Moonbox

I thought that Ignatieff did a pretty good job of bashing Harper and landed a good number of zingers on him. I also thought he was very well spoken. His problem was that he spent the entire time bashing Harper to the exclusion of all else and didn't make any effort to advance his own agenda. Jack Layton did this VERY well and Harper did it alright too. If I were to guess about the results of the debate I think I would say that Layton won at the expense of the Liberals and Harper and Duceppe basically treaded water.

I don't think the OP was talking about sovereignty in the sense of every treaty we sign. I think he was indicating something extraordinary with this deal...

because perimeter security does not equal loss of sovereignty. The mouth frothers and bed wetters on this forum would make it out to be otherwise but it's not something I'm terribly worried about. If it means I don't have to spend an hour crossing the border anymore then I'm excited about the prospect... I would say we need to know a little more about it, however.

It's still cold blooded murder. It was pre-meditated and things like uttering threats and assault as far as I know are jail-worthy offenses. Unless the police are incompetent in the area I can't see why this couldn't have been handled without the help of a hit man......

This is something that has always bothered me as well. In the interest of fairness, I think everyone should receive CPP etc. You should be rewarded for having saved for retirement.

Privatization is one option and it's used enormously in the US. If you've ever been to Tampa Bay there are tolls on the causaways all over. Federal $$$ I don't feel should be used for local projects. Inter province highways etc are one thing, but bridges etc should be a provincial or municipal expense. What I hate most about the federal government is how unfairly tax dollars are spent. The federal government, as far as I'm concerned, has a mandate to guard our borders, keep us safe, encourage trade and promote our interests abroad. Instead, we spend billions subsidizing Quebecqois whiners and Manitoba have-nots.

Oh his logic is most certainly in question. It's almost non-existant most of the time.

You get a lot more than a restraining order for beating up and sexually assaulting your wife. You go to jail likely for a long time. This was cold and pre-meditated attempted murder and a sham of a trial and I'd be surprised if it doesn't get overturned.

Infrastructure spending isn't bad when it's being spent efficiently. Unfortunately, large amounts of it are wasted on inefficient feel-good and pet projects that provide no net benefit to the vast vast vast majority of taxpayers.

Interestingly enough almost all of the Liberals' fundraising came from those 'few well paid businessmen at the top' until Harper changed the fundraising guidelines.

Oil is a worldwide commodity. What happens in Africa or Europe or wherever affects everyone. Even so, the prices definetly seem to go up pretty fast when something drives them up, and they're way stickier on the way down when prices are being pushed down.

August, I'm not sure you read anything else I mentioned in this thread. As for capitalism being a Darwinian jungle, it really really is, and I don't understand why you can say otherwise. As for the government being honest refereesm, give me a freaking break. I'm not that naive. A 1st year BBA student knows more about free markets and the invisible hand than most of the people on this board and I can assure you I'm a fair bit beyond that thanks. As for free markets protecting the weak, that's BS. Unrestrained and unregulated free markets are just as harmful to the average person as an over regulated centralized economy. Unrestrained, we have Bill Gates, Rockefeller, price fixing and straight out cheating. Regulating is good when it seeks to prevent deceitful, unfair and blatantly stupid market practises, because those things do not help the economy grow. and if you read my other posts you would have seen I blamed the borrowers just as heavily. I know exactly what happened, being in the industry myself. Your nice simplified explanation failed to explain the role that the Fed had in propping the housing prices up and how negligent the lenders were in approving mortgage loans. People were applying for refinances and new mortgages without having to prove their income. Borrowers and lenders basically ignored the most important principle of lending -- affordability. It really doesn't matter what your house is worth if you can't afford the payments on the mortgage. Zero down mortgages with 40 year amortizations and without income confirmation, based on the brilliant assumption that housing prices would continue to skyrocket forever -- that's what the Free Market came up with in the US. That's such naive BS I don't even know what to say. To say that Canadians are somehow just naturally more risk averse than the rest of the modernized world is balogna. We avoided the meltdown because our financial industries are heavily regulated. Our mortgage regulations required clients to either put 20% down on housing purchases (making the mortgage less risky and at the same time showing the clients have the background that enabled them to save that much in the first place), or they were required, by law, to purchase default insurance through a third party which has fairly strict approval guidelines. Interestingly enough, one of those guidelines is proven affordability, and CMHC DOES NOT typically approve mortgages above their affordability ratios. To say that the US and the rest of the world couldn't implement something similar is just not true.

