As July 1st approaches and I am going to be, once again, out of Canada during Canada Day, I have been trying to use my ample spare time to get into the spirit of Canada Day. I haven't yet spent half of my Canada Days overseas, probably like 3/8ths of them, and I blather on about the crappy things about Canada, some of them being the reasons I left it, but I still love my country and think it should be and COULD be the best country in the world. From that statement you may correctly infer that I don't believe it is. But I think all it would take is for the Canadian people, who I still maintain faith in, to collectively put our money where our mouths are. If Canada is your home and native land and it commands true patriot love in you, whether you are a son or a daughter of Canada, then you want to stand on guard and make sure the true north is kept strong and free. That is a responsibility we claim. It's a duty we take seriously. Or at least it should be. Quite frankly, it has become just something we sing about mindlessly at hockey games in my opinion. But before you get angry, rest assured, I WANT you to get angry. But for the right reasons.
When I see people getting all bent out of shape about one line of the national anthem being unfair to women, I get a little angry. Not because they're wrong, witness the above "son or daughter" comment, but because I think we need to concentrate on the meaning of the entire song. When I see people getting their long underwear in a knot about the gay pride flag being an unpatriotic altering of our national flag, I get a bit steamed. I wish Canadians would show this kind of righteous indignation about what that flag represents: our country. It seems people have the time and effort to become morally outraged at small things like our flag, our anthem, our prime minister bumping a breast, our sport, our national flower, our national bird, but for the love of God and country, what about our NATION?
How can we test our performances as the guardians of the True North's strengths and freedoms? I don't think that's too hard a deal. I think we need to look, really look, like we may never have before, at the people upon whose backs our country has been built. Every November 11th I feel much like I feel on Canada Day. I see the poppies and I hear the speeches but I am left with an emptiness as I look at Canada and see the modern product that was purchased with the blood of so many young Canadians. Is this what they wanted? Is this what they fought and died for? Who's to say? All we can do is try to put ourselves into the positions that Canadian men were in at the times when our country participated in war and see if we can't try to empathize and read exactly what it was they went through, and maybe even why they fought. Let's try to list some of the reasons people went to war for Canada. Then maybe from that list of reasons, we can decide whether we have a Canada today that properly honours their wishes and their sacrifices.
WWI
"What did that say? ONE? Oh crap! There's gonna be ANOTHER one of these?" is absolutely NOT what the soldiers thought or felt. Even if they were told at the start of 1914 that there would be two world wars, the majority of soldiers that ended up fighting in WWI for Canada would have probably welcomed the news. They were a pack of young, confident, brave, naïve, magnificent fools! The phrase, "For King and country," was enough all by itself to inspire a lot of Canadian men to enlist. At the time, 60% of Canadians were British born and still had strong ties. Canada was still just a quasi-independent dominion of the British Empire. We pretty much had to go if England instructed, though we could decide the extent of our involvement. Back then, when politicians and parliament were not so cooperative with the powers that be, William Lyon Mackenzie King repeatedly argued that parliament would decide, but he needn't have bothered. Canadians were gung ho to get into the act. So the number one reason, not necessarily the main reason, but the first on the list of why Canadian men signed up for WWI is because England did.
Considering that in 1911 there were 7.2 million people in Canada and 6.4 of them were born in Britain, (89%), Canada was rapidly changing in that area and there was little doubt that this was an unwelcome change among the citizens of Canada. Yes, Canadians were a little bit racist! By the time Canada actually went overseas in mid October of 1914, 54% of the country was British born and by the end of the war only 50% were. Canada was becoming multi-cultural and, big surprise, the majority didn't like it. The war provided many examples. There were so many people desperate to enlist, the Canadian military had the luxury of selectivity. And that meant young, fit, healthy, male, and white people only. Even people who didn't have time to brush after every meal were said to have pleaded and begged through rotting teeth to be allowed to kill some Germans, but they weren't allowed. Old men used shoe polish to blacken their grey hair. Young men, since birth certificates were uncommon, just lied about their age. There are stories of 14-year-olds fighting. Even natives, who would later prove to be valuable soldiers, were initially refused. Interestingly, 28.5% of Canada was French Canadian but very few of them volunteered because of the poor treatment they received at the training camp in Valcartier, Quebec. Most English speaking Protestants did not like French speaking Catholics. Simple as that.
Things were to change later in the war with conscription, but let's stay in 1914 awhile and really get a feel for what Canada was like and try to discover a few more reasons our boys went over to fight. "Boys" is a word I chose intentionally because in 1914 52.15%, over half the country, was under 25 and well over half of THEM were male. Some 440,000 more men than women. In a country of 7.8 million, those are some noticeable odds. Competition for women was stiff. The lure of the virulent, masculine, let's face it: chick magnet uniform and heroic, romantic sacrifice for one's country were undeniable. And what's the main reason 25-year-old men do ANYthing? Reason #2, which could even be reason #1, to get some action... wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Okay, I'm being filthy. It might be more respectfully described as, to get a girl and start a family. Remember, this was adventure! This was a chance to live something you'd only read in novels or comic books or heard on the radio. Most people didn't have TV's or go to see many movies. To be blunt again, lives in 1914 were not that exciting. The war added danger, drama, adventure, comradery, romance, yes even sadness to otherwise boring lives. What better setting for a lifelong relationship? I have to admit, I am a sucker for a war story, even a romantic one.
But, while the males weren't that much different back then, neither were the females. It took more than a uniform and heroic backstory to get the girl. If you like it then you better put a ring on it. A ring that comes with a wedding, lots of gifts, a house and a lifetime of financial stability. And folks, the war looked to be a very good way for an average Canadian guy to get enough money saved up to make a solid go of a family life. By the days of overseas training in late 1914 a buck private was making $1.10 a day. That was pretty good pay. A Leftenant, (they're called lieutenants now but weren't then), got $2.60 a day and a Colonel got $7.50. The ranks go something like Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Warrant Officer, Leftenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, General. There are sub-categories in almost all ranks. By comparison an average farm worker, (male), in 1914 made $35.55 a month compared to a private's wages of $33.oo a month. The Leftenant's wages of $78.00 a month were more than a telegraph operator's $68.64 per month. And if you were a Colonel, you made $225.oo a month. That's more than double the average railway conductor's $102.18 a month.
But these figures don't do us any good unless we know how much things cost in 1914. Here is a great graphic article of what I'm talking about. Rent was $20.15. That's the equivalent of $430.00 in 2014. And that's a HOUSE, folks! A two storey, 3 bedroom HOUSE! Utilities were another 8 or 9 bucks. You add a few loaves of bread at 6 cents each, some milk at 10 cents a quart, eggs at 34 cents a dozen, steak at 25 cents a pound, you can imagine how hard it would be to get married and raise a family even as a telegraph operator, never mind a farm worker. And with Canada's grain industry becoming the new world leader, more 25-year-olds in Canada were farm workers than telegraph operators at the time of WWI. The beautiful thing about the war for these young men was that they were given room and board for free! No rent, no utilities, no food to pay for. Even at private's wages, it didn't take a genius to see that no matter how long the war lasted, every soldier should be coming back with a sweet stash of cash! So reason number three, which was, in my opinion, most likely the main reason men rushed to sign up for the war was probably, financial gain. Of course saying, "I'm doing it for the money," or, "How can I find a girlfriend if I don't fight?" didn't have the same heroic ring as, "I answered the call for King and country," so reason number one was probably thought to be the main reason, but realistically, was it? Even people today can relate. The average wage in Canada is over $4,000.00 a month, although I've never been close to a job like that! Statistically close to half of that will be sucked up by taxes. Rent will be over a grand. Food, utilities, the people in Canada, even the ones who make 4 grand a month, are STILL in the same situation today! Imagine then how SWEET it would be to get a job for a few years that pays minimum $750 a month up to well over 2 grand and every dollar of that is take-home pay. Of course you'll spend a little on having a good time in Europe, seeing the sights, spending a night or two with a French hooker a la "Catch 22" but you would be hard pressed to find people in Canada TODAY who would turn down a similar offer. I sure as heck wouldn't!
You could probably add some fringe answers like to see the world , unhappy family life , crappy job or to defend my freedom and way of life . Probably these contributed to a lot of decisions to join the military for WWI but I don't think the main three are in very much doubt. So nobody cried when the first troops shipped off to war. It was all cheering and waving.
The war turned out to be a lot harder and longer than expected. Canadian troops distinguished themselves at battles like Ypres where they faced chemical warfare. I once smelled a container of chlorine pucks for swimming pools and for about a minute I wished I was dead. What our troops went through is hard to imagine, but try that sometime for reference. Next came the Somme. For five months allied forces were at a virtual stalemate with the Germans. Trench warfare was hellish and casualties were high. Canada lost 24,700 men and the allies lost 624,000 to the Germans' 660,000 and all for about 13 km. of penetration. This kind of pointless slaughter was not what most of the men who rushed to sign up had envisioned. Back home in Canada, the enthusiasm for volunteering diminished as news of the trench conditions and casualties spread.
Then in April of 1917 there was Vimy Ridge, a battle fought in France during which all four Canadian divisions fought together for the first time. Though we lost 3,598 men, it was an impressive victory over the Germans. There is a memorial in Vimy, France today in honour of our soldiers. Later in 1917, Passchendaele, however, was more horrific attrition like the Somme. Canada lost 15,600, British forces lost 275,000 troops and the Germans killed or wounded numbered 220,000. Within a year all the ground gained by the sacrifice of the allied forces was evacuated during a German assault anyway.
Toward the end of the war, battles were more successful. For instance the tank battle of Cambrai was only a couple of days in early October of 1918 and it was a slam dunk. It looked like the war was ending. Finally on November 11th, in a train car in Compiegne, France, an armistice was signed. Close to 66,655 Canadians were killed and almost 173,000 were wounded. All suffered physically and mentally from the war including those who had remained in Canada. However, all looked forward to prosperity in peace time. And, by God they had earned it! Unfortunately it was not easy to recover from the war.
