Is it time to take a page out of Mao Zedong's playbook, and send urban elites to the countryside to unlearn their hubris?

The previous post got me thinking. When it's in-your-face obvious that a 30yo university grad's standard of living in the big city is in virtually every aspect lagging far behind the standard of living of a 30yo high school grad, or even a high school drop-out, in small-town Ontario, maybe it's time to shake things up a little.

Generally speaking, the folks who make a go of it in these small towns have something to offer. Don't need to be fancy, but does need to be useful. Teachers, truck-drivers, nursing home staff, drywallers, painters, plumbers, dental hygienists, cooks, farm hands, and so on. If you've got useful skills you'll be fine, and most of these jobs don't require much formal ed at all, but we're happy to pay for what they do.

On the other hand, there's been a vast underclass of the over-educated growing like topsy. These are the folks who manage to spend their six or eight or twelve years of post secondary accumulating massive debt in exchange for credentials that are today worthless, or at least worthless-adjacent. I can't put my finger on it, but as a guy who took way too many soc courses, I've observed that the more your college major involved interrogating intersectionality, the less likely you'll have anything to offer these little communities.  

That said, there's nothing about that PhD, that you're paying off with a lifetime of sessional precarity, that prevents you from learning to drive a truck!

Canada's "housing affordability crisis" mostly impacts entitled, miseducated, urbanites with massive student loan debt

Recently the Globe has found ample space for the musings of a UBC academic who intends to leave the world a better, fairer place for the next generation. I'm certainly 100% aboard for that! Said academic has fired up his very own non-profit, with the help of a little government funding, called Generation Squeeze. As you can see from their landing page, hard work doesn't pay off like it used to. Younger Canadians go to school longer, to land jobs that pay less, only to face runaway housing costs.

Once you've digested a few of Professor Kershaw's Globe & Mail missives, you almost feel sorry for these kids. They were clearly sold a bill of goods. The "hard work" of attending post-secondary for six or eight or twelve years doesn't pay off like it used to.  Where once upon a time that might have given you a leg up on the riff-raff that didn't get into U of T or UBC, now these poor suckers find themselves locked out of the priciest real estate markets. Buying a detached in Toronto or Vancouver is a million +++ undertaking. In that market, you need at least a 20% down, and how is an under-employed PhD gonna pull that kinda coin together in a system where not one in ten doctorates will ever land a tenure track position?

Professor Kershaw is himself not only a tenured prof at a prestigious school, he is an award-winning prof at a prestigious school, so it's safe to presume he's not a complete moron, but he's completely unaware of how the other half lives. That other half is probably well represented in the hundreds of local kids who got high-school diplomas on the strength of their grade four level math skills, thanks to me. Hey, if they got  to my gr 10 class with gr 2 skills and gained two grade levels by June, I earned my paycheque and they earned their diploma!

Here's a few facts about the world they live in.

As in Toronto or Vancouver, two people each working full-time in a min wage job, will jointly qualify for a  $325000 mortgage. That's worth bupkis in TO or Van, but once you're 45 minutes north of Yonge and Steeles, a whole new world opens up! That mortgage, which wouldn't even suffice as a down payment in downtown Toronto or Vancouver, actually buys you a detached on an ample lot! And under a half million you need 5% down, not 20%.

Check out this stuff on offer now, easily within reach of those two hypothetical min wage earning grads.

For sale: 279 1ST AVE AVENUE S, Arran-Elderslie, Ontario N0G1L0 - X13819262 | REALTOR.ca

Say what? Two storey classic yellow brick on a quarter acre, in a quiet village in Amish country, for $330k ? Or perhaps, on the strength of you and your partner's minimum wage  jobs, you would prefer this easily affordable century bungalow.

For sale: 40 7TH STREET SW, Arran-Elderslie, Ontario N0G1L0 - X14094230 | REALTOR.ca

And if yellow brick ain't your thing, check out this red brick beauty!

For sale: 53 3RD STREET S, Arran-Elderslie, Ontario N0G1L0 - X13767306 | REALTOR.ca

Those are just a few of the options available to my students, none of whom have student loan concerns. A quick peek at the Government of Canada Job Bank listings for the area shows 182 jobs, most of which pay well above min wage. And the insurance policy of Amish neighbours in tough times is something Professor Kershaw's students will never find in Toronto or Vancouver!

Professor Kershaw's kids have massive student loans and need help. My kids are doing fine. They're buying homes and starting families. If they have to commute a half hour to work it's a country drive, not a twice-a-day ordeal. 

There you have it! Some kids bought the bill o' goods and now they're "generation squeezed"... other kids went straight to "generation live-your-life!"

Remembering when you could count on your John Deere to last 75 years

Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm warming up to deliver yet another rant about what a tragedy it is, or perhaps even an outright crime, and a quite despicable one at that, that nobody knows any more how to build stuff to last.

