The pointless waste and vanity of our refugee system

[bush_cheney2004]

1 minute ago, eyeball said:

Ok then call it what it is, sacrificing our principles... putting money ahead of everything else.

 

What principles ?   History laughs at that notion.

[blackbird]

CNN had a one hour documentary on Inside North Korea last night.  Everyone worships their leader.  Nobody criticizes anything.  They seem to be reasonably happy and have a certain amount of material goods.  The family CNN was visiting had good food on the table at dinner. Think they have stores that sell smart phones.  They have TVs in their homes although they looked like older TVs, not the modern flat screen TVs.  It's not permissible to criticize the government or leaders.  They have camps in the mountains were prisoners are sent or are executed.  That way they have no problems or disagreements.

Edited September 17, 2017 by blackbird

[blackbird]

39 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

Your term, but every single person has to deal with someone of questionable moral character.  Even the Unabomber had to go into town for nails.

So at what point do you draw the line?  Do you think there could be any consequences for dealing with China?

[Michael Hardner]

6 minutes ago, blackbird said:

So at what point do you draw the line?  Do you think there could be any consequences for dealing with China?

Where do I draw the line for myself ?  If I feel like boycotting an entity,  I do so.  I don't overthink it.

I don't know what you mean by 'consequences'.  There are benefits, of course.  Do you acknowledge that there are some ?  Do you acknowledge that living a moral life sometime has an economic cost also ?

[Grand Mal]

2 hours ago, dialamah said:

Trudeau has spoken out regarding their human rights, according to this article.

 

That just complicates the issue and it's easy to ignore if your agenda is better served by cherry-picking a single quote, out of context, from a long political career.

[betsy]

9 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Can you please give a cite?

 

http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/08/trudeau-admires-chinas-basic-dictatorship

 

[betsy]

7 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

I am fully ready to write off Trudeau for saying something so stupid.  But so far you haven't given me a cite.

Isn't that a cite for paying lip service to human rights?  Weren't human right advocates loud enough for him to hear.  If he's that stupid - what's he doing playing PM?  I suppose we can blame stupid people for voting for him?

Edited September 18, 2017 by betsy

[eyeball]

3 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

What principles ?   History laughs at that notion.

I guess that's why I mock the present.

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, eyeball said:

I guess that's why I mock the present.

Yeah, I did that last Christmas.  Now my family won't talk to me...

[blackbird]

6 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

Where do I draw the line for myself ?  If I feel like boycotting an entity,  I do so.  I don't overthink it.

I don't know what you mean by 'consequences'.  There are benefits, of course.  Do you acknowledge that there are some ?  Do you acknowledge that living a moral life sometime has an economic cost also ?

OK.  Of course there are benefits.  We have Walmart and Canadian Tire which I am always running to.  I'm sure without Walmart, life would be far more expensive and a lot of things would not be available here.   I consider Walmart a very valuable store.   When I need something, that's the first place I think of because the price is not so bad.   A lot of groceries are coming from China as well.  We are pretty much dependent on goods from China now.

Instead of learning French in western Canada, young people should start learning Chinese, especially in greater Vancouver.  It would probably be more useful.

Edited September 18, 2017 by blackbird

[PIK]

Just now, PIK said:

Do you even know anyone that fought in the 2nd war. I am age the age that di knew many.

 

7 hours ago, blackbird said:

OK.  Of course there are benefits.  We have Walmart and Canadian Tire which I am always running to.  I'm sure without Walmart, life would be far more expensive and a lot of things would not be available here.   I consider Walmart a very valuable store.   When I need something, that's the first place I think of because the price is not so bad.   A lot of groceries are coming from China as well.  We are pretty much dependent on goods from China now.

Instead of learning French in western Canada, young people should start learning Chinese, especially in greater Vancouver.  It would probably be more useful.

Walmart is a joke. If you believe walmart has saved you money you are wrong. The damage this company had done to small business and families is way more than the few cents you thought you saved. And the amount of money one family has taken south out of this country is disgusting.

[cannuck]

3 hours ago, PIK said:

 

Walmart is a joke. If you believe walmart has saved you money you are wrong. The damage this company had done to small business and families is way more than the few cents you thought you saved. And the amount of money one family has taken south out of this country is disgusting.

