what the top five or ten cities on this list - the rest are throwaway - comprise is a list of cities that have aging populations that are going to open up cheap housing markets as they die and are going to collapse if they don't get younger people to move into them.

for years, younger people have been moving out of the suburbs and back into the big cities, leaving older populations behind in these small cities. it's a potential crisis in canada that could see the backbone of several provinces crumble, and the country fragment into city states.

so, they cook up some metrics and claim that these cities are attractive to millennials. but, the only thing that the demographic they're targetting is really going to want is the price, and they'll have to offset that with commuting, and all it takes - including the time. i quit a job in the suburbs once to take one at a lower pay downtown, because i hated all of the time i was wasting getting back and forth from work. price has to compete with the intangibles of existence.

i saw this coming, though, a few years ago. and, i'll tell you what's about to happen - the boomer housing bubble is about to burst. for that is what the cost of housing right now really is, a population bulge.

you can see it clearly in the data. the number of people increased dramatically after the war, creating a scarcity in housing, which pushed prices up. then, these boomers developed a kind of addiction in going through the charade of swapping overvalued assets with each other, creating these chains of inflated sales prices, to the point that it's become endemic in these imaginary equity numbers. even without the decoupling of wages from productivity, the population pressures on housing in the boomer era have been straight upwards - and it was going to have to crash, once they faced the reality of having to sell to a generation that doesn't have a mountain of inflated debt to swap with them. there was bound to be a dramatic market correction once boomers started selling to millennials on a regular basis, even if the kids or the banks are the ones offloading the property, in the end. but, endemic wage stagnation in the face of deindustrialization has made the bottom that much deeper, as the jobs that are being passed on to the millennial generation are broadly at a fraction of the salary of the ones they're replacing. the price drops could be so shocking that it does end up being the kids or the bank that does sell - if the kids don't move in.

this scenario is usually presented as a horror story for the older generation, but they've only lost what they imagined they had. the ones that got out early no doubt did will, but it was a swindle; when the correction hits, what will be lost is numbers on a page that should have never been there in the first place. fate may be cruel, but what was lost was always only a dream.

rather, i'd prefer to see it from the perspective of the younger generation, which may get a better opportunity at affordable house ownership.

....even if it's in guelph.

https://www.point2homes.com/news/canada-real-estate/millennial-cities-ranked.html

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

so, market surveys are what you do when you want to determine public opinion.

when you want empirical data, on the other hand, you have no choice but to measure it.

as they are giving us a market survey, and not collecting data, they must be requesting an opinion on what we want marijuana to be priced at.

i don't think it should be more expensive than cigarettes. if anything, it should be less expensive to grow.

given current cigarette prices, and the idea that a cigarette is a gram of tobacco, $0.50/gram seems about reasonable - or $10 for 20 grams.

but, are they asking for an opinion? really?

if you're going to do this, use tor or something. and come in as low as you'd like.

https://globalnews.ca/news/3998543/marijuana-pricing-statistics-canada-crowdsourcing-survey/

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

what would an affirmative action actually look like in canada?

if you were to match the population demographics, in canada, not the united states, you'd probably see a net flow of jobs from west and east asian women (no doubt over-represented; very highly educated) to black men and indigenous people (who are the only substantially under-represented groups that i'm aware of).

maybe we'll get a chinese protest.

it really is important to check the country of origin, when you're doing demographic studies.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i'm going to make terence's point for him, because he doesn't seem able to make it himself. there's a good possibility that he doesn't understand what he's throwing around, either; the tactic here is merely to cast doubt on the results, not to actually explain why they're being misapplied.

there's three issues, here, not one.

1) equal pay for equal work. that is, increasing the salaries of women that already have jobs so that they match those of their male counterparts, for the same work. i can't think of any way to articulate opposition to this point that isn't chauvinist, so let's assume this is something everybody agrees with, in principle. this would, indeed, produce an instant boost to gdp, by definition, although i'm not going to pull numbers out of my rear. this can and really should be legislated relatively easily, although enforcement might be a bit rough, at least at first.....i think if they pass the law, the culture will adjust, because who honestly disagrees with this? it has potential to be a systemic change in how people, women, are compensated for their labour.

2) making full use of women in the labour market. that is, finding jobs for all the women that don't currently have one. this wouldn't just create an instant boost in gdp, but would even create an instant multiplier, as a good percentage of these women will now require child care of some sort, and perhaps new cars, as well. this number should be higher than the last one. but, this pre-supposes that enough jobs exist for full employment across both genders, and that's basically pre-supposing the growth that the policy would produce. if we could create enough jobs to do this, one wouldn't need a gender policy to enforce, because the market would, indeed, adjust.

