Single use plastic ban coming in 2021

[Alflives]

3 minutes ago, canuckistani said:

1. Population isn't the problem, culture is the problem. The problem isn't there are too many people, problem is the western culture of consumerism affecting everything and everyone it touches. Re-initiation of the proven & age-old human model of deriving meaning out of family, community and hard work ( where time off is a luxury, not the dominant part of the life) is a much better bet than reduction of population. 

 

This is why large populations outside of western cultural sphere can have large populations and not go kaput - their culture is not driven by filling their lives with all the disposable entertainment that western people use in such staggering quantity, because they do not have a strong interpersonal community. 

And this is why reduction of population isn't gonna work. In today's modern world, the 'dream' is to travel the world, take a zillion pictures + buy a house + car + recreation vehicle + recreation property + send children to expensive universities. yes, it is the 'dream'. Many of us don't accomplish this dream, but trust me, almost everyone has had this 'dream' for themselves or their children, especially the gainfully employed ones. And with this model, the world cannot sustain even 1/10th the population it has. 

 

2. Giving women control of their bodies does not reduce child-bearing rates, that is a western thing, a product of western culture, not a product of non-western cultures. It has worked in the western countries and some westernized countries, due to a combination of consumerist culture + break-up of the conglomerate family unit. This is why in countries where women have reproductive rights under their own control ( eg: China or India) ,as well  in socities where the congolmerate family unit works, such as the Inuits ( who FYI, have the same reproductive rights as you or I) , the population shows no sign of abatement. Whereas in societies where the family unit is breaking down + presence of consumerism culture is huge , the birth rates are nose-diving ( western world minus immigration + Korea + Japan, etc). 

 

 

What we need, is a culture-shift away from being entertained by paying for stuff - either objects to buy or shows to see, by entertaining ourselves with our close friends and family. 

Once when i went to Ethiopia in my travels, i encountered the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Its pretty much sunday afternoon, a family invites over all their neighbors for coffee, they lounge, drink coffee, eat snacks, few play card games while few chit-chat, etc. We need more of that in our lives, not weird solutions that run against human nature. 

Did these Ethiopian people stir their coffee with plastic spoons?  The plastic police are going to be after them. 

Again our government imposes another regulation that will consume even more tax dollars.  We are already taxed to the max.  

 

[higgyfan]

3 hours ago, Alflives said:

What can we do?  There are literally billions of people just barely surviving. They are worried about today, not tomorrow.  We live very comfortable lives, so we can afford time to discuss these things.  People in those developing countries can't afford to live any other way.  The cost to our economy to help them would be far beyond our means.  It's not just about helping with plastics; it's about sacrificing our way of life to help those who have far less.  Are we really willing to make that happen?   

Educate, find alternatives and help them develop proper recycling.  I know you are old enough to remember what the garbage was like before recycling came along (and the awareness that came with it).   We still need to get better at recycling plastics, but it's a whole lot better than it used to be.

 

I spend a lot of time in the southern states where many of them have no returnables or recycling and it is unbelievable the number of huge landfills; acreages actually.  They finally get to a certain size and they seal them off and shut them down.  No trespassing for  years and years to come. Broken bottles and garbage all over the place.  I've heard that there are many places in BC are like this as well and it's shameful.  Education will create better choices.

 

The bottle/deposits depot has become a great business and recycling can be profitable as well.  These businesses have to be fine tuned and eventually be accessible to every part of the province, country, continent, world.  Utilizing alternatives to plastic and developing new ways to recycle plastic and other harmful products in a necessity.  Education and awareness.

 

It's a huge endeavour and people get caught up in the magnitude of it all.  We need to take a smaller bite out of it and start with our own neighbourhood, city/region, province and country.  Education and awareness.  People begin to change their expectations and become more willing to make decisions around the packaging of certain products as well as the potential for safe disposal. New ideas come from awareness and the need to create newer, safer products will come.

 

Anyways, I have to go have dinner now.  For heaven's sake, with all the pot being grown in the Pacific Northwest, every resident should be given at least 5 hemp bags, don't you think?

 

 

[Ryan Strome]

3 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

well, there hasn't been a conservative PM yet that didn't raise our debt, since we started using debt as standard policy in the 1950s. 

 

Real wage growth is better today than when Trudeau took over from Harper (see: https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/wage-growth)

 

I agree on the deficit, that doesn't thrill me at all, but Trudeau and Scheer are on pretty much the same timetable to balance it. 