Canada's economy had been booming for 15 years since before the turn of the century almost up until the war began. It experienced a drop in 1914 due to draught and massive railway layoffs, but most expected the good economy to continue after the war. Before the war Canada had built up a huge industrial base including iron and steel and settling the prairies, one of the foremost wheat growing regions in the world. Then during the war, Canada was depended on for food. Mostly the wheat but also beef, pork and cheese. Canada also supplied artillery rounds, shells, explosives and other metals for the war effort. Government revenues until the war had been 90% from import tariffs and excise, (sin), taxes on things like alcohol and tobacco. A lot of other countries were like that too. Not yet given opportunity to establish crippling personal taxes. But, as we all know, to help finance the war, more sin taxes were added, some company taxes called, "excess profit" taxes were introduced, and, yes, a temporary personal income tax that STILL hasn't been repealed.
The total debt from WWI was said to have reached 1.665 billion dollars by war's end. The Borden government claimed that the new taxes were not enough to cover that. They "needed" to borrow. From, guess where? New York. Previously our largest trading partner had been England. The U.S. was an unknown. That changed. Canada's exports to the U.S. contributed to the "Roaring 20's" there. A lot of people don't know this but the 20's didn't exactly roar for Canada. In the 7 years between 1913 and 1920, prices of virtually everything in Canada almost doubled. The price index for that time was 100-189. That is, if something cost 100 bucks in 1913, it was 189 in 1920. The indexes for a lot of other countries were worse. The U.S. was 202, the U.K. was 253, France was 331 and Germany was 1002. But, no matter what country you were from, they all said the inflation was a necessary effect of the war, but not a single one could prove that, including Canada. Whatever the reason chosen to raise prices, the pay the soldiers had been receiving during the war was cut in half or worse by inflation by the time they got home.
Even though this looked good for Canada, it hurt us worse than anyone but Germany. The pay the soldiers had saved created a small bump in the economy in 1920 when they had all finished sailing home, but it took several years just to get back to the way things were before the war. In 1913 Canada's level of income was 84% of the U.S. level and 90% that of the U.K. In 1925 it was back to 70% and 84% respectively. It took Canada a dozen years, till 1926, just to get back to the economy they had in 1913. Though promises of glorious return to a prosperous life in a thriving Canada had been made to the soldiers all throughout the war, those promises weren't kept.
To give you an idea of the government that had made those promises, Borden's conscription crisis should do. First of all, his promise to never enact conscription was also not kept. There had grown an opinion, particularly among the well to do British, that French Canadians, "Quebeckers," were slackers and needed to be forced to fight for their country. It became clear to Borden after visits to Europe during the mid to latter parts of the war that Canada should send more troops. But the lads in Canada were not as willing to volunteer as they had been before the war. Borden decided on conscription but in order to pass it, he had to be re-elected. So he simply gave the vote to people who would support conscription like wives and relatives of soldiers, the first women allowed the vote in Canada, and soldiers themselves, including underage and British born. Soldiers had previously been banned from voting during war time. He just changed that before the election. Just made a couple of laws. Cheated to win the election. That's all. And he didn't give the vote to people who would oppose it like immigrants from enemy nations like Germany or Austria to Canada and conscientious objectors to the war. What do you know, he won! I have said that Canadian men and women back in WWI times were a lot like they still are today. So was the government. More to follow...
The U.S. received a great deal of cash in the Treaty of Versailles from allies it had aided like France and the U.K. and, of course, from Germany, who paid the equivalent of 442 billion in today's US dollars in reparations. These were not all to the U.S., but they got a good chunk of those payments and the party was on! The war winners were buying radios, TV's, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, cars, all kinds of things, so businesses expanded, imports increased, and the stock market soared. Another thing Americans were buying was real estate. Land and homes were being purchased sometimes sight unseen! It was a frenzy to get the lives that the citizens of the world war winning country deserved.
It is unclear why things were more conservative in Canada. One theory is that the banks did not go quite as crazy with irresponsible lending as those of the U.S. Canada abandoned the gold standard, declared Dominion notes legal tender then expanded its note issuance. They made money from nothing. This is one good way to cause a stock market meltdown. All the responsibility was left to the banks to decide how much money they wanted to create out of thin air to add to their reserves. They were limited only by their lending practices. And between 1923 and 1929 bank loans in Canada increased 60% but that was hardly the frenzy that was happening in the U.S. One reason was because banks in Canada were not allowed to issue mortgages.
Regardless, both Canada and the U.S. lacked financial policies to control excess credit growth and suffered the consequences. In my research I came up with this quote: "In this context, the goal of financial stability policy would be to limit systemic risk stemming from procyclical movements in credit, leverage and asset prices, which would render the financial system, and the real economy, more vulnerable to an adverse shock." Yeah. What he said. So limit risky mortgages, lending and investments, limit inflation, limit leverage, which is spending money and making deals with money that you don't have, or you will get smoked by an adverse shock, like if people start trying to collect on that imaginary money. In short, regulate. Sound familiar? It's exactly what caused the stock market crash of 2008.
So the U.S. had the roaring 20's and Canada, after slow recovery, had a few good years being 4 times more dependant on exports, mostly to the U.S. now, but in 1929 that stock market crash happened and both countries were in dire straights.
Before we get to WWII, as promised, more dirt on the government. As long as I've lived Canada has been considered a "nice" country. It's rated every year as one of the best, happiest, least stressful countries to live. It's only because the corruption is better hidden, that's all. And people who bring questions, doubts, even hard facts about that corruption are more expertly written off as conspiracy theorists. Look, in 1918 the War Appropriation Act, for half a billion dollars, (that's 1918 dollars), was approved. Try to do some research on that. It is not easy. Yet 100 years later, we're STILL paying off the WWI debt of 1.665 billion? That's some absolutely first rate government corruption!
When I found obvious illegal immigration and hiring of foreign students in the early 2000's, who were probably paid less than Canada's legal minimum wage, I called the appropriate government agency and was called a racist, then told, "Sir, there is nothing we can do," even though investigation, fining, deportation and all of that is EXACTLY the purview of the department I'd called. One of MANY war profiteering scandals during WWI was that of the Webb/Oliver rucksacks. The proper British equipment for soldiers was the Webb rucksack. These were manufactured by Webb through the J. Wesley Allison group of Manhattan, N.Y., who bought each piece of equipment for $4.40, then sold it to the Canadian military for $5.50. When the people at Webb hadn't been paid for the initial shipment, they went to Ottawa and found out what was going on. They then reported it to the ministers of finance and justice and the Solicitor General who all said, "Sir, there is nothing we can do." White, Dougherty and Meighen were their names. They told the Webb representative to either deal directly with the government or cancel the order. The government refused absolutely to deal any way other than through Allison and his gang in New York. So the deal was cancelled. And what do you want to bet the orders, including the original, were never paid for? This gets better! The Canadian government decides to now purchase Oliver equipment. The same stuff as Webb supplied only it cost $6.75 and $7.25 a set. Nobody knows why...... In the end the Oliver rucksacks were discarded, because they were shit, and before going to war, the English government supplied Canadian soldiers with Webb rucksacks.
I found an old booklet online that was really interesting to read! It's some of the war scandals of the Borden government that were brought up in parliament. Now, admittedly the booklet was written by Sir Wilfred Laurier, Borden's opposition for PM, but this is all stuff that is in the public record. You could find it in the minutes of the House of Commons. It's not simply propaganda. There are 22 scandals that are very much like the one above. And these are only the ones we KNOW about. Or at least the ones that the Borden government was directly confronted about. One that was interesting was about horses. I never picture horses being used in WWI but they were. 8,562 of them were assembled at Valcartier for Canada's first contingent. Of those only 6700 were fit for service when they got to Europe. That's almost 1900 horses that were of such low quality, they died or were slaughtered instead of used in battle. The details of several individual deals and the "friends of the government," who were the dealers, were brought up in the House of Commons. Names and prices. Diseases and ailments. Horses that could not get up without assistance; lame horses; blind horses; horses with broken hips; knee sprung horses; spavined horses; one horse who had been purchased for, (I'm not making this up), a drake and two ducks, were all bought for, on average, $162.50 through the agency of a Mr. Dewitt Foster. He chiselled the country out of more than $302,500.00 just in useless horses. This doesn't account for horses that were below par and bought for far more than they were worth. This one gets better too! The prime minister himself admitted that this Dewitt Foster had taken, (stolen), another $72,000.00 from government funds and squandered it in the pretense of buying horses.
This was one scandal that something had to be done about, surely! But the erstwhile Mr. Dewitt Foster was not imprisoned, forced to pay back what he'd stolen or even give an account of what he'd done with the money. He was just "read out of parliament." This is like the end of messages Ethan Hunt or other spies get from the government, "If you are caught we will deny all knowledge of you and your mission." He wasn't punished for graft against his country, fraud, or treason, he was punished for being caught! And he certainly wasn't punished enough. But this was a popular pattern during the war.
Boots. What was more important in trench warfare? Manufactured in Ontario and Quebec for a few bucks, sold to Canada for 4 by "friends of the government." Heels not reinforced, cardboard substituted for leather, just ridiculously small... same sort of quality as the horses and rucksacks. Soldiers were throwing them away and tying shingles to their feet. Soldiers were catching colds, tuberculosis. A boot commission was formed, a thousand boots were inspected and found unfit, but still the Borden government, a conservative majority, forced a whitewashing report through parliament.
One more I have to put in here: it seems the secretary of Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defence, who always denied any patronage list, even when, in 1915, the Director of Contracts in the Militia Department went on record as saying, "There is a patronage list - I suppose we have 8000 names on that list," it seems this private secretary, whose name does not appear in the article, had patented a shovel design. The government purchased some $33,750.00 worth of the shovels, which were never used. There were two problems with the shovels. First, they needed to be carried on the person, and this, the soldiers had found impractical, and secondly, ahem, each one had a hole in its middle. As I said, I'm a sucker for a wartime romance! hee hee hee...
