danielost:



You're truly a fool if you believe taxes are the primary reason we have more dual-income families today. Do taxes contribute? I don't doubt it. But taxes would have to be 50% on average to make a dual-income have the same buying power as it used to. And in a family of 4 making $40k, federal taxes are almost nonexistent (I was there not long ago, so I know - we were actually getting back more money than we were paying to federal taxes). So don't go spouting off this kind of nonsense without looking into it.

As for getting my son better care, don't try this BS argument on me. We've looked at other countries very seriously. If I weren't so terrified of such a drastic change, we would be at least looking for jobs in Canada right now. The government-sponsored autism programs they have are incredible. They do things for free that we can't even FIND around here, free or privately funded! Some places in the U.S. have these programs, but they're pretty exclusive to big cities where we can't afford to live with a single income (and reread my post above if you're little brain can't recall exactly why we can't do a dual income), and not always state-paid.

Next time, try not to spew such nonsense without at least pretending to do some research. Just makes you look foolish.

The fact is that housing has risen substantially. That is probably the biggest contributor to normal families having such huge debts today compared to one or two generations ago. My grandparents had a single income and my grandfather (the single income) was never even close to upper class. Yet they owned their own home and cars. My other set of grandparents were similarly well-off for the most part, though a bad accident damaged that grandfather's brain pretty badly, causing them all kinds of financial hardships, so I can't compare their situation (but they still did well enough for themselves - never were in anything close to a desperate situation).

[size="1 www.virginradio.co.uk/djs_shows/shows/geoff/blog/geoff/index.html - 31k - 20 mei 2007[/size]

(Bafta winner documontary, The Trap).

The Trap - Bafta-winner Adam Curtis (Power of Nightmares) examines the notion of freedom, looking at how we've reached the current idea of Freedom

Voting Question: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom?

Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It's what our leaders promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and, repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom.

Politicians promised to liberate us from the old dead hand of bureaucracy, but they have created an evermore controlling system of social management, driven by targets and numbers. Governments committed to freedom of choice have presided over a rise in inequality and a dramatic collapse in social mobility.

And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to enforce freedom has led to bloody mayhem and the rise of an authoritarian anti-democratic Islamism. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the Government has dismantled long-standing laws designed to protect our freedom.

The Trap is a series of three films by Bafta-winning producer Adam Curtis that explains the origins of our contemporary, narrow idea of freedom. It shows how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by nuclear strategists during the Cold War to control the behaviour of the Soviet enemy.

Mathematicians such as John Nash developed paranoid game theories whose equations required people to be seen as selfish and isolated creatures, constantly monitoring each other suspiciously ? always intent on their own advantage. This model was then developed by genetic biologists, anthropologists, radical psychiatrists and free market economists, and has come to dominate both political thinking since the Seventies and the way people think about themselves as human beings.

However, within this simplistic idea lay the seeds of new forms of control. And what people have forgotten is that there are other ideas of freedom. We are, says Curtis, in a trap of our own making that controls us, deprives us of meaning and causes death and chaos abroad.

[Information Liberation Editors Note: In typical Adam Curtis fashion he spins the issues to make the establishment seem like innocent dupes. In reality society is, and has always been, the product of social engineering by cunning behavioral control specialists. The control tactics and rhetoric have changed, but the agenda is still the same. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. )

Ps Freemarket, it only works for those who have the skills and the money. Get the (social,knowledge)skills out of the equasion and it will fail(For the individual). Get the money out of it and it will also fail(where to live and eat and learn?). And as an ending if a market sees no potental for profit what will happen with the people? Are we lining them up and giving them the bullet? Not very social or are we talking about Spartan law?

Or is it if we are giving up freedom for protection we deserve none? Benjamin Frankling?

Dude, thx for posting that.

