I wasn't born in the U.S.A., but I have attempted writing a protest song or two. As a somewhat amateurish musician without many paying gigs – stage performance or otherwise, I spend a great deal of my time, sitting around, contemplating what to do next.
As a dog-sitter, I can afford to sit out the searing mid-day sun from the comfort of my heat defying apartment with a cross-breeze blowing through it, and pretend I'm a serious blogger – something to tell the ladies.
As an aspiring producer of great works, I need to practice good home economics and spend an appreciable portion of my day preparing meals for myself to ensure my nutritional requirements are met so that I might live a long life and be able to continue my practise of putting my foot in my mouth at every fleeting chance.
As a dog-sitter, I can afford to sit out the searing mid-day sun from the comfort of my heat defying apartment with a cross-breeze blowing through it, and pretend I'm a serious blogger – something to tell the ladies.
As an aspiring producer of great works, I need to practice good home economics and spend an appreciable portion of my day preparing meals for myself to ensure my nutritional requirements are met so that I might live a long life and be able to continue my practise of putting my foot in my mouth at every fleeting chance.
A coupon-clipping bachelor, with limited accounting or book-keeping experience, I'm certainly no expert when it comes to making financial decisions for commercial enterprise, however, I am fully capable of taking two away from one: 1 – 2 = -1.
The solution, -1, would of course be deemed correct under certain specific number systems in practical mathematics. To get to the point, I could easily apply all my acquired penny pinching techniques that I practise at home on the microcosm, if you will, and apply or extrapolate my sophisticated frugality to business and industry some day.
Much like my own great national leaders of the day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the The Queen of England, the philosophers, astronomers and arithmeticians of olde worked tirelessly to advance society, civilization, and science for the benefit of all mankind.
The solution, -1, would of course be deemed correct under certain specific number systems in practical mathematics. To get to the point, I could easily apply all my acquired penny pinching techniques that I practise at home on the microcosm, if you will, and apply or extrapolate my sophisticated frugality to business and industry some day.
Much like my own great national leaders of the day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the The Queen of England, the philosophers, astronomers and arithmeticians of olde worked tirelessly to advance society, civilization, and science for the benefit of all mankind.
Canada is a mostly excellent place to be in the world, be it for richer, or for poorer... I run into exceedingly positive, well-adjusted yet helplessly impoverished strangers all the time – especially so when I take the nice doggies along for the stroll – the quintessential icebreakers that they are. Perhaps these ragged, soiled and grubby folks I haplessly encounter are merely pretending to be poor, or like me, manage to get what they want from life despite being perpetually broke and always between jobs. Take Bob the Binner, for example, who always seems spiritedly enthusiastic about zig-zagging from bin-2-bin (good boy band name?), scoping out allies, and wheeling and dealing his rare, sometimes exceptional finds to the general public. Good exercise doth he get, speed walking between depot and dumpster, sorting, sifting, and separating.
Where I live, close to my Province's legislative building, I also happen to see what seems a disproportionate number of smiling faces who are always well-heeled and behind the wheels of exciting luxury importamobiles. The University kids are wearing all the latest designer fashions and practice good cosmopolitanism. The minimum wage in Alberta is currently $9.90 per hour ($9.96 U.S. Dollars) and the average rent downtown in Alberta's capital city, Edmonton, is around $1200 for a bare-bones two bedroom.
Where I live, close to my Province's legislative building, I also happen to see what seems a disproportionate number of smiling faces who are always well-heeled and behind the wheels of exciting luxury importamobiles. The University kids are wearing all the latest designer fashions and practice good cosmopolitanism. The minimum wage in Alberta is currently $9.90 per hour ($9.96 U.S. Dollars) and the average rent downtown in Alberta's capital city, Edmonton, is around $1200 for a bare-bones two bedroom.
You're richer than you think. Or at least a certain commercial bank with it's roots in The Maritimes (a collection of quirky coastal provinces in Canada's eastern seaboard) would have Canadians believe. In their television / radio ads you find ordinary working class couples quite surprised to discover someone willing to help them over-extend themselves by committing to a monolithic mortgage in order to finance what amounts to both a qualitative and quantitative “matchbox” in some really boring part of the city.
I recently learned that most working-class Canadians are financed up to their hoohas to supplant a bunch of deteriorating assets while their jobs may even be hanging by a thread in spite of an already volatile economy. The figure quoted to me regarding the average Canadian's household's debt amount was something like $44k. Mere statistics, right? Probably as inaccurate as a house cat playing a CASIO keyboard anyway.
I recently learned that most working-class Canadians are financed up to their hoohas to supplant a bunch of deteriorating assets while their jobs may even be hanging by a thread in spite of an already volatile economy. The figure quoted to me regarding the average Canadian's household's debt amount was something like $44k. Mere statistics, right? Probably as inaccurate as a house cat playing a CASIO keyboard anyway.
“We (The Big Bad Banks) are richer than you and your broke friends could ever even dream: we'll suck tirelessly at your measly, direct deposited paycheque, mercilessly nickel and diming whatever your ruthless government leaves you with” is closer to the mark when it comes to Canada's big banks if you ask me; just a lowly tenant in a high rise building who's been renting - rarely dining out for the last six years.
To briefly conclude my little assertion (for lack of a better descriptor for this bumbling dialogue), it would seem that given the rapidly escalating Cost of Living vs. Wages, we, the ordinary working-class Canadian may as well become used to the idea of resigning to a lifetime of wage slavery, declining standards, and fewer holidays as globalization nestles into every facet of our collective lives.
Whistle while you work, people!
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