St. James Park Re-Sodded By Volunteers

[gabe]

kkgg7, It is comments like yours that contribute to the lowering of the standard of living for all Canadians. It does not matter if you are skilled or unskilled, public or private, or even self-employed...people should have the right to try and attain a decent wage with benefits.

 

[kkgg7]

Work as hard you want, but the sad reality is corporations are relocating to China where they can get away with paying slave wages. Having advanced degrees in engineering in 2011 gets you contract jobs, because it's cheaper for the company.

shareholder greed and CEO/board bonuses are the cause of most exported jobs. I know this from experience, having worked at 2 different companies that closed due to outsourcing. Neither was union.

OK. If any Chinese can do your job at 20% of the wage you demand, why do you expect corporations to hire you? That's not greed, what's being responsible to investors. Imagine you can either buy a washer for $200 from China, or exactly the same one for $1000 in Canada, will you be stupid enough to buy the latter?

Additionally, there are many jobs that is hard to be outsourced. China is a developing country. Its population is not as educated as Canada. Why not learn something that can't be outsourced? You really think anything engeering can be outsourced to China? China's nuclear stations, subway, high speed trains all use western technologies because they don't have their own. If you are really a good engineer, you can't be replaced by any random Chinese worker. China imports jobs as well, just the high end ones most average Joe is not qualifed for.

Stop feeling entitled to higher wages than any Chinese/indian just because you were lucky to born in Canada. The good thing about globalization is, your life quality is less depended on which country you were born in, but more and more about how competitive you are from a global perspective. Therefore, a hardworking Indian can make more money than a mediocre Canadian highschool dropout.

Let's face reality, the era where as long as you are born in Canada, you are guaranteed a good life without even having to work hard, is gone. We face more and more competition from outside the country. and if you are replaceable, you WILL be replaced and sink to the bottom.

 

[kkgg7]

It does not matter if you are skilled or unskilled, public or private, or even self-employed...people should have the right to try and attain a decent wage with benefits.

Talk about it with people in rural China, India or Vietnam, or Africa. Many of them will never attain the life quality any random Canadian has now. Why do you think you deserve more than they do? Just because you are Canadian? Is that fair??
This sense of entitlement is what will ruin a country.

 

[Urban Shocker]

I am amazed by people's tendency to blame the rich for everything. And now after the "occupiers" are done with their free camping, outdoor sex and recreational drug consumption and left a mess for the city to clean up, not only they are not punished for violating the law, but also the rich should pay for the damage, as apparently the rich screws up the world in the first place!

Well of course the rich should pay. If they hadn't screwed things up in the first place, as you point out, we wouldn't need an Occupy movement.

Perhaps they could claim the clean-up cost as a corporate expense.

 

[Urban Shocker]

One thing that amuses me is what exactly do the "occupiers" want?

You haven't been paying very close attention to the movement, have you possum?

 

[fouronesix]

To respond to the equality argument, what I take away from the evidence that the gap between the richest and the poorest is not that we should strive to attain a perfectly equal distribution of income, but that it is indicative of a growing inequity in the distribution of income.

To pick up on kkgg7's argument, which in my interpretation is about compensation equal to effort, while I would certainly agree that people should be compensated for the effort put into/required of their work, I think that the increasingly skewed income distribution is evidence that compensation is less tied to effort than previously. What I mean by this is that if effort could be precisely quantified, one would find that for certain positions within society compensation relative to effort has gone up, while for other positions within society compensation relative to effort has gone down.

Therefore, even if your conception of justness was tied only to merit, the increasingly skewed income distribution could not be construed as just.

 

[adma]

There's something *really* angry and resentful about kkgg7. Reminds me of relatives from Poland who never got rid of their accent or their hangups over Anglos, Jews, whomever

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

Back to St. James Park (apologies).

So, the Christmas lights in the park are fantastic! Is that the City's doing, or is it another donation from the sodders? Either way, St. James Park looks better this winter than I can remember. Really, really beautiful lights, and due to our northern latitude, they're lit in time for the 504 Limo home.

Kudos to whomever set them up.

 

[Thanos]

Everyone seems to hate banks. If so, why didn't they abandon the banks completely? Stop depositing money in them, stop using credit cards and consume with cash, and stop asking for mortgages/car loans. It is not that a difficult thing to do after all. No banks forced anyone to use their service and get a profit from it. You go to them voluntarily.

