Welcome to Canada!

Jul 05, 2021

160 square feet of glory:

A Craigslist listing for a “micro studio,” which featured a bed placed in a bathroom was flagged for removal after less than 48 hours of being posted.

Makes sense.

“Bathrooms must be physically separated from the remainder of the unit by partitions and a door to ensure privacy and to isolate noise and odours,” the guidelines state.

No shit!

Posted at 11:11 AM in Economics | | Comments (0)

The current year

Jun 30, 2021

My electricity used to be on a two-month billing cycle. The utility company changed it to a one-month schedule a few years ago. Now, my payments are approaching the same amount as they were before that change. In other words, electricity has doubled in price in a very short time. Add in the skyrocketing housing market, rent and the recent spike in food prices and real inflation is squeezing the average person. Of course, the government data shows a modest 1.314% inflation. So, it's cool.

The same holds true with crime statistics. If the police don't even bother recording the petty thefts, burglaries, and physical assaults, then did they really happen?

Posted at 11:27 AM in Economics, Life, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Communism to Capitalism

Jun 19, 2021

Raw emotion in a supermarket. The part about the eggs was pitiful.

Communism has been glorified for a century but it can't even provide the one basic need that people have: sufficient food! Cakes and toys are out of reach for the average Cuban:

The guy has been in construction for two decades but the roof on his home leaks because he simply doesn't have the materials to fix it.

Posted at 05:20 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

A few sacrifices

Jun 18, 2021

Advice on housing for younger generations:

After Core Development Group announced plans to buy a billion dollars worth of Canadian homes and convert them into rental units, financial advisers are telling millennials in the housing market to stop wasting their money on life’s little pleasures and start forming their own ghoulish conglomerates.

We get a few precious options:

“I don’t want to imply that spearheading a sleazy corporate land grab is the only path to homeownership,” Knapp said. “Prospective buyers could also win the lottery, discover buried pirate treasure, or poison a homeowner in the family. And stop eating avocado toast, of course.”

At press time, housing prices were up another 21%.

Today, they're up another 18%.

Okay, seriously:

Canadians are piling on debt to purchase property at the fastest pace in more than a decade amid a pandemic-driven housing boom.

In early 2020, I would have bet that housing prices would have decreased in Canada. So, the following is definitely shocking:

The average sale price for a home in Canada has surged 38% to C$688,208 over the past year, according to data from the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Plus, oil is up 50%. It has been a horrendous eighteen months for the average person.

Posted at 03:23 PM in Economics, Politics | | Comments (0)

And you'll be happy!

Jun 17, 2021

Large parts of Canada are worse. The average detached house in the Greater Toronto Area costs over $1 million. Even an annual $56,000 income -- that's double minimum wage -- is utterly insufficient in such a rigged market.

Posted at 05:05 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

No manna from minimum wage

Jun 14, 2021

On Thursday the Harvard Business Review published an article under the headline, “Research: When a Higher Minimum Wage Leads to Lower Compensation.”

It's new research from data in California and Texas:

“For every $1 increase in the minimum wage, we found that the total number of workers scheduled to work each week increased by 27.7%, while the average number of hours each worker worked per week decreased [sic] by 20.8%,” the researchers wrote. “For an average store in California, these changes translated into four extra workers per week and five fewer hours per worker per week — which meant that the total wage compensation of an average minimum wage worker in a California store actually fell by 13.6%.”

Since the businesses are forced to pay more for each hour of labor, they make up for it by cutting benefits:

“We found that for every $1 increase in minimum wage, the percentage of workers working more than 20 hours per week (making them eligible for retirement benefits) decreased by 23.0%,” the researchers said.

I've seen this a lot in Ontario as well where many stores would rather hire 2-3 part-time workers instead of one full-time employee. This often means that such workers now have to juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet.

This meme seems appropriate:

Posted at 02:09 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Modern commies

Jun 12, 2021

To close the racial gap in the U.S. there needs to be “wealth redistribution," not “income transfer,” said Ohio State economics professor Trevon Logan. [...]

