Bill @ #49

“ . . . the losers at the VAG . . .” looks like they are winner right now.

OCCUPY has grabbed your attention to the effect you splash your petty rancor indiscriminately . . .

Wouldn’t want to sit next to you on the bus!

“As rf points out when he skewered Sparty, the banks are us.”

I’ll follow up my earlier Gary Trudeau reference by setting out a slightly more obscure cartoon referral, which speaks to this point IMO:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Roger – I don’t post anonymously out of lack of courage. I post anonymously out of respect for employer. A google search of my name will bring up a link to my name on the website of my employer. What may be just my opinion could easily be cut and pasted and misrepresented as my employers opinion. In today’s media, I’d rather not take that chance. Yes, I do want my job. I don’t work in a sector where I can march around with signs calling my employer an idiot or a crook.

I also respect that my clients come to me for financial and investment advice, not political leanings. I am allowed that choice on this site, just as much as your precious protesters are allowed to chant and march without wearing a government issued piece of ID around their neck. I’m not the only hypocrite!

So if you are incinuating that a forum for comments should only be available to those under their real name, start your own site and make your own rules.

I’d take anonymous comments from sincere opinions (even those I don’t agree with) over the majority of the Jack Karouac-wannabee-tweet-like-ramblings you seem to be throwing up on here more often as of late.

As far as bank shares getting wiped out…..Roger….many bank shares did get wiped out in 2008/2009. Does Washington Mutual ring a bell? Citi is worth a fraction of it’s pre-crisis value. Bank of America the same. It’s hardly hyperbole. CALPERs doesn’t have a big whole in it’s funding because it’s bank share investments were peachy in 2008. The bailouts didn’t save the shareholders, they saved the bond holders and the main streeters who had deposits in those banks. And all they signed up for was 2-5% interest and no rights to profits. Just because it didn’t happen to our banks does not mean it did not or can not happen.

@rf

Please reread everything I posted and see if you can find where I said the banking sector shouldn’t have been shored up (under the circumstances).

@Ian

What am I missing here?

We used to think education was important enough for our overall prosperity we subsidized it. I, and probably you, and probably most people here benefited from that. Now there is a greater financial cost to getting a higher education. Kids today are stuck with a bleak choice – go in to huge debt for your degree or don’t get a degree and be stuck in a low paying job for the rest of your life (once upon a time you could get a decent job with only a high school diploma, but those are rare now).

Are you asserting that view?

I believe the opposite. Poverty is not the result of some mass moral failing.

I guess my overall point is from the 1940s to 1970s we did a much better job at ensuring the wealth generated by our society was distributed broadly, and since then not so much.

It’s not a uniquely Canadian or American or British problem.

I won’t claim there is a single reason for this. No one fully understands why lower/middle class wages have stagnated for 30 years – most economists think it’s a multitude of reasons. But there are strong suspects and the trendline is pointing for more inequality, not less.

Regardless of relative overall wealth – unequal societies are unstable societies.

And I’m not arguing for “perfect equality”. That’s an unattainable ideal, and the literature suggests some inequality is in fact economically beneficial.

“But there are strong suspects and the trendline is pointing for more inequality, not less.”

I’m neither an expert nor an economist (not sure if you are either), but it appears that your assumption here is not universally accepted:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/10/31/whats-really-up-and-down-with-incomes/

Really, it was an assumption on your part that he was suggesting the information picket be critical.

Conversely it might be useful information for consumers on Bank Transfer Day (which btw, is a movement to switch from banks to credit unions).

However, you seem to have forgotten I also wrote this…

I’m not sure why anyone would thus object to my suggestion to #OV that if they are determined to target banks they should stand outside and remind Canadians about this – rather than, you know, physically occupying a bank branch.

But let’s get mired in the bank talk.

I also have an RESP account going for my daughter. But what about those that can’t afford that?

I’m neither an expert nor an economist (not sure if you are either), but it appears that your assumption here is not universally accepted:

Oh that Andrew Coyne, always the contrarian! (Note the 2nd comment).

Coyne aside, there is somewhat of a consensus – [Warning, communist link ahead]

@ spartikus.

Conceded.

I am a right to assume their is a ‘movement’ on the left that feels the banks are now eternally ‘indebted’ to taxpayers and that the taxpayers are now entitled to a higher share of future profits? Or Nationalization?

Or just can’t figure out what Occupy is trying to achieve by marching on and Occupying the Cdn banks?

I don’t see the point in unions always lashing out at the banks either.

Yes, they were shored up……..but they paid it back within a couple of years.

Even the US Treasury made money off of the TARP program. When the governments and central banks step in, it isn’t exactly charity.
They step in and profit when the banking sector is on the ropes.

The banks could argue that they bailed out the governement in 90’s when we were the ones having our credit downgraded like the US recently. They were rewarded by being allowed into the capital markets and investment banking business.

rf My God it’s just dawned on me you are a prisoner.

You cannot identify yourself and speak freely: you are a prisoner to your suit!

You cannot express your opinions because you may scare off your clients: isn’t your candid professional opinion what your clients pay for?

Isn’t this a good platform to build confidence in your considered opinions?

You cannot reveal who you are out of respect for your boss. Does that mean you are gossiping on your bosses dime? Some respect!

Well, let me tell rf in sixty years of professional practice I never felt so constrained and I thrived.

And if I did I would have felt honour bound to speak out.