Sadly, WalMart started out as a company that sold US made products, but when they discovered China and became exceedingly greedy, they go to China with buyers who beat the Chinese suppliers down to the lowest possible price - and of course quality is simply not an issue.  Typically, you would have saved a LOT of money by buying a top value, top quality item that was domestic as you will replace the Chinese lowball junk 10x over.   China Tire Corporation is no different.

AND: as you are aware, each of those sales takes away another job on this continent.  This is how China went from nothing to 2nd largest economy in the world in a few short decades.  Take the jobs and then take the consumer's money.  Then, they will come in and buy up the remains of our productive assets for pennies on the dollar.

[blackbird]

5 hours ago, PIK said:

 

Walmart is a joke. If you believe walmart has saved you money you are wrong. The damage this company had done to small business and families is way more than the few cents you thought you saved. And the amount of money one family has taken south out of this country is disgusting.

I live in a town of about 18,000 or 20,000 people in the area and Walmart certainly does save a lot of money.  What is the alternative?   I have seen cherries sold in Walmart for $1.97/LB or KG and sold at the same time in another supermarket for $5 /LB or KG.   Clothes in Walmart are a fraction of the price of small clothing stores.  Same with shoes.  You can get a pair of runners for $20 or $30 in Walmart.  In a small shoe store you may pay double the price.  Even breakfast cereals are much cheaper in Walmart than regular supermarkets. 

Walmart has the advantage of obtaining and selling goods in quantity and using their own networks of warehousing, trucking and infrastructure.  They are able to do things more economically and efficiently through the whole infrastructure and supply network.  Small businesses do not have that ability.  It's a bit like comparing McDonalds and ordinary restaurants.  You can buy a hamburger in McDonalds for say $6 but I have seen hamburgers in independent restaurants for $12 or more, plus you must leave a 12% or 15% tip.   I have compared prices of some things in Walmart with other stores.  Saying Walmart doesn't save money is not a believable statement for anyone who has shopped in Walmart and compared prices.   Almost everything is cheaper in Walmart.   That's the advantage of free enterprise.

You say it damaged small business.  That is true.  Now you are telling the truth.   But small businesses also only pay minimum wages to hired employees, which is the same that Walmart pays.  The only people that make significant money in a small business are the owners if the business is successful, not the hired employees.   But you need to consider the cost of living for the thousands of customers that don't make a huge wage and must buy their goods.  They would be a lot poorer without the Walmarts and Canadian Tire stores, and the No Frill grocery stores.  Some towns controlled by the small business sector have managed to keep Walmart out of town.  This has hurt the majority of the population by forcing them to travel great distances to find a Walmart or forcing them to shop in a small shop with high prices.  Should a few small business owners be protected at the expense of the thousands of ordinary citizens?  I don't think so.

Edited September 18, 2017 by blackbird

[PIK]

20 minutes ago, blackbird said:

I live in a town of about 18,000 or 20,000 people in the area and Walmart certainly does save a lot of money.  What is the alternative?   I have seen cherries sold in Walmart for $1.97/LB or KG and sold at the same time in another supermarket for $5 /LB or KG.   Clothes in Walmart are a fraction of the price of small clothing stores.  Same with shoes.  You can get a pair of runners for $20 or $30 in Walmart.  In a small shoe store you may pay double the price.  Even breakfast cereals are much cheaper in Walmart than regular supermarkets. 

Walmart has the advantage of obtaining and selling goods in quality and using their own networks of warehousing, trucking and infrastructure.  They are able to do things more economically and efficiently through the whole infrastructure and supply network.  Small businesses do not have that ability.  It's a bit like comparing McDonalds and ordinary restaurants.  You can buy a hamburger in McDonalds for say $6 but I have seen hamburgers in independent restaurants for $12 or more.   I have compared prices of some things in Walmart with other stores.  Saying Walmart doesn't save money is not a believable statement for anyone who has shopped in Walmart and compared prices.   Almost everything is cheaper in Walmart.   That's the advantage of free enterprise.