“If we're having this discussion of wanting to close the racial wealth gap and we're not calling it reparations, there's a genuine opportunity that the Biden administration could enter into to begin a discussion of how closing the racial wealth gap would be reparations,” Logan said. “The current wealth gap is the net present value of the cumulative effects of dispossession, theft, discrimination, and economic racial oppression.”

What would be the present value of the half million White people who were slaughtered during the Civil War in the 1860s?

Anyway, there is no non-violent solution to this. All the oppressed joggers in America can be gifted a million dollars of assets each and in a matter of a few months, they'll be back to being poor. Racial differences in intelligence, will power, and diligence don't matter. The commies of the racial stripe will find a new way to blame White people and demand more $$$$. It's all so tiresome.

Posted at 04:45 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

The hidden tax

Jun 11, 2021

A very perverse incentive:

If you saved money over the last year, responsibly planning for the future or building up a rainy-day fund, it’s now eroded in real value because the same amount of money buys you less than before. But if you had simply binged your entire paycheck after receiving it, you wouldn’t have lost as much of your real resources. And if you finance your spending binge by running up credit card debt then receive an inflation-fueled pay bump, that debt is easier for you to finance.

Posted at 06:44 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Injustice

Jun 09, 2021

Housing has been getting quite expensive but what really takes the cake is university tuition. There was a time when diligent students could work in the summer to pay their tuition for the next year. Thus, they would have zero student loans to pay back when they graduated. Now, after university, there's a mountain of debt with stagnant wages and high rents. Add to that the mounting public debt and the ugly conclusion is: Millennials and Generation Zyklon have been robbed.

Posted at 02:11 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Nightmare in Canada

May 26, 2021

The average sale price of a house in Saint John, New Brunswick is $250,000. Right now, the most expensive house for sale in Saint John is priced at $1.2 million. Compare that to Toronto where the average sale price of a detached house is $1.75 million. This will rip apart families and friends:

Soaring home prices in Ontario, which are up between 30-50 per cent from last year depending on the area, are forcing a growing number of residents to give up on their dreams of home ownership.

A new survey by Right at Home Realty found 51 per cent of respondents say they believe they may never be able to afford a home in their current city or town. It gets worse for people looking in the Greater Toronto Area at 55 per cent and 59 per cent in the 416 area code region.

Hamilton, a largely middle class city one hour away from Toronto, has become unaffordable for most:

Vancouver, Toronto and Hamilton are, according to new research, the least affordable cities in North America.

Vancouver was the least affordable city, with Toronto in second place and Hamilton in third. All three are more expensive places to live than New York and L.A.

I have been looking at real estate in the Greater Toronto Area for a few years. It's crazy how a house that would sell for roughly $100,000 in parts of the US can often be priced at a million dollars in Canada. It's simply unattainable for most Millennials and Generation Zyklon in the Crazy North. 

Posted at 08:42 PM in Economics, Life, Politics | | Comments (0)

Powered by debt

May 13, 2021

Millions have lost their jobs or had their pay slashed in the last year. Now, they'll face the full wrath of the money printer:

The invisible tax of rising inflation will do far more to harm working and middle-class Americans than Biden’s proposed tax hikes. The trillions of dollars in congressional spending and money printing from the Federal Reserve is already having a dramatic effect on the price of ordinary goods. [...]

Over the past year, food prices are up 3.5 percent, with eggs and meat up by over 5 percent; gas is up 22 percent and is expected to get even higher by this summer; lumber is up 250 percent; new home prices are up $36,000, with overall housing up 11 percent; and new cars are up 9 percent, the highest in 68 years. In April, 13 percent of new car buyers paid more than the sticker price. Other goods — from household items, baby care and general merchandise — are already up between 5.2 and 7.2 percent from this time last year. The cost of eating out shot up by 3.7 percent over the past year, and some takeout specials such as chicken wings have nearly doubled. Coffee futures are up 24 percent since October. Even growing your own food has surged in price, with the cost of seeds and potted plants jumping by 10.5 percent.