Regular readers will be well acquainted with my observation (not that it's in any way original to me, as I'm sure several billion folks around the world are acutely aware of the phenomenon by now) that whereas we once valorized concepts such as reliability and quality, those are archaic values today, deader than God Himself.

No! In the modern era, we celebrate the genius who figured out how to ensure that any fridge stove washer dryer and random countertop appliance expires within weeks, or ideally hours, after its warranty! That's why that lonely Maytag repairman, who single-handedly covered the lower 48 from the 50s to the Reagan era, has been replaced by hundreds of Mexicans. In every town.

And they're on the go 24/7!

I share this only to provide context re the brand mentioned in the title. It was in the early '70s that my father purchased a used John Deere 450 crawler-loader. It was at least twenty years old at the time. Dear Dad has gone to the happy woodlot in the sky, but the by-now 80 yr old JD 450 is still chugging through the family woodlot on the home acreage.

Fast forward from the 80 year-old Deere to me dropping in on the neighbours at the weekend. They are hard-core Deere guys, owning no less than eight of them, ranging from '30s vintage to pretty close to state-of-the-art. They should know from John Deeres, and in their estimation every innovation for the last generation has been a step backwards. They are especially pissed about how newer models restrict their ability to repair their own machinery. Pretty much every old-school farmer thinks that an outrage, whereas the corporate guys figure it's just the way things have to work.

I had some farm matters to discuss, and when I pulled up, the father-son team happened to be tinkering with a '62 Massey Ferguson. The father explained that his father had bought it new in '62. I half-jokingly enquired if they were still claiming depreciation on it 64 years on. The no-joke answer was yes! Best tractor on the farm!

Well, guess it depends how you define best. They might love their wee Massey, but it's the Deere's doing all the work. That's why I've got my eye on this beauty. She's the little brother to the 450 my father had.  She's only fifty years old - barely broken in!

          Should clear the snow out the drive right smartly!                                               

                                                           

Five lessons I learned today from the war-mongering Editorial Board at the Globe & Mail

As Remembrance day looms, the worthies at 351 King are keen to get us in the right blood-lustig mood. To that end, they today  provided a stark warning of what  horrors await us should we neglect to elevate military spending to the very tippy top of our priorities list.

Lesson 1

In 1941 Canada dispatched 2,000 troops to Hong Kong to stand with our allies against Japan. They were poorly trained and  poorly equipped, were promptly captured and spent the next 4+ years in Japanese prison camps. The lesson the Globe Brain Trust takes from this history is we need to bust the bank on training and kit long before we send our troops into harms way.

The GBT neglects to mention that our two thousand courageous men in uniform weren't so much "dispatched" by Canada, as they were ordered there by their British commanders.  Those commanders, and their supposed overseers in the Canadian political class, were fully aware of their lack of prep and kit, but sent them to certain death regardless.  

The lesson I take from that is, unless we are masters in our own house, we'll forever be at the whim of those who usurp our sovereignty. We traded our British masters for Uncle Sam, and now that's gone sour we're looking to ingratiate ourselves with the virulently ant-democratic EU.

Lesson 2

Thanks to lessons learned in Hong Kong, the 2000 Canadians on the ground in Latvia are now some of the best-trained and best-equipped troops in NATO, but the GBT seem up in the air on whether we're ready enough; best to err on the side of more training and equipment.

I've got news for them. If NATO's big-talking small fry, most obviously Carney and his Baltic buddies, keep talking, and keep facilitating attacks on Russia, Putin's hordes won't be marching across borders. Their vast missile stockpiles, which NATO has no answers for, will take Latvia off the map long before our superbly trained and equipped Canadians ever see a Russian.

Lesson 3

"The Germans are preparing to fight within three years, but Canada will take the better part of a decade to bring its armed forces to a baseline level of readiness. Hopefully, the Russians will 

be considerate enough to delay any incursion until then."  

Ya, won't be the first time the Germans have prepared to fight Russia. And this provides what lesson for us? Frankly, Russia is no more a threat to Canada today than Japan was in 1941.  If the Germans are in the mood to take another crack at Russia, leave us out of it. Why are the globalists at the Globe so keen to put Canadians in harms way?

Lesson 4

Our thought leaders offer this gem in their penultimate paragraph; "None of this is inevitable, of course. Changing it starts with an act of imagination. "

Well, it might if this ossified crew of jilted American Empire Loyalists were capable of imagining anything other than a return to the pre-Donald status quo.

Lesson 5

If you're with our thought leaders so far, you'll see they saved the best for last.  What we really gotta do, and we dropped the ball on this in '41, is develop a network of trauma centres for the mass casualties we will inevitably encounter when we stand tall for our Canadian values.

There you have it, Canada! It is our sacred duty to prepare for mass casualties, because that's the least we can do to preserve our free and democratic way of life!

And while the Ed Board doesn't spell it out, I'm sure they'll be all aboard for transitioning to a focus on housing, health-care, and education  as soon as we're done beating Putin, Xi, and the latest ayatollah.

