Oh, you crumbums
I
once read somebody claiming that in Finland and especially in Sweden,
it doesn't really matter how much the breadwinner of a family of four
earns between 0 euros and 3000 euros a month, since after all taxation
and other wealth transfers, the family would end up with pretty much
the same material end result anyway. Perhaps this claim is a bit
extreme, but I believe it to be mostly true.
Even though I work only part-time and spend the rest of my days doing things that I like to do such as reading and blogging, my material standard of living is about twice as high as it was in Finland working in my full-time job. So I think that I made a good move coming over here, and recommend the same for others. For starters, remember that we paid about half for our condo apartment compared to what it would cost back home, assuming that an apartment of this quality were even for sale in the land of ugliness, paper-thin walls and mold problems that characterize the typically shoddy Finnish construction. Thanks to the fact that construction is allowed here and the opinions of all kinds of blue-haired nimbys and bananas are allocated to the trashbin where they properly belong, our mortgage will in fact burn next year, according to the mortgage calculator, while my fellow age cohort will probably keep working and paying for their overpriced cardboard boxes for a few more decades, a fact that I am certain they will find tremendously funny once they fully realize who they can thank for the high price of housing. But go on, keep working like the insignificant worker ants that you are. The seething masses on welfare depend on you!
As an amusing anecdote about the differences in the typical standard of living in both sides of the Atlantic, when an old colleague of mine visited us a few summers ago and we had a barbaque dinner with my parents-in-law, he noted afterwards that it is no wonder socialism never gained much traction in North America, if the house and the cars that my parents-in-law own represent the typical standard of living of the working class. Indeed. For all the complaining about the current gas prices, cars and the gas you put in them cost twice as much in Finland compared to what they cost in here, due to near-confiscatory levels of taxation (although I also have to say it's difficult for me to feel sorry for all the lazy gaswasters). As a result, Finns tend to drive old beaters that no self-respecting middle class person around here would even think of driving to his workplace.
Being a good little welfare state, Finland has an exceptionally generous welfare system. This has worked so far in a homogeneous country, but I'm curious to see what will happen when the inbalance between payers and freeloaders keeps tipping towards the latter group. The Finnish welfare system is so generous that if you don't feel like working, the bleeding-heart social services will pay your rent and give you plenty of money for living, leaving enough also for boozing and smoking. If you need something special such as a bike or a TV or a new set of clothes, just ask the social services pay for it. To support for this generous system, taxes for the decent people have to be significantly higher than they are in Canada or USA. But at least there is "equality" and nobody has to starve or be homeless, and Finland is like the best place on Earth or something like that.
I have now lived here in Ontario for five years and been meaning to find out what kind of welfare system we have around here, but it has been somewhat difficult to find the exact numbers and rules. Fortunately, yesterday's issue of Toronto Star had an article that criticized the system, "Working Age Poor Often Forgotten", that at the same time clarified how the welfare system works. First, the article criticized the Employment Insurance system for not being there when people actually become unemployed. If four out of five people who lose their jobs really don't get anything for it from EI, that makes EI a rather silly system that would perhaps be better abolished altogether. I am sure that these people would have better uses for the money that is deducted from every paycheck.
The article then goes on to explain that the welfare system is a last-ditch resort and therefore will not give you anything until you have spent everything you own down to the last $500 or so. It seems somewhat unfair to me to punish people who have saved money instead of pissing it all away, but since the welfare system is supposed to be a last-ditch resort, that's probably how it should be until we get the guaranteed minimum income system (which will never happen, though). After spending everything he owns, a single person gets to mooch at most $536 a month while a family of four gets about $1200, plus certain special allowances based on need. Gee, no wonder there seem to be so many homeless people around Toronto. But like I have often said, a scarce resource such as apartments in the heart of the city should be given to those who are willing to work and pay for them. If that money is not enough, McDonald's and Wal-Mart are constantly hiring. I also must have missed the part where it was established that living in the heart of a world-class city is a self-evident and fundamental human right. There is quite a lot of space available in Canada, most of it much less expensive than Toronto. Many small rural towns are losing residents, so if you just want to do nothing and smell bad, you could do it there much cheaper, instead of doing your best to turn this nice city into a sewer.
