partial_accumen

This is part of what I don’t understand. Cost of living in most major cities (Vancouver, the GTA, and to some extent Montréal) generally isn’t 50% less expensive than living in the USA. Yes healthcare is covered, but housing and food prices are quite high.

I don’t understand why IT wages are so suppressed there.

Edit: It’s funny, I’ve noticed they’ve really seemed to prioritise hiring Canadian developers in the last few years. I’ve always wondered if it’s because they feel they can pay us less

I have no idea why, but Canadian IT professionals earn a fraction of their US counterparts. I can tell you its not a skill gap either. I’ve worked with many amazingly brilliant Canadian IT professionals. Its a great untapped market for global talent. Prior to trump, I saw it as a huge asset to American companies to have access to such a highly skilled work force, working in our same time zones, speaking the same language, but costing half of an American salary (or less!). However, trump killed that. I very much miss my Canadian brothers and sisters in IT.

Indeed. “The FAA is investigating the event…”

agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrest… “You can smell that … $30,000 bonus.”

Luxury jackboot market is about to take off.

Are they going to start locking us up because of their made up “trump derangement syndrome”?

This is the basis for taxing high sugar convenience food. It was done for cigarettes, and today, consumers overwhelmingly see it as a good program. (Of course tobacco companies lobbied hard against it)

You’re referring to so called “sin taxes”. I’m aware those exist for cigarettes of course, and I know some places have them for sugary drinks, but I’m not aware of any sin taxes on sweet food. I know many places that do not have sales tax food have exclusions that put candy back under regular sales tax, but those aren’t sin taxes, and the sales tax percentage (usually at or under 10%) wouldn’t come close to the sugar drink sin taxes I’ve seen (which are closer to 50%). In my state there’s no sin tax on sugary anything, only the rules that mean that candy bars would have regular sales tax applied (about 7% in my area).

Can you cite a particular sin tax or situation where there is excessive taxation specifically on candy?

Like it or not, government making things artificially expensive in order to disincentivize people from buying the thing is a form of authoritarianism.

I’m struggling to think of any scenario I would agree with your statement and I’m not coming up with anything. Further, I think your statement is dangerous because it dilutes the actual dangers and restrictions an authoritarian government would put in place.

Gov’t should subsidize healthy food.

Wouldn’t that meet your definition of authoritarianism because it is causing non-healthy food to be proportionally more expensive?

The rising price of most sweets and the continued decrease in quality is the greatest disincentive to buying them.

I’m not a regular consumer of candy bars, but I saw that the price of a regular Snickers bar at a grocery store checkout is now about $2 each. Meanwhile in that same store you can get a box of brownie mix for about $2, 2 eggs will cost you about 60 cents and a quarter cup of vegetable oil will cost you about 10 cents for a total of about $2.70 yielding an entire tray of 15 brownies (or 18 cents per brownie). I get that part of that the candy bar is paying for convenience, but the differential is just too high now unless you just down have a kitchen available to you.

But with no ability to borrow to buy those, then cheap, houses, who would buy them and why? Sadly the answer would be: those with cash so they could rent them out.

Next trump will expose the corruption of Democrat James Buchanan’s administration from 1856. Nothing is as important as shining light of truth on Democrat Presidential government corruption…even if it predates the civil war. This is far more important that whether trump was involved with Epstein. /s

They elude to it in the second line after the title but they never point it out:

Five years ago it was a lot easier to buy a car for less than $30,000.

…and later in the article…

New cars costing less than $30,000 were just 13.9 percent of all car sales in the first half of this year; for the first six months of 2019—before the pandemic drove up new car prices by so much—they made up 38 percent of new car sales.

I think the answer is simply inflation:

$30,000 in 2019 is worth $37,722.15 today

…and…

$24,000 in 2019 is worth $30,177.72 today

So for apples to apples comparison the question should be, “How many fewer cars costing $24,000 in 2019 are there that cost $30,000 today?”, but the article doesn’t ask or answer that question.

I am making no legitimate non-obnoxious alternative proposals.

My mistake. Your posts sounded like you were advocating for something specific as a different. Instead, you’re saying the current system sucks and you know of nothing better? I’ll agree with part of that.

However, your example of the public library (a topic near and dear to my own heart) stuck out as its one area where the current system works okay at least.

You’re proposing an alternative system. I don’t know it, and was using your own example of a failing of the current system to see how your system corrects it. Should I have made wild assumptions instead and dismissed your thoughts?

So far I from your responses haven’t seen your proposed alternative to be viable.

If you work at your local library, you have to see how much it costs of acquisition of the collections as well as the facilities and staff that make these wonderful institutions possible. Public Library funding is frequently under attack and underfunded with many communities lack the services needed to serve the needs they have.

Do you honestly believe that in your preferred system of a small group of people voluntarily paying would be enough to replace the tax driven system we have today? Your suggestion about front lawn free libraries as a replacement suggests you may not have a full grasp on the expenses of a modern well run public library system.

We’ve seen this type story before.

How many days until abusive and unchecked jailers reach this point?

Do you exclusively use the "free little libraries” in front lawns today for your library needs or do you also use the tax supported public libraries?

Co-ops are not a new idea.

Co-ops denote shared ownership usually via a buy-in. Wouldn’t this replicate the existing Private Library concept?

So no public libraries in your model or are you saying that a small portion of people would voluntarily pay for the library, but the entirety of the public would be able to use it?

Who is paying for libraries under your preferred system?

recall I mentioned all nation states are bad.

I’m not sure what you’re advocating for instead of nations. Roving bands of nomads?

For now, yeah. I mean there is no such place as a safe or “good” nation. Every one of them will hold you at gunpoint demanding money so they can build a library.

I’m not sure where the “gunpoint” part came from, but do you…not like libraries?