I will add this one, slightly related with your article :

***

"President Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation, January 1961"


"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

***

Come in Canada, the true american dream has moved there since a while   

You might be suprised to find find that the drug companies dictate the prices of their drugs, Huh, what, but they shouldnt have the right to dictate the price of their own product!! foreign governments should have that power rite??

rediculous! of course the drug companies dictate prices, what foreign governments do is subsidise that price to the consumer.

well? being a canadian(not from quebec). I dont think the american dream moved north. since the early 90s(liberals) I've taken about a 20000$ loss a year in income. my wife and i needed two incomes to survive. and because I was crappy in french university was like ya sure. and as for almost free university? maybe in Quebec where it gets paid for by the rest of the country. The best thing and only reason my head will stay above water right now is the new conservative government which allows single income families such as my wife and I to split my income which almost makes my personal income tax nonexistant. and that is what helps families with special needs children(not entirely but it helps). Not the Liberals or god forbid Bloc Quebecois who keep taking from people who can barley frakkin afford it to give to people who dont want to work period

PlayJeff45, I have no idea which governmental groups ruin things more, because surely the conservatives and liberals screw things up very nicely. I'm just commenting on my specific situation in which the U.S. system simply doesn't work. And, of course, the insane way the rich keep getting more of the wealth. The top 1% of our country controls something like a third of the total net worth of the country. I don't care how you look at it, that is insane, and nobody works hard enough to deserve that much more of the pie.

Do I think hard work should be rewarded? You bet. I think the Mexican laborers, however, who get paid below minimum wage, deserve a hell of a lot more than they get. Some may indeed be lazy as hell, but I've seen enough of them doing shitty jobs I would never want, and getting paid horribly for it. So the claim that hard work is how you get ahead in the U.S. is total crap. If I am 80% productive at my job (ie, 32 hours of really good, productive work in a 40-hour week), I don't expect to get the same salary as the guy who puts in 120% effort. But I do expect to be able to get a livable salary that is "fair" relative to his. So if he gets 100k a year, I don't think I should be getting less than 67k (2/3, based on productivity ratio). By the same token, should my CEO get a huge salary since he helped start my company? Yes, he deserves something for that investment and initial effort. I think there should be limits, however. Without any limits, you get people like the CEOs of big gas companies, football stars, insanely famous actors, etc. You get people pulling in more money in a single year than a dual-income middle class family will see over their entire lifetime. That is simply an unfair system, and nobody works hard enough to truly earn that kind of luxury, period.

I heard this lame saying... "Genious is 10% inspiration and 90% persperation".

However, if most people are already perspiring anyway, then the 10% is all that counts!

are you only talking federal income


there is federal income, state income, property, car, sales, local income, local sales, and i am sure there are some i can't think of right now

and also don't forget just becouse you rent doesn't mean you don't pay property tax.

becouse the person who is renting to you has included the cost of the property tax in the rent like they should.

and all of those companies that pay taxes also have those included in their prices

so taxes for a person who makes minimum wage is at least 50% either directly or indirectly

don't come around insulting the education of every american out there, let alone every one in here, when you're speaking in fractured English to begin with. perhaps French is your native language, but to insult in a language you can't speak fluently is pathetic, if not hypocritical.

second, and i'll stake my reputation on this: my American education is far superior to your French Canadian one, hands down, no competition. i'm pretty damn sure the University of California alone publishes more papers and original research each year than the entire Canadian higher education system.



nope, i have my Bachelor's already and i work in administration now. i'll go back for my Master's/PhD in a couple years. but in a sense, i guess i'm a student for life.

Hey dystopic maybe you did not read but i totally stood up for the americans on this somewhat ignorant debate by a tasteless quebecer. i am canadian and to shoot down all canadians puts you in the same leaque as some freeloading individual from quebec. Yes the Universities are great in the states but I highly doubt they are any better than universities to the north. much aids research and cancer research is being done up here as down there. (THEY WORK TOGETHER) so please dont put me in the same cateqory as the french because truth be told we find them rude as well.

