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Comment by ryanchoi51 | Hacker News Reader

The social contract of working hard and being able to own a home or start a family has been broken. This is especially true in Canada, where the government seems to be doing everything in its power to erase the middle class.

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In the U.S., a lot of places I go seem to be run by skeleton crews with workers that are deeply dissatisfied. Something is fundamentally going awry.

As I was waiting in a long checkout line at the grocery store (one checkout line was open of the 8 available) I looked up the owners. Turns out it is a subsidiary of a regional grocery owned by private equity. No doubt there is some calculation of cost benefit.

I took the survey on the receipt I got and told them it was clear how their private equity ownership degraded my experience, and that they need to hire more cashiers.

I have been in Tokyo for the last 2 weeks and every place I go would be considered over-employed in the US. The only time I have seen less than 2 people staffing a convenience store was at 4am. It seems like every place I go there is at least 1 or 2 people cleaning, and still several people to handle customers. I went to this tiny ramen shop, with a ticket machine for ordering food and about 15 seats and there were 4 people working. There were more staff than people at that time, but the place does get busy at other times. Makes me wonder if eliminating all jobs in favor of automation isn't a great idea after all.

Ontario's conservative govt has made the entire state a third world country.

Just to clarify the current Ontario premier comes from a family of drug dealing and massive fraud. His govt has played a part in the largest education scam in the country. All the immigration stuff you hear about comes about as students to fake universities who have been granted licenses by his govt in exchange for money and they have no intent to study.

entire state? you sure you're from Ontario, mon ami? Cuz it's a province

shillbots be gettin lazy again

Want to give any evidence of your Boogeyman Trudeau's efforts to punish the middle class?

Anyone with eyes can see adding more than a million people since COVID began without laying the groundwork in terms of residential capacity or healthcare capacity can see the impact. It’s kept wages suppressed, house and rent prices inflated, and family docs MIA.

An odd take considering that a large percentage of family doctors in Canada are immigrants.

I am not sure the relevance of your point. Are you suggesting that we have imported as many family docs as we have non-family docs on a per capita basis to keep the ratios the same? If not, what’s your point?

I'm saying we have imported far more family docs than needed to keep the ratios the same. That without immigration we'd have an even greater shortage of family docs than we do now.

Well, about a year ago he put a 2 year ban on foreigners purchasing homes. But his reason for doing this was housing market fluctuations due to COVID. Due to COVID?!

The housing market has gone to insane levels. Certainly it's not all due to foreign buyers, but why as a citizen would I want to compete on the global market for our homes? The answer is I never want to complete globally for something that should sell locally. But government never wants to stand in the way of inflows of foreign money.

Anyone I know with a home in Canada expresses the sentiment, 'thank god I got in when I did or I'd never own a home.'. And they're right, they shouldn't be, but they are.

I'm trying to parse your comment. You approve of what Trudeau did, but are complaining because he did it for the wrong reasons?

Old comment now but I'll reply anyway. I approve of what Trudeau did in that he temporarily stopped foreign buyers. But not only do I call bullshit on his reasoning I think foreign buyers of homes should never be allowed.

So ideally he shouldn't have to give this bullshit reason as they never should have been for sale on the global market in the first place.

That he would use this bullshit excuse tells me what type of person he is. But that's politicians.

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