[Godstud]

@Neo Yes, but they still misuse taxes all the time, and to pretend they're not doing this is to be naive and gullible.

Companies pay less tax than USA, but the people pay more.

[Politics_Observer]

@Godstud

I want to make sure I am understanding you correctly. Are you saying that companies in the United States pay less taxes to the U.S. government? Or are you saying that American citizens pay less taxes to the U.S. government? Or are you saying both of these statements are true? My understanding is that Canadian citizens (not companies) pay more taxes to the Canadian government as opposed to an American citizen paying taxes to the U.S. government. Insofar as how much companies pay in taxes to the Canadian government in Canada, I don't know.

[Pants-of-dog]

Stealing retirement benefits from people who worked for them was good???!! WTF is wrong with you? It's your tax money that went into someone else's pockets.

Immigration and feminism have created a far larger labour pool. Those are facts. Of course, you live in a Lalaland and have abandoned common sense and reason.

Did I hurt your feelings?

Is that why you are just reacting emotionally and not addressing the argument?

Cool.

So you have no logical objections to my policy.

[Godstud]

@Pants-of-dog Like you, your policies are idiotic and unrealistic.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Godstud

No one has explained how my idea would not work.

[Godstud]

@Pants-of-dog If you can't follow anyone's arguments, then you need to pay more attention.

UHC in Canada was installed 50+ years ago. The political landscape now is considerably different. You scribe morality and trustworthiness to governments that are devoid of such things... like our current government that steals from it's own people while virtue signaling.

How will your idea work when the government you place such trust in, is not trustworthy, has no transparency, and does not work on your behalf?

Of course, if they steal from people you don't like, it's OK.

[Pants-of-dog]

If the only “argument” is that someone who does not live on the continent does not feel that some government is trustworthy, then this is not a worthwhile criticism.

[Godstud]

@Pants-of-dog Where I live is irrelevant, but it clearly shows how weak your argument is, when that's as high as you set your bar. I have access to the same information you have, and you're foolish attempt at distraction is just that. I am not going by how I FEEL but by the facts.

Corruption in Canada worst in a decade, finds international watchdog
https://biv.com/article/2022/01/corrupt ... l-watchdog

Also:
SNC-Lavalin affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair

The government has proven it is untrustworthy. You often argue against them, but now you are a hypocrite as you argue FOR them. I guess lying for your gender identity ideology makes lying about a lot of things much easier.

[Pants-of-dog]

Again, the feels of someone who does not live here are not relevant to determining whether or not elderly homelessness can be resolved by nationalization of the housing industry.

But the article was good:

Canada has, once again, slipped down an international ranking for corruption, standing at 13th in the world and well back of world leaders, such as Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore.

Since 2015, the year Liberal leader Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, Canada has fallen nine points, to a score of 74 out of 100 on the Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index. No country has seen a bigger drop in ratings since 2017 than Canada.

While the latest ranking is Canada's worst in a decade, the country remained at the top of the rankings in the Americas, where progress on stamping out corruption has "ground to a halt" and democracies like Chile and the United States rank even lower.

Transparency International, a non-profit non-government organization dedicated to sunshine laws, specifically cited ethical breaches by former Finance Minister Bill Morneau for awarding the administration of a $900 million grants program to WE Charity, which has a history of paying politicians and family members, including the Trudeaus, for speaking events.

Also cited is the SNC-Lavalin “foreign bribery case that spiralled into a political crisis” when Trudeau breached conflict of interest rules by improperly pressuring then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to defer prosecution of the construction company.

Transparency International notes how "top-scoring countries," such as Canada, “have proven too weak to meet the challenge of increasingly globalised, networked corruption – which is not measured by the Index.

“As a result, these seemingly ‘clean’ countries are enabling or even fuelling cross-border corruption, even if it may originate from other places further down the CPI table.”

And, as these countries continue to enable transnational corruption, there are “consequences for their own corruption levels,” stated the group.

Transparency Canada has often commented on real estate transparency in Canada. And while it continues to be an issue in B.C., the group notes the provincial government has taken steps to improve anti-corruption measures, such as by establishing the first provincial beneficial ownership registry for residential property as part of the Land Owners Transparency Act. The registry — a service the government intends to charge money for — has been delayed to fall 2022, and questions remain over the effectiveness of enforcement.

