Politics in 2016

[Altair]

I paid my student loans,  so why shouldn't everyone else? And if the student spends 10s of thousands of dollars on useless courses, while becoming a student activists with no intention of working for the man? Should he/she get debt relief indefinitely? Yes, most people aren't like that but enough are. And their are Starbucks, and other minimum wage jobs, everywhere full of people with  liberal arts degrees. College is not, and not should it be, a given. There are plenty of good,  we'll paying jobs which don't require a degree. Granted you might have to work your *** off but the pay is good. As a society, we push people who have no need, no desire and no business there, into post secondary.

As a parent if you want to force your kid I to school,  then pay for it. The government has a wonderful program called a RESP. If you plan you can take most of the burden off your child. Students, if you really want to go to university you will find away. Work full time and go to school, lots of people do it. If university is too hard for you while your working, maybe explore other options.

BTW, the people who have the real problem aren't the boomers. They didn't need university. It's everyone else between the ages of 35 and 50.

stolen from  Eaglelord17 earlier in thread

Well what about us who are actually taking courses for in demand jobs but can't get hired because of currently broken system?

Many of my friends and I have taken programs for in demand jobs. Things like Computers, Electrical, Trucking, and other Skilled Trades. We are unable to get a job because no one wants to hire apprentices, or wants you to have 5 years experience right off the back (which you can't get when no one will hire you in the field). We have not taken Liberal Arts degrees and expected something, we have taken needed courses and get nothing due to most the industrial jobs being exported under the watch of the previous generation and the refusal to train anyone new, instead relying on a older trained body (baby boomers), who are finally aging out.

Yeah, not all women's studies fools

 

[Brad Sallows]

Federal debt has had a greater opportunity cost than most people think.

From 1975 to 2015, the sum of operating deficits (money we had to borrow to pay program expenses) was about $95 billion.  During that same interval, the sum of public debt charges was about $1.2 trillion.  (Nominal, not adjusted dollars, and I didn't take time to plug the FRT into a spreadsheet - just did some rough addition.)

$1.2 trillion is a lot of foregone program spending, no matter how important that $95 billion was.

 

[Altair]

I'll present to you something to consider about education;  federal government support (in the form if funding) to support marginalized adults who have sub-standard literacy skills and can't partake in adult education (formal, non-formal, or informal).

Flyn, Brown, Johnson, & Brown (2011) offer:
For those “invisible” members of our society who attempt to succeed in the face of adversity, education is not viewed in the same light as it would be by a privileged person. To the disadvantaged, education may be a luxury pursuit, an endeavor that may or may not lead to a means of supporting oneself and one’s family. Furthermore, the inequality still prevalent in Canadian society often acts to prevent the disadvantaged from excelling academically and thus obtaining a functional literacy level. (p. 55).

These disadvantaged people are Canadians.  Some are immigrants, some were born here, all are caught in a cycle of poverty, crime and 'the welfare cycle'.  Many of them (e.g. - single mothers) are not able to get a basic education for lack of things such as child care at the learning facility.  This would include the young people who are now entering the 'marginalized adults' group WRT adult education.  If they were able to break the cycle they are in, they would also become tax-paying citizens (less stress on the welfare and social systems), they would likely be very thankful to the government that dedicated the funding to their futures and apt to support them for an extended period of elections.  Of course there is the side benefit for these people as well;  the ability to live a decent life away from poverty and the welfare cycle. 

Are they not more of a priority than those who have an education but can't get a job (that they want, right out of school, right off the bat)? 
Or do 'Sunny Ways' stop short of reaching these Canadians? 

The students praying for debt relief have SFA to worry about and deal with compared to marginalized adult Canadians who don't have the basic literacy skills to sign their name, apply for a drivers licence of even get a job as a janitor because they can't read.  Until they are supported, there can be no conduit of change for them.  I'll save my concern for those Canadians, vice the folks who just got their degree and have to start working outside their field of study, sorry.  There are people with far greater needs;  real, basic life needs. 

Where is the Liberal Party voice for these people?  Or, are they too "not your concern", like the elderly? 


Flynn, S., Brown, J., Johnson, A., & Rodger, S. (2011). Barriers to education for the marginalized adult learner. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 57(1), 43-58.

I'm indifferent, but who's saying both groups cannot be helped?

I'm not saying and have never said give students and young people x by taking away or denying "insert group" y.

 

[Altair]

The rankings people give to a list of issues, and the issues and/or causes that move people to vote, are not necessarily tightly coupled.  I suspect in the case of young voters there is no particular correlation.

For several election cycles I have noticed in the US and Canada that young voters will cheerfully rank shopping lists of issues for pollsters, and still not necessarily turn out to vote.

