Canada extends financial aid for millions for two more months
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
Our company was luckily not hit badly enough to qualify for the 75% support on salaries (we did get a line of credit!), but I know several others who needed it and got the support they needed which is great!
It's not perfect - rent supports for storefronts, restaurants, bars, etc. could be better, for example - and it won't save everyone or every business, but it's made a difference in many lives and helped us stay home and quarantine more effectively without so much worry about making ends meet.
I just hope more Canadians remember it was the NDP fighting for a lot of these supports come election time :)
It really doesn't take much to tell banks to add numbers to people's bank accounts.
What it's really doing is subsidizing everybody that works in or is tied to non-essential face-to-face service industry, by everyone else.
It's really not even that interesting, other than seeing how easily frazzled people are by the slightest calamity - why is non-essential services taking a vacation for a few months at the expense of everyone else supposed to be a major event with long-lasting consequences?
Imagine you have a family and you lose your job. If you have savings for a couple of years, you can take it easy for a while and then go look for a job and find one 6 months later. Was anything other than your ego bruised by the loss of the job? No, not really.
Why doesn't this analogy translate to what's happening with covid? I'm guessing because not only have you lost your job, but you owe tens of millions in gambling debts and spent half your waking hours convincing various factions to give you some extra time to come up with the money.
That's what the economy looks like to me and I find it difficult to be sympathetic - people need a reality check and get back to living a simpler life with less shit being bought and sold all the time. It is within my lifetime that I've gone from owning 2 t-shirts to 20 and I have no idea why. I can go back to wearing 2 and my life will be the same - I just hope others can see the silver lining in all this and not go back to living frivolously.
Much like running government 'like a business', the analogy of running a business 'like a household' only takes you so far. They're fundamentally different things.
Then there are those that bought chalets to put on Airbnb and rubbed their high returns in everyone’s faces until March.
Mine happens to be different from yours. Does that make me unreasonable? I mean, are there more shades to the world than reasonable/unreasonable, black and white?
I think so and I hope we can discuss the various shades of grey.
I think being responsible and saving for a rainy day applies across all spheres of life - be it government, business or a household. What do you think is fundamentally wrong with such a view, other than that it isn't the way things currently are?
>What do you think is fundamentally wrong with such a view, other than that it isn't the way things currently are?
For one, it dramatically increases the capital requirements for starting a new business. Such capital is likely not going to be available to new restaurants or other service oriented small businesses with no real collateral. Or it would come at such a high cost that it would be unprofitable to run the restaurant. All to optimize for a once in a century event.
I think the world where the government backstops these businesses is just a better world than the one that would arise from what you envision. It has more of what I want and less of what I don't.
Did I? There is a single sentence with the word 'need' in it in my entire post. My last sentence expresses my hope for others' behaviour. That's two 'normative' statements that really express the same point - we are living in a consumerist culture. I don't think that's at all a controversial position, it is almost a cliche at this point.
I also haven't made a single demand upon anyone.
I'm not sure what motivates you to misrepresent my position in such crude fashion and I wish you'd refrain from replying to me in this manner in the future.
> it dramatically increases the capital requirements for starting a new business.
Help me understand - you think the approach of being responsible and saving for a rainy day, dramatically increases the capital requirements for starting a new business? How?
How does saving profits relate to upstart requirements? As far as I can tell - the two are unrelated.
First possibility is the one most restaurants face. If they're lucky and the business is actually viable, they will have a profit margin of 3-5%. For a single location restaurant, that profit will be enough for the proprietor to make a decent living hopefully, but not a whole lot more. Should be enough for them to save up a few months of personal expenses sure. But saving up enough cash to pay rent, suppliers, and staff, for months, with no income... would take forever with those margins. It's just not possible for most businesses of that sort.
But let's also look at the other possibility. Say you've got a real hit restaurant (or another type of business with larger margins) and your margins aren't 3-5, but 15-20%. Now you're saving real money. So yes, you could sock it away under the proverbial mattress. But if you're that successful, it means people really value the product you're providing. Instead of hoarding your profits in case of a pandemic, you could instead invest those profits into opening a second location, allowing twice as many people to benefit from the service you're providing. In the 99% of years when there isn't a black swan event, that option is better not only for the business owner, but for society as a whole. So even for very successful businesses that could afford to keep a large amount of cash around, we're usually better off if they spend that money to do more of what's making them successful in the first place.
Of course occasionally there will indeed be a pandemic, at which point government can help out to prevent both types of businesses from failing, so that when the event passes they can go back to generating value.