3) increasing diversity in the workplace. if we're talking about replacing people, rather than creating new jobs, as we are, then there is really no reason to think this will have any effect on gdp, save for changes in talent, and there's not any reason to think those changes in talent will be positive, if the hiring strategy is purely ethnic.

what terence wants to say here, but can't put together, is that trudeau is kind of merging these ideas together, and mixing them up in a sort of confusing way that is designed more as a pr strategy than a policy proposal. he's presenting (1) and (3) as ways to achieve (2), and then arguing that investing in women, by itself, will increase gdp. maybe trudeau is, himself, legitimately dazed by the numbers, but i doubt the party is.

so, is a policy of increasing diversity going to increase gdp? well that's not what the studies say. what the studies say is that,

1) if you increase salaries for 40% of the workforce, or whatever it is nowadays, then gdp will go up. this is tautological.
2) if enough jobs were created so that women increase their participation levels to that of men, then gdp would increase by x amount. again: i'm not weighing in on the value of x. but, a substantial increase, here, is tautological: more jobs means more demand exists which means higher gdp. that does not require further study, that's a definition. and, that definition unquestionably implies diminishing returns, as the participation numbers balance out. what requires further study is epsilon, where x +/- e is the corrected range for the gdp numbers.

what do i think?

well, the tautologies are what they are. and, as mentioned, equal pay for equal work is really not controversial, is it? but, the rest of it is muddled up.

no diversity policy will create jobs. you need to find ways to increase aggregate demand, for that.

so, the end goals will mostly not follow from the proposed policy.

but, as is often the case with these wonky policies that the liberals have brought in under this government, i don't find myself all that opposed. i don't know if they plan on inserting quotas, or what. my take on affirmative action is that it was something that was worth a try, but that it always ought to have been temporary, until the workforce balances out a little. it should have come with a kind of sunset clause that was meant to evaluate the success of the program. by any metric, affirmative action has not succeeded in it's stated intent. at this point, i don't see any point in repeating failed approaches. i'd like to try something else.

but, i have to ask the question: how necessary is this, really? and, i'm not convinced it's nearly as necessary as some would claim. i want to look at things like trendlines. are companies becoming more diverse, as the country goes through changes? are more second generation immigrants getting hired? my understanding is that second generation canadians are really the most successful segment of society at this point, and that they're doing just fine in outcompeting everybody else - although some of them may still be dragging around cultural attitudes about women that white canadians largely dropped in the last generation, or the one before it.

i mean, if you want to talk about intersectionality, ask yourself this question: would businesses that have strong influences by men reared in other cultures be more likely or maybe less likely to hire minority women?

so, not only are we getting a false solution to an actual problem, but the more important data required to get to a real solution isn't being analysed at all.

but, terence at least knows that trudeau's feminist strategy is about politics, and not about policy. so, maybe i'm the one who missed the point, after all.

http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-the-dodgy-studies-behind-trudeaus-radical-experiment-to-socially-engineer-canadian-businesses

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i have never had a cavity, btw.

if you're curious.

if you've guessed my age.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

and, to the liberal party, let me ask you directly:

is the legacy of american slavery really something you want to volunteer to absorb? what exactly are you in solidarity with? and, have you really thought through the ramifications of this?

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

imagine how angry this would make you.

suppose you're a student in, let's say ghana. your parents tell you that the only way out of this shithole is through a scholarship, so you study as hard as you can, and manage to get a scholarship to go to university to study engineering in canada.

you're perhaps not expecting utopia, but you're there after being flown across the world because you were identified as an elite student.

so, imagine what it feels like, when you get there, to be told you're supposed to identify with the (formerly) enslaved class in the country next door, despite canada having no meaningful history of slavery, due solely to the colour of your skin. your told you should be happy you're not a slave. that would be as strong a punch to the gut as you could imagine.

let's be a little more explicit, because black history month is really anything but. black history month should be explicitly called african-american history month, because it deals with themes that are inherent to being american, rather than themes that are inherent to being black.

as mentioned, in canada, a black history month would simply not be very substantial. but, in a few generations time, black canadians will have a very different history to present, won't they?

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

and, i should point out the following as well....

the vast majority of black canadians - i mean like 99% - would actually reject the idea that they have any cultural connection to american history, and thereby reject black history month along with it. that is actually kind of a big deal in canada, rather than black history month, itself. because, the best way to piss off a black canadian is to suggest their ancestors were slaves.

because it's usually not true. and, they want you to know it's not true, so you don't think it is. it's not just an ego thing; black canadians overwhelming expect that you won't treat them as the descendant of slaves. because they aren't. and they'll put you in your place if you suggest that they are.

it follows that trudeau is diving head first into instant death if he thinks that pushing black history month is a way to win votes from black voters. not only is the african american narrative not something that black canadians identify with, it's something that they vehemently reject. it's an insult to them.

trudeau is going to get his teflon suit full of eggs if he thinks he's going to talk about this kind of thing with black canadians and get anything more than a guffaw.

