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Cultural Imperial posted:http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/politics/foreign-workers-microsoft-gets-green-light-from-ottawa-for-foreign-trainees-1.2870289 It's also because tech companies love the whole low wage and desperation behind foreign visa programs too. David Corbett posted:B-b-but real estate always goes up! It's an unbeatable investment! Home ownership is its own reward, you pay a extra thousand dollars a month for the privilege vs being renter scum also with hidden costs on 400,000 GTA condo, 10 year fixed, 5 percent down, 4.29% mortgage http://www.ratehub.ca/condo-mortgage-calculator  So for mortgage and property tax alone you would be paying $1000 more a month compared to renting a single bedroom apartment. etalian fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 19:47
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Are people really paying 4.29% these days? I thought it was way lower than that. e: oh 10 year fixed.
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Dec 13, 2014 20:23
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That couple with money trouble article always gives me schadefreud: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/12/12/couple-tries-to-balance-saving-for-childs-education-with-debt-paydown-and-retirement/  5/5 ready for retirement, even thought a majority of future retirement money depends on their all eggs in one basket real estate investments. Between the two of them they only saved up $12000 in retirement money accounts.
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Dec 13, 2014 21:11
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etalian posted:5/5 ready for retirement, even thought a majority of future retirement money depends on their all eggs in one basket real estate investments. quote:They are both in defined benefit pension plans
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Dec 13, 2014 21:31
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etalian posted:5/5 ready for retirement, even thought a majority of future retirement money depends on their all eggs in one basket real estate investments. They're government workers, they have a defined benefit plan that they've paid into that isn't listed in their assets.
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Dec 13, 2014 21:37
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It's another reason why high housing costs is bad for people since it makes it really hard to sock away extra money for retirement.
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Dec 13, 2014 21:40
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Just because he's the OP of this thread doesn't mean y'all have to leave him off your ignore lists. Exactly. I swear half this thread is just "this user is on your ignore list" for me now.
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Dec 13, 2014 22:18
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etalian posted:Between the two of them they only saved up $12000 in retirement money accounts. RESP's aren't retirement, they're for the kid's college.
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Dec 13, 2014 23:07
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Cultural Imperial posted:Having spent considerable time working in Kitchener Waterloo, I can only imagine what a loving shithole Barrie must be. Only 60 minutes from Toronto!!?!?!? SIGN ME UP Both are nice cities full of nice people, so there's that I guess?
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Dec 13, 2014 23:19
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FrozenVent posted:RESP's aren't retirement, they're for the kid's college. So more like $6000 total for non-pension plan retirement savings? It's pretty much important to note that once you graduate and get your first job, saving in your 20s is really important due to investment compounding. Later on in life you will get extra expenses like kids or big fat mortgage which makes socking away extra money for retirement much more challenging. etalian fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 23:30
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Cultural Imperial posted:http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/politics/foreign-workers-microsoft-gets-green-light-from-ottawa-for-foreign-trainees-1.2870289 Man, I was just going to post this. The obvious thing to point out is that Microsoft doesn't want quality engineers working in Vancouver, they want them working in Redmond. And Canadian engineers can already do this easily (because of the TN visa). So the only real purpose is to park foreign workers who don't win the H-1B lottery temporarily in Vancouver until they get one. e: also lol at that Financial Post article, I'm like a decade younger than those guys and have twice the net worth and 0 liabilities, can I retire now? blah_blah fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 04:27
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blah_blah posted:Man, I was just going to post this. The obvious thing to point out is that Microsoft doesn't want quality engineers working in Vancouver, they want them working in Redmond. And Canadian engineers can already do this easily (because of the TN visa). So the only real purpose is to park foreign workers who don't win the H-1B lottery temporarily in Vancouver until they get one. Funny story: My friends US employer didn't fill out his TN Visa properly. Immigration doesn't give you a second chance with them. He now cannot enter the USA, even for a day trip, for up to five years or something silly like that. I love that Vancouver is becoming a clearing house to bypass US visa requirements though. Remember a year or so ago when Facebook opened an office in Vancouver and they bluntly stated "yeah, it's temporary, we're just here to find talent that we want to bring to our US operations". 