Haha yes we can agree on that. I had to look back to see what the heck I'd said and I'd misunderstood you earlier. What I'd been trying to say was that the number of people who can afford 10,000/year, or even $7500/year in TFSA contributions are ones whose income is so high now that something remarkable would have to happen for them to end up with less than 16,000 in retirement income. It will still be extremely small. When you consider CPP and OAS, those people will literally need to have zero other sources of income. The type of people who can save 5-10k per year into their TFSA are not people who have zero income when they retire. So she has millions of dollars of wealth and is not making ANY income with it? Even a million dollars in lousy GIC's or savings accounts would earn enough to disqualify her. My point is the GIS is not something worth worrying about because the amount of wealthy people who qualify for it because they've saved in their TFSA is going to be small. Where this plan could really hurt us is with people like me in their late 20's or early 30's who invest in equities in their TFSA and would be able to hold them there for 30-40 years. Capital gain taxes on most personal investors my age won't even exist if the $10,000 limit lasts forever. Like you said though, it's not going to happen. Even if it goes through it won't be kept that way for long.

What the heck are you even talking about? I'm saying the percentage of people that can afford to invest $10,000 annually for 25 years are the people with >100,000 incomes. How many of those people do you know who end up with nothing for income when they retire, thus qualifying for a supplement? Give me that percentage. The OAS website is saying that the max income for the GIS is $16,000. What do you think the percentage is of retired folk who have been putting $10,000 in their TFSA each year and only $16000 in retirement income? Pretty freaking low. Most young people are still putting money into the RSP instead of the TFSA for the tax deduction. Seniors by far prefer the TFSA and they're the ones that have bought in the most to it. Kind of like RRSP's right? Okay we'll wait and see over the next 10-15 years and see: 1) How many wealthy people (the only ones who could save the $10,000 per year) end up with <$16000 in retirement income/year . 2) How long both future Conservative and Liberal governments will allow what will obviously be a fairly significant tax loophole if left unchecked. I'll agree with you in the sense that if left like this forever, the $10,000 limit will get out of hand. If you or I can see that, I'm sure present and future governments will too, and it will be a very easy thing to to change. What I won't agree with, in any sense, is that we're going to see a huge abuse of the GIS. The idea of wealthy people with nothing for income when they retire other doesn't really add up.

Probably the same percentage of people who could afford $10,000 a year to contribute to their TFSA. People with usually a fair bit more than $100,000 salaries. How many people do you know are able to invest 15-20% of their after tax income??? It's no less reasonable than your balogna scenario where lower income seniors, who've been able to put away $10,000 per year for the last 25 years, somehow find themselves in a position where their income is so low they then qualify for supplements from the government. That doesn't make a lot of sense. We can definetly evaluate the platform on the premise of what might/should/almost certainly will happen in the future simply by looking at the promise for what it is. This is a Tory pander to seniors. The Tories know that the percentage of seniors who vote is high, they know seniors are the main users of the TFSA and they know that most seniors won't have 25 years to accumulate balances in them. They also know, like any reasonable human being should, that they won't be in power for the next 25 years, or likely even 10-15 years for that matter, and that if it's such a terrible idea then subsequent governments will stop it before it gets to be a problem. Fair enough I ran it with no initial contribution. That was me just being nitpicky and contrary. A fault of mine. Again, it boils down to your assumption that the people who can afford to invest $10,000 annually (the wealthy) all of the sudden become poor as soon as they retire.

Not to burst your bubble but there's no trend yet really. The Nanos polls that are really showing the change have a margin of error of 6% and we've seen 4% shifts per day up and down in both directions. Ignatieff had better do better in Ontario than Dion did, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals match Tory support in Ontario. It's the rest of Canada that they have to worry about.

