I think it’s important not just for the consumers benefit but also the employees working in that industry. If it’s purely a profit motive then you get things like poor wages and working conditions where the employer can use “competition” as an excuse to keep wages low and reduce overhead by not prioritizing things like safety and environmental sustainability. When people have the option of working for a crown corporation that does prioritize safety, sustainability, and good work environments then private industry has to be able to offer comparable compensation and work environments to the crown corporation. The crown corp has an inherent advantage of being able to operate in a profit neutral manner, while the private industry has to be able to actually do something better than the crown corp to be competitive.
Kelsenellenelvial
This is my answer to pretty much everything. Create a consistent baseline both in terms of consumer services/pricing and for employee work environment/compensation. Then let private industry compete with that crown corp. perfect example, the state of telecommunication services in Sask. Sasktel offers cell, internet and cable TV services while private companies compete along side them. The private companies have to actually be competitive(or at least convince customers that they are) with Sasktel if they want to capture any significant market share. They’re also competing with Sasktel to hire employees into similar roles, so they have to provide competitive wages and work environments. Prices in Sask tend to be lower than elsewhere due to Sasktel’s presence.
I don’t see what we wouldn’t have similar results in other industries, as long as the government actually allows it to happen and doesn’t just sell off the crowns to create a short term budget surplus or reward their buddies in competing private industries.
Could also be skewed the other way if it’s only about wage and not total compensation. Higher paid positions tend to also have good benefits like healthcare, vacation time, pensions, etc. that are on top of the stated wage. Lower wage positions often don’t have those same benefits.
Most are in my experience. Permanent position really just means there’s no pre-arranged end date for the position as opposed to say covering a maternity leave where you’ve been specifically given that position for just until the permanent employee comes back. Unless otherwise negotiated any permanent employee can be let go with 2 weeks(depending on provincial regulations) notice.
Maybe $300/month, or $3600/year for groceries. Maybe another $200/year each for prescriptions, alcohol, and general housewares to cover the non-grocery items. $150 profit on $4200 of revenue would be about 4% margin. Doesn’t seem that high to me but I also don’t really know how that compares to other businesses in the same market.
I think the biggest one is some departments already have a GPS tracker type thing that’s launchable from a squad car. Then it’s just a matter of deciding if the risk of engaging in the chase is higher or lower than the risk of the suspect escaping. It’s also worth considering that never engaging in a chase makes it simple for people to avoid arrest simply by driving away, so there has to be some expectation in a suspects mind that it might not be worth running.
Hmm, hard to quantify since I’m not sure how much of the population does a significant portion of grocery and other shopping at Loblaws, but in that context it doesn’t seem so bad. If we taxed those profits completely that only puts an extra $50 in everybody's pocket each year, which doesn’t seem like it’d really have a large financial impact on many households.
Is there anywhere one can get more context in this? Seems to me like Superstore tends to be one of the more affordable options, so how do we reconcile that with them taking excessive profits? Are they doing enough volume compared to the competition that they’re that far ahead in economy of scale, have they been able to convince their staff to accept significantly lower compensation compared to the competition? Is this just people’s dissatisfaction being pointed at the biggest player even though the whole market follows the same trend?
Agreed that pricing is something that needs to be addressed, but subsidizing individual orders through Canada Post isn’t a good solution. Better to subsidize bulk shipping to the local stores to bring down the price at the shelf. That’d get residents a better return for the amount of subsidy spent.
On the other hand, console generations often provide a hard cut-off for compatibility. You can’t always use previous gen accessories with a new console, and those accessories are usually only comparable with that console. I can’t play my Wii games on my switch, nor use the controllers and other accessories. This is kind of inherent to consoles in that they’re meant to be a consistent platform that allows developers to maximize performance by knowing that each console is going to be pretty much the same. With iOS though the software evolved from the idea of desktop software that runs on a variety of devices. Developers develop with the idea that their software will be used on devices with differing hardware and performance. It’s a completely different paradigm. With computers, people expect that the one they buy this year will be better than the one available last year, but they also don’t feel the need to buy every revision(aside specific performance heavy use cases), they decide on their own replacement schedule. That’s the paradigm that the iPhone came from, regular iterations, occasional major revisions, and long term support/backwards compatibility with previous models and accessories.
I feel like that’s a bad example as consoles tend to be household items rather than individual ones. Regular releases mean that people can choose their upgrade schedule and always have a recently released product available. Good example is cars, manufacturers release a new version of each model every year, but the differences are fairly minor. Then every 5-10 years they do a major revision to the model that’s a significant change. This way most people don’t feel put off when they buy a 2-3 year old model and a revision come out the following year, but a person can buy a new model after 5-10 years and feel like they got a significant upgrade from the previous one.
On the other hand, providing capital increases the value of the labour applied. Giving a tradesperson and additional capital might mean they can afford better tools that allow them to work more quickly, accomplish more per hour of labour and therefore be able to charge more for that hour while the customer simultaneously pays less for the task being done. The tradesperson is then able to pay back that capital plus some gains for the person providing the capital. Everybody wins, the investor gets more money than they started with, the tradesperson earns more after paying back the investment than if they hadn’t taken it in the first place, and the customer gets a lower rate for the tasks that need to be performed.
The problem is when we let that scale up to the point of there being people with essentially endless funds to spend on things like mega-yachts and ridiculous mansions, while others aren’t even getting their basic needs met. The answer to me isn’t removing the benefits of capital income at all, but adding some progressive taxation to keep the net income more modest, and maybe some stronger/target employment regulation so the capital holders aren’t getting rich off labour that’s supported by government social programs.