You are making the assumption that strip clubs are escort services. In the criminal world strip clubs are commonly used to launder money. They aren't going to run a prostitution ring out of the place that they launder money. The heads of criminal organizations are businessmen and are not that stupid.
How many more dumb things are you going to say? Strip clubs are just money laundering fronts? The fact that money needs to be laundered in the first place is indicative that there are illegal activities going on in the background. Criminal organizations generally don't restrict themselves to one type of activity. Often they're amalgamations of all sorts of different enterprises. Drugs and prostitution are two of the most common. Don't be daft.
The argument is to make laws that actually protect the victims, rather than laws that make it harder to protect victims.
Not allowing highly likely future victims to make themselves vulnerable in Canada IS protecting victims. The whole point of the law is to prevent them from landing in a bad situation. You clowns have taken the extraordinary position that not allowing them easy entry into the country somehow MAKES them into victims, which is ridiculous. If we're preventing women (currently not being exploited) from putting themselves in positions where they're very likely to be exploited, that's not victimizing them. If we're forcing criminal organizations to smuggle women into the country for the purpose of exploiting them, we're not making the situation worse than it already was.
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It doesn't eliminate anything genius. They will just be smuggled into the country illegally now. And then you will have undocumented strippers in Canada which will create more problems for law enforcement.
But you seem to have it all figured out.
You win for the dumbest post in the thread so far.
Frankly, your logic sucks. Sure, some women will be smuggled into the country. That's a matter for the Coast Guard, Customs, Immigration etc to sort out. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't seriously curtail the operations of criminal exploiters. If they have to pay to smuggle women into the country, it'll cost them a ton of money to do it, put them at risk and make it very hard for them to pretend they're running legitimate and legal business. It'll make it much easier to prosecute the EMPLOYERS as a result.
The argument that we shouldn't de-legitimize something simply because criminals will break the law and get around it is beyond stupid.
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Don't ban strip clubs or anything, if I'm to take your narrative as gospel.
Did I say anything about banning strip clubs?
Moreover, am I to understand that your suggestion is visas should only be granted to people who work in "essential" services? Who's defining these "essential" services?
That's not my suggestion at all. My suggestion is not to grant them to young women working as strippers. The basis for this suggestion is that the women put themselves in very vulnerable positions and the likelihood of them being criminally exploited is high. I only mentioned the term 'essential service' ironically, but it's interesting that this is what you latched on to out of my whole argument. I'm looking for a good explanation on how this in ANY way makes Canadians worse off, because realistically, your critism seems based more on being an anti-Harper hack rather than any review of the proposal's merits.
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At some point you realize it's not worth replying to these things.
Actually it looks like he's arguing with a bunch of children. You guys haven't really made an intelligent point in 4 pages.
The argument is really simple. The likelihood of trouble for a young foreign woman who comes to Canada specifically for the purpose of stripping is exponentially higher than for the born-and-raised Canadian woman. Stripping is far from an essential service and the Canadian economy isn't exactly going to grind to a halt if our strip joints aren't full of 18 year old Russians.
By not granting work visas to strippers, the government eliminates a very obvious, visible and vulnerable supply of young women for criminals to exploit. Since Canada is neither morally nor legally obligated to grant work visas to these people, and since it wouldn't hurt our economy in the slightest, it's difficult to see how this is bad for Canada. I mean, you guys are ACTUALLY making the argument that preventing young, naive, likely poor and uneducated foreign women from putting themselves in EXTREMELY vulnerable positions is HARMING/VICTIMIZING them!?!? Holy crap...
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Well, aren't you special?
And what's with the quotaiton marks? Casting aspersions on your own declaration?
Aspersions...nice! Use the thesaurus for that?
He didn't say it wasn't happening.
He explicitly said that it was happening.
Sure, but the thread is about not allowing work visas to strippers and the rationale behind it, and cybercoma for some reason brought up that Canadian and American girls get exploited too, implying that this was just a misguided puritanical crusade against stripping. Young foreign women coming alone to Canada to work as strippers are putting themselves in positions of risk where the likelihood of exploitation is amplified probably 1000 fold.
So what you could say to him is, "Sorry I didn't carefully read your post, even though I responded to it."
Maybe you could just say, "Sorry for trying to sound smarter than I am and for trolling you with lame gotcha statements."