To say universities in one country or another are better is irrelevant, because it mainly depends on the individual universities budget. So if most universities in america have a bigger budget than the ones in canada, then yes, they probably will be better (assuming they have equally good management).

thats a load of crap, theres as much money maybe for per person to spend at the schools up here (per capita)  

The poor will always be exploited. Yes. Thats an unchangable truth. To some level they will be exploited. If u figure out how to eliminate the poor through making them wealthy please tell me but I don't think u can.

actually, you're entirely correct and have my full apologies, as do any other canadians who might read that. i was thinking about that later and started realizing it was one of those Quebecois. though, in my defense i did say French Canadian: i always assumed those were the same thing. in fact, i usually really like (other) Canadians (more than most Americans i meet). but those Quebec folk have it rough. English-speakers in north america don't like them, and Frech-speakers everywhere pretty much regard them as trash... they are kind of on the shallow end of the European gene pool.




hmm i spoke too hastily (or sloppily) again. no, schools in one country aren't better than another. that'd by far be an over-simplification, and it wasn't what i was trying to say in the first place. i was trying to say: my (American) education is far better than his (French-Canadian) one.

personally, i'd say there are different emphases in different countries and groups and makes comparing educational systems difficult. yes, money is a big factor: not just how much an institution has in its budget, but how it spends it (teaching, research, artistic productions, community development projects, etc). also important are the faculty the institution has, keeps, and can attract. finally, the students are also an important enough factor: what kinds of students the school can attract, and out of that group who it actually enrolls. what are their goals in education, their potentials and their economic means? there are way too many factors for any meaningful comparison that's less than a book in length.

No, they may indeed spend more per student and still won't be better, because the economies of scale for a large budget university means they can afford more of a diverse range of equipment and courses, sorry but there is really no beating that if your a small university.

well ther is a little truth to this VERRRY LITTTLE. if you think that the states has the best universities in the world because its ppractically what your saying. our scientists and doctors are canadian trained. are you saying that your doctors are more qualified than ours? we do have running water you know. and yes we are a nuclear powered country oh wait plutonium. oh yea we are the worlds leading supplier. oil yes we found it ourselves. Ever heard of the Canadian arm built and designed by canadians in substandard canadian universities. it also seems that you have no problem hiring canadian trained doctors to work in the states. Im not one to get into a discussion like this because I am somewhat out of my league(no university education  )but I sure as hell know when someone is yapping out of their ass and dystopic i very much thank you for not putting 80% of the Canadian population into Quebecois league   

Ok ass man, tell me, what University will not be able to improve themselves if you doubled their budget??

Well yes my english is not good, I'm learning to write it in forum mostly. English at school is not really good because you cannot practice it when there is no english where you live. Since I'm in montréal, I got the chance to practice and to get better, and by the way, this forums and some others are a training field for me if you want.

So sorry if I ruin your langage that I respect lot, like english people in general.


I can speak against american system and value some time, but I'll be the first to defend other americans values such as liberty and freedom of speech. (the typical one I agree)
I meet lot of american every summer here, and there all cool, except for some people who come from maine state to drink alcool when they are 18 years old. Lol   

I'm not saying your american education is bad.

If you pay 40 000$ for 1 year of study, I HOPE THIS IS GOOD HELL YEAH !!
But my degree is the same than your at the end, this is what count for any employer or governement. Proof of that : The american governement keeps hirings agents for governements, navy and other mulinational right here in montreal. Most of them want us to have a degree in various field, and to speak english of course. Well paid job I admit !! Just have to get good sources for it.

---) Our universty are mostly funded by private sector and public sector. The students pay less, both sector pay more, wich give you a better chance to go to university and become a source of income for your country instead of staying in the poverty circle and be a pain for the country (---


Explain me why guys mcgill and both UQAM universty in montreal are among the best quoted in Canada ? Come and see, how many americans and english canadians come to study here.

No Canada is not paying for us, we pay for you, that's what you conservative governement said and keep saying, by the way, they made adjustement to balance things, wich are not really bad in fact. (by the way they should be the one that hate us)



You think in Québec we are disliked by other french country ?

rofl.

So easy to say that, did you ever come here ? did you ever met a québécois, did you ever read the history of Québec and the relations of Québec with country around the world ? Of course not, because you are saying that.

Just to let you know, France was the first country to support our independance at the last referendum in 1994...or remember De Gaulle trip here, coming to Québec and leaving without going to ottawa after saying : Vive le Québec Libre.

Yeah they must hate us. That's why in a Québec university of 40 000 students, 20% to 30% of students are from France and other french country.
Yeah our system must suck man !


