Scotty

Have people forgotten that before the Bush tax cuts the US government had a budgetary surplus?

Have you ever been to Europe? Even to some of the "poorer" countries like Portugal and Spain and Italy? Life is slow and pleasant there, and it's not all about work, work, work. It's about living life, and family. There are lots of holidays, lots of vacation days, time to relax.

It's the Joe The Plumber mentality. Joe the plumber was disturbed at Obama's plan to increase taxes for those making more than $300,000 per year because he was thinking maybe he'd buy out the plumbing firm he worked for and maybe he'd be making more than that... only it emerged the most he'd ever made in his life was something like 40,000, working for a plumbing contractor and wasn't even licensed as a plumber.

If you had escaped from a Communist paradise you would have been aware there were no free unions permitted there, only government fronted 'unions' which were not unions in any real sense at all.

This is childish and silly.

This sounds like the typical rant of the jealous. Maybe instead of trying to take away other people's benefits people without unions should try organizing one.

It actually isn't. The top tier of income earners pay the lions share of income taxes.I think the top 1% earners pay something like 40% by themselves. The bottom 50% of American income earners pay virtually no income taxes.

The American lower middle class live like serfs compared to western European citizens. They struggle under low paying jobs with long hours and without benefits, at the mercy of employers, or of any illness which befalls them or their family, or any economic circumstance which costs them their job. Workers in Europe, by contrast, have generous benefits, lots of holidays and sick days, pensions, and full health care protection, as well as generous social payments and training programs if they're out of work.

They're basically like scabs. They want all the good things government brings, but they don't want to pay for any of them. As for the good things government brings to OTHER people, like welfare, pensions, etc., the tea partiers don't feel that's necessary since it doesn't directly help THEM. Like scabs they're basically self-centred, and care only about themselves.

Are they demanding unions give up bargaining rights, to be re certified every year, to abandon mandatory dues?

I'm willing to bet just about anything that the benefits for public sector workers in Wisconsin are worse than the public sector workers get in virtually the entire free world. Americans seem to think if they get three weeks holidays that's a shockingly good benefit, clueless that Europeans tend to get 6-8 weeks. Oh, Wisconsin workers get health care as part of their benefits! Most other citizens of the 'free world' get that as part of their CITIZENSHIP! As for their pay rates, Canadian teachers would laugh at them.

Can you think of any place in the world where the absence of unions has led to a better society with happier, wealthier 'taxpayers'? Because it seems to me that the places where unions are strongest tend to be the places which have better societies with less poverty, misery, crime and slums.

You have a pretty bizarre view of what public servants make. And you continue to focus on comparisons in pension contributions while ignoring the obvious union-busting add-ons in this legislation. Why?

So you're saying management always pays an honest day's pay, and that no strikes are ever about legitimate causes and reasons... No, it's about self interest. Management's self-interest is in having labour which does what it's told, which gets minimal or no benefits and minimal wages. The workers' self-interest is to maximum wages and benefits. The scab wants what his union colleagues want, but he's decided he'll let them do the fighting while he continues to work and support management, drawing a pay cheque.

Not that I've heard. It simply strikes me as despicable to create a budget shortfall by giving tax breaks to the wealthy, then try to take that money from the middle class workers, and oh-by-the-way also remove their bargaining rights just as a throw-in.

The place has few interior walls, as in a typical office building. It has high ceilings and temporary walls for exhibits. Thus you could simply sweep all that away and have a massive 'room' which encompasses half a floor. The HoC would fit there easily enough. However, they would probably still spend tens of millions in renovations so...

And how is the government going to force your parents to pay that bill?

This is patent silliness. You can't possibly compare the immigration of masses of raw, uneducated people needed back then in an empty country for jobs which were almost all unskilled to what is needed today in Canada. We no longer need unskilled labour, yet that is largely what we get as only 17% of immigrants are fully assessed as to their skills and education level. When immigrants start building new towns in the wilderness you will have a point, August. But that is not what is happening. They're crowding into the existing, already crowded cities. And Canada has far less habitable land than a simple glance at the map would indicate. Not to mention that as we pour immigrants into the cities those cities expand into what used to be prime farmland. So we can have more crowded cities with more pollution, less farmland, less forestry? How does that benefit us?

Nonsense. Our back yard has oil and gas and diamonds and all sorts of other goodies which turns a nice price at market. Nevertheless, few people live in the back yard. Our house is not empty. It's quite crowded. No one, and I mean NO ONE calls Toronto, as they used to New York Run By The Swiss. It's a dirty, crowded city with horrible traffic problems which can't even find a place to puts own massive garbage piles. And 100,000 new immigrants pour into the city every year. If you disagree with my opinion or facts then argue against them, not against me.

So does mass immigration of non-skilled labour. We bring in tens of thousands of unskilled laborers every year, and these people are eager for work and more than willing to settle for lower wages and benefits than Canadians. Employers are starting to take advantage of the government's guest worker program, as well. They're bringing in workers who will be obedient wage slaves for minimal wages to do jobs in the hotel and service industries - the ultimate outsourcing of jobs. All of this means a lot more competition for the low skill/low wage jobs the poor need.

For every raise in the minimum wage you'll have employers trying to figure out how to do with less staff. Or how to defray their costs by outsourcing so they don't have to pay benefits. You'll also have commensurate increases in the price of goods and services throughout the economy, for a raise in minimum wage rates forces all other salaries up as well. Ultimately, this leads to fewer jobs. AS for national daycare, that raises the problem of people who have worked hard and made economic and career sacrifices in order to ensure one partner is home with the kids forced to help subsidize the child care of parents who do not choose to make similar sacrifices. And btw, Quebec's daycare has tons of problems.

How does unionization affect the analogy? The scab still avoids the turmoil and discomfort, not to mention financial difficulties of the strike, yet reaps the rewards. Also, his absence from the picket line, indeed, his helping to support management makes the fight more difficult and costly for the remaining workers. Indeed, my analogy was wrong. It would more like the soldier, instead of assaulting the position with his comrades, sneaks inside and helps man the defenses, and then afterward seeks to rejoin his comrades. Do you wonder they'd feel anger towards him?

So the state will pay for tax breaks for corporations by taking the money directly out of the pockets of working class employees? And you find it odd people are upset about that? You've presented no evidence it unsustainable. Why is unsustainable now and wasn't twenty five years ago? What has changed?

Not a stronger work ethic, just selfishness. Compare it to a soldier on the battlefield. All the rest of his platoon are charging the enemy, but he sits in a hole and waits for all the violence to be over, then runs over to join in the victory celebration and reap the rewards.

Thankfully, multi-million dollar bonuses for CEOs and stock market whizkids are still easily affordable - even from non-unionized private sector banks and brokerage firms which would have gone belly up were it not for taxpayer support.