> it is far more efficient to put that money into creating things of value
From my perspective, having enough food, medicine and stability to withstand a pandemic without putting the entire society on the brink of collapse is the most valuable investment we can make, while balancing that with providing human dignity and freedom to pursue simple pleasures for all people worldwide. Once we've provided human dignity and simple pleasures to every human being and ensured that it stays that way even in the case of a pandemic or other calamity, then we can start building luxury yachts for billionaires and trading in the stock market strictly for the purposes of profit.
That's my understanding of value and maybe I'm naive, but I think most people would see this as a worthy goal for us to share planet-wide. I think having a society that shares this belief, would itself produce an incredible amount of good will, motivation and purpose for many that currently feel alienated and disenfranchised.
Do you have a different view of value and what you'd like to see humanity achieve? I'd genuinely like to know.
I think my answer to another comment of yours above basically outlines what I mean by creating value. The example of the successful restaurant choosing between building up cash and opening a second location. Basically if a business has sufficient profits that they're able to store up a significant cash buffer, it's because they're making something that people are willing to pay for. (Or they're particularly good at regulatory capture or rent seeking or something, sure, but for the most part there is a correlation between earning money and providing something of worth.) Businesses that make popular products and provide popular services—things that people like and are willing to pay for—make more money than those that don't. And these things that people want and are willing to pay for, by definition, have value. So rather than sitting on cash, when possible we would like these businesses to do more of what they're doing.
As another example, say you start a tractor company. You really understand what makes a good tractor, and your tractors are widely considered to be the best available. The only problem is, you only have one small factory, and can only produce a small number of them. You turn a profit on each one, and you want to be responsible, so you're saving most of that profit in case of a natural disaster or other calamitous event. It takes around 10 years to save up enough that you could keep all your staff on, your equipment in good shape, and your rent paid for a year, but you manage it. Unfortunately in the meantime, most of the farmers in the worth need to make do with shittier tractors, because instead of growing your business you're trying to build up a bunch of cash. Wouldn't it be better if you reinvested as much as possible into the business—borrowing even—to scale up your production as quickly as possible? That way more people get to benefit from your awesome tractors and everyone is better off. If a pandemic happens, the government helps you get through, so once it's over you can go back to making and selling these machines that are making farms more productive. And all the added production from that reinvestment is of course also creating jobs, paying more in taxes, and earning you more income as well.
Now sure, your direct competitors won't love your selling a better tractor, but if we scale the example out to the whole economy, the more successful companies are making and doing successful things, the more actual wealth is created for society. And of course, not all companies make useful things, and the things people spend money on aren't always objectively valuable either. But in aggregate it's pretty clear that value is created. Just look at the quality of life people enjoy now compared to say a century ago. There are serious problems (like climate change) that we need to tackle—I'm not at all arguing for unregulated capitalism as a panacea. But I think it's objectively true that if all companies strove to each build large nest-eggs to weather events like this one, far less wealth (meaning tangible stuff of value) would be created than is otherwise the case.
I am called a curmudgeon because I don't believe my government should spend a single cent in arts or any non essential thing while there is a single person without food. Until that point, I am really against over spending.
I also think the main problem of society now a days, not even the rich, is the materialism everyone has. People feel bad for not having the last iPhone or even the last Zara t-shirt, and buying it gives them a dopamine hit, but long term, they enter the hedonistic treadmill.
But the problem is, not everyone thinks like this. Recently talked with an investor saying I would not take investment as I don't believe in the 'startup' path. It goes against my own goals. I was told I was wrong, I was told I was stupid and ignorant. I asked if he would be ok making money with WeWork and Theranos, and he had no problem saying that we would like it, and his words after I asked and how about the ones losing the money at the end, the reply was literally 'Fuck Them! I already have my exit'
While there are people like this (and from small 5 euro situations to billions) no society will achieve that balance as the people attracted to the money/power will find ways to corrupt/control the others.
I am currently battling leaving my job where I am in the top 2-3% of earners in my country and just finding a small house in a fishing village where I can surf and fish all day, grow my own vegetables, and do odd jobs here and there. I am tired of money and materialism and consumption. (Caveat, I know I can have this stand because I have the money/skills to not super worry for the future, I understand someone making 20k a year isn't in the same boat, but they can still make better decisions like not buying the new Xbox and iPhone with 15% interest as I have seen many do around here)
For example, there was a recent article on coronal mass ejections causing issues with the US power grid, bringing the US power grid down for 3-4 months (which is how long it takes to build replacement parts) but two issues came up: the whole world would have the same situation, and it costs about $400M to buy the parts.
Do you think we should invest in this, or just lower taxes so more economic activity can occur?