Binoculars, trucks, guns, bandages, submarines, clothing, the stories were the same. In surveys done of academics, political scientists and the like, Sir Robert Borden, ranks as Canada's 8th best prime minister. (last to be knighted). Yes, he was a gentleman. It sounds absurd after reading of the way WWI was hijacked by him and his government, but with all I have learned about Canadian politics, their actions don't seem all that extraordinary and he just may have accurately BEEN our 8th best. Laurier is on our $5 bill and Borden is on the hundred. This, in my opinion seems fitting because Canadians don't use the hundred much. Some places don't even take them. They are reserved for large purchases only, such as rent, mortgages or income tax payments.
Now think about that 1.665 billion dollar price tag for WWI and how much of it accrued through avarice, graft and corruption. And with the introduction of new taxes, few if any on the perpetrators of war profiteering, the debt was hung on the people who were ripped off by the people on the patronage list. The good people of Canada. Those folks who just wanted to make a nice life for themselves and their families. The very soldiers and families of them, whose lives were endangered by the greed of "the friends of the government." I want to close with the beginning of the little scandals booklet because it echoes so eloquently what I started this post with. "While Canada was paying the price of Empire in money and blood, the vampires were gathering on the political horizon. All too early did they get full opportunity to gorge themselves at the expense of harassed taxpayers of the Dominion while the national guardians stood idly by or even aided in the shameful situation. A riot of extravagance, graft, profiteering and political maggotry such as Canada had never seen, and, let us hope, never will see again, followed the announcement of our participation in the war... a tremendous struggle for human liberty which demanded of us as never before the exercise of those national virtues without which a country is a source of weakness rather than strength to its allies." How much more heroic NOW are those men who were not just fighting the enemy far from home, but were handicapped by war profiteers at home and the complicity of their own government! And how much MORE do we owe their memory than modern governments that do the very same thing to the good people of Canada?
I think we've answered our questions for WWI.
coming next: WWII
Monday, June 26, 2017
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
What the World Needs Now is Wisdom, Sweet Wisdom
I don't know how to start this blog entry. The way the world is today, it's easier, and makes more sense to just whinge and complain. Greed and the love of gain have free reign. Their perpetrators are no longer even trying to hide these apocalyptic horsemen because they are no longer considered wrong, evil, crass, they are considered intelligent virtues. One of the most quotable guys ever, Bertrand Russell, said, "Even the best technicians should also be good citizens; and when I say 'citizens', I mean citizens of the world and not of this or that sect or nation. With every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom becomes more necessary, for every such increase augments our capacity of realizing our purposes, and therefore augments our capacity for evil, if our purposes are unwise. The world needs wisdom as it has never needed it before; and if knowledge continues to increase, the world will need wisdom in the future even more than it does now." A great quote. A timely quote as we see our world marching technologically onward while we get dumber and dumber. Now I could go on to question here. Because I have the time. It's another 4 AM mosquito fight here so I can't get back to sleep, but don't have to work tomorrow so here I am, banging away. I, unlike most people, have the leisure, the intellect, the facilities and the desire for that wisdom Bert talked about to ask, "Who was this Bertrand Russell, and why have I read so many great quotes from him?" I've heard of him but don't know a lot about him. Or to put it another way, I'm not busy, I can Google him.
Nobel laureate, born to money, prodigious writer, math, philosophy, social critic, political activist, AH HA! and an atheist. THAT'S where I remember him from. You see it's a theory of mine, a very well researched theory, that from the mid 1800's, perhaps the early 1800's, scientists, philosophers, social developers, politicians, pretty much anyone who wanted to be taken seriously as an intellectual had to jump onto the band wagon toward secularism. I enjoy reading the well known writings of the time by people who quite obviously maintained an unstylish belief in God and were not so good at hiding it. Charles Darwin is the best example, but let's get back to Bertrand. Geez, he lived to be 97... with that name. Could a poor parent name their son Bertrand? I'm thinking... no. No they could not.
Anyway, it was the intelligent thing to be an atheist and Bert came to his decision when he was 15 after reading the autobiography of John Stuart Mill. Mill, another atheist, had a great influence on Bertrand Russell. In fact he was his godfather. Mill is another I have read of in my personal research. His "inductive reasoning" may have been where Bert found the intellectual strength to make the leap to atheism. Inductive reasoning posits that some laws can be known without empirical verification. This is the rather unscientific direction many areas of science took at the same time, I believe to their detriment, and if you ask me, inductive reasoning is identical to faith. But don't say that to a scientist or an atheist. They think it makes them sound less intelligent.
Back to our point, Mill worked for the British East India Company from 1823-1858. The corporations of today probably have shrines in CEO's offices to this company! They were wicked! Taxing any tea other than theirs that was drunk in the colonies. Boston Tea Party? That was their baby. And HUGE, or you might say, "UGE," supporters of slavery. While Mill was in their employ he defended slavery calling it "benevolent despotism," whatever he reckoned THAT meant, and referring to slaves as barbarians even suggesting that anyone who spoke of equality just hadn't the experience to know what they were talking about. But then in 1869, no longer beholden to Mammon, he wrote of the evils of slavery and how unthinkable it was that it even existed in Christian England for, "its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised: and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence." Unmitigated abhorrence... unless you were personally interested in it, like you traded slaves or owned cotton fields or maybe worked for the British East India Company. Then it wasn't abhorrent, it was benevolent despotism.
Where am I going with this? Re-read the quote. It seems to me that the one and only reason why wisdom is not keeping up with technological advancement, though the world so desperately needs it to, nay, is actually being suppressed in this day and age, is the exact same thing that casts a little bit of doubt on the quotester, Third Earl/Viscount, born of Lord and Lady Amberly in their country home known as Revenscroft, and his godfather and influence: Money. Filthy lucre. Avarice. And, in the words of Mill himself, "the love of gain." So add to the quote, "... unless you're trying to get rich." Which pretty much negates it.
See? This is what I do. I find out stuff, always negative stuff cuz that's the stuff that's harder to find out, and share it with people who are blissfully maintaining their ignorance. I don't have to say, "Hey, have you ever seen Bruce Banner wearing super stretchy, purple pants?" but I do. And this has made me less popular than I once was.
I'm going to write something that will be at least mostly positive today. A break from the usual. But, believe it or not, I was once a very positive person not very many years ago. A lot of people enjoyed my company. I actually made people happy. I've mostly forgotten how, or had that ability shitkicked out of me by life and knowledge. I guess that'd qualify as the wisdom in the above quotation. I don't know what good it does the world for ME to have it...
Nowadays I can still put on that happy face for people who don't know me. But I think sometimes it's fake. Maybe more often than not. I put on the positive face for students and even parents of students who want their kids in a positive environment. Even strangers walking down the street. I'll give them a friendly smile as though my life, (and, indeed, theirs), couldn't be significantly better. People who've never read my blog or sat down and had a heart to heart with me. It's sad but the only people I make happy, sometimes, are people who have just met me. Well aside from those who know me best, family, and a few other special friends. I think, my very best friends, and my family know me well enough to understand that even though I'm all doom and gloom here on the blog, I still maintain a spark of happiness deep, deep down and it surfaces in the company of those I love most.
That said, I wonder if people reading this blog will think I'm just a negative Nancy. I feel like I have never brought that spark to the surface in print here. I feel a lot of things. I feel like I should know what the words Beh or cofveve or small fries mean, but I don't. I'm living in a world where the only kids I have are not mine. I love kids that are not mine! Because I don't have to take them home! I have them for a short time, then they're gone. So I figure, much like the heroes of the vids I'm going to recommend here, they're not mine, I can act and maybe they won't see me at my darkest when I'm just demoralized by the crappiness of the general public. Maybe they will never see me when I want to scream at the top of my lungs to the whole world, "This is not you vs. the world, it's supposed to be you in brotherhood with the world." That, I believe, is the wisdom the quote says is needed.
I sometimes wish I could have remained in Canada, my home and native land, and imparted to them, in their own language, the wisdom, ethics and common sense that I have learned over my 50 years on the planet. It would edify and improve Canadian kids in ways that are just as necessary as the ways I am helping kids over here in Asia. Maybe a little more since they would be able to grasp the deeper cultural and heartfelt lessons taught by one from within their own culture. Just like the two videos.
What I, and all of the finer ESL teachers over here are doing is the same, only we're handicapped by cultural, regional, national and linguistic subtleties that will take half a lifetime to learn. But we still get some great "wow" moments from students and those are what keep us going. I don't think most of us are THAT different from the teacher in Japan, though, we ARE quite a bit different from the Saint in the other vid.
So, this is as close as I get to a positive blog post. What I want to show you are two vids that made me feel very good. They should make everybody feel very good. They are absolute paint by number instructions in the wisdom I, and Bertrand Russell, feel the world needs. And I still maintain a spark of hope that someday, before we wipe each other out with greed, we just might acknowledge, honour and practice this wisdom over the "intelligent virtue" of avarice.
Watch "Tashi and the Monk," and "Children Full of Life," two documentaries you can find on this site.
Nobel laureate, born to money, prodigious writer, math, philosophy, social critic, political activist, AH HA! and an atheist. THAT'S where I remember him from. You see it's a theory of mine, a very well researched theory, that from the mid 1800's, perhaps the early 1800's, scientists, philosophers, social developers, politicians, pretty much anyone who wanted to be taken seriously as an intellectual had to jump onto the band wagon toward secularism. I enjoy reading the well known writings of the time by people who quite obviously maintained an unstylish belief in God and were not so good at hiding it. Charles Darwin is the best example, but let's get back to Bertrand. Geez, he lived to be 97... with that name. Could a poor parent name their son Bertrand? I'm thinking... no. No they could not.
Anyway, it was the intelligent thing to be an atheist and Bert came to his decision when he was 15 after reading the autobiography of John Stuart Mill. Mill, another atheist, had a great influence on Bertrand Russell. In fact he was his godfather. Mill is another I have read of in my personal research. His "inductive reasoning" may have been where Bert found the intellectual strength to make the leap to atheism. Inductive reasoning posits that some laws can be known without empirical verification. This is the rather unscientific direction many areas of science took at the same time, I believe to their detriment, and if you ask me, inductive reasoning is identical to faith. But don't say that to a scientist or an atheist. They think it makes them sound less intelligent.