An especially delightful detail in our welfare system is that social workers (who, as we know, are typically Birkenstock-wearing and capitalism-and-patriarchy-hating losers themselves who learned too late the real value of a degree in literature and transgressive hermeneutics) don't get to exact their revenge on society by placing social housing cases to privately owned apartment buildings and this way ruin them for everybody. Their bleeding heart counterparts in Finland get to place problem people around this way, which creates much-needed "diversity", since of course these drunks and other problematic cases are placed all around the town instead of concentrating them in cheap and bad areas where they belong so that they would harass and hurt only each other instead of decent people.
For example, I remember one social housing case who lived in our building when I was a kid, a man who was a "unemployed manual labour worker", to borrow the popular euphemism for a bum. Each night there was a loud racket going on with his drinking buddies. Years later in the building that me and my wife lived in, right next door to us there was a problem couple that we never actually saw but always in the hallway could smell the nasty reek of tobacco smoke coming from under their door, and during the nights, often heard noises of domestic violence. (That's that typical flimsy construction again, since around here I have never been able to hear anything through the walls.) One night when we once again heard these sounds of yelling and beating and got annoyed, we spontaneously started pretending that we are them, so that I went to the bedroom and put on a wifebeater while my wife similarly uglified herself, and then I beat on my chest going "öyh öyh öyh" while my wife similarly imitated the woman.
But I digress. Speaking of delightful spontaneity and social housing cases, yesterday's Star also had a heart-wrenching article "A Man Kicked to the Curb". It was about a disabled man who is now being evicted from the apartment building that he lives in. If I find a link to this article, I will definitely post it here, since it's been quite a while since I have read anything that comes even close to how one-sided, transparently euphemistic and generally ridiculous this article was.
First, we learn that this man Joe is "spontaneous" so that his emotions can swing wildly. Well, I guess that is one way to put it. And you know, aren't violent mood swings exactly what I would like my neighbours to have? Later in this article we learn that other people don't really need to take Joe's mood swings and angry threats that seriously, since he is bound to wheelchair. Because of this disability, Joe could not keep his dog in a leash when he takes it out, and afterwards he cannot scoop the poops that his yappy little free-running dog leaves everywhere around the building. And what do you know, the other residents at his building are intolerant and heartless so that they don't like this at all. These bigots just don't understand that the cute little poopies are not filthy nor do they smell bad if they come from a dog that belongs to a disabled man. So these intolerant bastards decided to have Joe evicted.
Fortunately, the leftist ideal of making everyone else pay and suffer for the needs of special people (that is, various defectives whose behaviours are highly problematic) didn't work this time. According to the article, during his trials Joe wasn't allowed to speak in his defense, which was somehow an injustice. Myself, I don't really see how exactly Joe's case suffered for him not being allowed to threaten the opposing side and the court officials with his mood swings and rants, but I guess that just shows how bad I am. After the formal eviction notice, Joe lost his temper and threatened the very people who were trying to help his case. Due to these threats, the nasty jackbooted cops who obviously didn't understand that Joe is a very special person took him to the notorious Don Jail in Toronto, where he spent the next four days finding out for himself how harmless and lovely feces really are, since this crungy old jail is not exactly accessible to handicapped inmates so that he had to wear diapers. Gods must truly have been rolling with laughter at the sight of such poetic justice.
