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Cross posting from the DnD thread: Yeah, about that company that owns a lot of those care homes in Winnipeg (Revera): quote:One of the largest operators of seniors' residences and long-term care homes in Canada is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), a federal Crown corporation charged with investing funds for the pension plans of the federal public service, the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Reserve Force. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/crown-corporation-long-term-care-homes-revera-1.5584098
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Nov 8, 2020 19:09
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Someone posted that and implied that it means revera is a crown corp, but thats not how it works. It is private company that happened to be bought by a pension fund. An actual crown corp ltc facility would likely get a big chunk of its operating budget from the treasury board and actually have care requirements and objectives stated in its charter.
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Nov 10, 2020 06:18
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I think the implication is you've been made complicit in their ineptitude by their investment share %. You were literally profiting off the cost cutting measures that lead to this.
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Nov 10, 2020 06:29
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apatheticman posted:I think the implication is you've been made complicit in their ineptitude by their investment share %. You were literally profiting off the cost cutting measures that lead to this. Yes, that's the entire point of having private long term care homes. They'll be run this way regardless of who the shareholders are, which is why they should be nationalized. It's not true that because the company is a subsidiary of a crown corp, then it is itself a crown corp. That's not how this works. The reason this is imo very important for people to understand is that a bunch of neolib and conservative dipshits are going try to argue that this ltc facility is publicly run when it isn't.
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Nov 10, 2020 07:38
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jettisonedstuff posted:Yes, that's the entire point of having private long term care homes. They'll be run this way regardless of who the shareholders are, which is why they should be nationalized. yeah this is a failure of privatization, we can't let them spin it as a failure of crown corporations so they can justify more privatization
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Nov 10, 2020 12:25
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This is actually a great example of how the financialization of pension and communal investment schemes leads to worse results for everybody, but that's probably a more complex explanation than people will be willing to listen to
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Nov 10, 2020 14:58
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Just want to add in case anyone isn't aware that we have such a lack of long-term care beds in some communities that, at the hospital I used to work at for example, about 1/3rd of our 300+ beds were consistently occupied by people who don't need to be hospitalized but can't be discharged to anywhere but a LTC home. And we were >100% capacity most days. Tired of spending literal days in the ER waiting for a bed? This is why. The reason we have hallway medicine is because the province (speaking of Ontario here) isn't willing to spend the money necessary to look after older adults. And that's to say nothing of how awful it is to work in these homes and have way too many residents to take care of and not enough time to do it. And everyone suffers for it.
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Nov 10, 2020 15:12
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yeah, i've worked in an "assisted living facility" that was supposed to be a kind of independent living place thats a halfway house between an apartment and a nursing home. but a very large portion of the people there really should have been in a nursing home, like dementia to the point where they cant even talk or feed themselves. but of course there was no space in the nursing homes, they were all on waiting lists i worked in the kitchen, food was good for the most part (unless you were diabetic, then you got the trash food)
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Nov 10, 2020 15:20
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vyelkin posted:This is actually a great example of how the financialization of pension and communal investment schemes leads to worse results for everybody, but that's probably a more complex explanation than people will be willing to listen to It's like financial tragedy of the commons, but it's really a side effect of capitalism that will happen until we get rid of that
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Nov 10, 2020 15:50
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Rutibex posted:yeah, i've worked in an "assisted living facility" that was supposed to be a kind of independent living place thats a halfway house between an apartment and a nursing home. but a very large portion of the people there really should have been in a nursing home, like dementia to the point where they cant even talk or feed themselves. but of course there was no space in the nursing homes, they were all on waiting lists And when they get to the nursing home, like the one I worked at (admin support staff, not care-delivery), they're in no state to do much but be wheeled right back to the hospital again because the waiting lists are just so long. I noticed a definite slide in the mid-90s, with the number of people who were mostly-ambulatory but had needs that precluded living alone sinking, and the number of people confined to a geri-chair or a locked Alzheimer ward (or both) rising. By the time I left, the second sitting for supper was merely a formality because there weren't enough people who could get to the dining room to fill it twice. Most of them were stuck on the floors, to be wheeled in and out of the common area, or left in a wheelchair in a hallway somewhere, chanting "help me help me", forever, to no one in particular. The poo poo I could tell you would make you want to kill your parents right now, and that place was one of the good ones - a nonprofit with permanent staff who seemed to care but were just run off their loving feet because there weren't enough of them, the backfills were idiots and the mission hadn't so much crept as leapt. The move-ins suck too, because when your room comes up you're told of the vacancy and you basically have to drop everything you're doing, pack your poo poo and get down here soon, which is just jim-fuckin-dandy for the residents who weren't mentally-prepared to do that just yet. This was especially awful in the Alzheimers care unit, because the new arrivals often have enough marbles left to know they're surrounded by strangers in a place that isn't home, and the staff and fellow residents all share in the experience when they come to that realization six or seven times a day.
