Moonbox

I think you're absolutely right in this. I think for the VAST majority of cases people should blame themselves. Realistically, it's not the bank's responsibility to tell you that it's a bad idea to carry a $20,000 visa balance at 19% and make minimum payments on it. First, providing you didn't lose your job or something (which is the minority of cases), it was idiotic to run up the balance. Second, your minimum payment is barely covering interest. With that said, the banks do anything they can to sucker people in. You can literally be on ODSP or welfare and get automatic increases to your credit card. If you're carrying a $1000 balance, and you've always made your payments on time, the banks would AUTOMATICALLY increase your limit without telling you. If you racked it up to $5000, there'd be another automatic increase providing you kept up with the payments. It was a game to the banks. They wanted to see how high they could go and how much interest the client would pay until finally they can't keep up on the visa. Even then, there's a good chance the bank could get a nice consolidation out of the deal. It reminds me a lot of some of the girls I was friends with in highschool and what they could do to the guys' heads. I used to shake my head for two reasons. First, it was sad to see how stupid some of these guys were and second, it was sad to see how cruel and manipulative the girls could be just to get a few kicks. Dumb consumers and preying banks are not a good match.

OPEC oil prices are only PART of the picture these days. Now we are facing VERY obvious and VERY clear price gouging from our own continental oil companies. We can see what a barrell of crude costs at any given point in time. We can see that ANY bad news excuse will drive the price up instantaneously, but when the prices are a LOT more sticky on the way down. What's also interesting is that when crude prices DO go up, gasoline prices go up proportionally more than the crude markets would suggest they should. There weren't more taxes on the crude, there were no increased costs in refining it. When gasoline prices rise faster than crude prices, and fall slower than crude prices, that's profiteering and nothing else.

Working in the industry I can say Jdobbin is absolutely right. Personally I think they could have done better. I find it REALLY pathetic how the banks are allowed to unilaterally raise interest rate spreads across the board on existing PLC's because of 'costs' but in the face of 16+% spreads on credit cards (unheard of in recent times) they do nothing to make things fairer for consumers. Why? Because they can get away with it. If anything the banks need MORE regulation. They can easily be profitable without screwing people over on a regular basis.

Ahh...the "I know you are but what am I?" defence. Real smrt. So instead of saying, "You're a desperate party hack lacking any semblance of intelligence/ logic." I need to say, "You ACT like a desperate party hack lacking any semblance of intelligence/logic?" I mean, I'm not branding you or personalizing...I'm just stating observations of your behavior. We can all access behaviour and comment on it. The smarter posters, however, don't use silly technical and rhetorical labels to describe political figures. For someone who refers to the forum rules when someone calls him, "dobby," it's hilarious to see you throwing around 'mad dog sociopath' and such. It's another reason for people to mock you for the pathetic and desperate hack you are ACT like. For the record, I don't think you're an idiot. I just think you're holding on irrationally tight to the Liberal bandwagon.

The amount of time you put in to posting pro-Liberal media (of any kind no matter how dubious or small) and the time you spend responding here suggests a VERY strong emotional aspect to your efforts. You're not the only guilty offender, but you're the most obvious. You can pretend to act level headed when people start mocking you, but it's your blatant and childish rhetoric that give you away.

To think that this poll means ANYTHING is nothing short of stupid. It means nothing. The survey is totally bogus and an actual academic could poke holes the size of your face through it by exhaling. I do have to congratulate you though, Radsickle, on bringing the maturity on this forum to an all time low.

The whole, "He's just in it for himself." and "Just visiting" stuff is stupid rhetoric meant to smear him before people even consider his policies. Thus far, I've decided his policies are mostly bad but whether or not he taught at more highly regarded universities OUTSIDE of Canada for most of his life have little to do with my decision.

There you go again dobbin, all pouty-mouthed with rhetoric.

If you're going to used cliché at least use it when it makes sense. Are we to presume that you voted for Stephen Harper hoping he got a minority so you could make sure he didn't get a majority?