“The limited availability of real estate data and of beneficial ownership data, in particular, means that we still know very little about who owns properties and whether they have been purchased with dirty money. This continues to be the case in the four markets – Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States – we had analysed in 2017,” stated Transparency International.

According to Transparency International, “this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) reveals that corruption levels are at a worldwide standstill.

“This year, the global average remains unchanged for the tenth year in a row, at just 43 out of a possible 100 points. Despite multiple commitments, 131 countries have made no significant progress against corruption in the last decade. Two-thirds of countries score below 50, indicating that they have serious corruption problems, while 27 countries are at their lowest score ever,” notes the report.

Transparency International asserts that the lack of improvements worldwide are negatively impacting democracy and human rights.

"Transparency International found countries that violate civil liberties consistently score lower on the CPI. Complacency in fighting corruption exacerbates human rights abuses and undermines democracy, setting off a vicious spiral."

I have no problem also nationalizing SNC Lavalin, WE Charity, real estate holdings of foreign and/or derelict owners. and any other groups like them.

[late]

Income inequality has a lot to do with this. Medical expenses are the most common cause of bankruptcy, which is another reason. Disorganised social services is another cause.

This thread is beyond saving.

[Godstud]

Again, the feels of someone who does not live here are not relevant to determining whether or not elderly homelessness can be resolved by nationalization of the housing industry.

My opinion is as valid as some twat living in Edmonton. Where you live is irrelevant. It's got nothing to do with feelings. You're projecting. Why are you so triggered?

The Canadian government is quite corrupt, and their dealings with big corporations are well documented, and evidence of this. Government ownership wouldn't stop corruption. It would merely make it more concealable.

Yes @late , in the USA, medical bankruptcies are 50% of all bankruptcies. There's too much money in the medical industry for the USA to change, at this point. Canada was lucky to do it at a time when our governments still worked on our behalf, and we had some truly moral politicians.

Social services in most countries are a shitshow.

Bureaucracy is the bane of any government spending. Most governments have very top-heavy bureaucracies. There's good money in it.

[Pants-of-dog]

The main causes of elderly homelessness are medical bankruptcy (in the USA), dependency on private retirement assets that disappear for one reason or another, loss of a family caregiver (i.e. their husband or wife who was taking care of them died), and most obviously and most importantly, a lack of affordable housing for seniors.

[Puffer Fish]

Younger baby boomers are facing a homelessness crisis as rents skyrocket and outpace Social Security

Data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development obtained by The Wall Street Journal showed that adults 65 and older comprised the fastest-growing portion of homeless Americans.

From 2007 through 2017, the percentage of people 51 and older in homeless shelters rose from 16.5% to 23%, a rate greater than what would be expected just from the increase in people of that age group. In 2018, the department started tracking people 55 and older in homeless shelters, and the figure rose from 16.3% to 19.8% in 2021.
The National Health Care for the Homeless Council reported that the proportion of patients 50 or older who it serviced in 2022 was 36%, up from 25% 15 years earlier.
"This is a level of a problem that we have not seen before," Barbara DiPietro, the group's senior director of policy, told the Journal. "We are seeing older people in shelters and encampments or who are living in their cars at a rate that we never had before."

This trend seems to be exasperated by "trailing edge" boomers, the second half of the group, born between 1956 and 1964. The Wall Street Journal said this group entered the workforce and immediately felt the economic impact of the recessions in the mid-1970s and early '80s, which made the group's overall financial health more precarious as they entered their retirement age.

Many of the "trailing edge" boomers experienced homelessness for the first time later in life. A 2017 University of California, San Francisco, study found that 43.6% of the homeless adults ages 50 or older that it interviewed became homeless for the first time after turning 50.

All older people who are retired or heading into retirement are doing so at a time when two economic forces are working against them: housing costs and an end to pandemic-era aid programs.

According to the Social Security Administration, the average Social Security benefit is now $1,706 per month, more than $300 below the nearly record-high national median rent price of $2,052.

Rent increases have hit Florida -- which has the second-highest rate of US citizens 65 or older and the largest total number of people that age and above -- especially hard. Half of the 20 metro cities with the steepest rent increases since the onset of the pandemic are in Florida, the Journal reported.
Additionally, of all retirees who moved to a new state in 2022, 11.8% went to Florida. North Carolina, at 9.6%, was the only other state close to that.