I must add I deal with english people everyday. I work in a bank, a collection center.
Most of people I call are english, come from Alberta and Newfoundland,(70%)
and are bad payers, poor people, not educated and mostly retards who sometimes speak an english even worse than mine. my english boss always tells me : "I cant believe it mike, I'm an english quebecers and youre a french quebecers and we both speak better english than thoses retards."

funny.

Yeah, our Québec Bank (Laurentian Bank) allow your poor people to get loans and get a life. So they can buy vehicules, house, live the american dream and be rich.
I think it's not a good idea in fact, we should just stop sharing our money, but that would make those thousands of customer so sad...

Next time before you say the canada pay for Québec, like in your open line radio, think about that.





PS : Québécois mean a french-canadian who live in québec. French canadians can also be acadians, french-ontaria, manitoba and etc...

Please use the quote feature otherwise we don't know what your saying or replying to?

Certainly i do not know how good universities in Canada are, yes a degree is a degree from an employers view unless you come from a university which is renown for being either excellent or crap.

So i guess at the end of the day, what makes a good university is it's reputation in the business world. Perception is everything, reality counts for nothing.

I don't have the time at the moment to read the entire thread, so I may be missing some information. However, I would say that it depends on how you define poor. We will never be able to make everyone's income equal except by just bringing everyone down. It's along the lines of what communism tried to do, and it didn't work. Some people think that those in the U.S. who don't have much money are badly off, but they need a bigger perspective. I know of a family that's on welfare, yet the mom bought her daughter a $50/month cellphone plan. The vast majority of families in the U.S. have at least one car, many have cellphones, nearly all have running water and electricity.

If you want to see poverty, go to other countries. Some people in the world live on less than $1 per day. In their country, that will buy them a lot more than it would here, but it's still a horribly low amount. There are countries where the average per capita GDP is somewhere around $300-$400 per year, and that's with everyone in the family working at something. To have any chance of stamping out poverty, what we need to do is help those other countries to bring their people up.

I probably won't have time to keep up on this thread, either, but I wanted to put my two cents in. I hope it's helpful.

In order to stamp out poverty you need to be without poverty so the poulation won't increase. It is a vicious catch 22

Yeah, I was originally going to say "to stamp out poverty." That's why I changed it to "to have any chance of stamping out poverty." I don't want to be pessimistic, but frankly, I don't see any chance of getting rid of poverty.

First I want to say this thread is awesome. I have seen a war between Canada and the US with some Aussie and British folks throwing knives into the ring and giggling as well as some fantastic name calling and moral attacks. But the economists' and the sociologists comments seem most relevant and the least subjective so against my better judgment I am throwing my towel into the ring with some random comments.

Economics: the science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of humankind.

capitalism: an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

socialism: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Economics is not really the issue as much as capitalism vs socialism seems to be. There are many economic models and free market capitalism seems to be the one being discussed and or complained about. Free market capitalism is your basic supply and demand model which is actually a good way to determine the value of a good. If many want it and there is only so much of it or if it is expensive to make, then it is expensive. If there is tons of it and no one wants it it is cheap. You can figure out all the in-betweens from there. Obvious complaints about free market systems are monopolies where there is only one supplier of a good in which case they can fix supply and demand at their whim, think your local electric company in most US counties. I can't recall the name for it off the top of my head but the other extreme where you have many suppliers and only one buyer who can then do basically the same thing, think your local mega store buying from its distributors and making them sell to them at a low price because their other option is to downsize drastically or close shop. Something about Wal-Mart demanding cheaper CD's from some manufacturers comes to mind. Of course we have laws and institutions to regulate this but with the lobby system in place in US governments this is hit and miss at the very best. In short monopolies kill off other suppliers and then take your money and send it to other communities to further the monopoly there and so on. The other extreme buys up things so cheap it puts alternative distributors out of business and causes small local business to go bust because they cannot compete with the buying power of the mega business. The problem here is not capitalism its lack of federal laws or enforcement there of due to lobyist money and on the other hand choices made by local or state(province?) goverments to protect their local economy over say convience or a boost to tax money from the mega stores in exchange for local money trickling back in. In defense of at least the local goverment it is a hard choice to make and most elected officials don't know much about economics and get sleepy at the thought of learning it.