For example improving schools almost always has a positive return.
> What do you think is fundamentally wrong with such a view
It simply doesn't work in the real world. It's a nice ideal but it's not a thing for most people.
People on HN tend to forget that we're earning more than the average here. I made more money during one of my uni's internship, it was before getting my bachelor so I didn't even have any kind of degrees at the time, than my mom was making at the peak of her career. So yes I can save 50% of my salary and have 2 years of emergency fund without even trying to save. On the other hand my mom never had that and couldn't have that even if she wanted to, it's the exact same thing for businesses.
After all that's why we live in societies, pay taxes, have insurances, &c.
Not everyone works cushy 6 figures IT job and hangs on HN.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/02241...
tell that to every startup that spends many months, sometimes years, without revenue, and certainly with negative income.
more directly, it's difficult to boil down misallocation to simply being out of revenue for some months, although econ 101 might indicate so (actually it's price x quantity at the margins, but we'll go with the simplistic interpretation here).
but more interestingly, inefficiencies are actually a key part of markets and capitalism. it takes many, distributed participants doing very similar things to get pricing right. many companies start and fade away. those are in fact inefficiencies in the ruthless game of survival of the fittest. in a perfectly efficient world, you'd only need 1 try to get it right.
the better analysis is to determine which factors in addition to to revenue to use to determine misallocation. if i had to hazard a guess, we probably want, as a policy matter, businesses to be able to weather up to a year of economic shock, not just a few months, without introducing any concerning moral hazard economy-wide, while providing the necessary resilience and stability.
regarding insurance, you're basically saying the businesses should pay for systemic risks, rather than all of us, but that risk is not idiosyncratic to just those businesses. it's systemic, so the system should bear them, i.e., the government (as representative of society as a whole).
Plus, who owns 2 t-shirts? Are you doing laundry daily? Hate to break it to you, but that isn't exactly great for the environment either. My father grew up poor as hell on a farm, and even he had 6 shirts. To this day he will comment that they were darned to the point of being patchwork, but owning 20 shirts doesn't seem like a huge extravagance. Even with homemade clothing, that isn't a ridiculous wardrobe.
There is definitely a consumerist culture and people buy stuff they don't need, but in the context of this article & the pandemic the people receiving this aid need it. I don't mean to be negative, but there are 0eople making the decision between paying rent and eating; calling out consumerism for this is in poor taste.
By the way I think he's being rhetorical, not literal. It's an order of magnitude thing.
i.e. I had o(n) where n < 1000 and now I have o(10n)
The problem we in the wealthy world are facing is one of distribution. When we made the policy decision of shutting down non critical production, we also broke a critical component of our resource distribution system (namely, giving people tokens that can be exchanged for resources). Since we don't have a centrally planned economy, no one is really in the position to make this kind of policy decision, so we are left with the option of mainting something like the previous system just giving people those tokens by central fiat.
[0] Unless you want to blame the pandemic on environmental changes and travel consumption. This isn't completely unreasonable, but even in the "natural" state, pandemics happen.
That government response is there to help slow the spread of COVID-19 which then results in the saving of many tens of thousand of lives.
If the government didn't step in to help, people are then forced to go to out to work which then helps to spread the virus.
Who sold them that stuff? Who convinced people that they need to upgrade their phones every single year? Nothing will change until we destroy the marketing/advertising industries that profit off manipulating the most vulnerable people...
I lost my job in Germany and got one year of unemployment benefits, no savings needed. Min wage workers have no way to build 6 months of emergency fund and keep the "dignity" you're referencing in later post. If on top of that they also have to build their own medical insurance and retirement fund it's game over from day 1.
> Why doesn't this analogy translate to what's happening with covid?
It's the same thing as unemployment benefits, insurances, &c. in the end, money going where it's needed* to avoid people losing everything to events out of their control. (*which hopefully is small/medium sized businesse, not mega corps avoiding paying tax whenever they can but that's another issue)
> people need a reality check and get back to living a simpler life with less shit being bought and sold all the time.
That's for sure, sadly it doesn't look like we're going in that direction. I'm personally appalled at how some people spend their money but it's part of the game
I'm glad you were able to get those benefits. I think in general it is a good system. You say no savings needed. By that you mean you personally did not need to save that money. But somebody did. Unless the German government is printing money they would have to get that money from somewhere. If they don't have it now they would have gone to the bond markets. In which someone will have to save for it in the future. Again this is not a bad thing. I think it is important to point that someone will have to foot the bill. In some cases it will be a future generation (depending on how much the government is having to borrow). This is usually in the form of taxes. Which presumably many would pay. Including those who did not receive any direct benefit during the crisis. You could argue that it is for the greater good. And many would agree. I personally do think there is something to learn from the position taken by GP. After all in the eurozone we regularly see contrasts between the frugal north (Germany, Netherlands, etc) and the spendthrift south (Italy, Greece, etc). Whether as individuals, companies, nations perhaps we could think about how to best to manage our resources to be able to weather the storms that may come our way.
