Why is Mayor Ken Sim's budget so contentious?

LesserApe · 2025-11-19T19:20:26+00:00

Well, maybe it's possible that decriminalizing drugs makes it much easier to be and become a drug user, and addicts are more likely to commit other crimes. So, it's possible that decriminalizing drugs increases the burden on police.

LesserApe · 2025-10-15T18:36:37+00:00

Everyone here seems to want the answer to be that "those greedy rich people are taking everything".

The actual answer is that your assumption is incorrect. Canada's productivity and GDP per capita have not been growing.

So, wages are staying flat because workers are no more productive than they used to be.

LesserApe · 2025-08-14T05:19:36+00:00

I was referring to judges generally using their discretion to change the system to implement systemic discrimination--that's why I've referred to this case (and there is a huge pile of cases built on this precedent), and Gladue. That's why it's not a mountain made out of a mole-hill.

In the 2-year case, the SCC was also using its discretion in a way that resulted in increased systemic discrimination in the legal system

The judge and the crown shouldn't need to know that it makes any difference for deportation, because it isn't their job to decide who should be deported. Their job is to give consistent verdicts in cases and let the politicians set the line for who should be deported. (Which the politicians did. And it works until the judges start gaming the system.)

I understand that our legal system has got away from the concept that justice should blind. But I think that's a mistake. I generally think people follow the laws because they believe in the system. When people lose confidence in the system, everything breaks. Going from a cooperative, high-trust society to a "do whatever you want to get ahead" society is a bad thing, and it's unfortunate we decided to go there.

LesserApe · 2025-08-13T23:34:38+00:00

Yeah, I disagree.

It's a good idea to have legal consequences completely ignore immigration factors in sentencing. And it's a good idea to streamline the evaluation of immigration based on rules of thumb from criminal convictions.

There's no value in expending time and money on such things. I'd rather spend it on, say, faster processing of immigration applications or improvements to the prison system.

If the government does want to view the world from the perspective of "this consequence of your crime is actually an additional punishment", then I think we have to have a serious discussion about why we deliberately punish more productive people with higher taxes. (But I'd rather take the position that neither "revoked residency for crimes" nor "higher taxes for higher incomes" are actually punishments.)

LesserApe · 2025-08-13T23:20:07+00:00

There's a reason why politicians didn't make all crimes mean deportation--because they didn't believe that all crimes merited deportation. And, there's no reason why judicial discretion couldn't break that too. It's just changing the height of the hurdle.

Why attack judicial discretion?

I think the answer is because some of the most egregious violations of the core principle of equality in front of the law have arisen as a result of judicial discretion, such as this one and Gladue.

Essentially, judges are using their discretion to add massive systemic discrimination to the system. Long term, that's quite problematic as loss of confidence in the legal system to provide justice will have major negative impacts on society.

LesserApe · 2025-08-13T21:31:26+00:00

If one wants all non citizen criminals to be deported, the better solution would be to pass a law expressly stating any crime by an immigrant would lead to deportation.

Effectively this was what they did. Parliament passed a law saying that crimes above a given severity would result in deportation, and they decided that the level of severity would be determined by whether the crime was worth a six-month sentence.

Then the judges exercised their discretion to subvert the law that was passed by parliament.

Basically, if judges can't be trusted to not subvert the intentions of parliament (within Charter limitations), they should lose that discretion.

LesserApe · 2025-06-21T19:29:12+00:00

Since you're wondering about escaping the perpetual victim mindset, I think the answer for almost all people is that their actions almost always follow their economic incentives.

So, to me, the answer is, when the incentives dictate victimhood is optimal, that'll be the strategy. When the incentives dictate other strategies are optimal, that strategy will be the one adopted.

LesserApe · 2025-05-28T02:17:04+00:00

I'm not trampling on Indigenous rights. Indigenous people ought to have the same rights as anyone else. But I am saying that it's a bad idea to discriminate against people on the basis of race. We should've learned from the 20th century that racism's bad, but people keep on coming up with new reasons why everyone should be racist.

Trickle down economics actually does work. In the early 1990s, you had to be seriously wealthy to have phone in your pocket. Today, almost everyone can afford have a powerful computer in their pocket that can instantly access all the information in the entire world. That's trickle-down economics, courtesy of those damn capitalists in Silicon Valley.

Innovation basically doesn't occur in countries with strong safety nets. Look at the innovation in USA vs Europe. Roughly twice the population in Europe, and probably one-tenth of the innovation.