Back to our point, Mill worked for the British East India Company from 1823-1858. The corporations of today probably have shrines in CEO's offices to this company! They were wicked! Taxing any tea other than theirs that was drunk in the colonies. Boston Tea Party? That was their baby. And HUGE, or you might say, "UGE," supporters of slavery. While Mill was in their employ he defended slavery calling it "benevolent despotism," whatever he reckoned THAT meant, and referring to slaves as barbarians even suggesting that anyone who spoke of equality just hadn't the experience to know what they were talking about. But then in 1869, no longer beholden to Mammon, he wrote of the evils of slavery and how unthinkable it was that it even existed in Christian England for, "its motive was the love of gain, unmixed and undisguised: and those who profited by it were a very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was unmitigated abhorrence." Unmitigated abhorrence... unless you were personally interested in it, like you traded slaves or owned cotton fields or maybe worked for the British East India Company. Then it wasn't abhorrent, it was benevolent despotism.
Where am I going with this? Re-read the quote. It seems to me that the one and only reason why wisdom is not keeping up with technological advancement, though the world so desperately needs it to, nay, is actually being suppressed in this day and age, is the exact same thing that casts a little bit of doubt on the quotester, Third Earl/Viscount, born of Lord and Lady Amberly in their country home known as Revenscroft, and his godfather and influence: Money. Filthy lucre. Avarice. And, in the words of Mill himself, "the love of gain." So add to the quote, "... unless you're trying to get rich." Which pretty much negates it.
See? This is what I do. I find out stuff, always negative stuff cuz that's the stuff that's harder to find out, and share it with people who are blissfully maintaining their ignorance. I don't have to say, "Hey, have you ever seen Bruce Banner wearing super stretchy, purple pants?" but I do. And this has made me less popular than I once was.
I'm going to write something that will be at least mostly positive today. A break from the usual. But, believe it or not, I was once a very positive person not very many years ago. A lot of people enjoyed my company. I actually made people happy. I've mostly forgotten how, or had that ability shitkicked out of me by life and knowledge. I guess that'd qualify as the wisdom in the above quotation. I don't know what good it does the world for ME to have it...
Nowadays I can still put on that happy face for people who don't know me. But I think sometimes it's fake. Maybe more often than not. I put on the positive face for students and even parents of students who want their kids in a positive environment. Even strangers walking down the street. I'll give them a friendly smile as though my life, (and, indeed, theirs), couldn't be significantly better. People who've never read my blog or sat down and had a heart to heart with me. It's sad but the only people I make happy, sometimes, are people who have just met me. Well aside from those who know me best, family, and a few other special friends. I think, my very best friends, and my family know me well enough to understand that even though I'm all doom and gloom here on the blog, I still maintain a spark of happiness deep, deep down and it surfaces in the company of those I love most.
That said, I wonder if people reading this blog will think I'm just a negative Nancy. I feel like I have never brought that spark to the surface in print here. I feel a lot of things. I feel like I should know what the words Beh or cofveve or small fries mean, but I don't. I'm living in a world where the only kids I have are not mine. I love kids that are not mine! Because I don't have to take them home! I have them for a short time, then they're gone. So I figure, much like the heroes of the vids I'm going to recommend here, they're not mine, I can act and maybe they won't see me at my darkest when I'm just demoralized by the crappiness of the general public. Maybe they will never see me when I want to scream at the top of my lungs to the whole world, "This is not you vs. the world, it's supposed to be you in brotherhood with the world." That, I believe, is the wisdom the quote says is needed.
I sometimes wish I could have remained in Canada, my home and native land, and imparted to them, in their own language, the wisdom, ethics and common sense that I have learned over my 50 years on the planet. It would edify and improve Canadian kids in ways that are just as necessary as the ways I am helping kids over here in Asia. Maybe a little more since they would be able to grasp the deeper cultural and heartfelt lessons taught by one from within their own culture. Just like the two videos.
What I, and all of the finer ESL teachers over here are doing is the same, only we're handicapped by cultural, regional, national and linguistic subtleties that will take half a lifetime to learn. But we still get some great "wow" moments from students and those are what keep us going. I don't think most of us are THAT different from the teacher in Japan, though, we ARE quite a bit different from the Saint in the other vid.
So, this is as close as I get to a positive blog post. What I want to show you are two vids that made me feel very good. They should make everybody feel very good. They are absolute paint by number instructions in the wisdom I, and Bertrand Russell, feel the world needs. And I still maintain a spark of hope that someday, before we wipe each other out with greed, we just might acknowledge, honour and practice this wisdom over the "intelligent virtue" of avarice.
Watch "Tashi and the Monk," and "Children Full of Life," two documentaries you can find on this site.
Monday, June 19, 2017
Hong Kong Chinese Visa Run
What you need, what you really really need:
I just got back from my Z visa run to Hong Kong. I had heard that they refuse people a lot, sometimes many times, so I did all the prep work I could. That was mostly wasted energy. SO what I want to do here is post something that will be helpful to people who have to do this daunting task. I found almost nothing online that helped much. I hope people can find this.
There just wasn't any consistency to the reports I had heard from friends, co-workers, literature, and websites, including the website of the Chinese Embassy in Hong Kong. I was told I needed many things. I am not saying it's going to be the same for everyone. It may differ from country to country, person to person or even embassy worker to embassy worker. Here's a list of what I needed:
1. Original letter of invitation by the employer confirmed and stamped at the office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in your city or the nearest city to your workplace.
2. Original Foreigners Employment Permit issued by the Chinese government authorities for Human Resources and Social Security.
3. One photo. The usual passport kind.
4. One application form filled out to the best of my abilities.
5. Photocopies of passport photo page, visa page, (if you have a current visa), and the little paper they put into your passport at Hong Kong Airport immigration.
6. Original passport(s), visa and that little paper.
7. $930 Hong Kong dollars. This was with the 300 extra for express service. Then it's finished next day. Otherwise it would have been $630 and it would have taken 4 days.
I am from Canada, and this was for my Z visa to work in China. I don't know if those make any difference, but the list of prices on the HK Chinese Embassy was totally wrong and they had express taking two days and rush taking one day but being more expensive. That too is wrong. Even the screen at the embassy with the price list on it didn't have any listing for the Z visa. They could have charged me whatever they felt like. And keep reading, you'll probably get the idea, like me, that anything can change before you even finish reading this. This is only a guideline for people who need to do this daunting task. I just want to help a little. Don't expect everything to be exactly the same for you.
Here's a list of the wrong things I heard from someplace or another.
1. You may use photocopies of the Employment Permit and Letter of Invitation as long as they're in colour. Not true. They needed the originals. In the attached list of what to bring, the one they gave me, it says you need photocopies as well. I didn't. I just handed the teller the originals. If they ask you to photocopy them, there is a machine there. It costs 2 bucks a copy but doesn't take the 2-dollar coins. Only one dollar coins. And the place where you are supposed to get change was occupied by a guy who really doesn't want to give change. He usually hides out of sight.
*My advice: Photocopy everything before you go.
2. You need special digital passport photos. I STILL have no idea what that means. I gave them a photo that had a back that peeled off so you could stick it on a application. No problems. People will tell you all kinds of things like it needs to be signed or stamped by the photographer, you need a red background, etc. Just get a normal passport photo with the normal rules. No smile, no glasses etc. If you don't have that, there's a photo booth near the photocopier. I didn't check how much it cost for photos.
*My advice: Bring lots. I had five photos, two from one passport photo session and three from a supposed "digital" photo session. They took the former. Just one.
3. You need the business licence of your employer. You need a signed contract from your employer. Even on the list they GAVE ME AT THE EMBASSY there are 4 things I didn't need and 8 if you count the photocopies. The foreign expert thing is now changed to a letter of invitation. Numbers 3, 4 and 5, especially 5, I have no idea what they even ARE, but I didn't have or need them. A letter from an offshore petroleum corporation?
*My advice: It doesn't hurt to have a contract. And, you know what, let your employer feel some of the pain, get them to give you the contract and business licences just in case. You never know, they could ask for them. I, however, didn't need them. There are only two important dox you need: the invitation letter and the foreign employment permit.
4. I was told to download the application from the website and fill it out in either Chinese or English IN TYPING. This was written on the website! Of course the document was in a form that made editing difficult, but I managed to get it done. It took some trial and error using different readers to open the document, but I proudly produced it when I got to the embassy and one of the two helpers there said, "No, that's the old one. Here, fill out THIS!" The new one is far more complicated and ambiguously worded. If you ask me, the one of the website is better. For example there is a question something like, "Where does the applicant reside at the time of the filing of this application?" I asked a Russian couple who were also pulling their hair out over this thing and they didn't know either. Permanent address, home address or where you're staying in HK? We both just put Hong Kong. It probably wasn't what they wanted but I don't think it was all that important. There was another space about dates of your intended visa or something like that. The one helper told me to list the dates, (and I had to fudge my address too, which was a hostel in Beijing and I forget the address), and address of my business visa. When I handed the thing in, the OTHER guy took it and told me I had to list dates and address where I'm going to live and work when I get the NEW visa. They even have a place on the form where you are supposed to list your family members. There is also no provision for a work visa on the app. so I had to choose between a single entry 3 month visa, a multiple entry 6 month, or multiple entry one year, none of which were relevant to my application. I checked 6 month multiple, which, on the price list should have been 500 plus 200 or 300 express or rush. But I got a bill of $930. Imagine my surprise!
*My advice: Bring addresses and names of employers and everybody you know and everywhere you've worked and/or lived, EVER, in English and Chinese just in case. Filling out this application is BY FAR the hardest part. But the two helpers were pretty good and their English was pretty good. Also, bring at least $1000 bucks HK.
