US government shutdown enters 40th day.
Senate Passes Deal to Reopen Government...

Also, Trump proposing 50-year mortgages and 15-year car loans. :suspicious:

Anyone compare the price of food in Canada and the US? A pound of ground beef is around the same price. I paid $10 a pound for some beef at a local butcher shop who gets beef from https://63acresbeef.com/

USD

CAD.

Real food and restaurants are crazy in the US. It’s all the same prices as here, but then exchange on top of that.

and in the bigger cities 20% is the expected minimum rather than 15% here

my friends sister from nyc came to visit and she called us canadians cheap for leaving 15% lol. she was joking but still irked me... what is cheap about not wanting to subsidize staff wages more than what we already do?

What a stark contrast to the fucktard of a leader the US has now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeople...t/s/wo4kPR1Sxv

^ what a great video.

I don’t think you understand what “subsidizing staff wages” means. You can pay $20 + tax and tip, or you can pay $25 + tax. One the restaurant, you, and the staff pay more tax. You pay the wage of the staff with your purchase regardless. It costs everyone less if it’s a tip structure.

:fulloffuck:

https://media1.tenor.com/m/xIpEyNCpz...fused-what.gif

Were just all tired of the tipping life man. Id actually rather pay $25+tax. Just abolish tips everywhere. Many of those service jobs that prompt for a tip arent even service jobs at all and they still want a tip. If tips went away most of those prices should absolutely not charge more to compensate. For example i bought hot sauce at lucifers and they prompted 10% on a $60 purchase. That should not suddenly go to $66 if tipping goes away.

https://youtu.be/qWBCv2SU0w8?si=gWw85_5Bl6YwBfDf

There's levels to this shit, what did orange face do

I was just at Mother Wolf in Los Angeles. The bill shows your meal + taxes + tips + a health and wellness fee. You have the option of opting out of the health and wellness fee but you have to tell your server.

Yeah but that’s not a restaurant.
Regardless it’s absolutely gonna cost more if those people take a pay cut, quit, and no one fills their jobs unless pay goes up.
Thats the reason we have all these TFWs and unemployment. People that don’t have to work those jobs just won’t and they will live at home until they are 35 playing Fortnite.
People won’t fill the jobs, labour costs go up, cost of goods go up. You pay it one way or another.
Trust me, we’ve tried to get tips out of the restaurant industry. But if one place charges $25, one place charges $20 + tip. People go to the place that’s $20 because it’s “cheaper.” The general public isn’t smart enough to do the math.

Niagara Falls has a tourist tax ... you can ask that to be removed but I got scammed a couple of times becuz I didn't notice it.

Another note, WTF is wrong with BBC that you had to do that, splice a clip of the orange Turd to make him look bad in a documentary. You didn't need to do that you stupid dumbo !!

It's too easy to just say "it's all orange man fault."

What exactly did we do to make us more competitive on the world stage? We are lucky that the world largest market happen to be our neighbour so we have some advantage vs. the rest of the world.

But it has gone for so long that we, Canadian, started to take it for granted.

Does US have any obligation to let the whole thing continue as it is? No. Any of our trade agreements come with clauses and exceptions that allow any party to implement necessary measures.

Again, we take all that relationship for granted. We say no to pipelines. We don't do any major infrastructure projects. We say no to any major industrial project in the sake of environment, first nation and whatever.

And when you look at countries like China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea... etc who are also export-focused countries, you can see a huge difference. They are always about making it easier and simpler if you are exporting. China has road and belt project, Taiwan is willing to give 10%+ of all its electric power to TSMC, Korea allows Chaebols to thrive with full government support as long as they compete on world level... and so much more.

Then we say the problem is Trump. We elect a new PM that does jackshit in making our products more competitive. And all that new PM's election promise was "I'll get a deal out of orange man, elbows up."

We don't want to address what US is asking. Instead, we want business as usual. And when that doesn't work, we are trying to spin it with ads and whatnot. And now it's again all Trump's fault for not coming to the table.

Like, I am not an amazing negotiator or anything like that. But if the other side is talking shit like this, I wouldn't want to deal with them in any way either. Especially when I'm the one holding the bargaining chip.

Canadians and "business as usual" is an interesting perspective and opinion. Granted, there are a lot of "not in my back yard" types that oppose infrastructure projects or things like pipelines, while people simply oppose paying taxes. Regardless of which leader is in office, if we don't adopt new strategies to create a competitive advantage for ourselves and another friendly nation, I would go as far to say that we're on our way to becoming a third world country. I mean, we just lost our measles-free status. :troll:

Hehe logic: "Canada shouldn't go out with a short skirt on if it doesn't want to get groped"

No. What I am saying is we are resource export-oriented market. And we should stick with that. You can't have "Climate change is our no.1 goal" when also wanting to cut down all the trees and dig all the oil from the sand and sell them to the US.

