Alan T Perry 🇨🇦

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk When he takes his seat in Parliament, will he be able to do so in costume?

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Similar joke involving a mathematician, engineer and accountant asked how much is 2+2. Mathematician: 4 Engineer: 4.0000000000 Accountant: How much do you want it to be?

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk @RaymondPierreL3@aus.social On the bright side, for every merger there's one fewer CEO to overpay.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I read elsewhere that in the US 50% of consumer spending is done by 10% of the population. (No figures for UK or Canada). Would this have implications for the driver of inflation?

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk The "big ghost horse fried two intestines" just above sounded rather compelling.

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Machine translation can be useful, but also produces some howlers. I recall using Google Translate for a menu in Hong Kong and one of the dishes was translated as "jellyfish fights for money".

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt Unclear on the customs. Should I buy a lettuce to celebrate?

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us @petercs@mastodonapp.uk The cashiers are more friendly than the self-checkout machines. I avoid the latter.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk The trouble is it's becoming increasingly obvious that those externalities can be measured in human health, dignity, flourishing and lives, often with direct and immediate correlation. E.g., cut foreign aid and people soon after start dying in the hundreds of thousands. And those in power don't seem to care as long as their patrons make money.

@ChrisMayLA6 A fundamental problem with our various democratic systems is that they are built on the underlying assumption of reasonable men acting reasonably. (I use the masculine deliberately.) Rules exist in part to mark the boundaries of reasonability and in part to restrain the unreasonable men acting unreasonably. But the latter are assumed to be outliers. When they are in the ascendant, as now in various places, the system breaks down. A system built on care, compassion and an ethic of selflessness degenerates quickly into cronyism, corruption and self-dealing. The bullies don't win in the end, but they cause immense damage and suffering while they have their moment in the spotlight.

@Rickd6@mstdn.ca @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us I think we can agree that there are no freeloaders receiving either wages or pensions, so living wages and decent pensions are a given. The "problem" of freeloaders is often posited by right-wing politicians as a reason not to increase benefits for those who can't work (disability) or currently don't work (unemployment). The reality is that these benefits are so far from adequate that no-one would choose to live on them given an alternative. And there are already eligibility criteria that must be met to receive these benefits. The narrative that there are large numbers of benefits cheaters is simply false. It's not zero, but it's vanishingly small, and not a valid reason to keep benefits at destitution levels. Better in my view to have a few people taking advantage of a good system, than to have people falling through the cracks of an inadequate system.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk The devil will certainly be in the details.

@wanwizard @ChrisMayLA6 I sat on my employer's pension committee for 18 years, and I agree. DB pensions, whether state-run or private, are truly pensions. DC "pensions" are not. As you say, they are tax-advantaged savings schemes. Same for personal retirement saving schemes. (In Canada we call them Registered Retirement Saving Plans or RRSPs for short.) But the downside is that they are costly and carry considerable risk and uncertainty for the employee. And they are lucrative for the financial services industry. Plus, as I have said elsewhere recently, they presume a level of financial sophistication that most workers simply don't have.

@Paulatics@mstdn.ca Thank you for keeping this front and centre. Pity CBC is still over there, too. I know they've said they are still there to engage their audience, but I would ask them 3 questions: 1) what other deepfake child porn sites do they intend to join to engage audiences there? 2) why are the growing audiences on Mastodon and Bluesky not worth engaging? 3) how many of their audience on that other site may be there simply because they want to be able to follow the few reputable accounts there, such as government and CBC?

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I've tried them. The flavour is pretty neutral, but the texture of sea cucumber is like eating cubes of petroleum jelly. But you form your own opinion.

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Yes, jellyfish and sea cucumber are ... not my favourites.

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk On the same menu, I found the dessert section labeled with whimsical poetry as "sweet in my heart", and the inimitable "xiaoxianxianshuijiao" (sic).

@ChrisMayLA6 The organized theft of intellectual property is certainly indefensible, but I also worry about the hoovering up of personal information and the implications for personal privacy and freedom. Elon Musk and his DOGE gang running amok like Fagin's gang of pickpockets is just the most egregious example. Possession of prodigious amounts of data is one side of the equation; the growing capacity to do nefarious things with that data is the other. Or have we forgotten Cambridge Analytica?