Of course, that's why I pay tax. I actually had saved money anyway, but the peace of mind you get from getting unemployment money is priceless. At the end, as I said, it's exactly like a car or health insurance. Almost no one can pay for a cancer treatment or a major car accident with no insurance, but not everyone will have to go through that in their life time so we all chip in and make the world a better place. There will always be people gaming the system, we should obviously take care of that in a way but it shouldn't be the focus.
It's always easy to say "I" save, "I'm" frugal. Yeah ok, we're software engineers, project managers, &c. and make 3-10x the minimum wage regardless of the country we live in. We spend dozens of hours every few months on this site debating about how the new $4k macbook keyboard suck while most people wouldn't be able to afford one if they saved for a year... I don't think most of us are equipped for this discussion.
I'm not sure about "the frugal north" vs "the spendthrift south", maybe system wise, but having lived in france, germany, california and greece I can say people as individual mostly live the same life and want the same things.
tbf I think the GP has a point about senseless consumption &c. but the whole "if you saved money you wouldn't need help" is bs on every level. Even I and my, so far, privileged life can see that as an individual things can quickly turn bad and spin out of your control.
Not, not really. Canadas bond rates are 0.5% it seems. The country just has to lend a few billions, wait a few decades, and the debt is essentially gone due to inflation alone.
> Why doesn't this analogy translate to what's happening with covid?
Because, as a share of population, approximately no one in the workingn class that makes up the bull of the population has “savings for a couple of years”, and that's not just a transitory situation but a fact that capitalism structurally guarantees.
I think these are the two key points. And sorry if it gets personal, but the first point one is obvious, and the second one is true - yes, yes you do.
There are people in the world who lack empathy. They don't understand those who are unlucky or in hardship. I mean, intellectually they say they do, but believe there's always a personal failure that's to fault, rather than any impact of environment or circumstances. They also believe their own situation is only due to their good work and thinking, and not due to any external circumstance, and they'd have been that successful in any set of circumstances.
That single mom working 12 hour shifts at Amazon warehouse - well it's her fault that she got pregnant / that father left / that she doesn't have savings. That Ontario auto worker with five kids who lost their job last year due to car industry moving on, and has been using their savings to retrain while looking for another job, it's their fault for running out of runway or not seeing the industry direction earlier. Etc Etc Etc
It's just sociopathic inability to see outside of one's own context and history and internal narrative. To imagine a series of unfortunate events. Sure you own 20 t-shirts. Doesn't mean all people do and/or have "tens of millions of gambling debt". I mean, honestly, the wording in that post is beyond cruelly clueless, it just feels like a troll. Nobody could ACTUALLY be that blind to their own personal privilege.
As I said, this could get a little personal.
CERB is not MEANT for people who gambled or have too many t-shirts. It's for people who work hard and now cannot, and are dis-proportionally impacted. I have a high salary and can obtain it from home - great. It's my luck and blessing and life choices and privilege.
The 21 year old at beginning of their career and no savings and who can NOT work now... is ORDERED to not work... the family running out of food... that's who it's for.
Canadians have overall made a decision (repeatedly) we'd rather help the innocents, at the risk we get a little abused. It's our stereotype. And the reason I live here.
The notion that we'll pay for it, that we're making up numbers, that it's unsustainable - those are all valid points. But the notion that these are all some over-privileged clueless people who are getting free money for no good reason... Jeebus. Somebody is wrong on the internets!
We routinely do the same thing for businesses in the form of grants and tax credits, so I fail to see how this is going to bite us in the ass any more than those investments have failed to tank the Canadian economy.
You are subsidizing landlords by giving this stimulus. It’s not that bottom up.
If you want to cut out the middleman, Canada could’ve paid mortgage bondholders directly through mortgage servicers on behalf of tenants and landlords.
Not trying to insinuate anything here, but I'm giving you some data points to show that it's not just a matter of moving money from spenders to savers, but there are other things involved.
For example, a bank only agrees to hold onto your money, because it will actually spend it for you.
Whenever you "saved" money, unless it was in your own coffin of gold, you actually just gave it to someone else to spend it with the promise that whenever you want it back they'll have it.