It could be that people are upset with the fact that their pay has stood still or they've lost their jobs or their bonuses has evaporated or been cut in half while executives are making more money and getting bigger bonuses.
One of our big banks was able to survive the great recession without laying off any employees. However, no salary increase or very little (less then 1%) and the bonuses have been eliminated or cut in half depending on your department. However, the executives (the 1% of the employees) have seen increase in salaries in the 5% range and this past year bonuses 10% higher then the previous year.
This is what people are mad about. And before you go ranting about your educated bs take into consideration that many of those 99% have an mba or cfa.
And it's not just banks. Every corporation is doing the same. Don't get me started on our poor engineering graduates who can't find jobs in canada outside of Alberta and will have to move to asia to find full time work at half the salary or keep on accepting contract work.

 

[gabe]

Back to St. James Park (apologies).

So, the Christmas lights in the park are fantastic! Is that the City's doing, or is it another donation from the sodders? Either way, St. James Park looks better this winter than I can remember. Really, really beautiful lights, and due to our northern latitude, they're lit in time for the 504 Limo home.

Kudos to whomever set them up.

The money for the Christmas lights was donated by some union.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

One of our big banks was able to survive the great recession without laying off any employees. However, no salary increase or very little (less then 1%) and the bonuses have been eliminated or cut in half depending on your department. However, the executives (the 1% of the employees) have seen increase in salaries in the 5% range and this past year bonuses 10% higher then the previous year.

What's your source and which bank? My colleagues and the folks at TD have seen 10-15% reductions to the trading floor and IB (usually by taking out 1 guy from a team of 3 or 4, but our securities lending group was completely axed.) That having been said, I haven't hear of any big gains in the senior execs' bonus pools.l

Also -- if you're a frickin' engineer, why WOULDN'T you move to Calgary (or better yet, Newfoundland)? Construction/civil/mechanical/fluid/chem eng jobs and they're crying for talent! Asia's better at half the price? My hometown is actually a pretty decent place, and any 2 wk in/2 wk out job would have a fulltime ski holiday lifestyle!

 

[Thanos]

That would be NBC.
I'm not saying Alberta is not a good place and I've always said that it's a lot easier to move provinces then most people think.
However, the consensus on this forum is that you can't just walk up and move elsewhere that easily.

 

[js97]

Well of course the rich should pay. If they hadn't screwed things up in the first place, as you point out, we wouldn't need an Occupy movement.

Well, I think people that overleveraged themselves have to take some of the responsibility. It took a collective country to build that real estate buble. Blame, and clean up, should be shared by all (and was shared by all). Some have managed to bounce back faster than others.

 

[kkgg7]

Well, I think people that overleveraged themselves have to take some of the responsibility. It took a collective country to build that real estate buble. Blame, and clean up, should be shared by all (and was shared by all). Some have managed to bounce back faster than others.

True.
The 99% should be blamed as well for their own reckless spending. Last time a survey shows a high percentage of tpeople (50% or something? don't remember) will have trouble paying bills etc if their payroll is a few days late. And if mortgage rate increases by 1%, many will find it difficult to make payments.

I mean, are we supposed to spend money like that? You can't spend more than you should, and when something bad happens, you accuse the banks for lending you too much. that's ridiculous.

If when the mortgage rises by 2% (it is very likely to), you are cash strapped, that means only one thing: you should buy a cheaper house!

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

Well, I think people that overleveraged themselves have to take some of the responsibility. It took a collective country to build that real estate buble. Blame, and clean up, should be shared by all (and was shared by all). Some have managed to bounce back faster than others.

Many people who shouldn't have qualified for home purchases in the US (but were qualified) were greatly mislead by the lending institutions and often, documents falsified. Forget about all those lenders for a moment because the sh*t flows from the top, and not a single big banker or Wall Street executive has been tried, let alone gone to jail three years after the mess began to unravel which nearly brought down the world's economy. There was no respect to "shareholders" here, it was a greedy, criminal act and it inevitably had to collapse which is why the banks took out insurance against the bundled mortgage packages. Those who were lead to believe that they could afford the homes that they were buying have borne the responsibility from being scammed, they lost their homes in the time that followed and many are living with friends, family or in their cars now. Yes, some took advantage of the system and they paid the same price.