Right now Joe is penniless and has been nailed with court costs to the tune of $1500. Since this debacle happened in midwinter and Joe still has until mid-July to leave, it seems pretty undeniable to me that tenants' rights around here are far too good. Jesus Holy Christ, if it really takes this freaking long to get rid of some tenant from hell (one of my wife's friends also had a similar experience of renting out her house to a deadbeat while she went to work abroad), I certainly don't think that we'll be putting our money to buy an investment apartment that we would then rent out, but choose to accumulate our savings in mutual funds instead. Fortunately, the article concludes that Joe "has allies and correspondents", so perhaps one of them could take Joe in his home? I am sure he would make just a wonderful housemate for somebody who wants to put his money where his mouth is.
The same paper also had a third article lamenting the welfare system, although this one was an opinion piece about panhandling. The university professor who wrote this piece is just appalled about the fact Toronto is currently considering a bylaw that forbids panhandling. (The fact that a panhandler attacked a city council member might have something to do with this --- after all, as they say, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.) I can't even begin to express how excellent such bylaw would be. Giving money to panhandlers should be forbidden the same way feeding pigeons is forbidden, and for exactly the same reason. After a few weeks of such ban, the ugly and rat-like parasites that crap all over the place would disappear for good, leaving the city for the decent people to enjoy. And don't even get me started with the pigeons! And pray tell, why were the vagrancy laws abolished in the first place? Are there really no more workhouses? No more prisons?
Since the number of panhandlers around the city seems to be highly correlated with the outside temperature and pleasantness of weather, certain logical conclusions about these people seem largely inescapable to me. Of course, the solution that this professor offers to the homeless problem is to first massively increase the welfare payments (my, what a surprise) and then build a lot more inexpensive social housing to house all these homeless panhandlers. My alternative solution would be to house a few of these homeless people with the good professor and his ideological fellow travellers for a few months, so that they would learn firsthand why exactly the homeless people are homeless, but do the politicians ever listen to me? No.
Even though I work only part-time and spend the rest of my days doing things that I like to do such as reading and blogging, my material standard of living is about twice as high as it was in Finland working in my full-time job. So I think that I made a good move coming over here, and recommend the same for others. For starters, remember that we paid about half for our condo apartment compared to what it would cost back home, assuming that an apartment of this quality were even for sale in the land of ugliness, paper-thin walls and mold problems that characterize the typically shoddy Finnish construction. Thanks to the fact that construction is allowed here and the opinions of all kinds of blue-haired nimbys and bananas are allocated to the trashbin where they properly belong, our mortgage will in fact burn next year, according to the mortgage calculator, while my fellow age cohort will probably keep working and paying for their overpriced cardboard boxes for a few more decades, a fact that I am certain they will find tremendously funny once they fully realize who they can thank for the high price of housing. But go on, keep working like the insignificant worker ants that you are. The seething masses on welfare depend on you!
As an amusing anecdote about the differences in the typical standard of living in both sides of the Atlantic, when an old colleague of mine visited us a few summers ago and we had a barbaque dinner with my parents-in-law, he noted afterwards that it is no wonder socialism never gained much traction in North America, if the house and the cars that my parents-in-law own represent the typical standard of living of the working class. Indeed. For all the complaining about the current gas prices, cars and the gas you put in them cost twice as much in Finland compared to what they cost in here, due to near-confiscatory levels of taxation (although I also have to say it's difficult for me to feel sorry for all the lazy gaswasters). As a result, Finns tend to drive old beaters that no self-respecting middle class person around here would even think of driving to his workplace.
Being a good little welfare state, Finland has an exceptionally generous welfare system. This has worked so far in a homogeneous country, but I'm curious to see what will happen when the inbalance between payers and freeloaders keeps tipping towards the latter group. The Finnish welfare system is so generous that if you don't feel like working, the bleeding-heart social services will pay your rent and give you plenty of money for living, leaving enough also for boozing and smoking. If you need something special such as a bike or a TV or a new set of clothes, just ask the social services pay for it. To support for this generous system, taxes for the decent people have to be significantly higher than they are in Canada or USA. But at least there is "equality" and nobody has to starve or be homeless, and Finland is like the best place on Earth or something like that.