 

There are lots of reason not to like Trudeau, but the economy isn't one of them, particularly when you put it in context. 

I disagree.

Wage growth has been terrible under Trudeau. He is also stimulus spending atm. Most debt by any pm isn't he? Massive defecit and a looming recession in 2020. If I were him I would step down.

[Shift-4]

Overdue

[DrJockitch]

10 hours ago, canuckistani said:

1. Population isn't the problem, culture is the problem. The problem isn't there are too many people, problem is the western culture of consumerism affecting everything and everyone it touches. Re-initiation of the proven & age-old human model of deriving meaning out of family, community and hard work ( where time off is a luxury, not the dominant part of the life) is a much better bet than reduction of population. 

 

This is why large populations outside of western cultural sphere can have large populations and not go kaput - their culture is not driven by filling their lives with all the disposable entertainment that western people use in such staggering quantity, because they do not have a strong interpersonal community. 

And this is why reduction of population isn't gonna work. In today's modern world, the 'dream' is to travel the world, take a zillion pictures + buy a house + car + recreation vehicle + recreation property + send children to expensive universities. yes, it is the 'dream'. Many of us don't accomplish this dream, but trust me, almost everyone has had this 'dream' for themselves or their children, especially the gainfully employed ones. And with this model, the world cannot sustain even 1/10th the population it has. 

 

2. Giving women control of their bodies does not reduce child-bearing rates, that is a western thing, a product of western culture, not a product of non-western cultures. It has worked in the western countries and some westernized countries, due to a combination of consumerist culture + break-up of the conglomerate family unit. This is why in countries where women have reproductive rights under their own control ( eg: China or India) ,as well  in socities where the congolmerate family unit works, such as the Inuits ( who FYI, have the same reproductive rights as you or I) , the population shows no sign of abatement. Whereas in societies where the family unit is breaking down + presence of consumerism culture is huge , the birth rates are nose-diving ( western world minus immigration + Korea + Japan, etc). 

 

 

What we need, is a culture-shift away from being entertained by paying for stuff - either objects to buy or shows to see, by entertaining ourselves with our close friends and family. 

Once when i went to Ethiopia in my travels, i encountered the Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Its pretty much sunday afternoon, a family invites over all their neighbors for coffee, they lounge, drink coffee, eat snacks, few play card games while few chit-chat, etc. We need more of that in our lives, not weird solutions that run against human nature. 

Point 1 I agree with accept that you are wrong in many ways in that you are making it a binary choice, really both need to be done.  8 Billion people going on 10 need to slow down the growth and change the culture.

Rampant consumerism is a huge part of the problem yes.

As for point 2.  Much of what you say is demonstrably wrong.  Japan's population curve is upside down and causing a lot of issues for their economy because of the lack of youth and rapid decline in birth rate, they have so far over corrected.  The reason Mexico's immigration rates are net negative to the US is that they achieved a net zero birth rate.  Given women control of their bodies also assumes easy access to contraception which is not the case in many of the cultures you have listed.  Also to say that China has the same reproductive rites as the West ignores a long ugly part of their recent history.  Now admittedly they made the totalitarian decision to limit population rates in the most repressive way possible and this lead to a new problem, not enough girls.

Valuing the children we have also helps as their isn't a pressure to have 7 kids.  Clean water and immunizations of course being the first and most important tools here.

You can't really use Inuit's as an example since their are so many confounders their and frankly they do not really have a significant population.  

Despite much of what I say above, I agree with your post, Western culture and consumerism are big driving forces here.  I have been critical of those as well but I don't think it is an either or question, that is how we kill progress.  Corporations need to be forced to change from doing the cheapest, most convenient and often most destructive thing as much as consumers do. 

[JM_]

12 hours ago, Ryan Strome said:

I disagree.

Wage growth has been terrible under Trudeau. He is also stimulus spending atm. Most debt by any pm isn't he? Massive defecit and a looming recession in 2020. If I were him I would step down.

disagree? with the actual data? weekly wage growth was stalled at zero when Harper got the boot, its climbed up under Trudeau and has been between 2 and 3 %. How can you "disagree"?

 

https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/wage-growth

[JM_]

11 hours ago, Shift-4 said:

Overdue

I totally agree, but its not going to mean much unless we actually start heavily investing in a real recycling industry. 