I think this is about as substantial as a fart in the wind so far. We'll have to wait and see... Unless Harper and the CPC implode then Michael Ignatieff is going to get lynched after this election. Stephen Harper has been the most polarizing PM since Trudeau and even a lot of his base don't really like him, disregarding the swing vote. His only saving grace is that the best the Liberals could come up with to oppose him were Dion and Ignatieff, under whom the party has merely survived at historically low levels of support and likely by brand name alone. Unless he can pull off some magic in the next three weeks, he's a total dud and he's certain to be ousted.

It's an interesting premise, but there are so many things wrong with it. First, the people who can throw $10,000 a year into their TFSA are likely those whose income is high enough to basically disqualify them for any significant supplements even with the TFSA income. Second, you're assuming that the TFSA will remain an option at the $10,000/year contribution limit for the next 25 years with no lifetime contribution limit, which is incredibly unlikely. The government, whether it be Liberal or Conservative in the future, would by all reason put limits to it. Lastly, your calculations are exaggerated. The annuity @ a 5% interest rate (an exaggerated rate but I'll give it to you) leads you to around $475,000 and you're ignoring the impact inflation has on it. Assuming a 5% interest rate, you'd have to equally assume a ~3.5% inflation rate. Effectively those greedy bastards will maybe earn 1.5% on their investments and you can bet that 25 years from now that $25,000 in income is going to be worth maybe half that effectively. Where the TFSA could potentially be a huge windfall for intelligent or wealthy investors I think is in equity and capital gains. Change that 5% a year in interest to an average of 8-10% capital gain on average and that's a pretty big deal. Once again, however, it's an impossibility that this would continue ad infinitum.

My experience is the vast majority of people don't even understand what the TFSA is. Yes, it's likely that most people don't have $10,000 per year to invest, but it's not like the RSP and the people who do have $10,000 aren't getting tax deductions on their contributions. They're getting an account where they can invest in small portfolios of investments and have the gains/income from it not taxed. I'm not exactly sure why it's a bad idea for the government to encourage people to save money and invest for retirement (which Canadians are notoriously bad at). If they don't they're going to end up costing the government just as much in support and pensions anyways. My generation is not going to be able to pay for the baby boomer pensions the way they stand now.

I assume you're basing your statement on your vast first hand experience of these groups right? I could make a similar blanket statement and say that an Islamic group, or an aboriginal group, is equally racist.

Chretien and Martin followed Trudeau, who was the worst economic manager the country has ever had by a long shot. We're still paying off his debt.

I'd like an answer to this too. Harper took so much criticism in his earlier days as PM and opposition leader for being pro-American from Liberal supporters but they can conveniently ignore Ignatieff's "my country" comments etc...

LoL yes I know I don't think executive bonuses really provide any sort of impetus for stock market prices. The bonuses are rewards for bumping up the share price perhaps, but P/E ratios, dividends and speculation are what really drive them. I guarantee you that big investors aren't looking at executive bonuses when trying to determine whether a stock is a good purchase. The only defence I can think of for it is that short term or immediate bonuses attract big name executive talent, which shareholders want. My question for them, however, is whether they should be looking for big name CEO's concerned only with the short term and short term bonuses, or smaller names (though likely just as intelligent) CEO's with the company's long term interest in mind.

Perhaps that's the case but you'd have to look at the group itself and what it represents before you make that judgement. Usually White Supremacist groups are LOUD AND PROUD about how stupid and bigoted they are. There's a HUGE distinction between a white supremacist and a white person feeling disenfranchised by affirmative action in the modern western world. I support and encourage the second sort of person to band together and give their complaints voice, while at the same time holding the first group in absolute contempt for the ignorance that they preach.

I don't see what the difference is between that and something like B'nai Brith or the Muslim Congress of Canada, or even Women's Rights groups. Is it impossible that the rights of white people are sometimes overlooked simply because they're a majority? Please explain that to me.