In the recent past, young voters turned out in large numbers for Obama and Trudeau.  Going back, I'd guess (without checking numbers) that Trudeau senior enjoyed a bulge of support among young voters.

My conclusion is young voters tend to turn out in larger numbers when they feel like they can vote for the prom king (or queen).  Giving them a little more credit for not being irretrievably shallow, perhaps they turn out when there is a novelty issue which attracts them.  They may say they care about free post-secondary education (as has been the case for, oh, at least the past 40 years), but the prospect of pot legalization is what actually drags them off the couch to the polls.

So I present evidence and you dispute it. Cool. You don't present any evidence and instead rely on truthiness.  Got ya.

As a side note, the only major party, and I use that term lightly here, to offer free post secondary was the green party.

 

[Eye In The Sky]

I'm indifferent, but who's saying both groups cannot be helped?

I'm not saying and have never said give students and young people x by taking away or denying "insert group" y.

Great!  So...what are the Liberals doing and going to do about it?

op:

 

[Altair]

Great!  So...what are the Liberals doing and going to do about it?

op:

What was any party going to do about it?

 

[Eye In The Sky]

What was any party going to do about it?

Completely irrelevant to reality.  There is a government elected now and this is their responsibility.  They are giving out money to others like we crap it out;  what are they doing for our very own disadvantaged citizens?  Or do we just not give a fuck about our own who aren't shining like stars? 

They wanted the power, the responsibility comes with it.  All of it.  Not the good stuff, also the bad.

 

[Altair]

Completely irrelevant to reality.  There is a government elected now and this is their responsibility.  They are giving out money to others like we crap it out;  what are they doing for our very own disadvantaged citizens?  Or do we just not give a frig about our own who aren't shining like stars? 

They wanted the power, the responsibility comes with it.  All of it.  Not the good stuff, also the bad.

when it come to the reality of what party to vote for for what issue, it makes perfect sense.

I will admit, I know nothing about this issue, and I'm assuming the liberal party is going to do jack all about it. I may be wrong, but if the prime minister cared about it he probably would have hugged someone related to it by now and I haven't seen any pictures of that on twitter.

That all said, I heard nothing about this from other the CPC and the NDP.

So when you get right down to it, if all three major parties have no coherent strategy or plan for how to deal with that issue, I call it a wash and move on to other things that there is some difference on.

As for the present, I don't expect much to be done on the issue. I can only imagine whatever funding existed probably didn't get cut when the federal government is running a 30 billion dollar deficit.

But on a whole, with the new CCB, tax cut to the middle class, money for first nations, debt relief for students, I think they are doing pretty well.

I think they have many areas to improve on, namely post secondary for veterans, return to lifetime pensions and stop suing the veterans over it, a decision on a fighter jet, being more forthcoming in question period, making pipelines a reality, and a plan to return to a balanced budget.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The rankings people give to a list of issues, and the issues and/or causes that move people to vote, are not necessarily tightly coupled.  I suspect in the case of young voters there is no particular correlation.

For several election cycles I have noticed in the US and Canada that young voters will cheerfully rank shopping lists of issues for pollsters, and still not necessarily turn out to vote.

In the recent past, young voters turned out in large numbers for Obama and Trudeau.  Going back, I'd guess (without checking numbers) that Trudeau senior enjoyed a bulge of support among young voters.

My conclusion is young voters tend to turn out in larger numbers when they feel like they can vote for the prom king (or queen).  Giving them a little more credit for not being irretrievably shallow, perhaps they turn out when there is a novelty issue which attracts them.  They may say they care about free post-secondary education (as has been the case for, oh, at least the past 40 years), but the prospect of pot legalization is what actually drags them off the couch to the polls.

I suspect (rather sadly) that you're closer to being right than are most analysts.

I go back to my earlier point. The Liberals ran a GREAT campaign ... they "earned' their win by telling enough Canadians, including, especially, those young Canadians who too rarely bother to vote, something that would make them come out and vote Liberal. Sometimes it was promises to spend in very popular ways that I, personally, believe are unproductive; sometimes it was promises to stop fighting, bombing or buying expensive jet fighters; sometimes it was promises to do something that appealed to one 'demographic' or another; it many cases the implicit promise was, simply, not to be Stephen Harper ~ who had been carefully and skilfully demonized over the past decade plus.

It worked and there is no point in crying over spilled milk ... Conservatives need to learn from what the Liberals did well and from what they, the CPC, did poorly.

 

[Jarnhamar]

https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2016/05/27/police-chief-talks-about-marijuana-raids.html

It was meant as a calm follow-up, to showcase drug seizures and justify the raids on pot dispensaries, complete with smashed door glass, of the day before.