[CanucksCountry]

 

Here is another gem from our prime minister 

[shad0w4life]

22 hours ago, Jimmy McGill said:

Construction season....

Also There's been a decline/flat amount of full time jobs since 2014, so how do we have record low unemployment yet the % of full time jobs is the same?

 

The #'s are being propped up by part time jobs, they include summer students in those #'s

 

With all those added jobs, and all that extra tax revenue, why is our debt going up and our dollar weakening? Not the symptoms of a booming country

 

It's the equivalent of me running a business that makes 10k a year, borrowing 2 Million, then hiring 2 people and saying that my business is booming, I've hired 2 employees and have over 1 million in the bank!

[shad0w4life]

31 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

disagree? with the actual data? weekly wage growth was stalled at zero when Harper got the boot, its climbed up under Trudeau and has been between 2 and 3 %. How can you "disagree"?

 

https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/wage-growth

  

2006-2015 He was in, and look at that, it TANKED under Trudeau and was almost double the current a few times under harper.

Not to mention he got in during a massive recession, and we got through that better than most countries in the world.

 

[Ryan Strome]

38 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

disagree? with the actual data? weekly wage growth was stalled at zero when Harper got the boot, its climbed up under Trudeau and has been between 2 and 3 %. How can you "disagree"?

 

https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/wage-growth

Already answered.

Edited June 11, 2019 by Ryan Strome

[Ryan Strome]

6 minutes ago, shad0w4life said:

Construction season....

Also There's been a decline/flat amount of full time jobs since 2014, so how do we have record low unemployment yet the % of full time jobs is the same?

 

The #'s are being propped up by part time jobs, they include summer students in those #'s

 

With all those added jobs, and all that extra tax revenue, why is our debt going up and our dollar weakening? Not the symptoms of a booming country

 

It's the equivalent of me running a business that makes 10k a year, borrowing 2 Million, then hiring 2 people and saying that my business is booming, I've hired 2 employees and have over 1 million in the bank!

I don't get why this has to be explained. I mean sure some need the explanation but I didn't think Jimmy did.

[JM_]

6 minutes ago, shad0w4life said:

Construction season....

Also There's been a decline/flat amount of full time jobs since 2014, so how do we have record low unemployment yet the % of full time jobs is the same?

 

The #'s are being propped up by part time jobs, they include summer students in those #'s

 

With all those added jobs, and all that extra tax revenue, why is our debt going up and our dollar weakening? Not the symptoms of a booming country

 

It's the equivalent of me running a business that makes 10k a year, borrowing 2 Million, then hiring 2 people and saying that my business is booming, I've hired 2 employees and have over 1 million in the bank!

 

Find me a conservative PM thats ever not run up the debt. Just one. 

 

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, Ryan Strome said:

Who was pm in 16 and 17 again?

you mean where it picks up after Harper left? c'mon man, lets not do the Fox news thing here, the number are what they are. 

[Ryan Strome]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

 

Find me a conservative PM thats ever not run up the debt. Just one. 

 

Find me a Trudeau who doesn't massively run up debt. 

[JM_]

Just now, Ryan Strome said:

Find me a Trudeau who doesn't massively run up debt. 

we'll have to wait for the grandkids on that one. 

 

[inane]

You guys and the economy lol, it goes up, it goes down, it's the same bs over and over regardless of the politician. 

 

 

[JM_]

45 minutes ago, inane said:

You guys and the economy lol, it goes up, it goes down, it's the same bs over and over regardless of the politician. 

it does. I am worried about the deficit, but on other aspects of the economy the gov't has been competent. 

 

I'm hoping this ban isn't just green washing and will actually come with some stimulus to the recycling industry, and other green industries for that matter. You want job growth, thats where I'd begin. 

[Alflives]

5 minutes ago, Jimmy McGill said:

it does. I am worried about the deficit, but on other aspects of the economy the gov't has been competent. 

 

I'm hoping this ban isn't just green washing and will actually come with some stimulus to the recycling industry, and other green industries for that matter. You want job growth, thats where I'd begin. 

That means more taxes on us, the consumers.  No more taxes.   

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, Alflives said:

That means more taxes on us, the consumers.  No more taxes.   

depends on how its done, it doesn't have to mean that. If we retrofit gov't buildings e.g., with the correct green tech it will pay itself back over time. The right infrastructure investments pay back more in GDP if done right.