That said, if the market crashes, they won't have it. Because the bank's plan to "have" your money when you ask for it is actually to give you someone's else's. Cause your money has already been spent, either loaned to someone who wanted to buy a house, or start a business, etc.
That means if all those loans defaults, the bank actually won't "have" your money, it'll have lost it.
This is at a high level (from my understanding), why the government always bails out banks and bank related markets like home loans. If the bank go broke, everyone's money is gone.
FDIC is basically just saying "we'll pay it out of taxes'.
The whole thing is a shell game.
Tenant -> landlord -> bond holders. Then what? Where does the chain end?
The younger generation also benefits from CERB and there are other appropriate programs for youths and students.
This was purely to prevent a housing collapse.
What about the people who would have been made homeless, perhaps permanently, by the housing market collapsing ferociously as you pointed you?
What do you think happens mortgage lending in such a scenario?
What percentage of current renters have a 20% downpayment ready for even something as large as a 50% drop in home values? In Toronto, last I checked it as 1.1m for the average house and about 800k for a reasonable condo. How many current renters do you honestly think have $110k/$80 ready for a downpayment?
A housing market collapse only benefits those with great sums of capital on the sidelines waiting to deploy.
So 1.1m for a house is probably a problem. What is the alternative to fixing that?
The USA, Ireland and others have already been through housing busts in the last 10-15 years and it had no effect on home ownership.
>So 1.1m for a house is probably a problem. What is the alternative to fixing that?
Keep in mind we're talking about prices in some of the most attractive places to live in, in North America. Places that are also the target of skilled immigration and migrants with money also.
As you probably know, it might be $1m for a starter condo in NYC, but you can pick up a detached house in a decent area elsewhere for a quarter of that.
The unaffordability of the cities is a function of supply vs demand. If you want to bring down city property prices, simply reduce the need for cities.
That actually depends on where you live - here in Ontario, we have laws that give tenants the right to stay even if the landlord sells/loses the property. The new owner must allow the tenants to stay, with the same lease terms, even if the new owner is a bank.
You can’t create more homeless when there’s just as much housing to go around as there was before.
you cannot have a strong economy while housing has crashed.
housing is at the top of the needs hierarchy. when people have money they will put as much as they can into housing. so if the govt gives everyone $10,000, probably 30-50% of that will flow to housing. that doesn't mean that their intention or only goal is to "support the housing market."
Housing crashed = cheaper housing = more labor mobility = labor can spend more money on their "higher level needs" like eating at restaurants or elective medical care or online shopping.
Would you say "you cannot have a strong economy while the food prices have crashed"? Obviously not, lowered food prices would be seen as a good thing by everyone.
Until the companies providing the food go out of business. Or get bought out by foreign firms with no incentive to provide good food or service, e.g. Tim Hortons (owned by burger king, which is in turn owned by a Brazilian firm).
The state building decent affordable housing on a massive scale to increase the supply and bring down the absurd prices.
The UK managed it post-WW2 when it occurred to the government that hundreds of thousands of well trained, very fit young men who'd been taught to kill where going to need somewhere to live over the next two decades.
At the peak of that in the 60's we built 400,000 council houses (in addition to private housing) per year.
In 2017 we built 160,000 in total.
Also back in the 60's there where strict rules on the size of family council (state) built housing around size - so those 400,000 houses had more generous room sizes on average.
The thing the plan lacks is a plan to get around the fact that home-owners will go ballistic and that government disproportionately listens to them and I say this as someone who will be buying a house in the next couple of years.
Ironically I'll be putting an ex-council house high on my list because a lot of them where built like battleships, had high ceilings and nice room sizes and frequently decent sized gardens.
Picking one I know from growing up.
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.7817901,-0.2459041,3a,75y,31...
Oh and to make it worse, Covid has and will decimate the house building industry, it's already an ogliopoly (the top 10 builders account for >50% of all houses built and artificially restrict supply to protect prices) - the remaining small builders are basically knackered at this point.
They really did build some nice ones.
What we really need is people with a bold vision of how to solve the problems, someone like Ebenezer Howard who started the garden city movement in the late victorian era but frankly we don't have them and if we did they likely wouldn't get elected anyway.
It seems like we are stuck on this one way downward spiral when it comes to housing for no sensible reason I can see.
I actually don't think we go back. Two of our parties love giving stuff away in regular times and will gladly use this crisis to bankrupt the country. The next election will basically be a race between who can give the most free stuff away - to a much higher degree than we normally see. This time it will be literal "vote for me and I'll give you $5,000 per month - that's $1,000 more than my opposition!".
The election after that one will be interesting though.
http://www.rbc.com/economics/economic-reports/pdf/canadian-f...