Instead, Friday’s police news conference turned to turmoil as marijuana advocates hurled questions at Chief Mark Saunders while he laid out the figures of “Project Claudia.”

Officers hit 43 unlicensed marijuana dispensaries across the city Thursday. They slapped criminal charges on 90 dispensary owners and employees and confiscated more than 270 kilograms of pot. Among the spoils were $160,000 in cash, 127 kilograms of oils and spreads, and 142 kilograms of pot-infused cookies.

I agree the Liberals ran a master-level campaign and they earned (sleigh of handed) their spot on top.

When I see stories like the one above though I can't help but think some of the Canadians who were excited about the whole legalizing pot platform may not put too much critical thinking into it. Lots of people putting the cart before the horse I guess.  If they voted Liberal I wonder how they feel about their vote? Probably the same as me when it comes to Conservatives and firearms.

 

[mariomike]

BTW, the people who have the real problem aren't the boomers. They didn't need university. It's everyone else between the ages of 35 and 50.

Where I used to work, recruits are now better educated than when I was a "probie".

Some also have more "Life Experience", as they call it.

The custom when I hired on was that the job should not be the second career of a man ( as it was entirely back then ).
Also, that young men hired straight out of school were more "moldable" than older more experienced men to the subculture. And, since most were recent high school graduates and unmarried ( probably still living with their parents even ), that their backgrounds were pretty empty.

Besides that, the younger you got in, the sooner you could max-out your pension and get out. 

 

[George Wallace]

I hark back to the words of JFK:  "Ask not what your country can do for you; but what you can do for your country."

What I see today is more "Me, Me, Me!" than anything else.  "Let's blame someone else for our lack of integrity, responsibility, and initiative."

Blaming your elders for your failures in any of the above, says nothing of you.  It only confirms what is being said.

 

[George Wallace]

So!  He who wins gets to write history.....or rewrite history....Whichever way you prefer to take it.

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Joe Oliver: The Liberals spent $9B in a single month, just so they could say there was a deficit
Joe Oliver, Special to Financial Post
May 27, 2016 10:05 PM ET

So.  From the Department of Finance's Fiscal Monitor, it has been revealed that a deficit of $2 billion for 2015-16 is due to a blockbuster $9.4 billion spending in the last month of the year alone.  Every month since the October election, the monitor turned up a budgetary surplus, resulting in a culminated surpluse of $7.5 billion for the 11 months from April 2015 to February 2016.  In order to generated a deficit for the full year, the LIBERALS HAD TO GO INTO THE HOLE several billion more than that $7.5 billion in just the month of March.  Bill Morneau was up to the challenge.  And so the LIBERALS have REWRITTEN history.  Will the younger generation absorb this or will they continue to march on following the sounds of this drum?

More on LINK.

 

[ballz]

Will the younger generation absorb this or will they continue to march on following the sounds of this drum?

Some of the anti-Liberals on this site have become unbearable at this point :facepalm:

 

[George Wallace]

Some of the anti-Liberals on this site have become unbearable at this point :facepalm:

Sorry if the truth hurts.

It can also be said that "Some of the "Hate Harper" or "Hate Conservatives" on this site have become unbearable at this point :facepalm:"


[Xp

Sorry that I am not infatuated with one ego over all others.  My apologies.

 

[ballz]

[Xp

Sorry that I am not infatuated with one ego over all others.  My apologies.

No, you're infatuated with your own age group, most of whom voted Liberal. Weren't you spouting off about integrity and blaming others for your problems in the other thread? Perhaps you should look in the mirror and stop blaming the younger demographic for the election results when your own demographic is just as guilty.

 

[The Bread Guy]

... If they voted Liberal I wonder how they feel about their vote? Probably the same as me when it comes to Conservatives and firearms.

Or vets.

 

[Jed]

No, you're infatuated with your own age group, most of whom voted Liberal. Weren't you spouting off about integrity and blaming others for your problems in the other thread? Perhaps you should look in the mirror and stop blaming the younger demographic for the election results when your own demographic is just as guilty.

Pot this is kettle, Over.

 

[George Wallace]

I am surprised that you so easily believe the lies from the Liberal gang, even when the facts are placed right in front of your eyes. 

As I said, the victor gets to write/rewrite history as they see fit.  If people want to believe the lies, then they will be the ones who suffer in the end.  The fiscal records of the nation are documented and archived.  Future historians will debate this scheme of creating a deficit by the Liberals and debate its ethical and moral values.  Perhaps in thirty years, you can be in on that debate and justify the actions taken by Bill Morneau.


 

 

[mariomike]

I hark back to the words of JFK:  "Ask not what your country can do for you; but what you can do for your country."

I believe / hope most people on here feel that way. Sure, it's a job to earn a living. But, it's more than that. For many, it's a calling.