5. I was told I'd need the paper from airport immigration or they'd send me home. I copied it with my passport and visa at the embassy on the 2-dollar copier. They just kept the photocopy and stapled the original into my passport, so I still have it. They DO take your passport(s) for however long it takes them.
*My advice: If you are at a good hotel, copy there. The line-up for the copier at the embassy can be pretty long and competitive.
6. People told me you can get refused to any little thing. One guy told me that he had made it through the application process when his friend got refused for some reason. Then HE was refused by association! I didn't see any of that. The two guys who give out the numbers for the tellers are the ones who told us what to change or write or re-do. Most people go to them a few times before they get their numbers for the tellers, but once that happens, you have a pretty short wait. I'd say I waited 15 minutes. Then the teller asked me for the dox, I gave them, I wrote that I will be cancelling my business visa, signed something and that was that. I got the receipt and she said to bring that at 10 AM next day and I'd get my passports back with the new visa inside.
*My advice: They aren't actually the sticklers I'd heard they were. The applications they get are all full of mistakes. They don't need you to be 100% accurate. Just try your best and they'll get you through it. It's tough, but don't get angry with all the craziness. The workers BOTH admitted to me that their system and their website seriously needs to be updated. Imagine how crappy their jobs must be!
7. I was told to go on Sunday, apply Monday and HOPE it would get finished by Friday. They actually don't like when you apply on Monday. Tuesday or Wednesday are better. Check the hours on the website. I think THEY are correct. Apply at 9 AM, pick up next day at 10 AM. Pay for the express. It's cheaper than two more unnecessary days in Hong Kong. MUCH cheaper.
*My advice: Get out of there with as much of your faculties remaining intact as possible and have lunch at Churchill Pub. They have great fish and chips.
Here are the things the embassy officially requires. It was totally wrong for me, but if you're interested...
To Hong Kong by plane.
I'm making this for the purposes of some new teachers who will need to do this soon from Taiyuan, so you might want to skip ahead if you're not living in Taiyuan.
There are direct flights from Taiyuan to Hong Kong. There's one a day and it's not ridiculously early. Arrange a taxi for 6:00 or 6:30 and you'll be fine. From Number 5 School to the airport at that time it will only take about 15 minutes. You might have luck flagging one down at that time but it's safer to arrange it in advance. (Or in my case, I had a Chinese speaker to it for me.)
Terminal 2 booths 32-34 is where you'll check in. They don't even open until 6:30 and if you are checking baggage, they'll do that closer to 7:30. Don't bother with the self check-in machines, they don't work. If you want to do something while you wait to check in, there is one bank machine hidden over by the toilets on the back side of the island opposite counters 32-34. You can get Chinese money but not HK. There are good cash exchange places as soon as you get there. You can't miss them.
**Do NOT go to the café across from the toilets and the bank machine. They charged me 83 RMB for a coffee my first time in Taiyuan. That's $15 Canadian! Go to KFC. It's a little walk but the coffee tastes better and it's WAY cheaper. You can get a whole breakfast for 38 RMB.
To Hong Kong via Beijing by Train.
This is going to be more of a challenge than the direct flight. But you can save a few bucks.
First you need a train ticket from Taiyuan to Beijing. You can get one at the ticket office near the crazy 7-way intersection. It's easy to find after you've been there once. The ticket will be 105 RMB and you will need to show your passport. The trip is about 3 hours from Taiyuan train station to West Beijing Railway Station. To get to Taiyuan's train station, catch a cab at the crazy intersection and give yourself at least half an hour for the trip there. Taiyuan train station is easy to navigate. You will go through security, (you need your passport again), then go up to the 2nd floor. Find your train on any of the big boards and wait till it boards.
When you get to Beijing, you can catch a shuttle bus to the airport outside the South entrance near the road. There is a booth there where you pay. I think it cost me 60 RMB last time. This is going to take 2 hours or more so be sure you have a late enough flight. Beijing traffic is unpredictable.
Taking the subway is more predictable, but it's not nice if you are taking lots of luggage. It can be done in just over an hour if you're lucky. You can get a Beijing subway card at the glass booth in any station. You will use it again when you return, or if you want to visit Beijing again. Take line 9 toward the Military Museum and National Library. Get out three stops later at the stop before the library, Baishiqiao South. Transfer there to line 6 and go two stops to Chegongzuaang station. Transfer there to line 2 toward Jishuitan. Go six stops and get out at Dongzhimen station. From there you will see pink signs for the Airport Express. Follow them and buy a ticket. It's 25 RMB and takes about 30 minutes. Very dependable and cheap.
Your flight arrives safely in Hong Kong.
After going through customs and immigration, (and getting your little piece of paper), collect your luggage if you need to and follow the people out. You will arrive at the money changing area. They have good rates and they also sell train tickets to the city. Their line-ups are shorter so you might want to buy a ticket to Hong Kong Station from here. They are $100 HK. You will see, pretty much right in the center of the station, people buying their tickets and going to the waiting area. For the trains. There will be a red number telling you how long you need to wait till the next train shows up. They take 24 minutes.
Sorry about my pics. I have a crappy camera. Anyway, this is what you should look for. See the red number? I had 6 minutes to wait. Not bad. And comfortable seats too. You can even charge your phone!
When you get to the last stop, (Hong Kong), get out and follow the signs for free hotel shuttle buses to the left. The buses go to lots of hotels. Most, in my opinion, are a bit pricey. But have I got a deal for you! I stayed at the Homy Inn North Point. The thing about these free shuttles is you can take them if you are not staying in the hotels where they stop. The lady at the money changing place told me what bus to take and where to get off. You might even ask the driver of the bus. Here are the routes they take.
For Homy Inn you take the H4 bus from here
and get out at the Ibis North Point. They will let you out across the street from the hotel. That is Java Road. Go up a bit to the intersection, cross Java and keep going the way you are going. You will come to Marble Road. Cross that and the next street you come to will be King's Road. Don't cross it, but turn right. On your way, you will go past some stores, supermarkets, fast food restaurants, money changers, bank machines, drug stores, a theatre and, on your left, across the street you will see 
This is North Point Station Exit B1. It comes out on King's Road a few minutes walk from the Homy Inn. MTR is the way to go in HK. In fact, you can't take a taxi from North Point to Wan Chai, where the Chinese Embassy is, it's too close. You would have to walk, or take the subway to Kowloon to catch a taxi to Wan Chai. But don't worry, the subway is dead easy. Very well organized and plenty of signs so even a beginner won't get too lost.
You can start looking for the big green Homy Inn sign on the side of the building several stories up. It's actually easier to see from the other side of the street. The problem will be finding the door. It's easy to walk past even if you know where it is. There are usually people blocking it because there are bus stops just outside. So you need to look for the street level sign for the Sun Chiu Kee restaurant. This is right next door to the Homey. Reasonable prices and everything I tried there was great! I had spare rib with vegetable fried rice, (103 I think), chicken fried rice and chicken chow mien. All of them made me long for the Chinese food outside of China. lol Here is their card, your Hong Kong transit card and a map, which isn't very helpful, to the Homy Inn.
Another good landmark is Jen's bank, which is directly opposite the door. It's a barred door that kind of looks like a prison door. You go up a flight of stairs to the elevators. Use the one on the left. Don't mistake this for reception. I waited a while there for somebody but nobody came. Inside you will see the 2nd floor marked as reception. Even though it's sort of the third floor. I got my own room with air conditioning and a bathroom with shower for 140 Hong Kong dollars. That's roughly 35 bucks a night. It was well worth it! Especially when you start pricing hotels in the Wan Chai area or even farther away in Kowloon. It's clean, the people are helpful and nice and it's in a great location. The one quirk that they really should change is the bathroom doors. I actually saw some of them being thrown into the back of a truck so this problem might be solved soon. They look like glass closet doors. The sort of sliding, folding type. And they leave VERY little room to squeeze through. Other than that, though, I couldn't find a better place for the money.
Time to go to the Embassy.
Go out the door and turn left. Walk a few blocks to that B1 exit that leads from King's Road down into the subway. And it's WAAY down into the sub-subway. Follow the signs for Kenendy Town, not Chai Wan. Even though it sounds like Wan Chai, which is where we're going, it's not where we want to go. We want Kennedy Town for some reason. Get on the subway and you will be a quick 4 stops from Wan Chai Station. Again, I'm sorry about the photography but I work with what I have.
If you look really closely you can see North Point and Wan Chai. The "You are here" sign is over Wan Chai. I think the stops are Fortress Hill, Some other stop, Causeway Bay, then Wan Chai. Get out and go to exit A5 where we will begin an interesting walk around the second story walkways of Wan Chai.
This is your exit. It takes some time to get back up to ground level but if you go out the right exit you will be in an open air covered walkway. You stay on it for a while until you get to Immigration Tower and see this:
Turn right. Then you walk a little ways till you see this:
then this:
You want to go toward the ferry pier. Soon you will see this:
I think that says Exhibition Center. Go toward that. But when you get here, where you turn left for the Exhibition Center, don't turn left, turn right.
Then you come to this place where it says Ferry Pier. Go through this door.
If you turn left after this little tunnel, you come to here where you have the port view on your left and a coffee shop on your right.
If you turn right, you'll miss the view but you will get to this sign which has our goal building on it. (finally!)
Look to your right and you will see this building.
That's it! So you turn right, then right again through the sign that's impossible to read until you're right under it and now you're in the right building. You'll see a liquor store on your left. Might be handy on a day like today. Ignore anything you may have read, like the address posted on their website, that says they're on the 7th floor or you may get caught in the elevator trap. Go back down to GROUND LEVEL and you will see little signs pointing toward the embassy that say "visas this way" or something like that. Good luck!
After getting your visa applied for, (hopefully), just follow those pics in reverse till you come to A5 exit, go down and take the blue subway line back to North Point, follow the signs to Kennedy Town again and finally you are here:
You should be able to find your way back Homy from here. Tomorrow, this will be a whole lot easier. I hope you don't have to do it in a tropical storm like I did.
Farewell to Hong Kong.