@ Bill 25:

“…the Climate Change religion collapsed as that was to be the ticket for a Progressive revolution that provided the excuse for central control of the economy by the government …”

“While those who are heavily vested in Climate Change still fight the good fight, other Progressives, like Monbiot, have moved on to a new target we all love to hate – the banks.”

Some people claim to have a direct line to God. You, on the other hand, seem to have a direct line between Fox TV and your jaw.

Such absolutist generalizations and misportayals have to come from somewhere.

Why don’t you take it up with Monbiot himself? He really does answer legit emails.

Here’s his contact link: http://www.monbiot.com/contact-2/

I’d sure like to be party to that exchange.

MB@66

Actually, this is a major reason why many munis in california are being pushed to the brink; that and their need to provided medical insurance for their employees and pensioners and the increasing numbers of boomer retirees.

I wouldn’t say this is happening to this extent here, but I hope we never, ever become california.

[San Jose]’s pension costs when he first became interested in the subject were projected to run $73 million a year. This year they would be $245 million: pension and health-care costs of retired workers now are more than half the budget. In three years’ time pension costs alone would come to $400 million, though “if you were to adjust for real life expectancy it is more like $650 million.” Legally obliged to meet these costs, the city can respond only by cutting elsewhere. As a result, San Jose, once run by 7,450 city workers, was now being run by 5,400 city workers. The city was back to staffing levels of 1988, when it had a quarter of a million fewer residents. The remaining workers had taken a 10 percent pay cut; yet even that was not enough to offset the increase in the city’s pension liability. The city had closed its libraries three days a week. It had cut back servicing its parks. It had refrained from opening a brand-new community center, built before the housing bust, because it couldn’t pay to staff the place. For the first time in history it had laid off police officers and firefighters.

By 2014, Reed had calculated, a city of a million people, the 10th-largest city in the United States, would be serviced by 1,600 public workers. “There is no way to run a city with that level of staffing,” he said. “You start to ask: What is a city? Why do we bother to live together? But that’s just the start.” The problem was going to grow worse until, as he put it, “you get to one.” A single employee to service the entire city, presumably with a focus on paying pensions. “I don’t know how far out you have to go until you get to one,” said Reed, “but it isn’t all that far.” At that point, if not before, the city would be nothing more than a vehicle to pay the retirement costs of its former workers.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111

@ Mezz 69, the situation in san Jose is appalling.

However, I’m not certain how that may apply to cities in BC which are not allowed to run deficits (exception: COV over the OV), and where pensioners rely mostly on public healthcare, with perhaps a minority able to afford a Blue Cross top up.

I read a few years ago that public healthcare for retired workers (including retirees) is one of the main reasons several auto plants were located in Ontario. It’s a huge cost to employers in countries without public healthcare.

Let’s not forget that the USA spends about 15% of its GDP on health care, while Canada spends about 10%. Not only is the US expenditure greater, but the rate of its increase since 1978 is more steeply sloped than most other democracies. In addition, the employer-sponsored health care insurance in the US is 59%, a remarkable figure that helps explain the challenges municipal government employers face there. Of note, the uninsured total is about 16% of the population, something hard to fathom here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

I don’t have time to relocate the source, but I read two years ago that Canada spends $3,000 per capita on health care while the US spends twice as much. However, the US rates of infant mortality are way higher, and life expectancy is significatly lower.

@rf

I’m curious what you believe the ‘acceptable level to be?

I would like the trend to be reversed but where that should end up…I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t think there’s a magic Gini Coefficient number.

“I forget where I said we should ignore Coyne.”

And, hey, I forget where I said that you said we should “ignore” Coyne.

But this is getting silly. Or sillier.

Let’s see if you and I, at least, can reach a consensus on a few point:

1. You write “What I’m trying to suggest here is, yes debts should be repaid…”

I agree. If someone borrows money and agrees to pay it back, they should pay it back.

2. You write: “We used to think education was important enough for our overall prosperity we subsidized it. ”

I agree. And I add, we still think education is important and we still subsidize it.

3. You write: “And I’m not arguing for “perfect equality”. That’s an unattainable ideal…”

I agree that perfect equality is an unattainable ideal. I’d also add that it’s unattainable because there are different, sometimes contradictory views, as to what equality is, or should be.

There. Consensus?

@Dan Cooper #76,

“Not always, no. But in some circumstances, yes I would say certainly. If it makes a better society, keeps people (especially children, the elderly, the disabled…) from ending up homeless or hungry for example, then again, certainly so.”

I will have to respectfully disagree with you then, on this point at least. If someone borrows money under an agreement to pay it back, they should pay it back, even if it was borrowed for good reasons.

The alternative, is that people who borrow for such purposes will not be able to get credit. Why would anyone loan money to someone if the debtor could simply turn around and say “well, I needed that money for food etc, so I don’t have to pay it back.”

If you want to provide assistance for people in that situation, allowing them to renege on their debts (and thus pass the cost on to the party who made the loan and, ultimately, other consumers) is not, IMO, the best way to go about it.

“p.s. The idea of discharging debts is not radical. Certainly, there is bankruptcy as a legal arrangement often used not only by regular people but also large corporations. ”

It’s not radical at all and lots of people, and companies, declare bankruptcy. But, of course, there are consequences, such an inability to get credit and loss of any assets to the trustee.

And, of course, the costs of such bankruptcies are passed on to other consumers, in the form of higher interest rates.

To the extent that the Occupiers are seeking the right to declare bankruptcy, someone might want to let them know that the legislation is already in place.