I have now lived here in Ontario for five years and been meaning to find out what kind of welfare system we have around here, but it has been somewhat difficult to find the exact numbers and rules. Fortunately, yesterday's issue of Toronto Star had an article that criticized the system, "Working Age Poor Often Forgotten", that at the same time clarified how the welfare system works. First, the article criticized the Employment Insurance system for not being there when people actually become unemployed. If four out of five people who lose their jobs really don't get anything for it from EI, that makes EI a rather silly system that would perhaps be better abolished altogether. I am sure that these people would have better uses for the money that is deducted from every paycheck.
The article then goes on to explain that the welfare system is a last-ditch resort and therefore will not give you anything until you have spent everything you own down to the last $500 or so. It seems somewhat unfair to me to punish people who have saved money instead of pissing it all away, but since the welfare system is supposed to be a last-ditch resort, that's probably how it should be until we get the guaranteed minimum income system (which will never happen, though). After spending everything he owns, a single person gets to mooch at most $536 a month while a family of four gets about $1200, plus certain special allowances based on need. Gee, no wonder there seem to be so many homeless people around Toronto. But like I have often said, a scarce resource such as apartments in the heart of the city should be given to those who are willing to work and pay for them. If that money is not enough, McDonald's and Wal-Mart are constantly hiring. I also must have missed the part where it was established that living in the heart of a world-class city is a self-evident and fundamental human right. There is quite a lot of space available in Canada, most of it much less expensive than Toronto. Many small rural towns are losing residents, so if you just want to do nothing and smell bad, you could do it there much cheaper, instead of doing your best to turn this nice city into a sewer.
An especially delightful detail in our welfare system is that social workers (who, as we know, are typically Birkenstock-wearing and capitalism-and-patriarchy-hating losers themselves who learned too late the real value of a degree in literature and transgressive hermeneutics) don't get to exact their revenge on society by placing social housing cases to privately owned apartment buildings and this way ruin them for everybody. Their bleeding heart counterparts in Finland get to place problem people around this way, which creates much-needed "diversity", since of course these drunks and other problematic cases are placed all around the town instead of concentrating them in cheap and bad areas where they belong so that they would harass and hurt only each other instead of decent people.
For example, I remember one social housing case who lived in our building when I was a kid, a man who was a "unemployed manual labour worker", to borrow the popular euphemism for a bum. Each night there was a loud racket going on with his drinking buddies. Years later in the building that me and my wife lived in, right next door to us there was a problem couple that we never actually saw but always in the hallway could smell the nasty reek of tobacco smoke coming from under their door, and during the nights, often heard noises of domestic violence. (That's that typical flimsy construction again, since around here I have never been able to hear anything through the walls.) One night when we once again heard these sounds of yelling and beating and got annoyed, we spontaneously started pretending that we are them, so that I went to the bedroom and put on a wifebeater while my wife similarly uglified herself, and then I beat on my chest going "öyh öyh öyh" while my wife similarly imitated the woman.
But I digress. Speaking of delightful spontaneity and social housing cases, yesterday's Star also had a heart-wrenching article "A Man Kicked to the Curb". It was about a disabled man who is now being evicted from the apartment building that he lives in. If I find a link to this article, I will definitely post it here, since it's been quite a while since I have read anything that comes even close to how one-sided, transparently euphemistic and generally ridiculous this article was.
First, we learn that this man Joe is "spontaneous" so that his emotions can swing wildly. Well, I guess that is one way to put it. And you know, aren't violent mood swings exactly what I would like my neighbours to have? Later in this article we learn that other people don't really need to take Joe's mood swings and angry threats that seriously, since he is bound to wheelchair. Because of this disability, Joe could not keep his dog in a leash when he takes it out, and afterwards he cannot scoop the poops that his yappy little free-running dog leaves everywhere around the building. And what do you know, the other residents at his building are intolerant and heartless so that they don't like this at all. These bigots just don't understand that the cute little poopies are not filthy nor do they smell bad if they come from a dog that belongs to a disabled man. So these intolerant bastards decided to have Joe evicted.
