Moonbox

I was referring to: My comment on US travel habits, however exaggerated, was meant to highlight how it's not just Canada Americans don't care about. They don't seem to know or care much about the world in general, or even their own country for that matter. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foundation/pdf/NGSRoper2006Report.pdf Highlights: 50% of Americans 18-24 can't locate New York State on a map 50% can't locate Mississipi 30% don't know where Lousiana is 40% of the same don't know the Amazon is in South America 30% can't locate China on a map marked with clear borders (only the country name is missing) 20% can't locate the Pacific Ocean??? 10% can't locate the US on a map??? 33% of them think the US population is between 1 to 2 billion people.... Anyways, there are all sorts of interesting facts in the study but I won't highlight any more of them. Personally, I think if you'd ever travelled much or taken even a basic interest in the affairs of the world, some of this stuff would come naturally...but whatever.

I think you should avoid bringing logical fallacy up in your argument... 2) Weather IS incredibly complex. You can predict all you want, but we STILL haven't been able to predict the weather, be it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or long term, with anything even approaching reasonable accuracy. The fact that you can draw two lines on a graph is irrelevant. You should be embarrassed you even wrote that. 3) "Science" IS wrong all the time, especially when the science in question has to account for 1000000 variables that nobody can control. This is another brutal example of YOUR logical fallacy. What the heck are you even trying to say? That for every lousy scientific conclusion there's probably a good one out there somewhere? Okay sure, but what does that tell us about climate science? Nothing?!?

I was merely responding to bush's condescension. Last I checked it was about +50% for Canada. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the discussion so I'll drop it.

The majority of Americans never leave the country, even once, for their whole lives. In fact, a good number of them never even leave their home counties. What does that tell you?

Not just the federal government. It's all the governments. I have a friend who just lost her job working for the province in water testing etc. You can tell from her Facebook updates just how little work she's doing.

Guys the whole Barbados thing is a giant red herring. It was a cute little anecdote and has absolutely no bearing on the topic at all really. Props to M.Dancer for getting you guys to bite so hard on it.

You're right. Tyranny by the many is not really any better than tyranny by the few. One is no better than the other though. How about 10% of the population controlling over 90% of the wealth and factors of production, which in turn only worsens the problem. It's the black and white outlook that people have that ruins the whole debate. Placing controls on the super wealthy to prevent them from manipulating the system and screwing over everyone else doesn't magically all of the sudden mean we find ourselves in 1920's Russia. Take out the top 3% percentile and you'd likely find that we've been getting steadily poorer.

I'll agree with that in a sense, but could we also not agree that the 20th century has proven that unregulated economies have lead to numerous collapses that have, as a result, required social and economic intervention from the government? It seems that some grey area is required, and that the people who occupy the black and white areas on the peripherals are the ones who really get things screwed up.

I would stay away from discussing the intricacies of economics if I were you. I don't mean any real offense, but it seemed like you got that out of your ECON 101 textbook and now you've decided you're an expert. Sure, the data could interpreted to present a correlation between the dropping of gold standard and income disparity, but that would only be if you're naive enough to assume that the dropping of trade tarrifs, world trade and a host of other variables (which are more to blame) don't have anything to do with it.

What the hell does that even mean? The misuse of buzz words like 'tyranny' and 'liberty' is the kind of stupidity and ignorance that people need saving from. The way they're used today is completely vapid. Bringing the words 'tyranny' into a discussion about Canadian or American politics is the sort of slippery-slop straw man arguments that have been dumbing down politics for decades. Look up the definition of 'tyranny' for us, come back here, and then tell us what the word actually means and then tell us how, in any way, it applies to this discussion.

That's a worthless statistic. I mean no offense, but the number of women in the workplace has skyrocketed over the last 40 years, which effectively comes close to doubling the number of workers in any given family. Umm...we should definetly worry about such a world. When one man/woman can hoard the equivalent of an entire country of 30M's GDP for a year, that harkens back to the days of Louis XVI. There's no reason for anyone to be that rich unless the system is encouraging it. Which would suggest we should do more to get hard working families out of dumpy apartments where they can raise their kids to be proud of themselves. It's the parroting of empty axioms like this that keep people stupid. You can't really argue with Friedman's quote, but it ignores the fact that unregulated capitalism provides 'freedom' for the rich, and much less so for the poor and middle class. When you're living paycheque to paycheque to feed your family, your freedom is practically non-existant. Providing safeguards to ensure a viable middle class is the best way to encourage the economy. It doesn't mean raising corporate tax rates and screwing your wealth producers, but it does perhaps mean raising income taxes on the rich and crushing the monopolies, oligopolies and protected industries that are constantly screwing us. I'm honestly disappointed in you August because you're normally a lot smarter than this. Bringing the Soviet Union into the argument is the biggest straw man you could have possibly attempted. Sure, the Soviet Union failed, but that really has nothing to do with what we're talking about. That was communism, or crushingly stifling government intervention. It was incompetent and misguided and corrupt and that's why it failed. Similarly, unrestrained capitalism is equally incompetent and misguided. It's human nature that certain people will exploit the system wherever and however they can, and we have countless examples of failures in the capitalist system. I find it galling/hilarious that people in the US, for example, are still bitching and moaning about any sort of government intervention when the US economy almost collapsed as was saved, ironically, by government intervention. I think the analogy of the government playing 'parent' to society is apt. If the parent is too laissez-faire and uninterested you're likely to end up with rotten kids. If you're too strict and overbearing, they'll grow up equally screwed up.