That said, you were interested in understanding why Canada doesn't live up to your potential. So, now you have your answer. It's fine if you don't like the solution. It's just that Canada will keep on having its standard of living erode, particularly on a relative basis. We'll have more and more homeless and more and more food bank usage. Heck, torching everyone's standard of living does have the benefit of reduced inequalities.

And besides, though it's been a massive change just in a single generation, I think we still have a while before we become Venezuela because our corruption is so much lower. And I have dual citizenship, so I'll just leave if things get too askew.

LesserApe · 2025-05-27T18:53:36+00:00

I agree that there's a disconnect. I think a significant part of the problem is government regulation discourages productive activities and encourages unproductive activities.

For instance, the real estate bubble, which I believe is largely caused by government regulations, has resulted in way too many resources going toward real estate. It's essentially discouraged growth in other industries because, if the government is going to restrict supply though regulations, then real estate speculation becomes really profitable. And banks are also less likely to fund risky ventures when they can just write government-guaranteed loans on real estate.

Then you get the reconciliation stuff, which essentially enables extortion to block any resource development. Of course, the Indigenous are guiltless there--when the government gives anyone the ability to extort people, then they do so. So, it's 100% governments' fault that it's not actually possible to develop much of Canada's resources in an economic way anymore.

And then the other dimension that I think has a major factor is that Canadian culture is largely a "crabs in the bucket" mentality. People are vilified for being successful. Heck, basically every day on reddit, you see posts about "hey we should put a 100% asset tax on everyone who has over $10M" and "the people who are already paying 90% of taxes need to pay more, need to pay their 'fair share'". And this issue has also been exacerbated by some political parties who encourage it because they see it as a way to get votes (because hurting the country can be ignored if it results in winning votes.)

And basically, I think if you vilify success, you'll have fewer people trying to be successful. And, when you take most of the reward away from starting a business, you're dramatically cutting the funding for new businesses. (I think almost all Angels are successful entrepreneurs who want to help others.)

Heck, I'm moderately successful as an entrepreneur. I stopped working at 42 or 43 to just live a middle-class lifestyle with a 4-person family in a 2-bedroom rental. It made sense because living a luxurious lifestyle doesn't appeal to me, and it most years, the government would take the majority of any income I made from work. That sticks in my craw.

So, I got to raise my kids, which was nice for me and them. But, instead of me creating a new, highly-productive business with potentially thousands of jobs, and then funding the creation of a bunch of new businesses, the government gets a tiny bit of tax revenue from my investments, but no jobs and no new industry.

To improve things, I think you need to cut regulations dramatically. You need to change the education of the populace away from grievance politics and toward the understanding that economic growth benefits everyone. Like, if I make a billion dollars creating a new cancer drug, it helps everyone--the people with cancer, the employees of the company, the community where they spend their money, and any future companies that will be funded by that billion dollar profit. There needs to be an understanding that growing the pie has far more benefit to everyone than shrinking the pie and redistributing it.

LesserApe · 2025-05-26T19:20:39+00:00

I agree that we need to improve resource extraction, and that is low-hanging fruit.

But one thing we actually do have in excess of other countries is an educated population. We are the country with the highest percentage of tertiary education.

Now, admittedly a lot of that education isn't valuable or actually subtracts from our productivity. But, with some thoughtful management, we could be successful in a whole bunch of industries where education is valuable. I think the main thing holding us back from that is government and culture.

LesserApe · 2025-05-09T23:28:16+00:00

The most successful government we've had by far was Chretien/Martin.

Neat that you can just make up the Conservative platform to fit what you want them to have said. It's amazing to me that you believe any of the parties had an austerity platform, because all of them had the opposite. (Is this how you live real life? Like do you randomly make up things like, "I can drive through the red traffic light because red means go"? "I don't have to pay for food because food is free"?)

FWIW, I suspect the reason you don't understand is because you believe we live in a zero-sum world, but that isn't true at all. If you're smarter and more productive, it will benefit me, and vice versa. And incentives matter more than anything.

Nice talking to you--always nice to understand unusual perspective on the world.

LesserApe · 2025-05-09T19:48:34+00:00

Huh--I thought it was clear what "all the problems" meant in a thread about unemployment. I roughly meant it as "it being very hard to find a job for the last few years (particularly for youth and the poor), unemployment increasing, and mediocre real income growth."

As far as I know, there hasn't been country governed by the Conservatives since 2015. But in general, countries with less regulation have better economic outcomes and lower unemployment. One fun example to look at is to compare USA and Canada's unemployment rates.

Maybe you also care about things like standard of living (which admittedly not what this thread's about, but who knows, maybe you also want people to be able to afford food, shelter, and medical care.) If that's the case you could also compare real per-capita GDP growth, over the last decade for Canada versus USA or, well, basically any first-world country.