When you've successfully gotten your visa permission in your passport, getting to the airport couldn't be any easier. Just go back to the Ibis Hotel. Remember where the H4 bus dropped you off? That's where you can catch it again. Free!
That takes you to Hong Kong Station. You need to go to a counter and pay. You can use your transit card if it still has 100 HK bucks or more on it. Or you can just pay in cash. Then go down the elevator to the train and you are back in the airport.
I hope this helps make the visa run a little less of an ordeal for you. I would recommend Kowloon Park and Victoria park for quiet walks. I liked Lockhart Street, (below the Wan Chai walkway), for pubs. Churchill's has good fish and chips. Everything is expensive but try to hit it at happy hour around 4. That'll save you some dough.
Good luck, folks!
P.S. Here's a map I got, guess where, which actually has the star in the wrong building. The embassy is not in the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre. I looked! It's in the China Resources Building. See the one to the right?
I just got back from my Z visa run to Hong Kong. I had heard that they refuse people a lot, sometimes many times, so I did all the prep work I could. That was mostly wasted energy. SO what I want to do here is post something that will be helpful to people who have to do this daunting task. I found almost nothing online that helped much. I hope people can find this.
There just wasn't any consistency to the reports I had heard from friends, co-workers, literature, and websites, including the website of the Chinese Embassy in Hong Kong. I was told I needed many things. I am not saying it's going to be the same for everyone. It may differ from country to country, person to person or even embassy worker to embassy worker. Here's a list of what I needed:
1. Original letter of invitation by the employer confirmed and stamped at the office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in your city or the nearest city to your workplace.
2. Original Foreigners Employment Permit issued by the Chinese government authorities for Human Resources and Social Security.
3. One photo. The usual passport kind.
4. One application form filled out to the best of my abilities.
5. Photocopies of passport photo page, visa page, (if you have a current visa), and the little paper they put into your passport at Hong Kong Airport immigration.
6. Original passport(s), visa and that little paper.
7. $930 Hong Kong dollars. This was with the 300 extra for express service. Then it's finished next day. Otherwise it would have been $630 and it would have taken 4 days.
I am from Canada, and this was for my Z visa to work in China. I don't know if those make any difference, but the list of prices on the HK Chinese Embassy was totally wrong and they had express taking two days and rush taking one day but being more expensive. That too is wrong. Even the screen at the embassy with the price list on it didn't have any listing for the Z visa. They could have charged me whatever they felt like. And keep reading, you'll probably get the idea, like me, that anything can change before you even finish reading this. This is only a guideline for people who need to do this daunting task. I just want to help a little. Don't expect everything to be exactly the same for you.
Here's a list of the wrong things I heard from someplace or another.
1. You may use photocopies of the Employment Permit and Letter of Invitation as long as they're in colour. Not true. They needed the originals. In the attached list of what to bring, the one they gave me, it says you need photocopies as well. I didn't. I just handed the teller the originals. If they ask you to photocopy them, there is a machine there. It costs 2 bucks a copy but doesn't take the 2-dollar coins. Only one dollar coins. And the place where you are supposed to get change was occupied by a guy who really doesn't want to give change. He usually hides out of sight.
*My advice: Photocopy everything before you go.
2. You need special digital passport photos. I STILL have no idea what that means. I gave them a photo that had a back that peeled off so you could stick it on a application. No problems. People will tell you all kinds of things like it needs to be signed or stamped by the photographer, you need a red background, etc. Just get a normal passport photo with the normal rules. No smile, no glasses etc. If you don't have that, there's a photo booth near the photocopier. I didn't check how much it cost for photos.
*My advice: Bring lots. I had five photos, two from one passport photo session and three from a supposed "digital" photo session. They took the former. Just one.
3. You need the business licence of your employer. You need a signed contract from your employer. Even on the list they GAVE ME AT THE EMBASSY there are 4 things I didn't need and 8 if you count the photocopies. The foreign expert thing is now changed to a letter of invitation. Numbers 3, 4 and 5, especially 5, I have no idea what they even ARE, but I didn't have or need them. A letter from an offshore petroleum corporation?
*My advice: It doesn't hurt to have a contract. And, you know what, let your employer feel some of the pain, get them to give you the contract and business licences just in case. You never know, they could ask for them. I, however, didn't need them. There are only two important dox you need: the invitation letter and the foreign employment permit.
4. I was told to download the application from the website and fill it out in either Chinese or English IN TYPING. This was written on the website! Of course the document was in a form that made editing difficult, but I managed to get it done. It took some trial and error using different readers to open the document, but I proudly produced it when I got to the embassy and one of the two helpers there said, "No, that's the old one. Here, fill out THIS!" The new one is far more complicated and ambiguously worded. If you ask me, the one of the website is better. For example there is a question something like, "Where does the applicant reside at the time of the filing of this application?" I asked a Russian couple who were also pulling their hair out over this thing and they didn't know either. Permanent address, home address or where you're staying in HK? We both just put Hong Kong. It probably wasn't what they wanted but I don't think it was all that important. There was another space about dates of your intended visa or something like that. The one helper told me to list the dates, (and I had to fudge my address too, which was a hostel in Beijing and I forget the address), and address of my business visa. When I handed the thing in, the OTHER guy took it and told me I had to list dates and address where I'm going to live and work when I get the NEW visa. They even have a place on the form where you are supposed to list your family members. There is also no provision for a work visa on the app. so I had to choose between a single entry 3 month visa, a multiple entry 6 month, or multiple entry one year, none of which were relevant to my application. I checked 6 month multiple, which, on the price list should have been 500 plus 200 or 300 express or rush. But I got a bill of $930. Imagine my surprise!
*My advice: Bring addresses and names of employers and everybody you know and everywhere you've worked and/or lived, EVER, in English and Chinese just in case. Filling out this application is BY FAR the hardest part. But the two helpers were pretty good and their English was pretty good. Also, bring at least $1000 bucks HK.
5. I was told I'd need the paper from airport immigration or they'd send me home. I copied it with my passport and visa at the embassy on the 2-dollar copier. They just kept the photocopy and stapled the original into my passport, so I still have it. They DO take your passport(s) for however long it takes them.
*My advice: If you are at a good hotel, copy there. The line-up for the copier at the embassy can be pretty long and competitive.
6. People told me you can get refused to any little thing. One guy told me that he had made it through the application process when his friend got refused for some reason. Then HE was refused by association! I didn't see any of that. The two guys who give out the numbers for the tellers are the ones who told us what to change or write or re-do. Most people go to them a few times before they get their numbers for the tellers, but once that happens, you have a pretty short wait. I'd say I waited 15 minutes. Then the teller asked me for the dox, I gave them, I wrote that I will be cancelling my business visa, signed something and that was that. I got the receipt and she said to bring that at 10 AM next day and I'd get my passports back with the new visa inside.
*My advice: They aren't actually the sticklers I'd heard they were. The applications they get are all full of mistakes. They don't need you to be 100% accurate. Just try your best and they'll get you through it. It's tough, but don't get angry with all the craziness. The workers BOTH admitted to me that their system and their website seriously needs to be updated. Imagine how crappy their jobs must be!
7. I was told to go on Sunday, apply Monday and HOPE it would get finished by Friday. They actually don't like when you apply on Monday. Tuesday or Wednesday are better. Check the hours on the website. I think THEY are correct. Apply at 9 AM, pick up next day at 10 AM. Pay for the express. It's cheaper than two more unnecessary days in Hong Kong. MUCH cheaper.
*My advice: Get out of there with as much of your faculties remaining intact as possible and have lunch at Churchill Pub. They have great fish and chips.
Here are the things the embassy officially requires. It was totally wrong for me, but if you're interested...
To Hong Kong by plane.
I'm making this for the purposes of some new teachers who will need to do this soon from Taiyuan, so you might want to skip ahead if you're not living in Taiyuan.
There are direct flights from Taiyuan to Hong Kong. There's one a day and it's not ridiculously early. Arrange a taxi for 6:00 or 6:30 and you'll be fine. From Number 5 School to the airport at that time it will only take about 15 minutes. You might have luck flagging one down at that time but it's safer to arrange it in advance. (Or in my case, I had a Chinese speaker to it for me.)
Terminal 2 booths 32-34 is where you'll check in. They don't even open until 6:30 and if you are checking baggage, they'll do that closer to 7:30. Don't bother with the self check-in machines, they don't work. If you want to do something while you wait to check in, there is one bank machine hidden over by the toilets on the back side of the island opposite counters 32-34. You can get Chinese money but not HK. There are good cash exchange places as soon as you get there. You can't miss them.
**Do NOT go to the café across from the toilets and the bank machine. They charged me 83 RMB for a coffee my first time in Taiyuan. That's $15 Canadian! Go to KFC. It's a little walk but the coffee tastes better and it's WAY cheaper. You can get a whole breakfast for 38 RMB.
To Hong Kong via Beijing by Train.
This is going to be more of a challenge than the direct flight. But you can save a few bucks.
First you need a train ticket from Taiyuan to Beijing. You can get one at the ticket office near the crazy 7-way intersection. It's easy to find after you've been there once. The ticket will be 105 RMB and you will need to show your passport. The trip is about 3 hours from Taiyuan train station to West Beijing Railway Station. To get to Taiyuan's train station, catch a cab at the crazy intersection and give yourself at least half an hour for the trip there. Taiyuan train station is easy to navigate. You will go through security, (you need your passport again), then go up to the 2nd floor. Find your train on any of the big boards and wait till it boards.
When you get to Beijing, you can catch a shuttle bus to the airport outside the South entrance near the road. There is a booth there where you pay. I think it cost me 60 RMB last time. This is going to take 2 hours or more so be sure you have a late enough flight. Beijing traffic is unpredictable.
Taking the subway is more predictable, but it's not nice if you are taking lots of luggage. It can be done in just over an hour if you're lucky. You can get a Beijing subway card at the glass booth in any station. You will use it again when you return, or if you want to visit Beijing again. Take line 9 toward the Military Museum and National Library. Get out three stops later at the stop before the library, Baishiqiao South. Transfer there to line 6 and go two stops to Chegongzuaang station. Transfer there to line 2 toward Jishuitan. Go six stops and get out at Dongzhimen station. From there you will see pink signs for the Airport Express. Follow them and buy a ticket. It's 25 RMB and takes about 30 minutes. Very dependable and cheap.
