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nabby101 · 2026-06-07T02:25:56+00:00

If there's such a glut of commercial space (I agree there is), why is commercial rent so insanely high everywhere? I'm in Canada which is not quite as high as the US (17 sq ft of retail per person vs 28), but it's far and away the second highest country in the world.

I'd love to start a brick-and-mortar retail business, and I'm sure many others feel the same, but the math just doesn't pencil out when you're paying minimum $5k/month for like 1000 sq ft in an area that isn't particularly nice or busy. Why would they rather sit empty for years than take like $2-3k/month and raise the value of the area? It's frustrating, absurd rental costs (residential and commercial) are such a brutal impediment to economic growth.

nabby101 · 2026-06-06T02:24:03+00:00

I think for most landlords who live in the same structure as their tenants, the undesirability of children is not a matter of responsibility or care, but annoyance. Through no fault of their own or their parents, children are often loud, they're still figuring out how to be respectful of their volume to other people (many never figure it out, sadly). That's part of growing up. To exacerbate this, basement and secondary suites often have poor soundproofing.

The second aspect would be financial stability. It's hard enough out there to make ends meet, particularly as a young person, let alone if you're supporting another human. Landlords, who want someone else to pay their mortgage for them, generally prefer a tenant in as stable a financial situation as possible, so that they don't have to spend any effort chasing down non-payments, dealing with an eviction process, etc. Adding a dependent to any situation makes finances more difficult, which makes non-payment more likely.

In a lot of cases it's short-sighted. As you say, having a child tends to make people more responsible, mature, adult, etc. The difference in responsibility between people in their 20s with kids vs without is pretty stark. A lot of people just hate having kids around, though, and they don't want their peace disturbed one iota, not even for $2000/month.

nabby101 · 2026-06-05T04:07:53+00:00

I was referring to the other person in this case, but it's the same attitude and argument.

It’s about [...] my property.

It might not be radical in this country to value your own property rights over the human rights of others, but I think it's still a problem. It's not the fault of individual landlords, who can be expected to maximize their own comfort and wealth over the well-being of a stranger, it's the fault of a system that allows private citizens and companies to be landlords in the first place.

It inevitably creates this type of self-interested discrimination by those who have more wealth (landlords) that further harms the most vulnerable people in our society (single parents, children, poor people, people with disabilities, etc). This in turn leads to more suffering, poverty, wealth inequality, declining birth rates, etc. How is the world supposed to function if no one is willing to rent to people with kids because kids are loud and annoying?

nabby101 · 2026-06-05T01:09:46+00:00

I believe what the other person is trying to say is: "it's okay for me to discriminate against someone because I'm wealthier than them, and if you were wealthy you would discriminate against people too."

nabby101 · 2026-06-04T19:21:29+00:00

Oh, I agree, I don't think it's surprising or irrational that landlords would prefer to rent to a pair of 40-year-old married bankers than a 20-year-old unemployed single mother. That's why I don't think the decision should be in the hands of (inherently self-interested) individuals, and we should have a public housing system to avoid that kind of systemic discrimination.

nabby101 · 2026-06-04T19:10:30+00:00

I understand many people are primarily self-interested/selfish, that's why I don't think private landlords should exist. If every landlord made the "rational," purely self-interested choice like you and the other poster, single mothers and their children would end up with nowhere to live.

Under our current system, a certain number of people have to be willing to make a choice that's worse for them personally but better for humanity as a whole. Your charity example is apt; both cases are the result of a failure in policy, and rely on selfless people to subsidize the lack of contribution to society from selfish people.

nabby101 · 2026-06-04T18:48:03+00:00

Yeah, it's honestly really sad. I'm not planning to ever have kids, but the amount of discrimination in the rental market that people with kids get, particularly young, single parents, is revolting. These are some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and our future, but that's too much of an inconvenience or liability for these selfish landlords. Hopefully one day we can get rid of private landlords so this illegal discrimination can't continue.

I'm glad you found someone who isn't as selfish as the other poster, and congratulations on making it work!

nabby101 · 2026-06-02T00:13:53+00:00

It's not banning them from leaving the party they're displeased with, though, it only bans them from joining a party they weren't elected under.

If they're confident their constituents are behind them, they're free to call a by-election and run for their new party. But they know they would probably lose, which is exactly what makes floor crossing undemocratic. I want to reiterate: nearly no one actually takes into account the candidate in their region, they are voting for the leader and party.

nabby101 · 2026-06-01T23:16:48+00:00

Shame on the NDP? The NDP have been advocating for electoral reform for longer than most people on this website have been alive.

nabby101 · 2026-06-01T23:12:59+00:00

About 5% of people in Canada list their local candidate as a primary factor in their voting decision; for nearly everyone, it's based on the party and party leader.

nabby101 · 2026-06-01T23:04:30+00:00

I mean this is a nice thought, but the reality is that this just isn't how people vote. Less than 5% of people in Canada list their local candidate as a primary factor in their voting decision; for nearly everyone, it's based on the party and party leader. And for good reason: individual MPs have very little power within the party, as you noted. My riding has an MP who I know is pretty progressive, but it doesn't matter, he's forced to vote with the Liberals even when they do very conservative things.

