EhForumUser @ EhForumUser @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

Completely forgot that you guys have literal milk bags. lol

Packaged together in another plastic bag, then placed in yet another plastic bag at checkout. It is the Russian doll of consumer packaging.

Styrofoam cartons used to be common. Don't seem them much anymore, granted.

Supermarket chains have plenty of control and influence over their supply chain.

Absolutely. The customer holds all the cards. But, likewise, the supermarket chains are beholden to their customers, and those customers have shown a clear preference towards the use of plastics. How do you convince them to change?

The cure for high prices is high prices.

Cars are expensive and many people are struggling to make ends meet, yet they can’t eliminate the cost of owning and driving a vehicle.

Before cars, those who could not afford a horse and buggy, or the fare to ride the train, lived in compact, densely populated areas known as cities where they could rely on their own two feet to get around. That's literally why cities were invented. I understand that more people live in cities now than ever before, no doubt to avoid the problem you speak of. If your rural homestead isn't making ends meet because the cost of getting goods on and off the property is more than the value the property is creating in return, the solution is obvious. We figured that out tens of thousands of years ago.

8 years of school

Huh. I thought attending grade 9 was legally mandatory these days.

No doubt you are way better off financially having entered the workforce full-time at 14. Compound interest is no joke. Enjoy the car it has afforded you!

Canada used to have that. But then we decided to urbanize, which allows people to walk everywhere, and thus we eventually had no need for the transit and eventually we ripped it up. It’s interesting we want to go back to the rural lifestyle again.

why is it essential to own something that costs >$12K/y

In what way is it is essential for the vast majority of the population? Rural dwellers, perhaps (although Canada's Old Order Mennonite/Amish population seem to manage just fine), or those with particular disabilities, but most people?

I live in a small town and could easily go without a car. Imagine those who live in cities, which is the majority of Canadians. The whole reason they are wanting to jam themselves together so tightly is exactly so that they don't need vehicular transportation to live life!

I do own a car, though, as the ROI on my vehicle easily exceeds 10%. I don't like owning a car, but where else am I going to find those kind of returns?

My point is more that it shouldn’t be that way

It wouldn't be that way if it weren't a good investment, but it generally is (becoming much less so over the past couple of years, granted) for a lot of people. In part because of subsidies, of course, but I expect that it would still provide good ROI even if the subsidies were lifted. The early road infrastructure in Canada was built by private interests, after all.

Being capital, it is a useful tool that gets useful things done. When useful things get done, life improves for all of us. What else are you going to invest in with similar affordability, risk, and returns? In other words, which tools would most people find more useful than a car to get useful things done?

I certainly didn’t vote for him

Well, of course not. The Premiership position is not hired for by the boss. It is decided upon by the other employees. Which is to be expected, it's just a third rank position. Do you think the top brass in any other organization hand pick every last employee? Of course not.

Not much else I feel like I can do

No doubt. Hence why nobody likes being the boss. Why do you think CEOs of any other large organization make millions? Nobody would go near the job for any less for exactly this kind of reason. Employees are assholes who will try to screw you over the minute you stop looking.

There's only lack of accountability if you don't do anything about it. You are the boss, after all. Nobody else is going to do it. The Premier and MPPs are just employees, and employees not acting appropriately is not a worker problem, it is a management problem.

What corrective steps are you taking to become a better manager?

Expensive is relative. This means nothing in isolation. Being a capital expenditure, what is the projected return on the $1k per month spend?

10% is generally considered a good investment. Given the scenario, does spending $1k per month on the vehicle return at least $1,100 back? In other words, if, in an alternate reality, this person had no vehicle, would we find he had at least $1,100 less income each month? If so, that is not expensive at all. A total bargain compared to putting $1,000 per month in a bank collecting 0.5% interest. Now that's expensive.

Then be sure to whip harder. They being a member of a labour union does make your job harder, no question. That's kind of the whole reason why workers join labour unions. But you're still the boss and need to make that known.

And housing should not be a free market.

Agreed. We should regulate it. First, we should zone areas of land as only being for certain types of homes. This will ensure that the detached mansion you always dreamed of will not be usurped by some developer wanting to build condos. Next, we should regulate the structures so that someone doesn’t try to build a small/tiny home where you want your glorious mansion. Third, we enforce only one structure per property. Your mansion needs a sizeable backyard for your pool! I have more ideas, but think that’s a good start.

Oh wait.

but what are they?

That's the thing, if you already knew then it would be too late. One needs to be creative and inventive to find whatever that is.

As before, this is why we once tried pushing our youth into university research labs with a promise of higher incomes. It just might have worked too, but the typical Canadian got it in their head that they need to go to university to get a job doing things we already know how to do, which does nothing to increase productivity, and so we got left with stagnant incomes and money flowing to where it goes to die.

The question is: How do we get Canadians back on track? Canadians used to be known for being exceptionally inventive, changing the world in so many ways.

Stocks?

No. Stocks represent a used asset market that allows those who figured out the above to move on to new things. There is a place for diversification into used assets, but it's not where you get set up or compel money away from housing.

Looking at the listings, there's a three bedroom condo up for $200,000. Recent sales in the same building suggest that is in line with the market. Rough math says a mortgage will be around $1,100 per month.

The average paycheque can make it work. Better if you bring a friend. Seems like a lot of money to tie up in an unproductive asset, though.

Of course, nobody would dare tie up so much money in an unproductive asset if they knew of a good productive asset to buy instead; with its proceeds then able to pay the rent/mortgage. Trouble is that we've run out of ideas. Once upon a time we thought that if we pushed people into university research labs that research would lead to new ideas, thus higher incomes from the newfound productivity that came from those ideas. People heard the university part, and the higher income part, but forgot the critical middle.

Real estate is where money goes to die. The only way out is to see productive assets become the focus again, but it's not clear is there is any ideas left, or if people are willing to get creative. An interesting conundrum.

"Normally we give friends of the council a lot more! This is a good deal." – Toronto city council, probably.

Remember when the city of Berlin, in an effort to disassociate itself from the horrors seen in Germany, changed its name to Kitchener – after Lord Kitchener, inventor of concentration camps...?

Looking forward to seeing what bad things the new name is associated with.

Melanie Newton, the co-chair of the city council advisory committee looking at the renaming issue, has studied Dundas’s legacy and said that as Britain was weighing abolition, he intervened and introduced a motion for ‘gradual abolition.’

In other words, the government of the time was mixed about abolition, and instead of letting it die on the floor to those who were opposed, he proposed a gradual system to try and win more abolition support – to ensure that something happened instead of the otherwise certainty of nothing?

What a horrible monster. Get that name changed at once!