Tuesday, May 27, 2014

A 'Bozo eruption"

John McKay calls Justin Trudeau's pontifications on abortion a "bozo eruption". In reality, it might be more accurate to just call Justin Trudeau a bozo. Or perhaps more diplomatically, say that Justin Trudeau had yet another 'bozo eruption".

Friday, May 16, 2014

Restoring my faith in humanity!

Three New York teenagers purchase a couch and chair from the Salvation Army for 55 dollars and find the couch a bit lumpy. Turns out that the lumps were envelopes stuffed with cash! Rather then keeping the cash for themselves (which many people would have done), they found a deposit slip in one of the envelopes and tracked down the owner of the money and returned it.

You have to give credit where credit is due, these three young teenagers are honest to god, good human beings.

How many of us would have done the same? I cannot say 100% for sure I would have returned the money.

Be honest in the comments below.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Two Surprising Facts about the Ontario Public Sector

Ok, so it has been many years since I last posted. I offer up the usual (lame) excuses. Work, family, leisure activities, service with the CAF, and many other (irrelevant) excuses. You know what they say about excuses....

I was inspired to write this blog post after reading some posts on the National Post about the sunshine list, disclosure of public salaries, and other recent election articles. So, after reading the comments, and doing some digging on the state of the public sector in Ontario I realized just how much trouble we are in.

Yes, yes, Mr Johnny-Come-Lately over here, but I think what I found out would shock anyone. Sure, we all know there are lot of public sector workers in Ontario. And we all know there are a lot people on the sunshine list as well. But I doubt realized just how well off the public sector is in comparison to the rest of the population of Ontario.

Yes Virginia, it's more then just a defined benefits pension and great dental and health.

FACT: 28% of all tax filers in Ontario earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year are employed in the public sector.

According to StatsCan, there are 5,840,200 full time workers in Ontario (private/public sector). Armine Yalnizyan of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, states only about 6% of tax filers in Ontario have an income greater then 100K.

So, let's do some math:

  • 5840200 * 0.06 = 350,412 workers in Ontario earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year.
According to CBC, there are 97,796 works on the March 2014 sunshine list.

So let's do some more math:

  • 97796 / 350412 * 100 = 27.908 %
FACT: Nearly 9% of all public sector employees are on the Sunshine list.

If I take this to include just public sector employees in Ontario, there are 1,107,042 public sector employees working in Ontario at the provincial and municipal level according to StatsCan. (Note, you may need to add some filters for geographic location and to filter out federal public sector).

And since math is so fun, let's do some more:
  • 97796 / 1107042 * 100 = 8.83 %
You are four times more likely to be earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year if you work for the public sector vs private sector. And this is not counting benefits or pension.

It's a great gig if you can get it, no wonder its a prime target for Tim Hudak to make cuts in the quest to slay the deficit and conquer the debt.