I'm by no means an advocate of heavy social spending (quite the opposite actually), but I'm certainly not pleased about the income disparity as it's probably the biggest contributor to the increased need for social spending. I don't think Canada's governments, either provincially or federally, do anything to protect consumers and ensure fair wages. We get absolutely robbed by our utility/telecom companies, as well as our banks and insurers, and all of this money goes into the pockets of the rich. At the same time, the average wages of Canadians have not increased for 30 years and inflation has just made them poorer and poorer. It's the same all over North America. The situation appears worse in the US. Until the ignore cows that fill the electorate actually take a few minutes out of their busy days of watching American Idol and Lost to understand wtf is going on in their world, they're going to just keep voting for people who are hell-bent on screwing them. Another thing that could help is an actually sensible left wing (ie. not the NDP) that could provide an actually valid and reasonable alternative to the crooks in the CPC and LPC. Jack Layton and the other morons in his party does the cause more harm than good.

Hold on a second...Are you trying to say you work in the film industry? Was this before or after you married a rich heiress and proceded to live in the lap of luxury and not work? Was this also before or after your apparent days on the streets that you told us about years ago? Oleg, you have indeed lived a fanciful life...fanciful in that you make it all up and every day it seems like you have a new life story. For the record, a lot of deadbeats actually DO 'work' for 18 hour stretches on 'fine art'. Most of the 'working', however, is usually the naps these artistes take after lighting up on the public dollar.

I wasn't saying insanity. I was saying inanity. Look up "Inane" and then call me. I'm trying to say your posts are emptyheaded and worthless. You generally blab for entire paragraphs without actually presenting a coherent or relevant statement, and while I might wonder about your 'sanity', I certainly have no doubt as to how inane your posting generally is.

Wow Oleg. You're taking inanity to a whole new level.

I don't imagine the US is going to attack vital government servers from friendly nations. It's more likely that the US will be cooperating closely with Canadian and other allied governments to provide a united front against potential cyber-attackers. They'll want our security to be top-notch and our cyber police will be working with their cyber police.

Okay, sure, not all of them are brilliant. That really has nothing to do with what I'm saying though. Labour laws are in place now to ensure that workers are not treated like disposable slaves, and while some of them make no sense, overall they're important. The Unions do something altogether different.

Treated 'reasonably' is also subjective. It's just a little less subjective in that labour laws define reasonable and fair treatment. Nope. You completely missed the point. Labour laws provide safeguards against unfair and unreasonable treatment. The unions, on the other hand, attempt to go far beyond that for the poor, horribly treated bus drivers who need to make sure they can bank 15 sick days or something a year. Dignity is completely subjected. I'll say they're entitled to being able to go to the bathroom, not being fired without cause or for being sick and to not have to work slavish hours. As for respect, you earn that and there's no other way to get it. You don't get that by shaking down taxpayers for salaries/benefits similarly skilled monkey workers in the private sector have no hope of earning.

Well that's another matter altogether. I have no idea why self-employed people don't get audited like 5000x more often, because that would certainly cover a lot of our budgetary issues.

Well 'treated poorly' is a pretty subjective term. I'm not really sure what a menial labourer is expecting from their boss, but it's unlikely that they're going to be told every day that they're special and delicate flowers. How they're treated is also not something that collective bargaining is really going to solve either. If your boss is a dick, I'm not sure how getting to bank sick days solves that. There are labour laws in place to ensure that employees are at least treated reasonably, but I don't know what you're expecting here.

What's more asinine is that you completely missed the point. We don't care what the union's job is. Of course they're going to try to get the best salaries/benefits for their employees. Collective bargaining only exists, however, to support the desires of an easily replaced (ie poorly skilled) workforce, or in the public service monopolies and protected industries. The job of management/the government, however, is to ensure that their companies don't go under to the union's asinine demands and that the taxpayers don't get fleeced. I'm not sure what's not getting through to people here. Postal worker skills are almost worthless. If it was in the private sector, they'd be earning the same wages and benefits of other two-legged barely literate drones workers.

Well it depends on what you do for a living. If, for example, you're doing monkey work in the private sector, I don't think it's likely you'll be highly appreciated for your 'valuable' contributions. That would be because they're not valuable. The difference with the public sector, however, is that on average you'd get paid a fair bit more, have more job security, far better benefits, and a golden pension all at the taxpayer's expense for the exact same type of work. There's nothing ideological about that. It's pretty simple fact.

Or he could have been a young kid or student or something or it could have been thirty years ago. Oleg, get a life. Your declarations like this are almost as dumb as the majority of your posts. As usual your posts barely make any sense. There's always a price for your labour. It's up to you to make your labour valuable. You've made it pretty clear you don't know anything about that, however. and CPCFTW, don't believe Oleg's story about marrying a rich heiress. Rich heiresses, or at least their parents, generally don't attach themselves, and therefore their money, to just anybody off the streets. Oleg has a VERY long history of making crap up here. I've read fairly numerous conflicting versions of his life stories. I doubt he's even remembered half of what he's told us.

How is a post office clerk, or a postal worker, any more qualified than a Tim Horton's or McDonald's employee? They're not! So why is it that they're paid so much better? Literally anyone with two legs and basic literacy can do their job, so why are we, as taxpayers, paying more than we should for postal service for people who are trying to shake us down for even more? I know a lot of people who'd love to be paid $40-50k a year to do monkey work.

It's monkey work. Anyone with two legs and the ability to read can be a Canada Post worker. Some of them need to be able to drive a truck of course, but that's not exactly deeply technical stuff. Why should they earn an above average, or even average, salary, when there are more skilled workers earning less? The benefits and pensions of these workers are also FAR beyond that of a private sector worker with similar skills and abilities.