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As a Canadian business owner, we're super lucky to be in Canada right now, and for the supports that have been put into place for people and businesses alike.

by lux 6y ago

As a Canadian business owner, we're super lucky to be in Canada right now, and for the supports that have been put into place for people and businesses alike. Our company was luckily not hit badly enough to qualify for the 75% support on salaries (we did get a line of credit!), but I know several others who needed it and got the support they needed which is great! It's not perfect - rent supports for storefronts, restaurants, bars, etc. could be better, for example - and it won't save everyone or every business, but it's made a difference in many lives and helped us stay home and quarantine more effectively without so much worry about making ends meet. I just hope more Canadians remember it was the NDP fighting for a lot of these supports come election time :)

alexashka 6y ago
In the short term, it's great. It really doesn't take much to tell banks to add numbers to people's bank accounts. What it's really doing is subsidizing everybody that works in or is tied to non-essential face-to-face service industry, by everyone else. It's really not even that interesting, other than seeing how easily frazzled people are by the slightest calamity - why is non-essential services taking a vacation for a few months at the expense of everyone else supposed to be a major event with long-lasting consequences? Imagine you have a family and you lose your job. If you have savings for a couple of years, you can take it easy for a while and then go look for a job and find one 6 months later. Was anything other than your ego bruised by the loss of the job? No, not really. Why doesn't this analogy translate to what's happening with covid? I'm guessing because not only have you lost your job, but you owe tens of millions in gambling debts and spent half your waking hours convincing various factions to give you some extra time to come up with the money. That's what the economy looks like to me and I find it difficult to be sympathetic - people need a reality check and get back to living a simpler life with less shit being bought and sold all the time. It is within my lifetime that I've gone from owning 2 t-shirts to 20 and I have no idea why. I can go back to wearing 2 and my life will be the same - I just hope others can see the silver lining in all this and not go back to living frivolously.
- tempestn 6y ago
  It's reasonable for individuals to aim for a few months of emergency funds. It's not reasonable to expect main street businesses to have cash on hand to cover many months of near zero revenue. Most small businesses just don't have the margins for that to be viable. If you expect every individual restaurant to be able to weather a period of months when no one goes to restaurants without any kind of assistance, the only restaurants you'll get will be large chains. Much like running government 'like a business', the analogy of running a business 'like a household' only takes you so far. They're fundamentally different things.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    GP also expects families to have 2 years plus of living expenses saved.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      Some did invest their spare $ into liquéfiable assets, at a lower return, just in case they needed to access that cash. Then there are those that bought chalets to put on Airbnb and rubbed their high returns in everyone’s faces until March.
  - alexashka 6y ago
    How did you arrive at your assessment of what is reasonable? Mine happens to be different from yours. Does that make me unreasonable? I mean, are there more shades to the world than reasonable/unreasonable, black and white? I think so and I hope we can discuss the various shades of grey. I think being responsible and saving for a rainy day applies across all spheres of life - be it government, business or a household. What do you think is fundamentally wrong with such a view, other than that it isn't the way things currently are?
    - EGreg 6y ago
      It assumes savings are possible in a business that has tons of expenses and can’t just stop paying rent.
cycop 6y ago
Yup remember how the NDP is bankrupting your future, the economic damage to giving money away is going to bite the youngest generations in the ass in 5 to 10 years.
- lux 6y ago
  This approach isn't "giving money away", it's redistributing our own taxes back to us when we need it. It's sound economic policy. It's also taxable income. We routinely do the same thing for businesses in the form of grants and tax credits, so I fail to see how this is going to bite us in the ass any more than those investments have failed to tank the Canadian economy.

by lux 6y ago

alexashka 6y ago

In the short term, it's great. It really doesn't take much to tell banks to add numbers to people's bank accounts. What it's really doing is subsidizing everybody that works in or is tied to non-essential face-to-face service industry, by everyone else. It's really not even that interesting, other than seeing how easily frazzled people are by the slightest calamity - why is non-essential services taking a vacation for a few months at the expense of everyone else supposed to be a major event with long-lasting consequences? Imagine you have a family and you lose your job. If you have savings for a couple of years, you can take it easy for a while and then go look for a job and find one 6 months later. Was anything other than your ego bruised by the loss of the job? No, not really. Why doesn't this analogy translate to what's happening with covid? I'm guessing because not only have you lost your job, but you owe tens of millions in gambling debts and spent half your waking hours convincing various factions to give you some extra time to come up with the money. That's what the economy looks like to me and I find it difficult to be sympathetic - people need a reality check and get back to living a simpler life with less shit being bought and sold all the time. It is within my lifetime that I've gone from owning 2 t-shirts to 20 and I have no idea why. I can go back to wearing 2 and my life will be the same - I just hope others can see the silver lining in all this and not go back to living frivolously.

tempestn 6y ago
It's reasonable for individuals to aim for a few months of emergency funds. It's not reasonable to expect main street businesses to have cash on hand to cover many months of near zero revenue. Most small businesses just don't have the margins for that to be viable. If you expect every individual restaurant to be able to weather a period of months when no one goes to restaurants without any kind of assistance, the only restaurants you'll get will be large chains. Much like running government 'like a business', the analogy of running a business 'like a household' only takes you so far. They're fundamentally different things.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  GP also expects families to have 2 years plus of living expenses saved.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Some did invest their spare $ into liquéfiable assets, at a lower return, just in case they needed to access that cash. Then there are those that bought chalets to put on Airbnb and rubbed their high returns in everyone’s faces until March.
- alexashka 6y ago
  How did you arrive at your assessment of what is reasonable? Mine happens to be different from yours. Does that make me unreasonable? I mean, are there more shades to the world than reasonable/unreasonable, black and white? I think so and I hope we can discuss the various shades of grey. I think being responsible and saving for a rainy day applies across all spheres of life - be it government, business or a household. What do you think is fundamentally wrong with such a view, other than that it isn't the way things currently are?
  - EGreg 6y ago
    It assumes savings are possible in a business that has tons of expenses and can’t just stop paying rent.

cycop 6y ago

Yup remember how the NDP is bankrupting your future, the economic damage to giving money away is going to bite the youngest generations in the ass in 5 to 10 years.

lux 6y ago
This approach isn't "giving money away", it's redistributing our own taxes back to us when we need it. It's sound economic policy. It's also taxable income. We routinely do the same thing for businesses in the form of grants and tax credits, so I fail to see how this is going to bite us in the ass any more than those investments have failed to tank the Canadian economy.