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Nov 10, 2020 15:51
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vyelkin posted:This is actually a great example of how the financialization of pension and communal investment schemes leads to worse results for everybody, but that's probably a more complex explanation than people will be willing to listen to Not really, unless your argument is that there's something in particular about pension funds and communal investment schemes that result in more exploitation than there would be if some ghoulish venture capitalist owned it. This was going to happen regardless of who owns the shares.
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Nov 10, 2020 17:43
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jettisonedstuff posted:Not really, unless your argument is that there's something in particular about pension funds and communal investment schemes that result in more exploitation than there would be if some ghoulish venture capitalist owned it. This was going to happen regardless of who owns the shares. I read their argument not as "pensions exploit more", but rather "pensions have motives other than maximal profit, which allows for meeting investment goals without running death traps". Venture capital has unbounded desire for profit, so they're unlikely to save lives. Or are you one of those "can't blame corporations they're duty-bound to increase shareholder returns" people?
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Nov 10, 2020 18:17
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pokeyman posted:I read their argument not as "pensions exploit more", but rather "pensions have motives other than maximal profit, which allows for meeting investment goals without running death traps". Venture capital has unbounded desire for profit, so they're unlikely to save lives. No, the motive of pension funds is to remain solvent so people can get their pensions, not to fund long term care homes. There are a number of industries that need to be nationalized because their entire raison d'etre is incompatible with profit maximization. My argument is that if we're not going to do that, it isn't the role of public sector pension funds to subsidize corporations. That would effectively transfer the exploitation from the patients and workers to public servants.
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Nov 10, 2020 18:31
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jettisonedstuff posted:Not really, unless your argument is that there's something in particular about pension funds and communal investment schemes that result in more exploitation than there would be if some ghoulish venture capitalist owned it. This was going to happen regardless of who owns the shares. My argument is that when you financialize something like a pension scheme in the way that financialization means in the modern world, i.e., fiduciary duty to maximize investment returns, you deny the possibility of those funds being used for socially-conscious investments. Essentially that means that there is no distinction between the way a pension fund operates and the way a ghoulish venture capitalist operates. Like imagine a pension fund that's faced with the choice between buying into two different LTC facilities. One hires enough workers, pays them living wages, treats residents well, and has adequate medical facilities and equipment to handle needs. The other does none of that, but as a result has a twice as big ROI. The fiduciary duty of the pension fund managers demands that they invest in the second one, because that will lead to greater gains for the pension fund as a whole and therefore greater returns for the pensioners. The CPPIB, according to its own statutes, has one purpose and one purpose only: to obtain "maximum rate of return, without undue risk of loss." That's it. That's the entire purpose. If that means feeding the very pensioners who are getting paid from the plan into woodchippers labeled "COVID-19" it doesn't matter because the directors' fiduciary duty is to do whatever gets the best ROI. If we didn't financialize communal investment schemes like this in this particularly predatory venture-capitalist-inspired way, we could theoretically use them for socially responsible purposes. Like I can imagine a pension plan using its money to invest in good LTC facilities that could then take care of those very same pensioners when they got old enough to need them, the same way unions, before financialization, used to be able to invest communal money in good housing for union members. But we've specifically set up laws saying they aren't allowed to do that because it doesn't earn the fund as much money as doing the opposite.