Your flight arrives safely in Hong Kong.
After going through customs and immigration, (and getting your little piece of paper), collect your luggage if you need to and follow the people out. You will arrive at the money changing area. They have good rates and they also sell train tickets to the city. Their line-ups are shorter so you might want to buy a ticket to Hong Kong Station from here. They are $100 HK. You will see, pretty much right in the center of the station, people buying their tickets and going to the waiting area. For the trains. There will be a red number telling you how long you need to wait till the next train shows up. They take 24 minutes.
When you get to the last stop, (Hong Kong), get out and follow the signs for free hotel shuttle buses to the left. The buses go to lots of hotels. Most, in my opinion, are a bit pricey. But have I got a deal for you! I stayed at the Homy Inn North Point. The thing about these free shuttles is you can take them if you are not staying in the hotels where they stop. The lady at the money changing place told me what bus to take and where to get off. You might even ask the driver of the bus. Here are the routes they take.
For Homy Inn you take the H4 bus from here
You can start looking for the big green Homy Inn sign on the side of the building several stories up. It's actually easier to see from the other side of the street. The problem will be finding the door. It's easy to walk past even if you know where it is. There are usually people blocking it because there are bus stops just outside. So you need to look for the street level sign for the Sun Chiu Kee restaurant. This is right next door to the Homey. Reasonable prices and everything I tried there was great! I had spare rib with vegetable fried rice, (103 I think), chicken fried rice and chicken chow mien. All of them made me long for the Chinese food outside of China. lol Here is their card, your Hong Kong transit card and a map, which isn't very helpful, to the Homy Inn.
Another good landmark is Jen's bank, which is directly opposite the door. It's a barred door that kind of looks like a prison door. You go up a flight of stairs to the elevators. Use the one on the left. Don't mistake this for reception. I waited a while there for somebody but nobody came. Inside you will see the 2nd floor marked as reception. Even though it's sort of the third floor. I got my own room with air conditioning and a bathroom with shower for 140 Hong Kong dollars. That's roughly 35 bucks a night. It was well worth it! Especially when you start pricing hotels in the Wan Chai area or even farther away in Kowloon. It's clean, the people are helpful and nice and it's in a great location. The one quirk that they really should change is the bathroom doors. I actually saw some of them being thrown into the back of a truck so this problem might be solved soon. They look like glass closet doors. The sort of sliding, folding type. And they leave VERY little room to squeeze through. Other than that, though, I couldn't find a better place for the money.
Time to go to the Embassy.
Go out the door and turn left. Walk a few blocks to that B1 exit that leads from King's Road down into the subway. And it's WAAY down into the sub-subway. Follow the signs for Kenendy Town, not Chai Wan. Even though it sounds like Wan Chai, which is where we're going, it's not where we want to go. We want Kennedy Town for some reason. Get on the subway and you will be a quick 4 stops from Wan Chai Station. Again, I'm sorry about the photography but I work with what I have.
If you look really closely you can see North Point and Wan Chai. The "You are here" sign is over Wan Chai. I think the stops are Fortress Hill, Some other stop, Causeway Bay, then Wan Chai. Get out and go to exit A5 where we will begin an interesting walk around the second story walkways of Wan Chai.
This is your exit. It takes some time to get back up to ground level but if you go out the right exit you will be in an open air covered walkway. You stay on it for a while until you get to Immigration Tower and see this:
Turn right. Then you walk a little ways till you see this:
then this:
You want to go toward the ferry pier. Soon you will see this:
I think that says Exhibition Center. Go toward that. But when you get here, where you turn left for the Exhibition Center, don't turn left, turn right.
Then you come to this place where it says Ferry Pier. Go through this door.
If you turn left after this little tunnel, you come to here where you have the port view on your left and a coffee shop on your right.
If you turn right, you'll miss the view but you will get to this sign which has our goal building on it. (finally!)
Look to your right and you will see this building.
That's it! So you turn right, then right again through the sign that's impossible to read until you're right under it and now you're in the right building. You'll see a liquor store on your left. Might be handy on a day like today. Ignore anything you may have read, like the address posted on their website, that says they're on the 7th floor or you may get caught in the elevator trap. Go back down to GROUND LEVEL and you will see little signs pointing toward the embassy that say "visas this way" or something like that. Good luck!
After getting your visa applied for, (hopefully), just follow those pics in reverse till you come to A5 exit, go down and take the blue subway line back to North Point, follow the signs to Kennedy Town again and finally you are here:
You should be able to find your way back Homy from here. Tomorrow, this will be a whole lot easier. I hope you don't have to do it in a tropical storm like I did.
Farewell to Hong Kong.
When you've successfully gotten your visa permission in your passport, getting to the airport couldn't be any easier. Just go back to the Ibis Hotel. Remember where the H4 bus dropped you off? That's where you can catch it again. Free!
That takes you to Hong Kong Station. You need to go to a counter and pay. You can use your transit card if it still has 100 HK bucks or more on it. Or you can just pay in cash. Then go down the elevator to the train and you are back in the airport.
I hope this helps make the visa run a little less of an ordeal for you. I would recommend Kowloon Park and Victoria park for quiet walks. I liked Lockhart Street, (below the Wan Chai walkway), for pubs. Churchill's has good fish and chips. Everything is expensive but try to hit it at happy hour around 4. That'll save you some dough.
Good luck, folks!
P.S. Here's a map I got, guess where, which actually has the star in the wrong building. The embassy is not in the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre. I looked! It's in the China Resources Building. See the one to the right?
Thursday, June 1, 2017
$15 Worth of Hysteria
B.C. just had its provincial election. Christy Clark won in maybe the sketchiest election in B.C. ever. It took 15 days to "understand" who had won the election. Have you ever golfed with a cheater? A guy who lies even when he doesn't have to? A compulsive prevaricator? I have. And when you ask him what he got on the last hole it's always the same glazed look at the invisible scorecard in the air, the silent stroke count accompanied by possible finger chalk-ups for each stroke and then the result will be what Tiger Woods scored last time he played this hole. Ask a member of the B.C. Liberal party who won the election between May 9th, (election day), and May 24th, (result day), and you would have gotten something similar. Because they're all the kind of people Canadian politics attracts.
Clark, a former minister of education who made cuts to education that were ruled unconstitutional by the B.C. Supreme Court and sends her kids to expensive, private school, has been involved in lots of scandals and investigations. B.C. Rail, B.C. Hydro, freedom of information, even being too pretty and showing too much of her awesome rack. It is awesome though, I gotta respect her for that!
So pretty much exactly what everybody wants in a candidate for provincial premier, she ran again this year. And she was so unpopular in B.C., she got re-elected! After reshuffling and recounting the votes. Like a magician who's made a mistake and starts the card trick over. But she won. Didn't she?
Now Ontario is having their provincial election. June 7th. So the last minute mud slinging has begun. Kathleen Wynne, who has made some major moves up the ladder of popularity after recently jumping on the $15 an hour minimum wage bandwagon, (probably just an election tactic), looks as though she might. Wynne. Get it? Har har.
This is not rocket science. Here's a good article with some staggering stats! Did they say a quarter of the workforce in Ontario make less than 15 bucks? Well then you'd have to be either a lunatic or, (excuse me while I laugh my arse off), HONEST, ha ha ha ha ha, to run for premier and say you DON'T support it, wouldn't you? That's 1.6 million voters who will get a raise! Is there a better way to get votes than to buy them? Now whether she will put Ontario's money where her mouth is or not, it doesn't really matter in politics. As long as you get elected. The people will forgive you for lying. They always do.
Much like Christy Clark, Wynne has been involved in scandals, denied the scandals, was busted, apologized but denied involvement, and she too is, as it seems every politician is regardless of party nowadays, all for privatization and deregulation. That's what the hydro comment in the vid is about. However, she is the opposite educationally. She is an educator and supports funding for public education. So at least she's got that going for her. Much like Clarke with her good looks, Wynne scores points for being openly gay. And I have nothing against being gay or having a nice rack or being good looking but I wish people wouldn't vote for people because of that.
Anyway, I'm not going to bore you with Canadian politics and I don't much care who wins the election in Ontario, but I have seen a lot of talk about the $15 minimum wage lately and it is becoming clear to me that people in Canada may be a bit more gullible than I had thought. All Wynne had to do was mention her support for this idea and suddenly she went, as the article states, from cold to hot. And now her opposition has cooked up their defence spreading fear of the $15 minimum wage. And people are falling for it. It's just last minute tactics. Political sophistry. A mudslinging sprint to the finish.
Pay careful attention to the ad. Almost everything it says the minimum wage hike will bring can not be caused by a minimum wage hike. They are things that can only come about when CEO's, heads of corporations, captains of industry and business owners decide to do them. More automation from big corporations. Only if big corporations decide on more automation. Fewer employers will hire young people. Again, their choice. Small businesses forced to close. This is the one legitimate concern, but it isn't as certain as they are trying to scare voters into believing. More on that later. Higher prices for groceries. Again the choice of the business owners. And almost everything else? Well then with higher prices on almost everything, the extra money for those 1.6 million people won't make any difference, will it? That's what the makers of the ad hope people get out of it. It's a political trick that goes back to the time when Moses wore short pants. And STILL people are falling for it!
I lived in Canada a few years ago and I was making 10 or 11 bucks an hour. I was working shiftwork, 12-hour shifts with a weekly turnaround of 8 hours I had to manage. I was working more than 40 hours a week every week. I was wearing a uniform that included a vest and heavy boots. I was walking, sweating, running, tackling, chasing, arresting, restraining and/or standing for 12 hours straight most shifts working security in Calgary hospitals. Every month I made a few hundred more than my brother I lived with. He was on welfare. I had one shift during which I got kicked in the shins by a lady with a cast on her leg who I was trying to restrain, I had to go into a room in full mask, gown and sterile equipment worn overtop of the uniform to struggle with a man who had a bowel disease, who was covered in his own stinking, diseased feces and shared that with all of the security guards who dealt with him, I think we had an escaped patient as well so I had to run all over the hospital, and the usual abuse from superiors. I got home and said to my brother that, pride be damned, I'd PAY a few hundred bucks a month to not have to work. It was basically that extra few hundred and pride at being employed that I was being shit on, metaphorically AND literally, for.