Fortunately, the leftist ideal of making everyone else pay and suffer for the needs of special people (that is, various defectives whose behaviours are highly problematic) didn't work this time. According to the article, during his trials Joe wasn't allowed to speak in his defense, which was somehow an injustice. Myself, I don't really see how exactly Joe's case suffered for him not being allowed to threaten the opposing side and the court officials with his mood swings and rants, but I guess that just shows how bad I am. After the formal eviction notice, Joe lost his temper and threatened the very people who were trying to help his case. Due to these threats, the nasty jackbooted cops who obviously didn't understand that Joe is a very special person took him to the notorious Don Jail in Toronto, where he spent the next four days finding out for himself how harmless and lovely feces really are, since this crungy old jail is not exactly accessible to handicapped inmates so that he had to wear diapers. Gods must truly have been rolling with laughter at the sight of such poetic justice.
Right now Joe is penniless and has been nailed with court costs to the tune of $1500. Since this debacle happened in midwinter and Joe still has until mid-July to leave, it seems pretty undeniable to me that tenants' rights around here are far too good. Jesus Holy Christ, if it really takes this freaking long to get rid of some tenant from hell (one of my wife's friends also had a similar experience of renting out her house to a deadbeat while she went to work abroad), I certainly don't think that we'll be putting our money to buy an investment apartment that we would then rent out, but choose to accumulate our savings in mutual funds instead. Fortunately, the article concludes that Joe "has allies and correspondents", so perhaps one of them could take Joe in his home? I am sure he would make just a wonderful housemate for somebody who wants to put his money where his mouth is.
The same paper also had a third article lamenting the welfare system, although this one was an opinion piece about panhandling. The university professor who wrote this piece is just appalled about the fact Toronto is currently considering a bylaw that forbids panhandling. (The fact that a panhandler attacked a city council member might have something to do with this --- after all, as they say, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.) I can't even begin to express how excellent such bylaw would be. Giving money to panhandlers should be forbidden the same way feeding pigeons is forbidden, and for exactly the same reason. After a few weeks of such ban, the ugly and rat-like parasites that crap all over the place would disappear for good, leaving the city for the decent people to enjoy. And don't even get me started with the pigeons! And pray tell, why were the vagrancy laws abolished in the first place? Are there really no more workhouses? No more prisons?
Since the number of panhandlers around the city seems to be highly correlated with the outside temperature and pleasantness of weather, certain logical conclusions about these people seem largely inescapable to me. Of course, the solution that this professor offers to the homeless problem is to first massively increase the welfare payments (my, what a surprise) and then build a lot more inexpensive social housing to house all these homeless panhandlers. My alternative solution would be to house a few of these homeless people with the good professor and his ideological fellow travellers for a few months, so that they would learn firsthand why exactly the homeless people are homeless, but do the politicians ever listen to me? No.
How much do you have to pay in Canada for a new Audi like this one I have in Finland?
http://www.oikotie.fi/s/cars/typelist?model_id=1000437&advsearch=false
Posted by Anonymous | 11:04 AM
I'm very fond of my -91 beater and will definitely not abandon it for a newer and flashier model. I'm still very fond of my dear old -83 petroleum burning Talbot which was totally build anew five years ago after a spontaneous combustion and burning down to an unrecognizable Sun Maid Raisin, but during the restauration process I just got used to a practical top velocity greater than 50 mph so I seldom actually use it for transportation.
Posted by Catilina | 12:19 PM
Paper-thin walls? Last night my neighbour downstairs developed a cough at 3 AM, and the fun lasted at least half an hour. The only thing that keeps me in this apartment is that any change might be a chance for the worse.
Posted by Anonymous | 1:21 PM
Great article! Mortgage. Find best mortgage rate and mortgage calculator.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:40 AM