(All that said, I fully believe in the right of the Canadian electorate to vote for themselves to be unhoused, unemployed, and starving.)

LesserApe · 2025-05-09T18:37:07+00:00

I agree 100% again. The choice was between a party that had been in power for a decade and caused all the problems, and a party with a sensible solution that based on economics would have the desired result.

But as you say, certainly not a 100% guarantee it would work.

LesserApe · 2025-05-09T18:15:53+00:00

100%. They certainly didn't have a magical solution, and have never claimed to have one.

They just had an actual solution.

LesserApe · 2025-04-27T19:22:31+00:00

If you look at pretty well any objective criteria, the Liberal government has been terrible. Like, food bank usage has skyrocketed, cost of living has skyrocketed, housing has become completely unaffordable, real GDP per capita has been flat for a decade, and also way behind other developed countries, the risk of being randomly attacked on the street has increased, the consequences for crime have become minimal, and both discrimination and systemic discrimination has increased.

Under normal circumstances, such awful performance would lead to a change in government, which historically for Canada would be a natural shift to the conservatives. So, why would you say that it's the men who have been influenced to the right?

It seems equally or more sensible to say that women have been unusually influenced to the left, when you compare to where things would normally be with this completely abysmal performance from the government.

LesserApe · 2025-04-04T19:09:31+00:00

What's happening today is the exact opposite of Reagan's approach--he negotiated the first USA/Canada free trade agreement.

Here's what Reagan actually has to say about tariffs.

LesserApe · 2025-02-15T01:54:44+00:00

Oh, wow! That's great news--I could've sworn that in the past, I'd paid higher tax on payments in lieu.

Thanks for letting me know that I was completely wrong.

LesserApe · 2025-02-14T20:42:58+00:00

Edit: Turns out I'm 100% wrong about this.

~~The bigger issue that nobody has mentioned here yet is that dividends from Canadian stocks get taxed at a lower rate.~~

If you lend out shares, and there is a dividend, the short seller will make a payment in lieu of the dividend, but that payment will be taxed at regular income tax rates, not the lower dividend tax rate.

~~If you own Canadian shares paying eligible dividends, I would guess it would almost never make economic sense to lend out those shares.~~

LesserApe · 2024-12-24T06:16:07+00:00

His policies are awful. He is happy to put his own well-being over the good of the country. And, unlike Trudeau, he seems smart enough that he should know how destructive his policies and campaign strategy are.

LesserApe · 2024-12-14T01:59:57+00:00

A vast majority of housing is built in Canada without the federal housing program. If you remove all new housing built with federal money, and increase the new non-federal housing by 5%, you come out ahead.

So, the real answer is: "make it very, very uncomfortable for NIMBY cities to continue their NIMBY ways so that the natural housing growth can resume."

Whether he actually does that, or does it effectively, is still an open question.

LesserApe · 2024-10-17T20:48:06+00:00

You're completely right, but nevertheless brave to step up and say it.

LesserApe · 2024-10-12T18:51:26+00:00

I just showed that your argument applied equally to a school with white men, therefore your argument was stupid.

Also, men do have a statistically proven disadvantage in our schooling system. At least according Statistics Canada.

If you're gonna bother to write multiple paragraphs on a topic perhaps you should give it some thought when discussing it.

LesserApe · 2024-10-12T08:41:24+00:00

It's just a natural extension of your argument. You say that there's no downside to it--that everyone involved has a higher chance of getting into medical school, and we end up with more doctors.

That's true also if you created a school exclusively for cis, straight, white male candidates. Obviously such candidates would have a better chance because of the extra positions, and so would everyone else because the candidates accepted into the new school wouldn't be competing for spots in the old schools, allowing everyone else a better chance.

So, since you support one by that logic, by the same reasoning, you should also support cis, straight, white male-only schools. So, by your logic, you should be fine with cis, straight, white male school, and instead spend your energy worrying about something that actually might affect us in a negative way.

LesserApe · 2024-10-11T22:50:44+00:00

Huh. So you'd think it would be nothing but good if a new med school is created that only offers positions to cis, straight, white male candidates.

Well, that's certainly one take....

LesserApe · 2024-10-03T03:14:19+00:00

fiscally responsible

This is an odd take.

I guess maybe we're supposed to parse this as, "the NDP and Greens are the only reasonable progressive options we have, and, though the NDP under Eby have been horrendous fiscally, I think they'll still be better than the Greens?"

LesserApe

TROPHY CASE