You were saying this 7 months ago as well and it didn't happen.

It's pretty juvenile if you ask me. I'm no fan of Ignatieff but this site is definetly geared towards misleading the stupid.

It looks like someone just cannot avoid the immature personalization he so openly denounces. Frothy mouthed extremist? Far Right wing? Mayhaps the forum community's contempt of dogmatic and unquestioning support for the Liberal Party is starting to chaff? I'm picturing an angry man pounding on his key-board, red face-paint smearing with tears, while candles burn in the background around a pentagram with a Michael Ignatieff idol in the centre. Sketches and designs for a spaceship lay scattered around the room.

Anyone who blames him for unemployment is an idiot. That being said there are a lot of idiots and I do agree with you that people ARE blaming him and looking for change. Well THERE is a strong argument....

Just because you qualify your statements with, "It appears" doesn't mean you weren't trying to spin anything. If I said: "It appears Ignatieff wants to bring back Trudeau-style social welfare spending" you and dozens of other posters would be up in arms. The implication was made and that's all that matters. Either you can defend the logic of your argument or not. "It appears," doesn't nullify good criticisms of weak arguments/statements.

Well you and I are on the exact same page then. The problem with immigration, unfortunately, is that the German engineer's application is stuck behind about 5 million refugee applications and by the time his is even looked at, he's moved to Australia or somewhere instead. We need to be able to get THROUGH the applications faster and let the qualified immigrants, no matter what their race, move to this country before we even START to look at the poorly-educated and unskilled ones. I don't care what race or ethnicity the person comes from, providing they can show us their background qualifications. Language is almost secondary, because a qualified and/or educated worker with a background of work history likely has the motivation to learn quickly. Our problem is that we accept TOTALLY unqualified applicants in the first place. No skills, no work background, no language skills and no education should = Decline. Period.

I think this is EXACTLY our problem. Having racial quotas is a form of racism in and of itself. I'm not saying that we should only be bringing white anglo-saxons into Canada, I'm saying that requiring us to accept some abstractly generated number of people from "X" ethic group is drastically limiting our abilities to bring qualified and productive immigrants into our country. By using these 'quotas' you're basically saying, "Sorry, this MORE qualified applicant is being turned down because he doesn't belong to 'X' ethnic group." That's the very definition of racism and it brings affirmative action to an all new low.

Chiropractors are not doctors. They're chiropractors. They doctors only in the same sense a PhD is a doctor. If someone was shot and someone yelled, "Is anyone a doctor!!?" The chiropractor wouldn't stand up and take charge.

If you want to pretend that EI isn't frauded on a regular basis by thousands and thousands, by all means. My spouses brother works in landscaping 4-5 months a year and then collects EI in the remainder. I have two friends working together for a general contractor in the summer and then working for cash the rest of the year while collecting EI. It's happening, it's easy to get away with, and small employers will do it because it's cheap and nobody monitors it well. You can plug your ears, close your eyes, yell loudly and insist it doesnt, but you're only fooling yourself. I'm unfortunately not going to be able to give you names because these sorts of things aren't generally published...for obvious reasons. The GST has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about. I don't have the numbers but I suspect it will dwindle fast over the next little while. Even so, if we have so much money that we're going to be extending EI to people who've only worked 9 weeks in the last YEAR, then EI is over funded and I'm being taxed to much (or the debt's not being paid down fast enough). Again, let's reform EI, but NOT by lowering the number of hours required annually to qualify. I'm 100% with you there. I think some civil and cooperative discussion on the matter could do us some good. I don't think Ignatieff has a good solution, but I think something could be done to help the people you describe.

If they bail out DB pensions I'll probably kill myself. Kidding...sort of...

Depends on the pension. The only thing is that most union pensioners over 20 years would take WAY more than what they put in. Current pension contributers (current employees and company contributions) would make up the shortfall. This is what you see with the car companies. In the case of GM, if the company fails pensioners lose like 50% of their benefits because nobody else will be putting money into the plan. They'll get what they put in, but they'll still cry that they don't get what they expected and signed for while they were working, even though it's largely the pensions that caused the company to fail in the first place.

