Category: entitlement generation

Circling The Drain, Literally

There’s a simple solution for alleged funding problems for sewer and water networks: have the user pay, just like they do for internet. If usage fees cover repairs as well as future upgrades and expansion, bottlenecks won’t occur. Municipal governments, on the other hand, prefer to wait for “others”, namely provincial and federal taxpayers, to pony up for things they don’t want to charge local voters for.

She said municipalities largely rely on property taxes and user fees for revenue, which account for roughly one-tenth of total government revenues in Canada despite them being responsible for a majority of core local infrastructure.

“We know what we need to do,” she said. “The concern is we don’t have the fiscal capacity to do it at the speed and scale that housing targets require.”

Empty Piggy Banks

Here’s something these folks need to ponder: over 40 years of falling interest rates, often hovering near zero, have made defined benefit pension plans nearly impossible to maintain. The go-to “solution” is to get that magical entity known as “others” to make up any shortfall. But those “others” are growing tired of handing over their capital to be consumed.

Fed into the performance-based formula, those figures have meant former Queen’s employee Gordon Crawley has received no increases since he retired in November 2021. Meanwhile, the consumer price index (CPI) has risen by more than 16 per cent over that time frame, according to Bank of Canada data.

He says it’s been difficult, especially knowing he won’t get any additional payments to top up his pension and help deal with inflation until the fund’s returns have made up for lost ground.

What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?

Overdue.

Circling The Drain

Two notable takeaways from Newfoundland’s recent budget: this is a record breaking deficit figure from an allegedly conservative government, and health care now eats up nearly half of all spending. We’ll be well on the way to two thirds before long and that will be the case for every province.

The budget forecasts a deficit of $688.5 million and a $20.8 billion net debt by the end of the 2026-27 fiscal year.

The province will spend $5.4 billion on health care — 42 per cent of its entire expenses — including more than $47 million to create 200 new long-term care beds.

Child’s Play

There’s a simple option for people alarmed about the high cost of raising kids: don’t have any. But if you have enough political sway, maybe you can coerce that magical entity known as “others” to shoulder the burden for you. To be fair, California is really just following Canada’s lead on this matter.

The number of 4-year-olds attending state-funded preschools reached record highs last school year, driven by states embracing universal access and an unprecedented $14.4 billion in spending.

More than half the nation’s public preschool enrollment gain — some 25,000 students — came in California, which this year made every 4-year-old eligible for its “ transitional kindergarten ” program, or “TK.”

“Transitional kindergarten”? I wonder who came up with that title.

$100 Million For Indian Students

Daily Hive;

Some international students could be eligible for up to $100 million in scholarships from the University of Toronto, the Canadian government announced on Monday.

Prime Minister Mark Carney met with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the weekend, securing an “ambitious new partnership” with the country that focuses on energy, talent and technology.

“India is the fastest-growing major economy and a powerhouse of global commerce and technology. In a rapidly changing world, Canada and India are transforming their economies to be more diversified, more independent, and more resilient,” said Carney in a statement.

…and C3 for their grandmas.

So, yes – he’s done the math: In a recent interview with CBC News, [India’s High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh K. Patnaik] suggested that because of our “complementary economies,” Canada should be eager to welcome an additional 60 million Indians.

Fire Them All

Here’s hoping that Javier Milei’s labor market reforms continue to gain traction. Notice how the news item is framed in such a way as to draw no connection between the undeserved power of Peronist labor unions and “frequent economic shocks”.

The bill, which grants employers greater flexibility in matters of hiring, firing, severance and collective bargaining, has drawn fierce opposition from labor unions and their Peronist allies, who argue it would roll back measures that protect workers from abuse and Argentina’s notoriously frequent economic shocks.

Taxes For Detox

It’s one thing to admit that BC’s approach to hard drugs has failed, but it’s another to offer up taxpayer funded treatment programs for every addict for as long as it takes as the alternative. I’m pretty sure that Elenore Sturko’s not planning to fund any of that on her own.

“If someone voluntarily wants to get help, I am your biggest champion,” she counters. “I want you to walk into any door and to be able to say, ‘I want detox today, and I need to go to treatment, and I’d like lifelong support and counselling if I need it, and a nice place to live that’s drug-free and safe for me.’

No Retirement For You!

While most of these youngsters can see a problem, my guess is that only about ten percent of them can understand why it exists: it’s the inevitable outcome of an exponentially rising debt burden colliding with demographics.

A report by BMO published on Monday showed 73 per cent of millennials surveyed believe retirement planning will be more difficult than it was for their parents, followed by generation X at 67 per cent, generation Z at 61 per cent and boomers at 60 per cent.

The Children Are Our Future

And that’s why they’re building a new state-of-the-art bunker under the new White House ballroom.

As Gen Z ditch books at record levels, students are arriving to classrooms unable to complete assigned reading on par with previous expectations. It’s leaving colleges no choice but to lower their expectations.

One shocked professor has described young adults showing up to class, unable to read a single sentence.
“It’s not even an inability to critically think,” Jessica Hooten Wilson, a professor of great books and humanities at Pepperdine University told Fortune. “It’s an inability to read sentences.” […]

With students struggling, academics have been forced to adapt—a move critics describe as “coddling.”

For her part, Wilson has turned to reading passages aloud together, discussing them line by line, or repeatedly returning to a single poem or text over the course of a semester—in part so students can begin to develop the skills to read critically on their own and be prepared for their post-graduate career.

Bad Advice

Who knew that Canada’s problems are the result of not paying people enough not to work?

At the heart of the issue, he said, is Canada’s eroded social safety net, particularly employment insurance (EI), which, along with other social programs, isn’t keeping up with today’s economy.

EI benefits have mostly stayed the same in value and replace roughly 55 per cent of a person’s wages. The benefits are higher than in the United States, but they lag far behind European countries such as Denmark, where they replace 90 per cent of a person’s wages, the Netherlands (70 per cent) and Sweden (80 per cent).

The Numbers Game

It’s pretty hard to believe that a deficit could be literally twice what you estimated in the space of a few months, but Wab’s got one thing one his side: average John Q. Manitoba voter probably couldn’t care less. They just want the free stuff to keep coming.

The Manitoba government’s deficit for the current fiscal year is expected to reach $1.6 billion, more than double the $794 million estimated in the spring budget, the province’s second-quarter report released Monday showed.

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