— Musings —02.26.2014 09:34 PM
Why my Sunday column is going to cause a Biblical shitstorm, in 140 characters
— Musings —02.26.2014 09:34 PM
The IMF doesn’t necessarily disagree: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf
Warren,
You mean Stats Can still can? Somebody must have dropped the ball.
Being the Prince of Darkness makes you an expert on Satanic ?? 😉
Timely.
Just saw this yesterday,
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/02/25/canada-middle-class-statscan-net-worth/
Given the focus on middle class here and in the US, would seem according to the above article that our experience is different than that of the US.
hmmm…
so the median net worth is up 44.5% since 2005, but the average home price in the same period is up 46.6%. Given that the consensus is that real estate is quite inflated at the moment and due for a large adjustment in Canada, and given the fact that median income has dropped, while cost of living continues to rise, where does that leave the middle class?
Also, people don’t sell their (overvalued) homes, so they don’t realize income as a result of these (on paper) prices.
Very good point this harpercon crap about all of us being richer because our net worth is up should be be put to rest and exposed as total bullshit.
Just because my house is worth more than ten years ago and my wages are stagnant that means i am poorer not richer
spin spin and more bloody spin
total crap
I did this tiny bit of research on that subject after I saw the FP + (CAPP) article and based on that it appears the average home price has increased by approx. 56% since 2005
2005 = $248,953
http://www.economicdevelopmentwinnipeg.com/uploads/document_file/average_house_prices_winnipeg_and_canada.pdf
2013 = $391,820
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/average-house-price-in-canada-rises-8-to-391-820-1.2427778
Can you find a place in the middle? None of those folks actually WORK to contribute to our society. OWS’ers and HFMgrs are all parasites of a sort.
I sympathize with the 99% cause.. but man.. they couldn’t organize a community bingo tournament if their life depended on it. As much as I despise the tea party morons, they got involved in the political system and are making shit happen, real change (albeit based on their warped views).
The occupy folks think sitting down and playing music will change the world… I wish they had some real skills/leadership and got involved in the political process to change it. Playing a guitar in a public park won’t make things better.. supporting, organizing and promoting candidates that share your views is how you will improve society.
Bingo. Read the great book, The Rebel Sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed for a full explanation.
We’re talking about the 1%.
I’m sure the dead and dying and mutilated who just occupied Kiev couldn’t organize a community bingo either and their lives did depend on it and they paid a horrible price. Maybe you should learn a few chords and join the kids who have the courage to act rather than posting facile putdowns in the voidosphere.
I see the Tea Party making a difference for the worst, and the 99% getting all worked up with no result. I would tell you, or anyone to their face, because I’m actually on their side. The problem is they (we?) don’t have effective strategy, organization or tactics. Crying victim gets old fast.. at one point the wheels of change have to be set in motion… “changing the conversation” isn’t enough. They need candidates, in the right places, who have the power to legislate. That means involvement in the political process. Too many of them are too lazy to even vote.
And, comparing the 99% here to Ukraine’s population is like comparing an airplane to an alley-cat.
strumming furiously while organizing bingo tournament 🙂
this is the age of being played
by those paid to make us slaves
the more we learn the less we say
because we’ve become too afraid
what are you waiting for
the wolf is at the door
and he’s waging war
what are you waiting for
take back what’s yours
Tea party grassroots members are neither organizers nor influencers, they are pawns of the ultra rich whose money provides the only influence that movement has ever had.
Politicians take up tea party positions to ensure the financial support of dark money PACs that are usually funded by one or very few individuals. The grassroots are a smokescreen that the elites have misled into working against their own interests and on behalf of the interests of the 0.1%
I’ve seen those conspiracy documentaries as well. Trust me, way more billionaires want to get rid of the Tea party rather than keep it. Most billionaires are on the “moderate” Republican side, and supporting traditional Republican candidates in what’s become a civil war. Rich folk down there have a vested interest in things like the stock market- and paralyzing government (a favourite tea-party tactic) doesn’t sit well with most.
I can’t stand them, but it’s obvious the tea-party folks have successfully changed the political discourse down there by paralyzing almost all major legislation. They’ve been incredibly effective. The moderates are now afraid and often change their votes despite their better judgement because of fear they will be challenged by a tea-partyer in primaries if they don’t tow the tea-party line.
I only wish progressives became winners, and not whiners. Kudos to Warren on that one, he is a rare breed.
Who’s counting the 10 million that died near Nanaimo over the last few years?
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Acidic+water+blamed+West+Coast+scallop/9550861/story.html
We may all be in the same (sinking) boat soon enough.
