it’s worth talking about who needs benefits, versus who is getting them.

It’s hard to mess with this stuff and take things away because these amounts are part of people’s retirement planning. People and the upper cut-off probably wouldn’t care because they get so little, but if you start messing with the low end of the clawback range, then you start to cause problems.

The wording of this borderline deceptive. OAS has a reasonable threshold at which the clawback starts, and by the time you get to the top end, the clawback is very close to 100% of the benefit. So those seniors up near $134K are getting like $20/month. It’s not nothing, but it’s not worth all the angst here.

The $179K threshold is for those who deferred the benefit, so they’ve had years of zero benefit earlier on. Which is a gamble that you’ll live long enough to make up the difference.

Also, remember that these numbers are all AFTER the benefit is included. So a senior at the lower cutoff is actually making $73K before the benefit.

Also, also, remember that all of these amounts are taxed as income. So that senior at $73K pre-benefit is going to be taxed at the highest rate for the benefit.

Even so, it would still have made more sense to give additional benefits through GIS instead of OAS.

William Morris

I don’t really agree with the degree of doom predicted by the article.

The crux of the matter seems to be that once the workers went back to work they needed to give 72 hours notice to walk off again. That maybe a mistake by the Board, but hardly a calamity. They put in notice and walk off again. At worse, it stretches the length of the negotiations by 72 hours. In this case, it did not.

If this is how the labour boards are going to interpret the laws, then the most likely outcome is that unions are going to stay off work until a tentative deal is accepted and ratified by the members. Why risk having to put in another 72 hours of notice?

Is this good for the workers? No.

Is this good for the employer? No.

So maybe they have an agreement that no notice is necessary to go back to the picket lines if they return to work before ratification.

I don’t see any greater threat to worker rights here.

I really don’t get this at all.

On one hand, I get that inflation is just the expression of the supply/demand curve and that increasing interest rates makes it more expensive to borrow money and therefore lessens demand and should, theoretically drop inflation.

But…

Anyone with half a brain knows that this round of inflation wasn’t caused by overheated demand. It was driven by supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, avian flu, climate change and the Ukraine war. The price of oil alone drove much of the inflation numbers, both directly and indirectly by increasing the cost of production and shipping of other goods.

Does anyone at the BOC seriously think that 10%+ inflation in groceries was caused by overheated demand? Do they seriously think that people should be buying less food to lower grocery demand and reduce prices? Do they think that people will?

Does anyone think that the 6-12 month waits for a new car that are typical now is because gazillions of people are suddenly wanting to buy all at the same time? OK, there probably is pent up demand due to the fact that virtually no new cars were available during the pandemic, and lots of people want EV cars now, but the truth is that availability is way down compared to pre-pandemic times.

I see talking heads from the finance sector on TV all the time saying stuff like, “We need to tame an overheated economy…”. DO WE? And then claiming that the interest rate hikes are working because inflation has come down. Yeah, right. Far more likely is that the supply chain issues are getting resolved, and supplies are increasing.

The truth is that the BOC has only one knob that they can turn, and that’s the interest rates. So they’re going to turn it. And the prevailing wisdom says that it takes close to 18 months for interest rates hikes to have an impact. So the downturn in inflation that started at the beginning of the year has virtually NOTHING to do with the big jump in rates that happened last spring.

As to that 18 month lag, it’s probably even longer this time around because of the mortgage situation in Canada. Those people with huge mortgages have, to large degree, 5 year terms. So a comparatively small number of those people have had to renew under the new rates. And even if rates start to come back down next year, we’re still going to see an increasing proportion of those mortgagees get hit with huge increases to their payments. And that’s going to suck money out of the economy - big time. Are those people already tightening their belts, before they renew? Probably to some extent, but there’s nothing like seeing an extra $2K-3K come out of your bank account each month to make it real.

Chiropractic is sneaky bullshit. At the root of it is a belief that all kinds of ailments can be cured by chiropractic “adjustments” - and we’re not talking back aches and sore joints here. It’s woo along the same lines as homeopathy and acupuncture.
But many/most chiropractors hide that bs, and seem to stick to back/joint issues. But in that case, are they really as qualified as a physiotherapist, osteopath, RMT or actual doctor? I mean, if their schools are teaching that you can cure, say, autism with a back adjustment, do you really want them treating you???