Well we agree on that in principle, but unfortunately the system IS rampantly abused in this way. My spouse's brother abuses the system as does everyone else in his landscaping company and some dubious friends I have working for 'contractors' do the same thing. I know those are just testimonials but EVERYONE knows people like this. He IS being a bit deceptive on the issue. Regardless, more money spent means more taxes paid. Either we pay higher taxes or we pay taxes longer, that's where the money comes from. Boeing workers are irrelevant to our argument. They're already working the better part of a year. I understand paying their benefits short term. In this I agree with you. Lowering the hours required for eligibility is not the answer though. If you've been employed full time for years and years and only recently have had problems, EI should be there for you. It should not, on the other hand, be there for someone who's been out of work for a year or 75% of the year etc. It was never designed to be. There are better ways of reforming EI, even temporary measures, than just blanket-reducing the number of required hours work.

Ignatieff doesn't have anything to do with what happened back then. Having said that, his opening of the coffers to allow easier access to EI money is a continuation of previous Liberal policy in this area that has served the party well in the areas I mentioned previously. I know EI isn't the ONLY reason people vote for a party, but people's votes will generally follow the money. As the Liberals were allowing unfair advantages to the Maritimes on federal transfer payments, along with MUCH easier EI qualifications, it's no surprise that they have dominated in these areas recently.

I don't think you understand how pension funds work. The money you put in is only a FRACTION of what you take out after retirement and it depends on further funding from current workers. I'm being simplistic but basically the assumption is that when you retire, inflation and wages from current employees and their contributions are what's going to support and supplement what you put in. There's a reason the government encourages you to save in an RSP and TFSA. MOST companies can't afford to support you in retirement. Companies like GM etc have a pension plan FAR FAR FAR more generous than what the average manufacturing worker would get and it was the consumers that bore the brunt of the cost. Consumers have since refused to continue supporting GM pensioners who were paid FAR too much while they were working in the first place, so it's an unfortunate case of "what goes around comes around". The collective greed and stupidity of the union members at large is what caused this. Shareholders and CEO's aren't running off with pension money. The money is still there, it's just what pensioners contributed is A LOT less than what they want to take out. The pension plans themselves are protected. The future contributions of the company are what's not. My heart is breaking......

He's just saying that the Liberals do very well in areas where unemployment is high and that's mainly because Liberal governments have been very 'liberal' with EI in places like the maritimes.

Temporary could mean for the next 3 years. Temporary could change to perpetual. Neither you nor I really know at this point. What I really need to know, if you can explain it to me, is how the recession makes it so we need to qualify people who don't regularly work in the first place. Come on Jdobbin. Someone who only worked 9 weeks in the last 52 can't make the case that the recession that hit less 7 months ago caused them to be unemployed. That means they were only employed 9/21 weeks before the recession hit which hints they weren't working much before that either. I'm wondering if you're confused (or maybe I am) about the EI rules. According to Service Canada, you are eligible for EI if you've been laid off for 7 days and if you have worked for the qualifying period. The 19-50 weeks eligibility is how long you can draw on EI before it expires. Changing THAT would help laid off manufacturers (I'm not suggesting it btw) but changing the qualifying period (how long you're required to have worked in the last 52 weeks) doesn't make EI faster or more responsive. What Ignatieff is saying doesn't make sense. I long ago stopped paying attention to what Harper says about his opponents policies. EI reforms (temporary or not) WILL cost a lot of money, which WILL require tax dollars to pay off. I'm going by what IGNATIEFF is saying and I can't fathom the logic that, because of the recession, he wants to extend EI to people who weren't (or were barely) working BEFORE the recession in the first place. It doesn't make sense and it appears to be a pander for far left votes. Please explain if I'm misunderstanding here. And once again you and I generally agree on what we want to see done...