Category: entitlement generation

Compliance Costs

If I were a Minnesotan, supposedly I would sleep at lot easier at night knowing that the state was ready to protect me from all those unscrupulous house painters out there.

The legislation, which was posted online February 15, would restrict the “sale of certain solvent-based paint materials to licensees; [establish] a paint contractor board; [and require] licensing for paint contractors and journeyworker painters.”

So regardless of their motivations, Minnesota lawmakers are at best offering an immoral “solution” to a problem that doesn’t exist. At worst, they are weaponizing the law to benefit special interests.

Une Patiente, S’il Vous Plait!

I’m not surprised that the doctor lost patience with this woman, but a Quebec regulatory body views that as a perfectly good reason to discipline him. As per the Jordan Peterson controversy, I expect he’ll have no recourse to the courts.

The doctor said he had never prescribed hormones to someone who wanted to “transform into a gentleman.” He then brought up concerns that the hormone would lead to aggressive behaviour and changes in character, something the patient said was just a stereotype.

During the consultation, doctor and patient started arguing, with the patient reminding the doctor that he is a trans man, and the doctor responding that he is “genetically female” and noting that as far as being a trans man: “That is in your brain.”

Welfare Mentality

Manitoba has not seen itself as a “can-do” province for decades now, with voters seeming to prefer the passivity of a “have-not” attitude instead. That same outlook has predictably infected the City of Winnipeg as well. One supposes that the main response to the city’s budgetary woes will be to go cap in hand to the province…who will predictably go cap in hand to the Feds. In the meantime, expect infrastructure to continue to crumble and crime to soar.

An accelerated regional road renewal program, funded by the federal government, has come to an end, so there will be less work done on road repairs, he said.

There is also no new money to transition Winnipeg Transit’s bus fleet to zero-emission buses, beyond what council has already committed to, nor to add more buses to the fleet.

Last month, the city released a budget projection that estimated Winnipeg would overspend its budget by $3.1 million, based on financial data from the end of September.

At the same time, the city must replenish a rainy-day fund that was nearly emptied during the pandemic.

Ponzi Finance

It’s by no means unexpected, but 2024 is going to bring some tax hikes for Canadians when it comes to funding their retirement. Or, more accurately, funding the retirement of people a lot younger than you. But that’s what socialized pensions are all about. You pay more, and “others” get the proceeds.

Anyone who has paid into CPP since 2019 will receive higher benefits, but the full effects will take decades to materialize, so  the youngest workers stand to gain the most. People retiring 40 years from now will see their income go up by more than 50 per cent compared to the current pension beneficiaries.

What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?

NY Post;

Harvard cleared its president Claudine Gay of plagiarism before it even investigated whether her academic work was copied, The Post reveals today.

In a threatening legal letter to The Post in late October, the college called allegations that she lifted other academics’ work “demonstrably false,” and said all her works were “cited and properly credited.”

Days later Gay herself asked for an investigation and Harvard tore up its own rules to ask outside experts to review her work, saying it had to avoid a conflict of interest.

And the experts then found she did need to make multiple corrections to her academic record.

The bare-knuckled law firm Harvard employed to try to keep the plagiarism allegations from ever coming to light told The Post it would sue for “immense” damages.

Harvard never revealed an investigation had been launched as the lawyers put pressure on The Post to kill its reporting.

But more than a month later, on December 12 Harvard said Gay had been investigated by its top governing body and was correcting two academic journals, to acknowledge where her work had really come from — meaning the claim it was “properly credited” was false.

As if being a smug anti-Semite wasn’t reason enough to fire her.

Harvard then took plagiarism seriously — and in one way still does, disciplining dozens of students every year for this gravest of academic sins. Even transgressions falling short of plagiarism could still constitute “misuse of sources,” for which a year’s probation and suspension from participation in extracurricular activities were the usual response. Plagiarists, meanwhile — those who had lifted someone else’s language without quotation marks or citation — were bounced from the college for a year, during which time they were required to work at a nonacademic job (no year-long backpacking trip) and refrain from visiting Cambridge. They would be readmitted after submitting a statement that examined their original misdeed and reflected on it.

Maybe there’s an explanation after all.

And still more.

Polling for Dollars

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who financed this opinion poll. The questions are absolutely geared to reinforce the prevailing narrative. It’s not much different from “elections” in the Soviet Union in which the communist party candidate would get 98% of the votes.

92% of Canadians agree they feel confident in the food safety and animal welfare standards used in dairy, chicken, turkey and egg farming in Canada because of supply management. 94% of Canadians also prefer their dairy, eggs, chicken, and turkey products to be produced locally and in Canada under supply management.