I was thinking about buying a new PC recently. The actual price of the whole build comes out to almost double the MSRP! And that's assuming all the parts are even available for purchase. As of right now, the top three 3000 series GPUs from Nvidia are sold out in Canada.

The primary driver of the current inflation comes through money printing by the Federal Reserve. The Fed nearly doubled its bond purchases since the beginning of the pandemic, pumping almost $4 trillion into the economy. This is about as much as the Fed purchased between 2008 and 2014, during the worst of the Great Recession. From February 2020 to March 2021, the total of circulating cash, mutual funds and banking deposit money supply increased from $15.473 trillion to $19,896 trillion. The Fed effectively monetizes the federal government’s debt, creating both a cover for higher deficits and increasing the money supply further. From 2019 to now, the national debt jumped from just under 80 percent of gross domestic product to over 100 percent.

We had a one-month stock market crash last year. We're due for a giant meltdown like we had in 2000 and in 2008.

Posted at 10:28 PM in Economics, Life, Politics, USA, Web/Tech | | Comments (0)

Legalized theft

May 11, 2021

That's in just four months.

If you're in the middle class and you want to sell your assets in New York, then get ready to bend over and pay YOUR FAIR SHARE:

The combined state and federal capital gains tax rate in New York would rise from the current 34.7 percent to 54.3 percent under President Biden’s American Families Plan, according to a new study from the Tax Foundation.

That's a cool $100,000 extra in taxes on the sale of a half-million dollar property.

Posted at 12:57 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Back to work!

May 10, 2021

An overwhelming majority of Canadians don't agree with increasing immigration. A sizeable number want to decrease it. Yet, none of the Canadian political parties support this basic view. In fact, last year, when over a quarter million Canadians lost their jobs, the Liberals imported over a hundred thousand workers into Canada. Result? Depressed wages and a skyrocketing real estate market that's ripping apart families as siblings and the younger generations have to move far away to get an affordable place to live.

Oh, speaking of useless political parties and cheap labor:

Posted at 06:15 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

The Bell Hell

May 03, 2021

Walter Schultz doesn't like leaving anything to chance. The licensed private investigator documents everything — so when he contacted Bell Mobility in February for a better deal on his service, he recorded the exchanges.

Three different customer service representatives made the same offer, which he accepted, that included 10 GB of data for $55 per month.

But Bell later told the Kitchener, Ont., man he couldn't have the deal — because it didn't exist.

I know someone who used to work at a Bell call center. Too many reps, mostly foreign students, would often make ridiculous offers to customers to get them to stay but, in reality, those deals didn't exist for current clients. Many times such offers were exclusive to new customers but they came with a time limit -- the sweet low prices would apply for six months and then skyrocket to the original, high rates. Of course, this important information wasn't shared. So, one ended up with pissed off customers six months down the line but by then the reps already had met their numbers, got their bonus, and had moved on to greener pastures.

Bell and Rogers are truly hated by a large number of Canadians because what they're doing is deceptive and illegal. Why do they keep getting away with it? A law professor explains:

He says the biggest problem for consumers is "accessing justice," because it's often too expensive to enforce consumer rights if a telco refuses to budge and the CCTS rules against the complainant.

"Already consumers always feel that they're in a weaker position, and I think they are, which is why we have legislation to protect them… but what are [they] going to do? Commence a legal action for $100? Most people will not," he said.

Stop using their services. There are plenty of reasonable and cheaper alternatives.

Posted at 11:18 PM in Economics, Life | | Comments (0)

Can't buy a closet

May 03, 2021

When Andrés Peñaloza and his wife Maria Fernanda Gonzalez first immigrated to Canada from Venezuela more than two years ago, they dreamt of a better life, which included owning a home. But after years of looking to buy something that would be suitable for the family they hope to start in Vancouver, they’ve quit searching.

Tough years ahead for Millennials and Generation Zyklon:

With the average home price in Canada jumping 31.6 per cent year-over-year in March, Peñaloza and Gonzalez are part of a cohort of people under the age of 35 who feel that their dreams of homeownership are increasingly out of reach. These millennial prospective buyers have seen their earnings hammered by two major recessions now.