The Liberal Party has different priorities than the Tories, but we're not wild eyed spenders. This year is different, but generally speaking we strike a balance between priorities.
If landlord’s mortgage is risk-free, it means that the landlord is leveraged at the expense of people who don’t have home — which is rather unfair economically, and leads to more inequality. Wealthy risk-free landlords get passive income and re-invest it into more leveraged assets, poor people pay taxes to bail-out their landlords.
Not sure how you figure this. It's a pretty painless application process and everybody is getting approved.
It would honestly be better if they just said "free money for everyone, just click here" because the CRA will now have to spend the next decade trying to collect fraudulent benefits. The cost of the entire program would probably be 25% higher if you factor in what this will cost to audit and attempt to collect from fraudulent claimants in the future, plus the lawsuits from tax payers because Canadian leaders literally instructed people to just claim it even if they didn't qualify.
They promise the former but my money is on the worst-of-both-world combination. That's not how UBI is supposed to work at all.
Regardless of how it turns out, the middle class will end up paying for it as the effective tax burden on the 0.1% remains untouchable.
I hope everyone's enjoying their vacations, at least it's a nice summer.
The USA attracts talent, and workers.
Those that can't get into the US but get into Canada and are reasonably talented, who don't have family ties - eventually go to the US. Two of my staffers, one from India, one from Jordan, just did this. For them, Canada was a temporary layover for a few years until they could go stateside.
Canadian wages are considerably lower than the US for 'talent' so generally, people prefer to go to the US.
Canada doesn't have very many true product, engineering, design jobs wherein the outputs are developed on an international scale, not a lot of things are really 'made here'.
On the high end - Canada imports doctors, software folks to do CRUD, ane engineers that never get to do engineering. One specialization is teaching and research for University, some number of profs are brought in.
But mostly - it's people with education who will never get to use it, and a lot of people to work in retail, coffee shops and Long Term Care homes.
Edit: after reading, this sounds very cynical! Although it is to some extent. Migrants to Canada in the economic class generally have education, like a Uni degree, though this is an only necessary one in the family, not necessarily the spouse, parents, obviously not the kids. Skills are often not very transferrable, and there are surprisingly few jobs wherein one can jump right in with 'technical knowledge' of some kind and Canada does not have the high-tech industrial base to support the need - Canada is almost last among OECD nations in terms of R&D investment, not because of the lack of R&D among individual companies, rather, the lack of the kinds of companies that actually do R&D. The Uni system is very good, tons of good research, but the commercial bits don't happen in Canada.
That said, if you roll the dice enough, you get lucky sometimes. Tobi Luetke (Shopify founder/CEO) is an immigrant from Germany. Mike Laziridis (Blackberry founder/CEO) was born in Istanbul of Greek parents. Michael Cowpland (Corel founder/CEO) was an immigrant from the UK.
Many of these outsized successes were low probability, high impact.
1) Structural. Canada is a 'large open economy' next to a 'massive open economy' where the economic pyramid is 10x - plus more inequality and they are a global player meaning that everything important in Canada gets consumed by the American system. Bought, put out of business, or talent goes south.
Bombardier is a good example: Trump arbitrarily and totally against NAFTA laid down tariffs which led to the failure of the business and put into the hands of another major power - the EU.
2) Cultural. A lack of focus on exceptionalism, and without very strong cultural foundations, a historical focus on 'equity' and 'stability' (which can be good things of course) Canada cannot play 'asymmetrical jujitsu' like Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong (pre takeover), Israel. It's a hugely contentious thing to say, but large scale migration - for all its benefits' - also exacerbates the problem, by creating more of an 'economic civility' rather than 'cultural civility'. When PM Trudeau sad Canada is a 'post-nation nation' - what he was saying without realizing is that Canada is simply going to be a 'safe, fair, trading post'. Think of Canada now really as 'The Hudson's Bay Trading Company' like a giant corporate living space, managed by well-meaning functionaries. Absent cultural foundations, then core civic and economic elements come to the fore. Canada can be thought of as 'an international economic zone North of the United States', basically without any real elite or national vision. The strategy is 'build more homes, get people into mortgages from one of 6 nearly identical banks, get them buying every day from Tim Hortons, Starbucks, McDonald's, get them in high-consumption environments near shopping malls full of foreign brands, and making consistent car payments, again, mostly surpluses going to foreign car companies. Working either for the government, a small business, or more likely the local office of a large international firm like KPMG, Ford, Price Waterhouse, etc..