Housing Micromanagement

I often wonder if conservative parties are all that different from their opposition. Witholding federal funding in order to browbeat civic governments into changing their housing policies to meet arbitrary targets sounds a lot like central planning. You could just drop federal housing subsidies altogether, repeal federal building codes and put an end to zero percent interest rates, but someone clearly thinks that this won’t buy enough votes.

Require big, unaffordable cities to build more homes and speed up the rate at which they build homes every year to meet our housing targets. Cities must increase the number of homes built by 15% each year and then 15% on top of the previous target every single year (it compounds). If targets are missed, cities will have to catch up in the following years and build even more homes, or a percentage of their federal funding will be withheld, equivalent to the percentage they missed their target by.

The Children Are Our Future

And that’s why I’ve learned how to make pemmican.

This sense of demoralized ennui and bitter cynicism was created on purpose, by battalions of Marxist educators and popular culture. They worked hard to sever the natural bonds between young people and their family, culture, and nation, creating a generation of angry orphans.

The result of this educational program was not a generation of proud free thinkers, but rather a sea of despondent youth who are easily recruited to fanatical causes because they were taught to distrust traditions, family, capitalist freedom, and even humanity itself.

Zombie Nation

When a business’ interest expense exceeds its profit, it is typically called a “zombie corporation”. It’s quite possible that Canada is going down a similar path right now. While the federal government doesn’t turn a profit, per se, major spending items are well on track to be utterly dwarfed by interest payments.

But the truly stunning figure is not just the size of the annual deficit, which is holding at $40 billion pending a red-ink tidal-wave next year to pay for massive-ticket items like the estimated $11-billion national pharmacare tab and looming fighter jet purchases.

In just five years that debt-financing tab will hit the jaw-dropping intersection where the $60-billion cost of paying interest approximates the cost of all federal transfers for health care.

Tax Bonanza

What productive business wouldn’t like a 35% tax credit for each employee they hire? Oh, wait, that’s a perk reserved for truly unproductive businesses. It’s the modern day equivalent of subsidies for the buggy whip industry, primarily designed to pay off Justin’s water carriers.

The government’s fall economic statement announced an increase to the Canadian Journalism Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit allowing qualifying news outlets to claim up to 35 per cent of up to $85,000 in salary for a qualified employee.

They Were Promised There Would Be No Math

it’s been an article of faith for decades that those with college degrees out earn those without. and it clearly shows up in the data.

the correlation is unmistakable. but, and this is a massive but, that does not mean what many suspect. it does not mean that “college creates earnings and opportunity.” for many, it starts to seem to mean the opposite: college is lost opportunity and vast expenditure and debt accumulation that will never pay for itself. and a lot of this comes down to bad expectations and a form of “lake wobegon fallacy” of statistical illiteracy.

the percentage of americans getting college degrees has exploded from around 4% in 1940 to the mid 37%’s now and this actually understates the issue as this is just the number who successfully completed a 4 year degree. over 70% of recent high school grads enroll in college which means that around 45% of 16-24 year olds are enrolled in college and more than half were at some point. what was once 1 in 20 is now 1 in 2. and that’s a VERY different thing and this is where the cargo cult emerges:

an institution for the top 5 percentiles of a society is a very different place than an institution for the whole top half. it must be structured differently, work differently, place different demands, and perhaps most of all: it’s output and the outcomes of those who attended are going to be different. college is not magic. it does not make people more motivated or smarter. it may select for these traits, it does not make those who attend “higher percentile” in terms of innate ability or expected outcome.

past a point, it may be inflicting harm and i would argue that based on the promises and expectations, it’s creating a mathematical impossibility.

it seems like every kid who enrolls in college is expecting to be in the top 10-20% of earners. this is sort of “the deal” that folks are buying into. but if 50% of society is enrolling, it’s obviously impossible. the real world is not lake wobegon. we cannot all be above average. half of society cannot be a top 10% earner and that’s the sort of outcome being mistaken for the marker of “went to college” a thing that used to all but unerringly signify “top decile” but that does so no longer. somewhere on the order of 3/4 of them are going to wind up being disappointed. they have to be. it’s just math. (perhaps this is why high schools and universities seem so increasingly loathe to teach it?)

It just so happens: “The average scores in three of the four subjects featured on the test – mathematics, reading and science – were below the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. The benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students taking the test to have a high probability of success in college.”

Zombie apocalypse

The only upside I can see in this story is that most governments in the world are in even worse financial shape than the U.S. federal government. But that will just delay the inevitable.

Navigation