"excuse me. sir, are you implying that my ancestors, and the ancestors of the other people in this room, were slaves? because, if you are, i'm appalled."

and, see, a canadian pr team would know that, too. but, when you go and hire all these american strategists (that may have been born in canada, but are culturally american), they miss things like this.

and, that's the irony, right?

"african-americans, black canadians....they're all the same, right?"

no.

one group descends from chattel slavery and has roots in the united states since the fifteenth century. the other is highly educated, mostly middle-classed and has arrived in canada almost entirely since 1970, either from the caribbean or directly from africa, and largely via scholarship grants.

and, the implication that there is any commonality at all is, in fact, brutally racist, which is what trudeau will be told, when it comes to it.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

i think the only state of the union address i've ever watched was the one in 2002.

i'm not an american. it doesn't mean much to me. and, i don't want to watch your president lie for an hour.

to be clear: they all lie spend the hour lying through their teeth. take a random clinton state of the union and fact check it and see if it's much better than trump's; it won't be. and, what's the point of watching that?

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

nonononononono

ok.

imagine this: imagine the president of the united states taking the stage, and announcing that the american government will recognize a national holiday around the struggle of french canadians, because it recognizes the importance of quebecois history and the contributions that quebeckers have made to american society.

that makes about as much sense to americans as celebrating black history month makes to canadians. if you are the fraction of a percent of canadians that is descended from american slaves, nobody is stopping you from celebrating your history. nobody is stopping quebecois-americans from celebrating their history in america, either. but, few people would argue that the contributions of quebec to american society are worth taking much special note of, or that the influence of french canada (while demographically substantial) is of much importance to american culture.

if the president were to do such a thing in the same week as an investigation was being launched into a conflict of interest, one might conclude that it's just some frivolous bullshit to distract the media with, and an attempt to avoid taking serious questions. and, one might applaud the journalists that see through it and ask tough questions, when the event is designed to take softballs.

now, trump will tweet out america's new adoption of international de gaulle day.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

“What the journalists did was hijack the conversation and deterred it from being on topic,”

no.

what happened was that the government held a press conference about an american political issue to try and distract from issues that actually matter in canada, and the press corps called them on it and turned the topic back to things that are actually interesting to canadians.

it's the government, here, that's guilty of creating distractions by pulling out the identity card, on an issue that canadians correctly don't recognize as relevant to them, because the facts are that it isn't. and, there's no use in feigning naivete, either. this was an intentional distraction. and, it's the media that turned the topic back to something canadians want to talk about.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

these are just numbers:

number of black people in new york city ~ 2 200 000 (30%)
number of black people in canada ~ 1 200 000  (3%)
number of black people in chicago ~ 900 0000  (30%)

number of indigenous people in canada ~ 1 400 000 (4%)

detroit is 80% black.
los angeles is 40% black.
montreal and toronto are both 9% black. [note that many african countries have french speakers, and that almost none of these people are descendants of slaves]
vancouver is about 1% black, which is more representative of most of the country.

toronto is 20% east asian [chinese, korean, japanese, philipino]
toronto is 13% south asian [indian]
toronto is 9% black.
toronto is 4% west asian [arab, persian, turk]
toronto is 3% latino

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

that's right: the plight of black canadians is not "top of mind" in canada because, unless you live in a handful of districts in toronto, they really don't exist. black canadians are less than 3% of the population, in canada,  and almost all of them have arrived since 1970. they were barely present at all in the early years of the country, as slaves or as citizens, and did not stay after the underground railroad, for whatever reasons. there are only a handful of black communities in canada, and most of them are not urban but actually quite remote. that's very different than the united states, where blacks are about 10% nationally and make up majorities in substantial parts of the country, including in major urban areas.

in the united states, blacks are without a doubt the largest minority group and of exceeding importance in the country. in canada, they're like 15th - sandwiched between japanese and jewish, or something.

the largest and most important minority groups in canada are not black africans, but lighter-skinned indigenous people and asians, both east and south. we will have chinese and indian prime ministers before we have african ones, and we may never have african ones at all.

the trudeau government's strange focus on african-canadians is an imported americanism, a consequence of the fact that so much of the liberal party went to school in the united states. and, that's a problem that the party needs to come to grips with: it needs more canadians in it's top positions. it's not running for office in california.

the media was right to change the topic, and the party should get the point.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/01/30/justin-trudeau-gets-no-questions-about-black-canadians-at-press-conference-focused-on-their-experiences_a_23348080/

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.