Add another one to my "things that confuse me" list... Why do average, ordinary people vote for Conservative / Republican / (insert your right-wing party here) politicians? I can see voting for them IF: Your household income is more than $500,000/year You are a majority shareholder in a corporation that employs more than 500 people You are a senior management in a major corporation You have the majority of your net worth invested in energy and "defense" stocks But honestly, unless one or more of the above applies to you, it just doesn't make sense. For the average Joe, voting for Conservative politicians is basically the equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot -- over and over again. Their modis operandi is to systematically underfund and dismantle public institutions, and replace them with private corporations they can profit from. The result is an ever increasing divide between rich and poor, creating a cheap labor force at the bottom (more ...
Climate Change is big news. It's a dividing issue. Us versus Them. Depending on who you believe, it's either a) the most catastrophic event of our time , or... b) completely made up. So -- Is it real? Probably. The underlying principles are well understood. When will it happen? It's likely to have already been happening since we started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. Recent studies indicate that the measurable climate effects could be delayed 30+ years, so we might only be seeing the effects of carbon emissions from the 70s and 80s . That's right, all the emissions from those 1980s big V8 cars haven't even registered yet, never mind the more recent SUVs . What will future effects be? Hard to say. Warmer average temperatures. More storms. "Freak" weather. Rising sea levels, no doubt. Will there be a "tipping point" where the changes start spiraling out of control and threaten human survival? Maybe. But we don't know en...
As a small business owner, I have no dental or extended health coverage. So a while ago, I decided to sign up for a Manulife CoverMe policy. Their policies appear to be priced well. The website is nicely done, and the sign up process is entirely online. It gives you the feeling that they really have their stuff together. The problem is that as soon as they get your money, the experience goes sharply downhill. It looks like they invest all of their funds and effort into marketing and getting people to sign up, but as soon as you need service, you're SOL. Their claims process is straight out of the 1980's, requiring you to snail mail or fax a sheet you need to fill out by hand. You would think they could have managed some sort of electronic method. I was able to easily set up automatic payments from my credit card online, but when I needed to cancel these payments, I had to phone twice, send two different faxes, and they still deducted two extra payments after canc...
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