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Dec 14, 2014 04:40
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Rime posted:Funny story: My friends US employer didn't fill out his TN Visa properly. Immigration doesn't give you a second chance with them. He now cannot enter the USA, even for a day trip, for up to five years or something silly like that. It owns how Vancouver thinks it will usurp the Bay Area/NYC but just ends up being a temporary corporate flop house for techies who couldn't get a US work visa.
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Dec 14, 2014 04:48
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etalian posted:It owns how Vancouver thinks it will usurp the Bay Area/NYC but just ends up being a temporary corporate flop house for non-Canadian techies who couldn't get a US work visa. Added, because it makes the irony richer.
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Dec 14, 2014 05:03
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Yeah I know plenty of friends from Victoria who ended up moving to Vancouver to further their tech careers, but even so the goal isn't to land your dream job in Vancouver, it's to work in a lovely under-paid tech job in Vancouver until you can get enough experience to then go to Seattle or SF. No one ever actually expects to work there, it's just a stepping stone to get to your real career at a real company. If only Vancouver offered more tax cuts or something I'm sure it would be booming. That said, how has Seattle been so ridiculously successful over the last decade? Is it just lucky, or did the city actually do something?
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Dec 14, 2014 05:11
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Sassafras fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 05:14
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Baronjutter posted:That said, how has Seattle been so ridiculously successful over the last decade? Is it just lucky, or did the city actually do something? Microsoft + Amazon have given them a large pool of talent to draw from, and substantially lower CoL (+ no state income tax) makes it actually somewhat possible for them to compete with SF/NYC. And Seattle's a pretty nice place to live.
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Dec 14, 2014 05:15
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blah_blah posted:Microsoft + Amazon have given them a large pool of talent to draw from, and substantially lower CoL (+ no state income tax) makes it actually somewhat possible for them to compete with SF/NYC. And Seattle's a pretty nice place to live. It's always amusing to check out real estate listings in the nicer areas of Seattle. It's Vancouver condo money, tops, for super nice SFHs.
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Dec 14, 2014 05:32
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Baronjutter posted:That said, how has Seattle been so ridiculously successful over the last decade? Is it just lucky, or did the city actually do something? Similar to the bay area it started out with lots of traditional manufacturing/semiconductor type companies but eventually transitioned over techie cult coolaid with companies like Amazon setting up shop. I think it's mainly due to lower business costs, favorable tax treatment and also much lower overall cost of living compared to the people's republic of California. So basically main draw is offering west coast weirdness at lower price point than California. etalian fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 05:51
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Here's what $600/month gets you these days, rentailures: http://vancouver.craigslist.ca/van/apa/4779426318.html  Yes, to get into bed you need to stand on a fridge which is beside the radiator, and then climb up a ladder which is mounted above the radiator, and then sort of leap across the gap and into bed. 
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Dec 14, 2014 20:30
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I'm the fridges leaning against the radiator.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:46
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Dutch Disease.jpg US S&P 500 by sector composition:  Fairly healthy, the biggest share 20% for tech is not vastly greatly than other sectors Canadian TSX Index by sector composition:  Add up Energy and Financials, 60% of all canadian market capitalization is concentrated in just two vulnerable industries. Also lol how high tech company capitalization only makes up 2.1% of Canadian market capitalization, bay area knockoff plan is great success
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Dec 14, 2014 20:47
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Rime posted:Yes, to get into bed you need to stand on a fridge which is beside the radiator, and then climb up a ladder which is mounted above the radiator, and then sort of leap across the gap and into bed. 
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Dec 14, 2014 20:49
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etalian posted:Also lol how high tech company capitalization only makes up 2.1% of Canadian market capitalization, bay area knockoff plan is great success Investment capital for technology basically just doesn't exist in Canada, and nobody from the US is willing to invest across the border. The company I worked for a few years ago was one of the primary players in its field and massively profitable, tried for years to find VC to expand and failed, ended up selling a controlling interest to a Euro-based mega conglomerate for less than $100m. At the same time, vastly less profitable competitors in the USA were being acquired for close to $1B. loving Hootsuite is the biggest VC investment in a tech company in Canadian history. We're a banana republic known for ultra-cheap resource extraction, and investors would like to keep it that way.
