Lost some. Won some.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Exactly. Very little relation, when people chart out the timings of even just the larger waves of immigration vs. house prices. I think The Breach was one of the ones who had articles and/or videos about that in the past. Millennial Moron (don’t mind the name - he does great analysis) has also shown there’s been lower and lower net migration for a while now. (Conservatives are cherry picking numbers from early in the year and pretending numbers stay that way all year on social media, but the long-time trend-- which I’ve also seen on StatsCan’s site myself in the past-- is that the first half of the year always has more people coming in and the second half drops off.) So if the TFW population is dropping, why aren’t jobs getting easier to come by? Could it be our young people are struggling with today’s unfair barriers and requirements to job applications (and wasting time on phantom job postings)?

    It seems LPC and CPC “swap” policies (or probably more accurately, reveal what they really feel on TFW labour) depending on who’s in power. Media is also captured by the ownership class that drives policy and wants cheap, easily-exploited labour. Governments especially like getting a boost to tax revenue from TFWs who get little to nothing back in services. Maybe the owner class will eventually stop all this… by replacing workers entirely with AI and/or robots.

    If the wealthy aren’t adequately taxed to balance the economy so it’s not just a relentless upward flow (and thereby make our democracy more responsive to most of the people), we will lose our middle class to a collapse of white collar prestige jobs, combined with rising asset prices from wealthy people buying everything up with the excess piles money they have after buying our politicians and media. Rising poverty is gravy to big investors like them, after all. The more workers have to stay in debt rather than pay off houses/cars/student loans early, the more somebody gets out of their securities investments.


  • Someone has to help them see the contradictions within their own beliefs, if they don’t get there on their own. For the most part, I think the most likely candidates are people who were once like them (and there are social media accounts like this), since they’ll be more likely to listen to someone who they feel understands them. If people who have already recovered from that life aren’t available, then someone matching the qualities they wouldn’t reject in a friend is the next best thing. In other words, THIS is where allies are supposed to shine if they want to be doing something meaningful to help.

    At the earliest, those of us in one or more of their currently most hated marginalized groups can start stepping in once they’ve crossed the threshold from “this doesn’t feel right” to “how do I start connecting with others in a healthier way.” Allies should help them bridge that initial gap first, and then the tougher-skinned ones among their friends in marginalized groups can ideally join in. That’s how a functioning, healthy society should work. Instead of tunnel vision/pipelines and social bubbles, we need genuine healing and connection.

    As an aside, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how preemptive (as opposed to reactive) social isolation is actually remarkably analogous to expecting someone in financial poverty to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s just that the problem is an emotional form of poverty instead of financial (or both). Some externalize the pain (hating/blaming group X), and some internalize it (any marginalized group that tries to be MAGA), and some do both (“own the libs!”) but all in all we’re talking about people trying to convince themselves they’re happy while also struggling to drown their own humanity.



  • While I recall seeing some columnists who seem to have a specific agenda to back certain industries, I think what most people are concerned about is not that breaking reports are done by cartoonishly evil journalists, but that foreign interests have undue influence over editorial decisions. (As I see it, billionaires from our own country are equally as bad and media concentration in general should also be addressed, but it makes sense to have reasonable restrictions on foreign-ownership of media.)



  • There are grassroots support movements and even legal assistance. You just won’t likely hear about them in establishment media (probably because they don’t expect their intended audience to be in a financial position where they might need it). Even with smaller news sources that focus on talking primarily to activists and/or the actual people affected by the issues (like Status Coup News), folks only briefly touch on it. This is where local news has an opportunity to shine (even if it usually doesn’t).












  • Well, I suppose there’s also the small hope that even if we lose the NDP, the Green Party could find itself and welcome everyone that’s getting disenfranchised into their ranks, finally achieving Official Party status. I realize it’s an out-there suggestion, but it’s seeming more and more like anything is possible in the next few years (and whatever happens in that time will probably decide a lot about our future).


  • Yup, Mark Carney marketed himself in the traditional Liberal way, by copying others’ most popular policies like a larger retailer proactively lowering prices to neutralize upstart competition. Now that they’ve essentially validated that viewpoint, if they even seem to consider reversing the policy later, they give the CPC ammunition. Both Carney and Freeland campaigned on this even though they must know damn well taxing the rich is the only certain way to ensure the long term health of society and the economy.

    But the LPC is what the CPC used to be now. The CPC is much closer to the MAGA-esque PPC than they are to their traditional role. The NDP is apparently in a battle between LPC-ish establishment types at the top and more traditional NDP members at the grassroots. If the NDP gets absorbed into the LPC in future, that’ll be it. Those grassroots voices will be silenced, and the left will be just as gone from Canadian politics as it is in the United States.