scrubbedexpat091

Being an American who has experienced both the Canadian and US system, I am not sure why anyone would voluntarily pay thousands or more a year for healthcare but for some reason some in the US seem to love paying through the nose because gasp they might need to wait a week or 2 for a non-emergency.

My mom when she had cancer while she had health insurance she quickly exceeded her life time maximums and with co-insurance and such still ended up near bankrupt, in BC here, she would have to pay for parking at the hospital but she would have paid $0 out of pocket for the actual medical treatment, doctors, surgery etc.

scrubbedexpat091

I am certainly willing to work, but I do need an employer willing to accommodate my needs to health which is the tricky part, and if training options were more widely available that provided supports people need, this one size fits all educational system where the best and brightest get to go leaves a lot of people behind to struggle through life barely making it.

There was an article recently about a Practical Nurse who is trying to upgrade to RN, but can't get into the programs because she doesn't have a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA but yet she is consider qualified and working as an LPN, I would rather have an LPN trying to upgrade to RN who has been working in nursing but has a 3.3 GPA over a 19 or 20 year old who has no work experience in nursing but has a high GPA.

One can have a low GPA and still be smart, we are all different, and we don't all learn via books and lectures, I can learn just about anything via repetition, but reading a book and listening to lectures, I retain very little which is why I do so poorly in school despite trying and putting all my effort towards it, and the more classes I have at once the worse I do since there is more information to learn then my brain can retain.

The world would indeed be a better place is everyone understood we are all different, have different abilities, have different modes of learning, came from different backgrounds and some people have more barriers than others and sometimes those barriers are too difficult to overcome alone which is what society seems to want as its not willing to provide necessary supports to those who need it.

If hospitals for example trained medical device reprocessing and didn't rely on private educational programs to do the training, it would open that door to more people, its a job that training can be done on the job, and in fact 90% of the training program through the college that provides the training is done at the hospital doing the job, very little is in a classroom, but by making it so people need to go through a college, people have to pay $10,000 and some change for training that isn't even a year long, and so start off part-time or casual at a hospital making $23/hr, and they make it even harder by making it a continuing education program which means not eligible for student loans, which means you need the financial resources to pay for said training. A low wage worker wanting to better their life likely doesn't have the money to pay for it, nor the time since they are needing to work 16 hour days just to make ends meet.

Same with learning how to take blood, training programs are short but expensive, many of the short term training programs for specific jobs cost more or the same as a 4 year degree, and that is kind of sad and many of these vocational training don't lead to high paying jobs, mostly in the low to mid 20 something an hour which for Vancouver still means struggling but it's better than $14/hr.

Leslie

Chickens and eggs. It's the rise of populism and the rise of embarrassing buffoons in leadership. The point is, in response to some heavy punditry, the Democrats can't really take a 'warning' from what happened yesterday in the UK election --- it already happened here.

johnwoo

Back in the 50s and 60s most every major and some minor British companies had apprenticeship programs. The degree of difficulty of getting accepted depended on the prestige of the company. There was a lot of competition for companies Like Jaguar and Roll-Royce.
Some American Companies had apprenticeship programs I know Caterpillar Tractor did. In the US my son did with a large HVAC company. Not a trade I'd recommend. Little or no health insurance for the most part, slow or rainy days no pay, no vacation. Like all construction jobs, takes it's toll physically over time. The days of union jobs are long gone.

johnwoo

The masters of gerrymandering and voter suppression. The masters of white fear, white supremacy and Nationalism. The masters of pandering to the religious right and evangelicals.

scrubbedexpat091

And even where unions exist there may be little benefit to a union in some industries, the grocery stores here are largely union, but they are largely low wage (usually min wage) mostly all part-time as well now, top pay is still too low to actually thrive here, Air Canada is the same, their ramp employees are union, starting pay is min wage, top pay is less than some of the non-union companies and takes nearly a decade to reach top pay, yeah they get to pay into a pension, but that $13.85/hr after taxes, union dues, benefits, pension and other deductions net take home is closer to $8 or $9 per hour.

Everyone seems to want to race to the bottom for some reason.

dc koop

I lived in Crawley, Sussex for a few years as a young man. It was one of the new towns which were built at the end of WW2. It had a very large industrial estate and factories that were turning out numerous industrial products. I served an apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker. After I left the UK I never worked in that trade again. Many years later I did a trip to Crawley while visiting the UK. The industrial estate was completely gone, factories and all. Many of those trade apprenticeships did not do any good for those who went through them because the jobs had all left the country. My grandfather worked most of his working life at Harland and Wolf ship yard in Belfast. That too has gone. All the factories in Sheffield have also disappeared. I'm not even sure if Sheffield cutlery is still in existence. Union jobs are still alive and well in the public service sector here although at the City where I worked there was a no strike clause for police, fire fighters and water and power utility employees.

dc koop

Costco, Sam's Club and Super Walmart have taken away a lot of trade from the chain supermarkets so union bargaining power has weakened as a result of that.

johnwoo

Hence my previous posts that our generation had it easier than today's. Glad you agree.

scrubbedexpat091

Sam's Club failed in Canada, not even Wal-Mart could compete head to head with Costco here.... But Super Wal-Mart's have taken a chunk of grocery market share, but grocery chains seem to be winning customers back with nicer stores, and home delivery something Wal-Mart doesn't do yet, where I am Wal-Mart is a small player only 1 store within the City of Vancouver limits but far eastern edge and its more a mini-Super Wal-Mart since its smaller compared to a normal Super Wal-Mart. With all the grocery chains and independent grocery places Vancouver seems to be able to keep Wal-Mart at bay, helps that the city doesn't approve applications so doubt we will ever see another Wal-Mart within city limits but they thrive in the suburbs.

dc koop

I had emigrated to Canada and then in 1968 or 69 received a letter from my long lost American half-brother in Vietnam. We kept in touch and some years later I visited him in Idaho, liked what I saw and decided to apply to stay. In my twilight years I think I would like to return to England, buy a cottage in a nice little village in the Cotswolds and bond with the country again. My wife being an Anglophile likes the idea but it's a non starter as my daughter and the grand kids would be too distant. Also being an old fart with much of America ingrained in me would be another drawback

dc koop

There's no shortage of supermarkets in my neck of the woods. Many have closed down and gone out of business over the years but some have started to retail Mexican food in quantity which has drawn the increasing Mexican community to the stores.

Albertsons and Vons are the two major stores in my part of the town with Stater Brothers a third. Albertsons and Vons are both unionized and both belong to the same company. Talks on pay increases have been dragging on for eons. The union members voted on strike action but so far nothing has taken place. The last time they struck several years ago they lost a lot of customers to Walmart and Costco and Albertsons later closed down several of their stores. Both they and Vons rarely ever seem crowded and sometimes almost empty so I have to wonder how they're both doing financially.

dc koop

There has to be an ever increasing number of jobs in green technology but demanding better standards of education with a college or university degree as a definite requirement. The problem is that the public schools are not turning out better educated students . At my granddaughter's high school 55 percent of the pupils are unable to achieve a higher score than C in mathematics.

scrubbedexpat091

Oh I would have loved to be able to get a C in math in high school....lol

Steerpike

Well, the warning is clear; whether you think it may apply or not is another matter. As Zargof pointed out, Corbyn was unpopular as an individual while Sanders is not unpopular. But it's a fair question, whether the country is ready for a significant move to the left ... https://www.politico.com/news/2019/1...sanders-084962
I'm not sure it is ready, and I fear that a Sanders candidacy could fail. This is more of a gut feeling than anything born out by statistics. I hope I'm wrong.