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us Living Wage campaigns are certainly helpful in putting pressure on companies to boost the lowest wages they pay, and on the statutory minimum wage. Good to see this group turning their attention to pensions as well. There's also the issue of unemployment and disability benefits being far from adequate. Lots of work to do, but the most important is to change the culture to expect that all members of society are entitled to live decently. We may not fully end inequality, but we can end poverty. If poverty is a policy choice, so could universal flourishing also be a policy choice. There may be a question of how best to get there, but a half century of the trickle-down experiment shows it doesn't work. Neither does the gig economy. Decent pay, decent pensions, decent benefits are all a worthwhile start.

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us Upstream investment in human flourishing would pay enormous dividends in health and quality of life.

@wanwizard @ChrisMayLA6 Canada has two state pensions, Canada Pension Plan is a mandatory contributory DB plan, with contributions coming equally from employees and employers, up to a maximum pensionable income. Old Age Security is based on residency (minimum 10 years to a maximum of 40 years after the age of 18) with no work requirement, paid from general government revenue. Essentially OAS is a form of Universal Basic Income for the elderly. On top of that there are various employer schemes (DB pensions and DC schemes) and personal saving schemes.

@wanwizard @ChrisMayLA6 That's a problem I hadn't considered with respect to disability insurance. My employer's Long Term Disability (LTD) plan contributes to the employer pension plan, but would not cover any growth in earnings including inflation. And I have carried supplemental private LTD insurance for years, which would also pay into a private saving scheme. But neither would pay into our contributory state pension though that also includes a disability income component. It's a gap in our respective systems.

@ChrisMayLA6 Welcome back! Sounds like you had a smashing time. Well deserved.

@IndyRichard Er, Canada has 6 time zones. Just sayin'. 😉 But amusing meme.

@leeloo@chaosfem.tw @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us As does the English "swindle". Nominative determinism at work.

@IndyRichard Yes, you are correct to include Hawaii (and Alaska, which also has its own time zone). The question then becomes whether to include Puerto Rico, which would bring it to 7. But I think 1930's Germany covers all US time zones however you count them.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Now if only they would price in the externalities....

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Nor am I!

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk So they're not implying that, e.g., a German tourist visiting Spain by train and staying in an AirBnB is materially different to a North American tourist visiting Spain by airplane and staying in an AirBnB. 😉

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Interesting framing of the story. Thefts are up 20% in number, 24% by volume and 48% in value. The last figure is of course inflated by the steep rise in the price of petrol, but becomes the headline number. And then the "problem" the article ends on is taxes. Sure. It's in fact a small number of thefts, which of course doesn't make it right.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I'm curious how tourism facilitated by air transport differs materially from tourism facilitated by ground or sea transport in its impact.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk Interesting. Like over-priced smart phones?

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk If the problem were VAT, cutting it might be a solution, but if the problem isn't VAT, cutting it doesn't address the problem. It's early days, and he needs a quick win, but here's hoping Burnham can move on from simplistic non-solutions.

@alex_p_roe@mastodon.world @ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk The ability to laugh at these is what makes us human.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk No organisation of any description consistently lives up to its own values, nor does any individual. This is particularly disappointing when the organisation in question is an ethics-based non-profit. The question is whether the organisation strives to live up to its values, and how it corrects course when it fails. Does it implement real reforms to ensure it will improve, or simply issue an anodyne press release saying "we are committed to ... as our top priority" and tick the ethics box?

@Glastomichelle Thank you for sharing such beauty, which beyond the intrinsic value of such splendid photography also spurs me to aspire to improve my own photographic skills.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I'm sure another tax cut would help.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I can't describe how comforted I feel waking up for the second morning to skies filled with smoke from forest fires 1000 km away.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I'm sorry you had that experience. I've seen it first hand, too. Pressing for a merger of a regional pension scheme with a national one, I was treated as disloyal and punished in a variety of ways. I will never forget (the merger complete) the day the pensioners received an increase of 28.8%. It was October and the increase was retroactive to January. The person who had blocked the merger and caused me so much grief had the audacity to celebrate the merger publicly, saying what a great thing this was as though the credit was his, and never once acknowledging my role. The results were good; the personal cost to me was unnecessary and high.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk I think "clouding" should read "colluding". Competence does not seem to be a priority of the current US administration.

@ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk As noted in the article refugee sponsorship has been a success in Canada for nearly 50 years. Those sponsored by churches and other community groups do much better than refugees sponsored by government. Mainly, I suspect, it's because they have a supportive community that takes an interest in them, and often lead to lifelong friendships. My parish has sponsored a number of refugees over the years. Recently we had an anniversary dinner catered by a refugee family's business. And we're working on bringing another family to Canada now.