Except my concrete asset is worth negative hundreds of thousands
Did your house burn down and you didn't have insurance to rebuild or how the hell did you manage that? The market has softened a little, but not that much. Well, maybe if it was a $30,000,000 home?
That is true. The value of my home doesn't mean much to me. If it is worth $1 tomorrow, oh well? Who cares?
But it is troubling to think what will happen when most other homeowners are underwater and their debt gets called. That is going to hurt all of us.
Canada strives for all of its words to be proper. Math is short for mathematics. Appending an 's' leaves you with mathematicies and that's not what is meant, nor is it a word found in the Canadian lexicon.
Costco’s business model makes way more sense
Yes, there is something to be said about only opening stores in high density, high income neighbourhoods. With only 855 stores worldwide (and only 107 in Canada), they are able to generate well over a billion dollars in net income by doing so.
But there is only so many high density, high income neighbourhoods, and they can only handle so many stores. It is not really a duplicatable model. Instead, Loblaw and the like go where Costco refuses to. You can actually find their stores in small towns and other poduck places.
Sure, it's not nearly as profitable serving the poor. Loblaw has over 2,400 stores, yet only sees a measly 500 million dollars in net income, but ultimately someone needs to service those markets. And, really, it's still a pretty good gig. Old Galen there isn't exactly hurting.
It sound like Meta is acting preemptively to put pressure on the government.
There isn't much pressure to exert. C-18 has already received Royal Assent. The people of Canada have spoken, and this is what they want. Given that this is what Canadians have proclaimed as being what they want, why would Facebook wait?
If homicide laws were being introduced for the first time, and not yet in effect, are you going to kill a few people while you still can? Or are you going to realize that people don't like being murdered and conclude that maybe you should not do that even if the law still technically allows?
This disconnect between how municipal leaders and many apartment/condo-dwelling constituents
We practice democracy. The municipal leaders are the constituents. Mayors and councillors are employees hired by the leaders to carry out their bidding. That said, there is probably something to be said about the, more likely to be poorer, people in apartment/condos spending less time – even no time – directing their employees. As the employees are certainly not mind readers, they are going to lean towards the bosses that talk to them and will quickly forget about the silent.
We do we have these bylaws? Ignorance rooted in class.
That is no doubt a large part of it. But there is also a lot of plain old conservatism, particularly in Toronto. Alcohol in convenience stores? "Won't someone please think of the children?" Toronto cries – not noticing that rural Ontario has allowed the sale of alcohol in convenience stores since 1962 without problem. Hell, it took until the year 2000 for Toronto to finally give up on being dry, decades after the rest of the province abandoned the idea. Like the naysayers to marijuana legalization, which turned out to be a nothingburger in the end, there is a lot of fear of the unknown. Should the bylaws be lifted, they would no doubt quickly forget about their concerns, but that doesn't stop the irrational resistance beforehand.
Kind of. Per unit of area Tokyo is every bit as expensive as even the most expensive parts of Canada, yes, but when you are buying a smaller area that does put it in greater reach of the average person. The idea being presented is that people would rather have a small space to call their own over having no space, while current policy pushes for a minimum amount of space that is usually larger than the small spaces people will accept.
There isn't a whole lot of evidence to suggest that there are supply issues. Even the so-called chip shortage later revealed that chip output saw no decline throughout the pandemic or since.
The exception being related to the European fertilizer plant shutdown followed by the Ukraine conflict, cutting off access to Russian fertilizer, prompting some issues related to food. That does explain some inflationary pressure in 2022, however, those issues have largely cleared by now. The farm gate price of food is pretty much back to normal at this point.
This round of inflation seems to be fuelled simply by people being willing to spend more. We saw a similar phenomena following the end of WWII.
wasn’t Canada supposed to be a rich country with a good standard of living, even in lower income areas?
It used to be, but nothing in life is static. To become a rich country you need innovation, and to remain a rich country you need to continue to innovate. Canada was once very innovative, changing the world in many ways, but in the last decade or two we've rested on our laurels.
More like a wave of government bailouts to keep the party going.
I was in a strong Reddit karma position. Early retirement was looking good, but then the rug was pulled. Now I'm back to work here having to start all over again.
Geek and nerd had negative connotations when geeks and nerds were commonly poor, but then things shifted and, notably with the rise of the Information Age, being a geek and/or nerd turned into being useful in becoming wealthy. Now it is a compliment.
True of all insults, really. Same reason, for example, words with associations to slavery are considered insults. Or those related to the sale of sexual favours. The implication is that one is poor. Any words you can throw at someone who is rich will be something most people will want to wear as a badge of honour.