We have an identity crisis. What does Canada do exactly?

MAGA having a meltdown...

If we don't blame the tariffs on Trump, I really don't know who else we can blame it on. Apparently you seem to think we should be blaming ourselves for having Trump slap random tariffs on aluminum and steel. And apparently you think we should be blaming ourselves for wanting to continue on a thoroughly integrated auto manufacturing industry that has proven to work extremely well for everyone's benefit over the last 60 years.

I agree that when the other side is talking shxt like they have, I wouldn't want to deal with them in any way either. Except of course in my thinking, the shxt talking side is the US.

I agree that the US certainly has more bargaining power than we do, but it isn't like we don't have any bargaining power with them either. There are things that the US can't get anywhere else for nearly as low a price as they can get from Canada, and we are one of the US' biggest customers as well. Prior to Trump, we had a mutually beneficial trade relationship with the US. But in typical Trump fashion, he wants to take all the profits while leaving the other party with nothing but breadcrumbs.

Trade doesn't work that way. I'm not sure who else we can blame other than the Orange Man.

LOL dude has to humanize his own acronym as if its a person that has feelings and then remind someone that the slogan "make america great again" is about making america great again.

I wonder why they had to be reminded what it meant? :pokerface:

Have you ever thought that if it wasn't for the distance advantage that we have, we couldn't really sell any of our natural resources to anyone. Well, not anyone with that much demand really.

Our cost is too damn high. Other than the US, it makes very little sense for anyone to buy our products. And if you don't want pipelines to be built and no infrastructures to be built either, the cost would remain prohibitory high to trade it with anyone else.

And then we blame it on Trump. Because he isn't willing to do trade as we have always done.

If Carney is competent in any way, he'd try to ease the tension with the US, give in on certain aspects that Trump demands and build infrastructures necessary for us to sell to other countries. This way, you continue to sell to your largest buyer while growing your second/third/fourth buyer. When they grow big enough, then you can go to your biggest buyer and renegotiate things.

We rely so heavily to sell whatever we have to US, and then blame it on our only buyer that they are no longer willing to buy shit from us. Is it really the buyer's fault?

Heck, we'd complain so much when supermarket jack up prices. It's these greedy bastards of jacking up prices.

So, this is US way of complaining that their supermarket needs to change or they are shopping elsewhere.

You do realize that Carney had raised the Keystone pipeline revival in a meeting with Trump back in Oct, right?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/car...ival-1.7653949

And did you also know that our exports to UK and N.Ireland has increased by over 60% since Trump took office? that our exports to Europe went up by over 25% this year?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/can...data-1.7637651

You say our costs are too damn high, and that makes very little sense for anyone to buy our products. That may be so in some cases, but what you have conveniently left out is -- the US is still buying a lot from us because despite those high costs of ours, our goods (resources) are still the cheapest stuff the US can buy bcos we are their next door neighbour. Do you not understand that if they buy from somebody else, the US' costs will go up too? It is mutually beneficial for them to buy from us. The US isn't just doing us a favour by buying from us. They are also doing a favour for themselves.

And we haven't gotten into the fentanyl tariffs yet.

Yes. I’m aware of what was proposed. But talk is cheap. Given how our system is set, why not starting with the AB-BC pipeline? Oh, I forgot, Eby just flat out said no pipeline through BC. How are we supposed to have cost advantage for other buyers when we can’t even get our shit to the coast effectively?

Canadian oil is cheaper for a reason. We can’t really sell it to anyone else because it’s more expensive to ship and more expensive to process. But the idea is that if you make it competitive to other offerings in the world, people will come. As of right now, our cost is too high. Other existing buyer’s volume is spare change comparing to what US is capable of using.

I think you're mixing up the former administration with the current one.

It takes a LOT of time to get infrastructure projects off the ground. I don't like everything Carney does, but I like the fact he's doing what some of the more successful moderate democractic figures of the past have done by investing heavily in infrastructure development and having that play and pay out over a number of years afterwards. Nobody getting rich overnight here, investments take decades. He's literally trying to create that identity you are craving as being a resource rich nation ready to play ball with the rest of the world cuz our former friend is being a dick.

You said it's too easy to blame the orange man, the easiest (and most egotistical at that) thing in the world is to be an armchair/monday morning quarterback dude, review everything that's been done and shake your head and start pontificating about what YOU would have done if YOU were doing everything.