Basically, a massive suburb of 'civic consumers', where it's very safe and placid, but nothing really happens either - no intellectual, creative, operational leadership, nothing to distinguish the situation from an arbitrary, nameless suburb anywhere else in the modern world.
This is happening a lot in the world, but the capital of this is Canada.
When you travel, it's getting harder and harder to 'know where in the world you are' by looking out the window, which is tragic.
> Canadian wages are considerably lower than the US for 'talent' so generally, people prefer to go to the US.
Easily a difference 40% or more. The CAD is about 27% weaker than the US Dollar, and even after accounting for currency differences the salaries are still lower in an absolute sense. Taxes are also much higher and ramp up much quicker, too, meaning there is less of an incentive to pay you big $$$ since you're going to be losing a much higher % compared to places without state income tax, like WA or TX.
If you spend time on reddit, head over to r/cscareerquestions, and you'll see a ton of "Canadian trying to go to SanFran" type posts. It's not hard to do -- the NAFTA TN visa still works -- and the FAANGM salaries in places like SV, DC, NYC, Seattle, etc. blow most Canadian salaries out of the water.
> On the high end - Canada imports doctors, software folks to do CRUD, ane engineers that never get to do engineering. One specialization is teaching and research for University, some number of profs are brought in.
Literally 5/8 of the apartments in my building are these people, lol (myself included). Imported Uni professors from India, a couple from S. Africa doing medical stuff, and a few foreign IT guy types.
> But mostly - it's people with education who will never get to use it, and a lot of people to work in retail, coffee shops and Long Term Care homes.
I disagree with the former, but the latter part is true -- Canada imports a lot of TFWs to work at Tim Hortons or nursing homes.
The government believes 'it must be racism' to the point wherein Ontario gov. has banned requiring 'Canadian experience' for jobs etc..
This is surely, at least partly true. It's a problem. But - overall, the issue is really that 'credentials are not equal', 'credentials may not be relevant' and most importantly 'credentials are only a small part of the job'. There are actually few jobs in Canada wherein someone's 'technical ability' will qualify them for something right away.
Doctors - well there's a pathway for them. Profs if they are hired into Unis. But even in IT - it's not so much one's education that makes one ready, we know in high tech that a lot people don't have technical degrees. Yes, ABC Corp. might be specifically in need of 'materials science' people but that is rare. Companies need people with technical backgrounds that can communicate, manage, problem solve in a North American operating environment, and they also need tons of people in talented areas wherein credentials just don't mean a lot. If you look at any successful tech corp a small minority have technical roles. Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Field Marketing, Sales Support, Branding, Customer Operations etc. etc. these are all communicating jobs wherein people who are more culturally adapted to the environment are better prepared. This is the primary driver of the 'migrant vs local citizen wage gap even among credentialed jobs'. Unsurprisingly, this gap closes over a couple of decades, which makes sense.
In places like Sweden, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that Swedish culture is very specific, the language is hard and so they're really having difficulty getting newcomers into more sophisticated roles. It's inevitable and an inexorable fact of the system. One way to mitigate this would be to make migration a little bit more job-based, in which case employers would be making the decisions as to 'who is employable' which makes much more sense, excepting the ugly scenarios wherein you get wage suppression, which is 100% a reality as well. (The large banks in Canada started dumping call centers in Canada and moving them offshore, which is an example of that kind of thinking)
Actually taxes in the US and Canada are pretty similar. You have to be living in a state with no income tax to see any difference.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/t...
Canada produces the most advanced video games that require real talent, and the commercial bits happen in Canada yes.
Canada has international clusters in AI that are ahead from the ones in the US
'Assembling' aircraft and cars for other nations who are doing all the real R&D, design, business and decision making is not 'advanced'.
Canada makes some decent games, but they're mostly driven by EA (USA) an UBisoft (France).
Canada has tons of AI talent coming out of Montreal, but no AI companies. That said, there are very few AI companies, mostly the winners are the FAANGS putting it to good use in their products.
Canada is a high-CO2 nation, more people = more emissions. It should be restricting migration to only other Western countries (where migration flows are likely to be two-way instead of one-way).
The Benefit is available to workers:
* Who have stopped working because of reasons related to COVID-19 or are eligible for Employment Insurance regular or sickness benefits or have exhausted their Employment Insurance regular benefits or Employment Insurance fishing benefits between December 29, 2019 and October 3, 2020;
* Who had employment and/or self-employment income of at least $5,000 in 2019 or in the 12 months prior to the date of their application; and
* Who have not quit their job voluntarily.
Because it's not a UBI and government programs have the tendency to multiply like rabbits, we also get the Canada Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) and Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) to cover different groups.