Poverty is difficult to define but I am going to jump off a cliff here and say it is being without the necessities for life. The subjective issue here is what is needed versus what is desired? As some of the posts have pointed out sometimes desire for better hope etc. is needed for life. Thats above and beyond the economic understanding of poverty which lists food, clothing, shelter, and perhaps means of transportation to a job so you can buy the other basic needs. So by that definition many are poor even in the richest nations for various reasons some self imposed and some imposed upon them, but hey we all feel opressed sometimes amiright?

The idea that education at least in the US is out of the grasp of some people is for the most part not accurate. If you can save the money for a Greyhound bus you can get to a town with a community college and grab yourself an associates degree and start moving up economically. Of course with more folks getting 2yr degrees all the time the wage for such a job will shift as supply and demand shifts so you would do best to keep going in school if you can stomache it. Yes you will have to take out FEDERAL AID loans which brings me to my last point since this has gotten way off track.

Social goods versus common goods. Common goods are goods you want/need that only you benefit from like a gallon of milk(you should have to figure out the difference between want and need for yourself and if the evil media has sway over your fragile psyche then I have some snakeoil on ebay for you). Social goods are things like bridges, roads, hospitals, flood walls, police, military, and the list goes on. These are goods everyone wants/needs and everyone benefits from. Social goods are logically best supplied and regulated by a goverment. In many ways thats all goverments are for most times. They gauge demand and supply and regulate social goods. Since healthcare is a hot topic I'll use it to show the ups and downs of making something a social good. Socially provided hospitals will provide you with goverment approved ADEQUATE healthcare. Will it be able to sow your hand back on so you can use that mousefinger? Probably not but it will wrap you up and keep you from bleeding to death and if you are lucky it may even give or sell you cheaply a prosthetic. If you have enough money to get that hand sown back on should you have the option? In capitalism the answer is yes. If there is demand and supply and you can pay the value its yours (economically this also includes illegal things...). Point is I think adequate healthcare (call it insurance) should be provided by the goverment but not at the expense of totally socializing all healthcare and be prepared to pay the taxes to back it.

Ok against better judgement I'm going to keep ranting for a little more. The war on drugs is being fought totally wrong. Recreational drugs (just using a convention here I tend to think of it as self medication not recreation) are a common good with high supply and demand. If you want to stop illegal drug use you can either kill supply (not going to happen as long as there is demand) or kill demand (not going to happen as long as its addictive). So the other option is to flood supply. Legalize it and regulate it . Much of the profit from illegal drugs is because the supply is limited due to it being illegal and therefore smuggled. If it was legal and more obtainable the price would drop and the cartels would leave the business or at the least start paying income taxes on their kilos. Sure for a while supply would be eaten up and you would have plenty of overdoses new users etc. but eventually supply and demand would even out again and I bet you demand would drop off and crime rate would decrease. Of course this is purely economical and does not take ethics into account at all but I would wager that after the initial increase in demand from increased supply it would drop off and you would have just as many addicts as ever only you would be making your money back from all the state funded rehab and imprisonment we already go through.

Totally random thoughts feel free to pick me apart.

P.S American football is harder than Canadian hockey

I must agree that in the end, getting ride of poverty is really difficult, may look unthinkable.

Now think about what we could do with the usa military budget if we had this ammount to do that... just imagine.

What we could do with billion of unused dollars sleepings in many personnal accounts around the worlds.




I didnt wanted to create a war between french and english, canadian vs americans. That's not the point. As a Québécois, I can tell you most of quebecers would agree with what has been said in this topic, except what came from me. I'm not necessary a reference to judge what is a quebecers. Yeah I'm some kind of minority here. But still, I think that if we put aside the moral judgement we've done, mostly me hehe, there is lot of truth, not only in my post but in everyone post.


There is lot of things we might not agree, but in the end we live in the same continent, same planet of course and we are humans and I'm sure most of us are good people who hope the best for everyone.

PS : Canadian hockey rules