You say it damaged small business.  That is true.  Now you are telling the truth.   But small businesses also only pay minimum wages to hired employees, which is the same that Walmart pays.  The only people that make significant money in a small business are the owners if the business is successful, not the hired employees.   But you need to consider the cost of living for the thousands of customers that don't make a huge wage and must buy their goods.  They would be a lot poorer without the Walmarts and Canadian Tire stores, and the No Frill grocery stores.  Some towns controlled by the small business sector have managed to keep Walmart out of town.  This has hurt the majority of the population by forcing them to travel great distances to find a Walmart or forcing them to shop in a small shop with high prices.  Should a few small business owners be protected at the expense of the thousands of ordinary citizens?  I don't think so.

When you add up the job losses the money leaving the country , that is a lot of damage. In my town most small business were paying up to 12/hr.. Now  those people are no longer working for the other store but now at walmart working for less and less hrs. But what you don't understand is how walmart treats its own suppliers. Many end up getting screwed in the end by walmart. They have destroyed a lot of hard working people's  businesses ,so one family can control a shit load of wealth. Really fair. And before you say walmart wants higher minimums, of course the do, it will kill what competition they have left. I support small business even if it costs a little more and in a lot of cases, you do save money at the small places. 

Edited September 18, 2017 by PIK

[Argus]

42 minutes ago, PIK said:

When you add up the job losses the money leaving the country , that is a lot of damage.

While I despise Wal-Mart and don't shop there, it has to be said that most of the manufacturing jobs that have disappeared are  due to technological change. It simply takes far fewer people to operate a factory now than it did even twenty years ago. Yes, retail jobs have disappeared due to Wal-Mart. But it's also a more efficient distributor of goods, drastically lowering the price markup. In combination with technological change that allows people to purchase things they wouldn't have - like air conditioners, as one example. Dirt cheap now, where they were beyond our means when I was young.

 

[Michael Hardner]

1 hour ago, Argus said:

Dirt cheap now, where they were beyond our means when I was young.

That's one advantage.  The other one is that a lot of overseas manufacturing is done by North American branch plants.  And those markets also are opened for North American exports such as tech, which are much higher paying jobs.  Overall the economy grows due to freer trade according to economic orthodoxy and as initiated by pro-business governments in Canada, the US, and Britain in the 1980s.

Of course, there are many workers left behind.  The government (such as the Harper government) provides for retraining and mitigation to an extent but there is a political price to pay.

[blackbird]

4 hours ago, Michael Hardner said:

That's one advantage.  The other one is that a lot of overseas manufacturing is done by North American branch plants.  And those markets also are opened for North American exports such as tech, which are much higher paying jobs.  Overall the economy grows due to freer trade according to economic orthodoxy and as initiated by pro-business governments in Canada, the US, and Britain in the 1980s.

Of course, there are many workers left behind.  The government (such as the Harper government) provides for retraining and mitigation to an extent but there is a political price to pay.

Correct.   People who find themselves displaced by lower paying jobs or are displaced by technological advances need to prepare themselves by making plans to get into another occupation or field and retrain.  Society is constantly changing.  Telephone companies used to employ large numbers of people to maintain and repair the old mechanical switching system in the telephone exchanges.  It took a lot of maintenancemen to maintain, and lubricate those mechanical switches.  When those were replaced with electronic exchanges in the 1970s, people had to retrain or transfer to other jobs in the company or retire if they had enough time.  The new technology probably reduced the workforce to 10% of what they had before in the telephone exchanges.  But they still needed a lot of employees in all kinds of other jobs in the company. But newer technologies create some jobs in computer sciences, programming skills and software/hardware engineering.  

The days of the small town shoemaker, candlestick maker, and blacksmith are gone.  Barbers are still needed though.  I know a barber who was once a janitor in the hospital but when they announced they were laying off because of government cutbacks and he wouldn't have a job, he re-trained maybe twenty years ago to be a barber and has not regretted it a bit.  He said cleaning up blood, etc. in the hospital was not a pleasant job.  Now he has good working hours and can choose his own days off and gets to chew the fat with all the customers.  It's an easy stress free job.  Another barber I know hires a replacement in the winter and takes off to his mobile home in Arizona.

Edited September 19, 2017 by blackbird

[blackbird]

On 9/15/2017 at 4:47 PM, taxme said:

I thought that CanadWhy a had enough oil of it's own that we did not need to rely on countries like Saudi Arabia for our oil? Maybe if we started to keep our oil here in Canada, we could buy gasoline at .25 cents a liter. Never the less, a boycott against Saudi Arabia is needed to get those Shieks of Arabic to begin acting more like human beings for a change otherwise you are no better than they are. There is no way that with all the oil being produced in the world today that Canada and other nations need to rely on SA. That is all bull chit. 