Yer just speaking as a punk rocker, and not a father of growing children dependent on the capitalistic system for their future.
What do you have against Stats Can? They produce the data. Facts are facts. You are free to interpret them as you wish. Could this be because you are unhappy that Justin’s whole “suffering middle class” story is not supported by the data, either in terms of income flows or, as this week’s release of the Survey of Financial Security showed, in terms of net worth? Canada is not the U.S. If this is your economic platform for the next election, it is weak, very weak, because it is largely based on falsehoods.
An unhealthy combination of rational expectations and the love of spouting off. 🙂
See Warren, there you go setting economic policy again. Tsk. Tsk.
C’mon Warren we always spout when you put the tease on future columns. It’s what we do 🙂
Yes, data is data, but when you are performing a financial analysis, the data gets processed. The news articles do not talk about the underlying assumptions, and the fragility of ANY calculation of wealth. There were TWO large components of the increase in net worth. The VALUE of pensions, and the VALUE of peoples homes. As is the case for any capital asset, the VALUE is inverse proportional to nominal interest rates. If, for example, the interest rate used to value pensions were to move from 3% to 4%, that would represent a 33.33% decrease in the present value of the pension asset. That strikes me as pretty volatile. For Real Estate, the relationship is similar, but due to ‘sticky’ real estate prices it can take a few years for changes in interst rates to be fully reflected in house prices. But the same relationship does hold true. So here we are in an environment featuring the lowest nominal interest rates imaginable. Should we experience as much as a 2% increase in nominal interest rates over the coming years, those gains would be completely wiped out. Unfortunately for borrowers, the value of their mortgages is not variable, and does not float up and down over time. It is a fixed obligation. I am NOT saying that household wealth has not increased. I am saying that you should understand the limitations of this particular ‘data’. If you want a cleaner picture of the financial position of Canadians, then net income is a cleaner and more stable measure. In my opinion anyway.
The value of pensions does include a discount factor, but also includes the effect of rising equity prices, which by far swamps your discount factor. If interest rates rise, housing prices will moderate relative to what they would have been otherwise. But unless you expect a real collapse in Canada’s housing market, the gains are not going to be wiped out.
Net income is a flow. Net worth is a stock. You are not measuring the same thing at all. But if you really want to get into that part of the story, Trudeau is wrong on that front as well. I do not know who is advising him, but this story about median family incomes barely budging since the 1980s is misleading. If you take the incomes of all families (with or without chilren, single and multiple income earners) median incomes declined outright in inflation-adjusted terms between 1980 and 1997 and have increased by 22.5% since then (1997 to 2011). If you take his Nathalie (two earners, with children) median incomes stagnated between 1980 and 1997 and have increased rather steadily between 1997 and 2011, for a gain of 30.1% during that period. The stagnating incomes story is a 1980s and first-half 1990s story, not a 2000s and 2010s story. The issue is similar for income inequality by the way. What is true for the U.S. is not necessarily true for Canada.
The 99%-er movement is all so short-sighted, so completely ahistorical. The world is the wealthiest, most peaceful it has ever been. Governments are becoming progressively more open, and democracies are rising, falling and rising again. The environment is reported on and studied like never before, with accidents being contained and compensated.
And nothing good came from the socialist experiments. Whether it was Africa, Asia, Europe or South America, capitalism, democracy and globalization have consistently rescued billions from tyrants, dictators and poverty. Cuba’s disaster is always celebrated for its health care and educational system: Who would trade our freedoms for Cuban healthcare? As usual, the West has the best of both.
It’s the worst system, except for all the others. Force change and watch the Frankenstein consequences. Allow it to grow, adapt and evolve, over generations, organically, and the resulting political and economic system will match the society.
I’ve been under the impression that political leaders were supposed to, yanno, lead.
It seems we are seeing a case of dooling reports here.
Jason Kenney is using the Stats Can report to say Trudeau is just making shit up.
Trudeau responded by saying he doesn’t care what the Stats Can report says, and is referencing a recent report from bureaucrats in Kenneys department saying the middle class suffered between 1993 and 2007.
Trudeau does need to be careful with that report though, as the Liberals were in power from 1993 until January 2006. HOWEVER I think Trudeau can still run with his claims because even though the stats may say the middle class in better off, SOME MAY FEEL THEY ARE WORSE OFF.
That should be dueling reports, not dooling reports. Duh.
What about drooling reports?
And drooling reTorts?
or Dueling in snorts?
Stooling imports?
No, no: pooling y’ur warts.
That’s just silly.
Susan?