Meanwhile, as the number of Americans 65 or older is expected to grow 45% between 2020 and 2040, from 56 million to 81 million, the volume of available affordable housing is shrinking.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found the US had at least 600 fewer nursing homes than it did in 2017. In Florida, there are long waiting lists for low-cost senior housing and long-term care facilities paid for by Medicaid, the Journal reported.

Government data obtained by the Journal showed homelessness was up 11% from 2022.

If housing continues to become harder to find and costs continue to skyrocket, older Americans will increasingly need to find other forms of income, or the homelessness crisis will almost certainly get worse.​

Younger baby boomers are facing a homelessness crisis as rents skyrocket and outpace Social Security, Cork Gaines ([email protected]), Business Insider, September 15, 2023
https://www.businessinsider.com/young-l ... 20dwindles.

[Truth To Power]

Tax more? Fuck that! People are already taxed to death in the West.

Only honest, productive working people are over-taxed. The greedy, evil, privileged, parasitic rich are not taxed to any significant extent:

"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." -- real estate billionaire Leona Helmsley

"That means I'm smart." (in response to the observation that he pays very little tax) -- real estate billionaire Donald Trump

How do people have higher quality of life and more money than in the West, when they pay almost no taxes? The taxes only line the pockets of the rich, and politicians.

The Henry George Theorem explains why all tax revenue that is spent on desirable public services and infrastructure is a subsidy to landowners. The productive must pay for government twice -- once in taxes to government to fund desirable public services and infrastructure, then again in land rent to landowners for permission to access the same desirable public services and infrastructure their taxes just paid for -- so that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for doing and contributing exactly nothing.

More taxes is the worst solution.

More of the current taxes is the worst solution. The best solution is taxes that require the greedy, evil, privileged, parasitic rich to repay the subsidies they are being given.

More social care for the elderly? No. That's not a solution, either. That's like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound and not addressing what caused the wound in the first place.

I.e., privilege.

[Truth To Power]

It isn't greed that has changed things.

But greed (unfortunately mistranslated as, "love of money") is the root of all manner of evil.

Greed has always existed.

But it has not always been as politically favored and empowered as it is now.

The ideologies being touted as making everyone happy are ones of hedonism and self-gratification.

Touted by whom?

No wonder no one cares about the elderly when selfishness is the culture being pushed.

It is mainly the greedy, evil, privileged, parasitic rich who push selfishness.

[Truth To Power]

Nationalize the housing industry.

So, achieve the same level of success as Venezuela's oil industry....?

Or would you prefer success like Norway's oil industry?

Can you find a willingness to know the fact that there is a massive difference between nationalizing an industry and nationalizing the natural resource it is based on? Yes or no.

[Puffer Fish]

For many on the Left, the automatic answer to any problem is to throw a lot more money at it, pass more new laws to ban things, and take more direct government control over it.

I'm just asking, can we think of any other solutions?

Let's also keep in mind that sometimes problems end up being caused by government "solutions" to other problems.
I'd use the analogy of a patient who takes a pill and suffers some side effects as a result, so they are given two more pills to address the side effects of the first pill, but those two new pills also have side effects, so they are prescribed yet some more pills, which each of side effects, and so on. In the end, the patient might end up even worse than if they had just not taken the original pill in the first place.

(to further drive home the analogy, you can also watch the short cartoon A Dime to Retire (1955), with Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.)

[Pants-of-dog]

For many on the Left, the automatic answer to any problem is to throw a lot more money at it, pass more new laws to ban things, and take more direct government control over it.

I'm just asking, can we think of any other solutions?

Yes, and we looked at then in the last housing thread you created. There was hardly any empirical evidence for market based solutions.

Let's also keep in mind that sometimes problems end up being caused by government "solutions" to other problems.

And most social problems are caused by private “solutions” to problems.

I'd use the analogy …..

(to further drive home the analogy, you can also watch the short cartoon A Dime to Retire (1955), with Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.)

I prefer to use reality instead of analogies. Mostly because they provide empirical evidence that market based solutions do not work.

[Truth To Power]

After all, the medical industry has been nationalized.

It most certainly has not. Paying collectively for certain goods and services is not collective ownership of the means by which they are produced. K-12 education has largely been nationalized, but not health care.

[Truth To Power]

I'm just asking, can we think of any other solutions?

Justice in public revenue and land tenure institutions would abolish homelessness pretty much immediately, as well as radically relieving most other social and economic problems. People just hate justice.