[opendoor]

Hey, I have a few minutes, so why not.

Originally Posted by pylon

TLDR/broolcorysto incoming but this is my take...

I am one of the fortunate few that this has little or no life changing impact on. In fact the pandemic created a record breaking market conditions for a solid 2 1/2 years for my industry. In fact it's the hardest and longest hours I worked in my life. 8-10 daily at the dealership, and another few every night at home. For 2 solid years. It was financially rewarding, but it sucked, it was eye opening, and it completely red-pilled me.

The first thing that was immediately apparent was how deceptive the stats on Covid were. Car dealerships for the better part stayed open, full tilt boogie, business as usual minus capacity restrictions for a while. Buildings full of middle aged, overweight smokers with bad diets and more comorbidities than you can count. We were coughed on by thousands of people. We dealt with hundreds of anti maskers. And in all of that I know of one car dealer employee in the entire province that died of Covid. One single person. And I can assure you, a large portion of them weren't vaccinated. Many of us caught it, nobody died. There are about 40,000 people working at car dealerships in this province. Where are the hundreds of grocery workers that died? Support should have been given to those at risk, yes. But shuttering the economy globally has had devastating, lasting effects on the world economy, youth education and people's health that will take a generation to fix. Those willing to continue on with life, should have been allowed to at their own risk.

The stats are not deceptive and they're far more useful than your anecdotes.

And the fact is, there is little to no correlation between economic growth, educational outcomes, etc. and countries/jurisdictions that had stricter mitigation policies. In fact, those things correlate much more heavily with the mortality rate; the more people that died, the more disruptive it tended to be on the economy and peoples' well being. It was a pandemic; there was no magic bullet.

Secondly. CERB was the most abused thing I have ever seen in my entire life. By the end of the program, people were upping massive down payments with printed, inflation driving funds to buy overpriced cars they had no business buying. TV's, Xbox's, saving for dream vacations... that's where a large portion went. People living in their parents basements with no bills now had disposable income and willing co-signers in their parents. Self employed people were dipping into it too and going on with business as usual under the table.... and being paid largely with CERB funds. It created a massive underground economy. And the scammers, they just transitioned into the EI program after. You want uncontrollable inflation? Start handing out money to people who never had any to begin with and wouldn't have noticed any change in lifestyle without that money. Worse yet, give contracted gig workers and self employed people a 2k raise for 6 months.

This at least has some rationality to it, as CERB was inflationary. But you're vastly overstating the effect of a single program. CERB and its follow up programs added about 2% to Canada's money supply. So it had an effect, but if you think it's what drove inflation, you're mistaken. And like any economic policy, it's a matter of tradeoffs. The alternative was people not being able to pay their rent or buy food during a period where they couldn't work. Would that have been better?

Thirdly. Anyone who is buying into the utter horsesh*t narrative that the Liberals are spouting about the carbon tax is dreaming. The cost is passed onto Every. Single. Thing. You. Buy. What do you think it costs to heat a 50 year old 20,000 square foot car dealership with giant doors opening and closing all winter? Our gas bill has more than doubled since natural gas spiked, then add to that the carbon tax came about. What does that do to our labor rate in the shop? The amount I can discount a car? We operate on a net profit model. And every penny counts. What about the 'free' full tank of gas you get with your car? What about the cost to ship parts... entire cars? Every single business that exists dealing hard goods is being forced to charge more for everything they sell. And it's crippling businesses and citizens alike.

Unless businesses are gouging customers by profiteering on the back of a carbon tax (which is probably happening, but that's greed, not the tax driving that), it doesn't have any more impact than we know. We know exactly how much is collected and what % of the GDP that represents and what it contributes to inflation.

If businesses gouge on top of that, that's their prerogative. You even say yourself below, if the carbon tax was removed they wouldn't lower their prices. And yet you still blame a tax.

Altruism and recording breaking immigration has destroyed the dream of pretty much anyone under 35 without rich parents from owning a home. It's heartbreaking. And I feel for anyone being shafted by these brain dead immigration policies. I have a crappy 2 bedroom condo I am renting for $2100, and the first 5 applicants could not provide any references, credit history or job letter as they are new to Canada. And some are trying to offer money above my asking rate to ignore those facts. One showing the guy was commenting on how two of the closets and the storage room would make excellent bedrooms for kids.... in an 18+ building. That's how rents get driven out of control. We need to make immigrating to this country extremely difficult until such time as the people that live here.... especially young adults, can actually catch up and get ahead. These are the people paying taxes, that come from families that paid hundreds in thousands in taxes, and they are being ignored, and laid to waste only to be mocked with false promises from this asinine Liberal government. The solution? They are now being conditioned to the idea of state designed, mobile homes as an alternative. Let's just call that what it is. Or build 4 plexes and row housing in suburbs destroying peoples lifelong investments when we have more land than we know what to do with.

In the last decade, rent has increased 30% on average in Canada, which is right in line with inflation (27%) over that period. It has spiked since 2021 to be sure, but that was after a period of a decade with little increase in rental costs so the long-run average is still totally normal.

As for immigration causing it, the places that have seen the highest spikes in rental costs (Toronto, Vancouver, etc.) have some of the slowest population growth, while places with fast population growth over the last decade like Calgary had flat rents for a very long period of time. Obviously it has an effect, but there's a lot more going on than immigration. And immigration has significant benefits in growing our labor force and ensuring the viability of our tax base in the long term.

Pandora's box has been opened. We are being and many already are conditioned to $8 eggs, $1.80 gas, non-stop inflation, crippling interest rates, and we're never going back even if some magic event happens. Sobey's knows you gotta eat, and they've determined that you'll pay 4 bucks for a head of lettuce. If the carbon tax goes away, you think you're going to realize the full savings on your next tank of gas? Not a chance, you'll get a fraction, they know you gotta get to work.

And that, is capitalism, capitalizing on a socialist experiment imposed by Canada and many other countries abroad that printed money. As it should. It was enabled by the governments policies and there's no getting the toothpaste back in the tube. This is the penalty for knee jerk reactions by led by socialist policy in fear of a really bad flu that didn't even come close to living up to it's advertised lethality. I empathize with anyone struggling in this now. But as the saying goes for a huge portion.... "You voted for this."

Anyone who's still fiddling their bean about the Marxist Socialist Utopia being talked about, and taught about in Universities across the world, this is your warning at what even dipping your toe into the Socialist waters for even a year can do to a country's economy and your quality of life. Thankfully, the polls are showing that people are finally starting to get it. But I won't believe it when I actually see it next October.

So the solution to capitalist exploitation of consumers that's driving up prices is to capitalism harder with fewer regulations? OK...