Note: that's an average. There are places in Canada where houses have nearly doubled in price in one year.

“Back when my mom started out as a young person in Canada, it took five years of full-time work to save a 20 per cent down payment on an average priced home. Today, across the country on average it now takes 14 years,” he said.

At that rate, it will take 70 years to pay off a house. Even for an average salaried couple, that's 35 years of non-stop full-time grinding work to own a house. It's simply not worth it.

Taking a step back, it's astonishing that a country the size of Canada has such a ridiculous real estate market. There is enough viable space in the country to increase the housing space by an order of magnitude. Yet, the supply is artificially limited by policy, the immigration levels are exploding thanks to the Liberals, and the job market is stagnant courtesy of Corona Chan. Most of this misery was largely avoidable.

Posted at 04:43 PM in Economics, Politics | | Comments (0)

Escape from New York

May 01, 2021

When high taxes and asinine regulations drive away entrepreneurs and revenue, the bureaucracy starts to prey on the small businesses. Of course, this only accelerates the decline. 

The Thomas Sowell bit is apt. He was a Marxist in university who quickly learned about the cold and brutal nature of the government apparatus after he worked in it.

Posted at 08:58 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Just a few short years later

Apr 27, 2021

Many Canadians are against the added option of a private system. They think that everyone should get the same miserable health care regardless of income. What they fail to see is that not-poor Canadians will simply travel abroad to get treatment. In other words those who suffer through months and years (!) of wait time for a basic appointment or surgery are largely the poor Canadians. It would be better to have a private system with extra doctors, nurses, and hospitals within Canada. Of course, that would showcase the mediocrity of the public system. So, the sad reality continues.

Posted at 05:41 PM in Economics, Politics | | Comments (0)

"Absolutely useless"

Apr 19, 2021

Kumar got consumed by the hype:

Ashok Kumar switched to driving an electric rickshaw taxi from working at a printing press three years ago, after hearing the New Delhi government was offering subsidies. However, he never got the promised rebate on his $1,770 electric rickshaw.

Kumar sets out each day acutely aware that he has just until lunchtime to earn as much as he can.

Then he has to rush home to charge his vehicle. It takes 12 hours of charging to get a running time of five hours, he says.

That's horribly inefficient on so many levels. With petrol, he could've got five hours of run-time from five minutes of "charging". If you're rich, then electric vehicles are a luxury toy. If you're not, then good luck since the tech and infrastructure is still primitive.

Posted at 06:49 PM in Economics, Politics | | Comments (0)

The curse of volatility

Mar 25, 2021

Elon Musk is not dumb:

Bitcoin crashed from $20,000 to $3,000 in a one-year period starting from late 2017. If that happens again, then Tesla will be very happy to refund in Bitcoin.

Yup. Bitcoin has been the most spectacular gamble of the last decade but it's not a currency given its volatility: down 16% in just the last two weeks.

Posted at 06:46 PM in Economics, USA, Web/Tech | | Comments (0)

Diversity is Death

Mar 15, 2021

Glenn C. Loury: “A Formula for Tyranny and More Racism”:

[...] group-egalitarians claim that, absent injustice, we should have equal representation of groups in every human enterprise. But how can that be? If groups matter, some people are going to bounce a basketball 100,000 times a month and other people are going to bounce it 10,000 times a month. If groups matter, their members will not do the same things, believe the same things, think the same things, or act and react in the same ways. Groups have their own integrity, expressing themselves in how they live their lives, raise their children, and spend their time. This will inevitably result in a different presence of groups across various human activities. They will not have similar occupational or professional profiles. They will not be present in the same proportions as members of the National Academy of Sciences, as tenured faculty members, as tech entrepreneurs, hedge-fund managers, small shopkeepers, single parents, or petty criminals.

More government power is the objective. The government will decide who is punished: those horrible White men and women. Who gets the $$$$? The Poor Oppressed Coloreds, of course. The malignant unifying force of the colored coalition of the Left is seething hatred of White people. The votes will flow to the Democrats and the stolen trillions of dollars will flow to the POC.