 

Countdown to Smarmageddon

Here we are yet again at 'the most important election in US history.'  Of course we are! Seems to me every election since at least Ford - Carter has been the most important in US history. In fact, as America's democracy becomes demonstrably the opposite of "democratic," the global America-centric Western media empires now claim US elections are the 'most important, ever, not just in America,  BUT IN WORLD HISTORY!!!'

It's no secret that across the so-called liberal democracies, the 'will of the people,' voters, is everywhere usurped by the one-percenters, or more correctly, the point-double-O-one-percenters, more recently sometimes referred to as the Epstein Class.  American democracy was officially dismembered by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision in 2010. While the relationship between money and power was hardly hidden before, from that moment forward, money has  officially trumped the ballot box in America's electoral system.

The  Trump era has brought a new twist to  media coverage of  elections in the world's indispensable, greatest, and most admired democracy. Whenever Mafia Don shows up on the ballot, not only is the next election the most consequential in the history of democracy, it could be the LAST ELECTION EVER! And that goes double for today's midterms.  The future of American politics has never been at such risk... OMG, is he gonna pull out the BIG RED ATOMIC BUTTON?

Well, with the clown posse around Donny J, I suppose anything is possible, but I'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction.  When the dust settles (no no no... not the nuclear, but the metaphorical) it'll be business as usual. Regardless of the outcome of the most expensive midterms in history,  the Gaza genocide will continue, as will the ethnic cleansing of West Bank and the destruction of Syria and Lebanon. 

We will continue to ply our Ukrainian patsies with empty promises. We'll ship 500 Patriots... as soon as our defence industry, which is the envy of the world and the scourge of our enemies, gets around to building them. The American voters are tired of seeing their taxes fund wars they were never consulted on and couldn't care less about. All of these things will continue seamlessly, regardless of which party prevails today. 

Equally true: the actual concerns of the voting public will never be addressed.

Bibi-Donnie bromance shows signs of severe strain

Back in February last, when USA/Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, in the midst of pretend peace negotiations, it looked like the good guys had the upper hand for a few days. We murdered the top wog and most of his family, to say nothing of his ruling clique who all deader than dead! In fact, we killed so many of the evil-doers we don't even have anybody to talk to for the next round of fake peace negotiations.

And as we've been reminded once or twice by Mafia Don and the unctuous jerk-off of a platoon-leader who by some miracle became Secretary of War,  our forces of righteousness and projectiles of democracy have sent their navy to the bottom of the sea and its leaders to hell. Oh ya baby!... USA USA USA!!!

A few days into that glorious war, I posted this; The war Israel and USA started ten days ago now threatens the future of both.  

Bingo!

Seven months later, how's it going? The towelheads o' terror are still firing missiles with reckless abandon. The Good Guys seem to be running low on interceptors. There is no sign of peace on the horizon. The Nations of Virtue have sanctioned the Persians from top to bottom and up the wazoo since '79, to no avail. Those folks will eat grass and live in caves for a thousand years before they bow to the genocidal duopoly USAIsrael.

Both of these war criminals are getting more than a little nervous about where things are headed.  There's a real fear that the terrorists might launch a few thousand missiles before the Good Guys in Jerusalem get their next batch of Patriot interceptors, which are scheduled to arrive in three years time. Both of  'em are way out on political limbs they're furiously sawing off in hopes of distancing themselves from blame, but I don't see any hope. America will be in turmoil after Tuesday. The GOP will be decimated, but the Dems will explode in civil war. A lot of heavy hitters in the donkey club hate their fellow asses more than they hate Trump, if what just happened in Michigan is any taste of where we're heading.

Meanwhile, The Greatest Leader Since Moses, while having lost the election, nevertheless finds himself as the 'caretaker' PM while a coalition is formed, a process he should be able to stretch out indefinitely. So here we are. Trump knows Bibi has already destroyed his presidency.

That's not the kinda thing Mafia Don is gonna forgive and forget.

How your perspective on dying changes when you realize you're dying

Don't get me wrong; all of us are always dying, and like the motto of one of my fave alt-news sites proclaims; on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everybody drops to zero.

No shit!

But circumstances have brought me to a place where the odds of my dropping dead any moment have allegedly increased exponentially. That of course is the regrettable course of events that led to a couple of nasty diagnoses nobody wants to hear; CHF and COPD.

Well, you can't really make light of that sort of thing. At the same time, what are you supposed to do about it? I've had my issues in the past. In my "wild hare" days I graduated through one of the world's finest addiction rehab centres not once, but twice! Today I'm six years older than the life expectancy of a boy-child born in '55.

Not only that, but neither of my allegedly life-threatening ailments have in any way impacted my ability to do the things I love most: read and write!

So as far as I'm concerned, my best bet is to keep living life. At this point, cutting out the weed or the smokes or the beer is entirely beside the point. I owe life to the grace of God, and I give thanks every day.