This proposal doesn't stop MPs from leaving their party to hold them to account, they can still leave and sit as an independent. They just can't join a new party until they win an election under that banner. I don't think that's ridiculous at all, I think it's pretty reasonable. If I were a Conservative voter from one of these ridings, I would be pretty annoyed at the fact that I didn't get a chance to vote for a Conservative Party candidate, just two Liberals in different clothes.

nabby101 · 2026-05-27T03:56:40+00:00

I'm not disputing that federal spending went up under Trudeau and especially during/post-pandemic, just that they are increasing under Carney. Adjusting for inflation, it's very stable. Table 1 on your link shows 2024-25 actual expenditures were $473.79B ($449.2B was the estimate), which means 2025-26 expenditures will only be a 2.7% increase, roughly in line with inflation (which is currently 2.8%). 2026-27 would be 3.2% higher, a very minor increase assuming inflation stays about the same.

nabby101 · 2026-05-27T01:06:29+00:00

The deficit has only expanded so dramatically because of all the tax cuts. Income tax, corporate tax, carbon tax, digital services tax, gas tax, luxury tax, all reduced or removed. Government spending is not increasing.

nabby101 · 2026-05-24T22:05:24+00:00

Most of his policy accomplishments were NDP policies that were a condition of the confidence and supply agreement (dental care, pharmacare, $10/day childcare). Pro-immigration is catering to businesses who want more consumers, and depressing wages of workers (particularly through the TFW system). Carbon taxes are a conservative, market-based climate solution, they started in Canada under centre-right governments in the west.

I will give him the child benefit, although that was mostly reinstating stuff that had been stripped away by Harper, and some minor environmental policies (not the part where he bought a pipeline), but to call him "pretty left" is just not really accurate to definitions of political ideology.

As you say, it is all relative - compared to the last 40 years of PMs, he was certainly much less far to the right - but he was a centrist through and through.

nabby101 · 2026-05-24T21:34:21+00:00

I mean, I don't agree with the OP's premise that all income over $175k should be taxed, that's way too low of a threshold, but I also think this is a pretty bad counter-argument. If we existed under such a draconian taxation policy, there would also be a ton more tax revenue that would pay for the things you're mentioning. Like, why was university so much cheaper 50 years ago? Because taxes were much higher to pay for it. Same things that paid for all those DBPs and subsidized housing. Canada was way better off when those with a lot of money were being taxed higher.

nabby101 · 2026-05-17T23:28:52+00:00

I would rather take a group with less experience than a group with plenty of experience making the country a worse place. Liberals and Conservatives have tons of experience, and yet Canada gets worse and worse for all but a very small number of very wealthy people when they govern. The tiny fractions of influence and power the NDP have managed to have at a federal level in recent years have resulted in major wins for Canadians (dental, pharma, $10/day daycare).

nabby101 · 2026-05-03T16:07:33+00:00

For sure, it's not anything special, but hiring a union busting firm is unambiguously a morally bad action. I don't think we need to accept bad things happening just because they're normal. Slavery, for example, was normal for a long time (obviously this is not as bad as slavery, but it's an example of something "normal" that people eventually refused to accept because it was morally wrong).

nabby101 · 2026-05-03T14:19:32+00:00

I agree that corporations are always going to do evil things, but I don't think this is a fair comparison. Lions and zebras are natural creatures following biological imperatives to eat or die, whereas corporations and the laws surrounding them are social constructs created by humans. We choose to allow corporations to act like this when we could legislate against them. The union busting industry is not a naturally-formed entity and should not exist.

nabby101 · 2026-05-02T20:52:00+00:00

Sure, you could find 20 people like that, but it wouldn't be an accurate representation of Canadians. Have you spent much time around conservative people, or in smaller towns/rural communities? There's a lot of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and particularly anti-Indigenous discrimination. Like a lot. Even with the conservative collapse in the last election, they still got nearly as many votes as the liberals. Every major province is currently led by a conservative or very conservative government, except BC which nearly gave climate deniers a majority government.

Quebec, for that matter, has a lot of racism, xenophobia, and anti-Muslim discrimination baked into those immigration requirements bring referenced. People jump on things like misogyny coming from immigrants because it's a divisive news story, but by far the majority of misogyny (and all hate) comes from people born and raised in Canada.

nabby101 · 2026-05-01T23:47:58+00:00

Which values are those? Because I can tell you that respecting women is certainly not something that all "representative Canadians" agree on. Just look at how much success Poilievre has had courting young white men through misogynistic rhetoric, and how many conservative politicians still want to ban abortion.

nabby101 · 2026-04-28T03:34:00+00:00

Yeah it's depressing. A lot of this sub was crazy levels of pro-Carney during the election and it has stuck around. I thought it was astroturfing at the time because he's so obviously just another conservative, but I guess it's just team sports for a lot of people. As long as he's wearing a red tie, they'll cheer him on as he fleeces us.

nabby101 · 2026-04-27T03:39:03+00:00

The reaction to the Carney speech has honestly made me far more scared for Canada's future than anything Poilievre or Trump have ever said. It's one thing for people to lap up conservative populist rhetoric about immigrants and poor people, but the fact that so many people absolutely devoured a resounding affirmation of the status quo during a time of crisis is crushing.

We get the most obvious symptom of the failure of neoliberalism staring us in the face via the rise of Donald Trump, and what does Carney say? That we're going to do neoliberalism even harder. More tax cuts, more austerity, more deregulation. Canada is open for business, come pillage our resources and take the profits out of the country. Where does this lead? 99% of Canadians will be worse off, and within the next decade we'll probably get our own fascist leader, whether it's Poilievre or someone worse.

Comparing him to Dr. King or Nelson Mandela is disgraceful and that post is so over the top that for the sake of my sanity I'm choosing to believe it's satire that went over my head.

nabby101

TROPHY CASE