"But dad if I moved back to my place I'd have to buy my own groceries."
sigh
That's simply not true. They can do anything they want without the agreement of any of them. Check the seats, you missed some.
OP said the LPC needs NDP or PCC to get a majority but it is not true at all.
It's complicated, and it definitely helps the liberals.
About the original 4-month term (with 2 additional months at 0.15% tax, $12000 works out to $1800 to pay back):
"A recipient who earns the maximum benefit of $8,000 will have to repay $1,200 at tax time."
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/don-t-spend-it-all...
One wonders if you'll consequently see very difficult economic recoveries in different provinces.
BC was actually the hardest hit early on, but they were quick on their feet and the first to see a real response to curve-flattening changes.
Our options are \/ or \_
Central banks should be delegated the authority to issue deposit accounts and debit cards to all citizens, but apparently the world hasn’t ended enough for us to do that yet (which would make helicopter money super simple).
Remember that 'helicopter money' from central banks is not actually 'free money giveaway' it's just talked about like that.
When the Federal Government gives away money like this to citizens, it's more literally free money and it has to come from somewhere: either taxpayers or from debt.
When a government gives away money, it’s borrowed or taxpayer money. When a central bank does it, it devalues the currency (behold the value of a reserve currency!). Regardless of the hangover, you still do it if it’s necessary.
I digress; central banks can do whatever we need them to as a society. It’s their job to responsibly pull the macroeconomic levers to meet their mandates.
Not really, Central Banks are not part of the government and they can't do things outside the very narrow scope of authority we give them. Especially the Fed, which is a privately owned entity run by the banks themselves.
The Fed is the last place we want to manage social security programs. That job is for the government.
Now, it just so happens as you point out they have some magic levers such as the ability to take on stuff onto their balance sheet, but using that outside the scope of their policy is another thing altogether.
So yes, we can make 'money, financing and banking' do what we want, but if we do - it will absolutely not be 'The Central Bank' - it will be some other new kind of entity, designed differently, with different power structures and different objectives.
> It’s their job to responsibly pull the macroeconomic levers to meet their mandates.
> "central banks can do whatever we need them to as a society." <-- This is where we can modify their mandate at any time through legislation.
We really can't. To would so be a fundamental reconstruction of governance, tantamount to constitutional changes.
The central bank running current accounts for citizens and doling out money in a manner similar to how it tries to manage inflation using purchases on the free market etc. is so far beyond the premise of a 'Central Bank' that it's not a 'Central Bank'.
It makes the entity inherently politicized, as it becomes nary impossible to set 'targets' that aren't political.
So yes, we could dump the Central Bank and create a new entity that does 'Central Banking And Other Things' but there isn't even an intellectual framework for that, let alone some kind of reference anywhere in the world that could be used as a guide.
Putting the power of the printing press that close to 'giving out money' in a populist way is pretty scary anyhow and I wouldn't see the point in doing it at all.
If there are progressive social measures to be made, it might be for example related to how we structure what goes on the Feds balance sheet, and why, etc..
If we want to hand out UBI or something like that, it happens under government & the Treasury, not the central bank.
What value do banks add in this day and age? They arent loaning all the near free money the central bank is offering to sustain commerce, so my feeling they will be cut out at some point soon.
So, what happens if a bank goes bankrupt?
No, most good money is ownership of an asset, like possibly Gold, for example. For Euros, it's ownership of high-grade assets.
In the US, it's ownership of TBonds. Now, yes, TBonds are a form of debt, so there can't be a USD without the US making loans, but, the dollar itself is not debt, it's ownership of debt, which are different things.
Banks #1 job is managing risk. They do the work of determining who is credit worthy, on what terms and not, making the loans and taking on the risk.
That is what finance is.
They're just lying about being strict on TV to make everyone feel better about it. They don't have the capacity or political willpower to follow through. It's been months, it isn't urgent anymore, if they wanted to devise any sort of eligibility checks they would have done it already. But the only real eligibility requirement is being ballsy / desperate / yolo enough to claim it.
Some people like to complain about regular welfare programs being abused, but at least those have some controls, they're not just a web form with your bank details. Abuse rates will surely be much much higher for CERB, and that was largely preventable.
My wife works as a professional in the field. She says outright and obvious fraud is criminal code territory, and simple dishonesty (like what most amateurs do, just lying to a government official because they think they can get away with it this week and next week doesn't exist) just gets you a permanent denial of any future payments. That means you're cut off from welfare, for example.
Every system has freeloaders. Keeping freeloaders in business during this crisis has more than enough downstream benefits that we really shouldn't care if some lazy assholes get to be moreso for a few months.