Posted at 11:26 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

The kittens will roar!

Mar 12, 2021

A woman who doesn't understand women:

With hundreds of thousands of women still out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CEO of a Canadian construction company hopes more women will consider entering male-dominated skilled trades.

"We have a systemic trade shortage right now," says Mandy Rennehan, the founder and chief executive of Freshco, a construction company that specializes in retail maintenance. "That's why I'm focusing on trying to get more women into trades."

I bet the CEO is overwhelmed with applications from STRONG, INDEPENDENT, and FIERCE women who totally love working outside in the wonderful Canadian weather.

Posted at 04:30 PM in Economics, Politics | | Comments (0)

Public "education" III

Mar 08, 2021

A proper grade 12 economics course would be utilizing calculus to teach important lessons about marginal cost and marginal revenue. Instead, we get retarded noise about NIGGERS, WHORES and BITCHES:

A Queens mom working at home was outraged to discover that her son’s Zoom economics class at a Brooklyn high school consisted of rap videos featuring drug deals, prostitutes and vulgar language, including the N-word.

One mom learned the truth and she's not happy.

When Hagood told her, “I don’t like how you’re speaking to me,” she shot back: “You have rap videos using N-words, talking about whores and bitches and selling drugs. I’m working from home, and this is what I’m hearing my kid in his senior year learning in class.”

Yup.

Posted at 05:29 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Punishing the poor

Feb 19, 2021

Over a million jobs in danger according to their own analysis:

A federal $15 minimum wage could soon become reality, thanks to Rep. Pramilya Jayapal's seemingly successful efforts to secure its inclusion in the House's forthcoming $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. Democrats are celebrating this potential win, believing that it could lift millions of working class Americans out of poverty. [...]

As part of their rationale for raising the minimum wage to $15, Democrats are citing a new Congressional Budget Office analysis finding that it would lift 900,000 workers above the poverty line. Yet that same analysis also finds that the "Fight for $15" would leave 1.4 million fewer workers employed, and that prices would rise to offset much of the costs. And there's every reason to believe these downsides would paradoxically hit disadvantaged and marginalized workers hardest.

Yup. It's not hedge fund managers, doctors, engineers, teachers or politicians who will lose their jobs when the minimum wage is hiked. Those who do get hit will learn the harsh truth about the real minimum wage: $0/hr.

Posted at 03:42 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Lots of explosions and implosions

Feb 14, 2021

Is Dan serious? He's comparing a 100-year price chart of gold with a decade of insane Bitcoin volatility!

Forget the whole decade; just take the past twelve months. One Bitcoin was $5,000 less than a year ago. Today, it's worth almost $50,000. Bitcoin is a speculative asset. It's definitely the most spectacular gamble of the last decade. But a currency? Nope. Not with that level of psycho volatility.

Posted at 07:47 PM in Economics | | Comments (0)

Can you feel the compassion?

Feb 03, 2021

Kroger Co. will close two Southern California supermarkets in response to a local ordinance requiring extra pay for certain grocery employees working during the pandemic.

The decision announced by the company Monday follows a unanimous vote last month by the Long Beach City Council mandating a 120-day increase of $4 an hour for employees of supermarkets with at least 300 employees nationwide and more than 15 in Long Beach.

The ignorant politicians don't understand basic economics:

The Long Beach ordinance was approved during a Jan. 19 meeting in which council members and Mayor Robert Garcia said that many grocery stores gave employees hazard pay during the early stages of the pandemic but later phased it out.

“These folks that are working at these markets and these grocery stores are heroes,” Garcia said at the time. “This is nothing new. They have received this type of additional pay in the past and if they deserved it in the past, they deserve it today.”

Thanks to his actions these heroes will soon get zero dollars an hour. This is going to be the ugly reality for hundreds of thousands of unskilled and low-wage workers across America in the next few months as the minimum wage is increased and many businesses with thin margins have no choice but to fire their workers and shut down.

Posted at 10:34 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

There is no equality

Feb 01, 2021

A CEO learns a very important lesson:

One of the big decisions that Calvin made when he founded Spill was to pay himself and his colleagues an equal salary.