Try to contribute to the discussion instead of just being a glib little weenie okay?
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Women in Canada are just as likely to be exploited.
No. They're really, really not.
I personally know about half a dozen women that have worked in the business and most of them were from Canada. The two that weren't were from the United States and England.
A testimonial. Well that's reliable. Interesting that you know so many women in the business...I myself know 'none'.
Regardless, if you can't see how easily an Eastern European girl with weak English language skills and no friend or family support could get exploited, I don't know what to say to you. Yes, there are exploited Canadian girls as well. A lot of them are coming from dirt poor, abusive or neglective families, however, and it's a lot harder for the government to anticipate who and where these girls are, and therefore much harder to do anything about. When an 18-25 year old girl from Russia comes here alone, however, and it's pretty clear she'll be stripping, it's much easier to see where things are going. Your assertion that the government is targetting victims is just really stupid. The government is looking to prevent scenarios with high likelihoods of unfortunate outcomes.
Personally I don't really see the value in granting work visas for strippers in the first place. Why are you upset that poor girls from out of country aren't going to be able to come here and take their clothes off for dirt bags and old married men?
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At the risk of sounding like I've been listening to my toaster, I think we should be all facing the reality that what we really need to do is effectively 'bail-out' our whole species. I'd go with a gigantic jubilee - a forgiving of all debts everywhere and establish an entirely new currency (I've always had a fondness for Michael Hardener's idea of a digital time-stamped currency) based on a full cost accounting of things like environmental degradation and in-kind contributions of charitable acts that contribute or restore something to society or the environment.
You do sound like you've been listening to your toaster. If you're serious, and you actually think that this is possible right now...I'm sorry I don't even have a good suggestion for you...just good luck
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How do you interpret the PM gutting environmental protection and fast-tracking the construction of a pipeline through 600 fish bearing watersheds?
What do you say to people who are concerned this will impact their livelihoods; don't worry, be happy or you must be a left-wing eco-terrorist?
I'd say that the safety records of pipelines are pretty good and that the alternative is to not drill the oil at all, or transport it by truck. I don't like the alternatives.
As far as the environmentalists are concerned, the oil sands shouldn't exist at all. In terms of pipeline location, the goal for them, it seems, is to delay the process as long as possible and hope that eventually people give up altogether. If the goal was to actually find the most practical (both environmentally and economically), then perhaps people would take their concerns more seriously.
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Are people who are irate about these changes being willfully ignorant?
I think it's just indignation that the gravy train, which a lot of people have been willfully abusing, is being reigned in a TINY bit.
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Just like Harper hasn't eaten kittens that we know of........I guess I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but you probably wont right?
Harper is a cat man. He would be more likely to eat puppies. I, on the other hand, love dogs, and, if forced to decide, would rather eat kittens.
Government job cuts make NO economic sense
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted
I'm not sure what your point is here. You can raise this objection/question on literally ANYTHING the government does, so it's pretty much meaningless. In the end, we have to assume that the millions the gov't spent to have third party consultants and accountants find cost savings will lead to positive budget outcomes.
Layoffs are generally done en masse for a reason. It's so they can be over and done with in as short a period as possible, so that the people still working there can move on with their lives/jobs and not be worried about a slow bleed of pink slips. As for coincidence, there is none. The Conservatives have long indicated that we have a bloated public service, everyone knew that, they won a majority and now they're moving forward with their plans.
Minimum wage and labour laws should be all the protection Wal-Mart employees should expect. I want to try not to sound like a dick, but what sort of qualifications are required for a Wal-Mart job really? The only reason you would unionize as a Wal-Mart employee is because it's a profitable company and because it's huge. Employees could, again, hold them hostage for wages and benefits they couldn't hope to find working in similar roles.
We're not increasing the power of the private sector by laying off redundant public sector employees. We're making the private sector more competitive by eliminating inefficiencies and tax liabilities.
I really think that you're looking at this too much in a socialist vs capitalist mind set. Too much of one or the other is always bad. Right now, our public sector is bloated and making life more expensive than it should be for the average Canadian. At the same time, however, there's an increasing polarization of wealth in Canada that's making it more difficult than ever for the middle class. These are SEPERATE and UNRELATED problems that should be each dealt with on their own.