With most Canadians money and themselves is what it is all about and all that they can think about. Just saying.

Why is Quebec using imported oil while opposing the Energy East Pipeline project?  Should cut off the transfer payments to them and stop allowing imported oil into eastern Canada.

[PIK]

On 9/18/2017 at 12:50 PM, cannuck said:

Sadly, WalMart started out as a company that sold US made products, but when they discovered China and became exceedingly greedy, they go to China with buyers who beat the Chinese suppliers down to the lowest possible price - and of course quality is simply not an issue.  Typically, you would have saved a LOT of money by buying a top value, top quality item that was domestic as you will replace the Chinese lowball junk 10x over.   China Tire Corporation is no different.

AND: as you are aware, each of those sales takes away another job on this continent.  This is how China went from nothing to 2nd largest economy in the world in a few short decades.  Take the jobs and then take the consumer's money.  Then, they will come in and buy up the remains of our productive assets for pennies on the dollar.

I remember old man walton on the stage with ray gun ronnie, being called a great american. And at the same time wal-mart was charged with putting made in america labels on chinese made jackets.

[cannuck]

Mom and apple pie at its best.

[eyeball]

The wealthy and powerful true to form....fuckers.

[Argus]

A Washington newspaper pegs the cost of illegal immigrants to the United States at $116 BILLION per year. But don't worry, it doesn't cost us ANYTHING!

Or at least, just a few pennies. Nothing to worry about!

And despite claims from pro-illegal immigration advocates that the aliens pay significant off-setting taxes back to federal, state and local treasuries, the Federation for American Immigration Reform report tallied just $19 billion, making the final hit to taxpayers about $116 billion.

 

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/record-135-billion-a-year-for-illegal-immigration-average-8075-each-25000-in-ny/article/2635757

[taxme]

On ‎2017‎-‎09‎-‎19 at 2:43 AM, blackbird said:

Why is Quebec using imported oil while opposing the Energy East Pipeline project?  Should cut off the transfer payments to them and stop allowing imported oil into eastern Canada.

The reason for that is that Quebec hates the rest of Canada. All Quebec wants from the rest of Canada is what it can get from duh Attawa, and duh Attawa is only to willing to give them what they want or demand. Quebec went unilingual French and duh Attawa didn't say a word. I guess that we all should know by now as to who is really running Canada? Just saying.

[H10]

On 9/9/2017 at 11:04 AM, Argus said:

Jonathan Kay points out how wasteful our refugee policies are in spending vast fortunes (numbers never made public but billions) to bring over refugees and put them up in hotels and public housing here instead of helping improve the lot of far, far more refugees stuck in camps near their homelands. Citing a book by a pair of Oxford university professors he reminds us that our refugee system was originally intended to help political dissidents but has grown into this vast alternative immigration system and a sort of lottery for the dispossessed of the third world.  For every person we help this way we could be helping twenty in the camps - but that wouldn't produce such lovely photo ops by virtue signalling politicians and liberals.

It helps only a few, but they tend to be the few with the most resources, leaving their original country barren of the educated and the most able who might rebuild it.

The refugees who make it to Canada typically will have much better lives than those who don’t. But this comes at the expense of humanitarian funds that might be spent to better effect — and with greater efficiency — on the far larger number of refugees who still languish overseas. According to the authors’ numbers, “for every US $135 of public money spent on an asylum-seeker in Europe, just US $1 is spent on a refugee in the developing world, (and) fewer than one in 10 of the 4-million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan receive any material support from the UN.”

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/jonathan-kay-why-canadas-refugee-policy-may-actually-be-doing-more-harm-than-good#comments-area

They aren't going to rebuild a blownout country with nothing, they come here, work a few years, wait until war is over, and then go rebuild.

[taxme]

On ‎2017‎-‎09‎-‎27 at 12:01 PM, PIK said:

I remember old man walton on the stage with ray gun ronnie, being called a great american. And at the same time wal-mart was charged with putting made in america labels on chinese made jackets.

It's always about the money. Screw the people who makes people like the Walton's rich in America. Corporations have no loyalties to anyone but to their bottom line and making more profit. It's always about the money.