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Dec 14, 2014 20:53
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Dec 14, 2014 20:55
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/petrothoughts/quote:Just leaving a conference in Dubai, and thinking about oil prices. (A lot of the conference was actually about geopolitics, and I don’t want to think about the quite grim stuff from that end.) So, some not especially organized notes. ps gently caress alberta
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Dec 14, 2014 21:15
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Rime posted:Here's what $600/month gets you these days, rentailures: Where's the bathroom? Is it even legal to rent something out as an apartment if it doesn't have a bathroom?
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Dec 14, 2014 21:36
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^ It looks like it's a rooming house (shared facilities), we have a lot of them in Winnipeg.
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Dec 14, 2014 21:46
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tagesschau posted:Where's the bathroom? Is it even legal to rent something out as an apartment if it doesn't have a bathroom? Ad says shared washrooms. I wonder how many micro-units they can shoe-horn into one building? Looks like a lot from the hallway photo. But hey - $675/mo furnished. Also laughing that there are a dozen pictures on the site to capture a room the size of a large walk-in closet. Been 15 years since I lived in Vancouver - isn't that general area a poo poo hole?
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Dec 14, 2014 21:52
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that room is smaller than a prison cell
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Dec 14, 2014 21:56
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That price really isn't really typical though. My friend lives in a pretty ok place maybe 10 min walk from Broadway-Cityhall station and she's paying just shy of 800 for a fairly spacious bachelor. Other people are paying that or less in slightly worse areas. You can always find crazy horrible apartments for horrible prices just about anywhere. In Victoria an old 1800's hotel with tiny 300-500 sqft rooms was converted to apartments. They don't share bathrooms but are priced 600-1000 a month. Or you can walk a few blocks and find tons of 1 and 2 br apartments in a nicer area for 700-1000. I often think there's just a market of people willing to pay more for less. Or willing to pay like 10% less on their rent for 50% of the space. I guess if you don't care at all about space and just want the absolute minimum you'd be ok with that??
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Dec 14, 2014 22:03
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haha is this a joke http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2014/12/stuff-your-stockings-with-bc-coal.html quote:No matter whether you light the menorah, trim the tree or setup the Festivus Pole, your holiday activities likely have a connection to a lump of coal mined right here in British Columbia.
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Dec 14, 2014 22:13
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Baronjutter posted:I often think there's just a market of people willing to pay more for less. Or willing to pay like 10% less on their rent for 50% of the space. I guess if you don't care at all about space and just want the absolute minimum you'd be ok with that?? This is absolutely true. For some people, the cash constraint is so overwhelming that it's worth it to accept a way worse place in exchange for keeping slightly more money. On the other hand, you only need take a look at the vehicle market to realize that most Canadians have a very poor grasp of the relationship between price and value.
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Dec 14, 2014 23:13
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Cultural Imperial posted:haha is this a joke US wins again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ueDHn2HTk
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Dec 15, 2014 00:27
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 https://twitter.com/BenRabidoux/status/544294203602518017 #fuckalberta
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Dec 15, 2014 02:30
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Does anyone know what the Alberta Heritage Fund looks like these days?
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Dec 15, 2014 06:00
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Heavy neutrino posted:Does anyone know what the Alberta Heritage Fund looks like these days? 
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Dec 15, 2014 06:09
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Heavy neutrino posted:Does anyone know what the Alberta Heritage Fund looks like these days? E: dammit. Edit for content: The Fund’s value at September 30, 2014 was $17.4 billion on a fair value basis. For comparison, Norway's sovereign wealth fund was at $890 billion USD earlier this year. They have extracted a comparable amount of oil to Alberta, but apparently a non-comparable amount from oil companies. Albino Squirrel fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 06:09
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Heavy neutrino posted:Does anyone know what the Alberta Heritage Fund looks like these days? Laughable, given that the GDP of the province is $295.276 billion. quote:The Fund's value at September 30, 2014 was $17.4 billion on a fair value basis. http://www.finance.alberta.ca/business/ahstf/ Not even enough to raid and balance the budget for a year if there's a shortfall. 
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Dec 15, 2014 06:10
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Albertans to soon stop whining about the injustice of the canadian equalization system.
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Dec 15, 2014 06:13
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