"There were five people, and everyone was pretty much contributing the same," he says. "So we tried this experiment where we paid each of us an equal amount of money - regardless of experience, regardless of role. We wanted to challenge the traditional model of pay. We decided on £36,000 a year for everyone. We calculated that was a decent living wage for London."

That simple strategy doesn't work when one hires varied staff:

As Spill took off, Calvin recruited new staff such as a software developer, a salesperson and clerical workers - and decided to offer them all the same £36,000 salary. This is when the problems started.

The real world is ruled by the iron laws of supply and demand. You'll get a lot of clerks for $4,000 a month but almost no software developers.

Calvin eventually let go of the equality nonsense and now has pay grades. It's distressing that nobody in his social or professional circle convinced him that this was an extremely bad idea from the start. Well, at least, he learned.

Posted at 09:42 PM in Economics | | Comments (0)

How dare they make money!

Jan 28, 2021

The hedge funds cry out in pain as they short you:

WallStreetBets has been banned from Reddit and Discord after conspiring to make money on the stock market, even though they are unworthy of such riches. Shortly after they were banned for "hateful and discriminatory content," the online dictionary Merriam-Webster quickly changed the official definition of "white supremacist" to "anyone who makes a lot of money in the stock market when they’re not supposed to."

Know your place, peasants!

Posted at 03:13 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

No skin in the game

Jan 27, 2021

Average guys lose thousands of dollars in the stock market everyday. They take tremendous risk with their own money. Nobody bails them out when they often fail. Here, we have money pooled from millionaires and billionaires and when it evaporates there's talk of bailing them out!

Absolute fucking vultures! They take all the sweet gains and when huge losses arise, they pass the bill to the American taxpayer. No wonder there's such tremendous hatred for these craven parasites.

Posted at 04:27 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Learn to code version 2.0

Jan 23, 2021

More immigration combined with an increase in the minimum wage is going to push a lot of jobs to the underground economy. Low-skilled workers in America are really going to feel the pain in the next few years. Most of them voted for these policies.

Posted at 04:54 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Decades of misfortune

Dec 15, 2020

Yup. It's not a surprise or a mystery. Average wages have been stagnant in America for three big reasons:

  1. Women entered the workforce in huge numbers. Increased labor supply.
  2. Colossal levels of immigration. Again, labor supply increased.
  3. Atrocious free trade which resulted in manufacturing being exported. Decreasing that specific labor demand.

Those who're highly educated and technologically savvy survived and thrived. Those who're poor, below average, and who obviously don't own equity suffered greatly during this time.

Posted at 10:28 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

Walter E. Williams

Dec 04, 2020

I found out about Walter E. Williams in the late 90s. He was an economics professor and a columnist. I spent many hours online reading his bold, logical, and uncompromising prose in those summers in Saudi Arabia. One could instantly see that he was an excellent teacher. His work will inspire many more for years to come.

Thomas Sowell writes about his friend:

Walter once said he hoped that, on the day he died, he would have taught a class that day. And that is just the way it was, when he died on Wednesday, December 2, 2020.

He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone.

This didn't surprise me:

Holding a black belt in karate, Walter was a tough customer. One night three men jumped him -- and two of those men ended up in a hospital.

Posted at 03:34 PM in Economics, Life, USA | | Comments (0)

Fuck you, White men!

Dec 01, 2020

Nasdaq is going to push Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) on White people:

Nasdaq is pushing for greater diversity among the more than 3,000 companies listed on its exchange. [...]

Under the proposal, the majority of companies will be required to have at least two diverse board directors: one woman and one person who identifies as either an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ. If a company cannot meet these requirements, it will not be delisted, but it will need to explain why it cannot satisfy the goals. Failure to publish board data, however, could result in delisting.

According to the article, more than 75% of companies don't meet this retarded diversity standard. The new colored, BBQ, vaginas that will get hired will surely be looked upon as bright and competent.

Posted at 03:38 PM in Economics, Politics, USA | | Comments (0)

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