The time before that when I lived in Canada I tried to make a go of the ESL teaching market in my own country. I found that it was not an easy thing to do. One major trend in business across Canada that most Canadians don't know about until they're looking for work is the trend AWAY from hiring someone full time. And just try to find the good old jobs where the employer WANTED you to work expensive overtime! I dare you! The education industry is bad for this. Teachers have always worked short weeks since they do a lot of lesson planning, marking and other work at home. Modern business solution: Declare their 12-20 hours a week "part time," don't give them any credit for extra hours they have to put in at school or at home, and don't pay them any benefits. I was not qualified to teach in regular schools but there was a time when I could get lots of hours substitute teaching and working at ESL schools. No more. Now fully qualified Canadian teachers with teaching certs are subbing. Some schools take nothing less. They're also working ESL camps and at ESL schools. To make up for the loss of benefits. This and the fact that becoming a certified teacher has gone from a cheap, one-year education certificate to a year or two of upgrading and a two or three year teaching certificate that is now 10 times more expensive every year, scared me away from that forever. Education is now a racket in Canada and regular people are being priced out of it along with other pie-in-the-sky luxuries like housing, driving, retiring...
In Canada, I was just spinning my wheels. I looked at the people I worked with. About half were from other countries where, when their paychecks were converted, 10 bucks an hour was a great wage. They also told me they had ways to work enough time to collect Unemployment Insurance, or I guess now they call it Employment Insurance, go back to their country and STILL collect. I'm not kidding! And the worst part about this is I think the appropriate agencies in Canada KNOW about this but do nothing.
Some of my co-workers were part timers, students, wives supplementing husbands' incomes, and a LOT of them were people who still lived with their parents. THAT'S one way to make 10 or 11 bucks an hour work for you! Cut out rent and food and BOOM! See? We don't need no stinking minimum wage increase! We just need people to move back in with their parents! Actually, there's another benefit to the minimum wage hike. How many of those people who were in the same, demoralizing jobs as I was, and gave them up to go on welfare or move back home, will suddenly insert themselves back into the workforce? How many parents will be glad to get 30 or 40-year-old kids out of the house?
Listen, as someone who has tried, and remember I'm on my own, no wife and no kids, it is impossible to get anywhere on minimum wage in Canada. Even 15 bucks isn't going to keep up with inflation. I've read that the living wage, that's just enough to pay the bills, in Vancouver is over 20 bucks an hour nowadays. They say half of Canadians have degrees. I read a stat from a prominent university that I was shocked at: 23% of degree holders in Canada are unemployed. Since they're the smart ones, they're probably living with Mom and Dad or living on Swellfare. Canada is richer than ever but a quarter of the people in Ontario make shit wages! I wonder how many make less than the average wage. 60 years ago average Canadians made average wages. And they were enough to pay for their cars, houses, (yes I'm talking outright ownership, not the word "buy" we use today that means a lifetime of mortgage), kids educations, vacations, even a pretty good retirement. What happened?
I'll tell you what happened. Deregulation. Same as America. Politicians have been bought, rules and laws have been changed, legislators have been lobbied, banks, investment firms and insurance companies have been turned into casinos. Canada may have been boring 60 years ago, but give me some of THAT boredom! Now the people who have almost all the money in our country have been given free reign to do unspeakable things with it. One example is something that appears every now and then in some media or other and quickly disappears. It's a story close to my heart because water is important to me and I don't think unbridled capitalism gets any worse than the story of Nestle water in Canada. They have done this in both Ontario and B.C. but I will give up beer if either of the candidates above talked about it in their campaigns or has any plan to end such illegal activity.
Nestle goes into Ontario and pays $3.71 per million litres of water, puts it into plastic bottles that are a huge ecological blight on the whole world, then sells it back at, what 2 or 3 bucks a litre? Depending on where you buy that water it's half a million to a million times what they paid for it! They continue pumping a million litres a day during drought and forest fire season. They don't care and they are not regulated. In B.C. it's even worse! They pay $2.25 to steal the water from British Columbians then sell it back to them. MORE than a million times what they paid. WHO are the people responsible for signing these contracts with Nestle? And why are THEY not busted down to a minimum wage job? Why are there no regulations on this? That's the issue that comes up every time this is mentioned but it gets forgotten about and Nestle keeps on pumping.
The exact same thing is happening in other deregulated industries like housing, oil, banking, stocks, and, most unfortunately, education. I don't know, but probably mining, logging and all other major Canadian industries too. Greed is being allowed to run amok. Can we stop this already?
And this comes back to the minimum wage and the elections. One way to offset this situation we've gotten ourselves into is to increase the minimum wage. Now, of course, businesses are instantly going to be against that because it will hurt if they aren't paying their employees $15 an hour. Obviously, right? Well, as I said above, it's not as obvious as all that. Probably the most famous economist of our time, John Maynard Keynes, would say that those businesses will actually HELP themselves by increasing the minimum wage. Now, I think, maybe down at Chick/Brody Porsche and Audi, they may not feel the benefits so much because people making minimum wage, even 15 bucks, aren't shopping there. But it will be good for the economy and the majority of businesses. Here's how.
But this will only work IF the business world doesn't just instantly raise prices and stop hiring and do all those things that stupid ad talks about. And don't fault me for saying that, if you are saying that giving a 4 dollar an hour raise to 1.6 million people in Ontario won't mean more customers, more business and a shot in the arm to a stagnant economy, then I question your intelligence and/or your honesty. You can guess which one it is for yourself.
Keynes sees a minimum wage increase as a good way out of a recession. And if you don't think Canada's in a recession, what happened to the whole world in 2008? Forget so soon? Here's a reminder. From Forbes Magazine. Even the businessmen know the causes of that meltdown. To sum them up in one word: deregulation. When derivative salesmen and CDS hawkers and banks and Moody's and AIG and all those avaricious Tazmanian Devils were finally cornered, do you know what they said? Do you know what even the big daddy of deregulation, Alan Greenspan, said? "We're sorry. We were wrong. But can you blame us? Why weren't we regulated?" Please skim or read this article. It's a pretty long list of people who got rich from deregulation. They are all despicable and although none are in jail, at least some of them really should be. Ratings companies giving triple A ratings to obvious crap. "Let's hope we're all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters," one said. Political leaders repealing regulation laws and encouraging "liar loans" and lending to ninjas. (no income no job applicants), and de-staffing, basically shutting down the SEC, which is supposed to regulate stuff like this. AIG insurance bosses getting 100 bill. from the American tax payer to keep their company afloat after careless investment in credit default swaps and other financial weapons of mass destruction, then spending it on lavish executive golf and hunting trips. Steve Eisman, who was portrayed by Steve Carrel in "The Big Short," (WATCH that movie many times!), has the best quote of all: "These guys lied to infinity. What I learned from that experience was that Wall Street didn't give a shit what it sold." These people needed regulation. Companies like Nestle stealing from Canada and selling them back what they stole at criminal profit margins need to be regulated. The people who allow Nestle to do that need to be regulated. People who are eliminating full time, long term jobs and making the job market of Canada largely temporary need to be regulated. Minimum wage needs to be regulated. How can Canada claim to be a civilized country when disgustingly rich companies are ALLOWED to pay their workers minimum wage, knowing that minimum wage is far from a living wage?
So don't fall for the tired, old arguments of, "Well that's socialism!" Or "That's communism!" It's just plain good sense and it was part of capitalism when capitalism was thriving. The reasons communism and socialism have many examples of failure are the identical reasons for the crash of 2008, a failure of capitalism, just greedy people getting out of control. Another good Keynesian quote, "When the capital development of a country becomes a byproduct of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done."
So relax about the 15 dollar minimum wage. If it's implemented, and that's not even all that likely in my opinion, and if knee-jerk business tactics are not implemented without thinking, the market will do what it is supposed to do and adjust itself and things will be a little bit closer to the glory days of our country. But if not, and I have to say, I have a feeling none of the businesses in Canada will give the minimum wage hike a chance, if not, we'll just be a little bit closer to yet another meltdown. And even IF it's introduced and the instant price hikes are the reaction, costs will not be inflated that much. Like the writer of this article agrees, wouldn't you pay a few cents more for a meal knowing the worker serving it was earning a livable wage?
You would think the one bullet point to take away from the 700 billion dollar bailout of 2008, which has turned into trillions by now, would have been, "How 'bout we work on some regulation here?" Inconceivably, that still hasn't happened! Chalk it all up to the power of greed. But I have one last thing to add: If you don't trust companies, government, or banks to stop lying, cheating and stealing from us, or being greedy, as consumers, we have power. An important point in that above article was that one of the "people" who caused the financial crisis of '08 in the States was the American public. Don't take risky loans from sketchy bankers or derivative salesmen. Don't be greedy yourself! Try to avoid credit. Don't vote for crooked politicians. Don't shop at rich companies whose workers make minimum wage. Don't EVER buy another product from Nestle! Don't buy so many bananas. I'm trying not to. It's tough, but we can all make a difference if we choose our battles wisely in the fight to wrestle our country back from our greedy owners. It will take time, sacrifice and patience, but I think it can be done.
*** By the way, the Ontario election isn't until June 7, 2018! Shows you how closely I follow Ontario politics. So Wynne has a whole year to actually raise the minimum wage. I hear there is talk of going to 14 bucks in 2018 then 15 in 2019. This will allow companies to be proactive, raising prices today! Then whether this actually happens or not, you still get more money from your fewer customers while ensuring that the poor won't be able to pay their bills. So it's a win-win for business.