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Nov 10, 2020 18:58
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Full shutdown for Manitoba, including banning social gatherings with people outside of your household. I have one other person in my household and she works long hours in essential services, including some overnights. It looks like I'm going to be literally sitting by myself for a month. gently caress all of these loving cowards who said "balance epidemiology against the economy" instead of actually doing a little bit of enforcement. This is now going to do more damage to tHe eCoNoMy than having a more forceful enforcement all along would have caused. The healthcare costs alone from this lockdown are going to by orders of magnitude outstrip what it would have cost to susidize everything through this. loving cowards.
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Nov 10, 2020 19:50
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vyelkin posted:My argument is that when you financialize something like a pension scheme in the way that financialization means in the modern world, i.e., fiduciary duty to maximize investment returns, you deny the possibility of those funds being used for socially-conscious investments. Essentially that means that there is no distinction between the way a pension fund operates and the way a ghoulish venture capitalist operates. It's me, the person who sees the "Prefer Ethical Investments" button, and clicks it, believing it does anything. It does not.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:04
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Manitoba is keeping schools open though. What is even the point? and even if they get covid under control, the provincial borders will remain open. this needs to be nation wide or why even bother.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:19
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vyelkin posted:My argument is that when you financialize something like a pension scheme in the way that financialization means in the modern world, i.e., fiduciary duty to maximize investment returns, you deny the possibility of those funds being used for socially-conscious investments. Essentially that means that there is no distinction between the way a pension fund operates and the way a ghoulish venture capitalist operates. This would either tie people's long term care to the quality of their employment, or it put the onus on PSP funds to subsidize long term care when it should be subsidized with the collective income of everyone in the country. Also I'm skeptical that this sort of thing could even exist if people are allowed to opt out of PSP funds and stick their money in private funds. If your proposal is to basically collectivize the savings of the nation and use the capital to underwrite various publicly owned corporations that provide services like long term care, dentistry, etc. that aren't already provided by governments, I'm in full agreement. The issue I have with the discussion around this particular case is with idea that the public sector pension fund specifically, under our current rules and economic system, has some sort of social responsibility to tie its hands behind its back, take the funds of the working people paying into it, and use them to subsidize essential services that society at large should already be paying for collectively. The two are not the same at all. This isn't some incremental step to the eventual abolishment of capitalism, it's just dumping the social responsiblity of taking care of the elderly and infirm on public sector workers' pension funds. Lastly, I'm not an expert, but I think there's a good chance that it is impossible to run a long term care facility that is humane, does not exploit its workers and turns a profit. The best case scenario is likely that you can pick 2/3 of those things. To me the solution to this seems really, really obvious: nationalize all long term care facilities, incorporate them as crown corps with charters that specifically lay out the services that they are to provide to their inhabitants, and subsidize them with whatever funds they need to operate.
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Nov 10, 2020 20:35
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jettisonedstuff posted:This would either tie people's long term care to the quality of their employment, or it put the onus on PSP funds to subsidize long term care when it should be subsidized with the collective income of everyone in the country. Also I'm skeptical that this sort of thing could even exist if people are allowed to opt out of PSP funds and stick their money in private funds. Yeah this is essentially what I'm saying. We've financialized all forms of investment in our society and then washed our hands of it because our political class believes that private investment is inherently more efficient and more responsible than public investment. So even publicly owned and controlled investment funds, like the CPP, are set up within legal structures that compel them to act as if they were venture capitalists. I think that's abhorrent and we would be significantly better off as a society if we were using our collective savings for something other than merely maximizing ROI, which essentially forces our collective savings to bolster the most damaging aspects of capitalism. quote:The issue I have with the discussion around this particular case is with idea that the public sector pension fund specifically, under our current rules and economic system, has some sort of social responsibility to tie its hands behind its back, take the funds of the working people paying into it, and use them to subsidize essential services that society at large should already be paying for collectively. The two are not the same at all. This isn't some incremental step to the eventual abolishment of capitalism, it's just dumping the social responsiblity of taking care of the elderly and infirm on public sector workers' pension funds. This might just be me misunderstanding what you're saying, but the CPP and CPPIB are not just a public sector investment fund, they're the investment fund for the entire Canada Pension Plan which every worker in Canada (except Quebec) pays into. It is the largest single investment fund in the entire country, it owns assets worth $410 billion, and it is theoretically under public control, but we have legislated that public control to require that it take nothing into consideration when choosing investments except maximum ROI. Now, if you want to argue that asking it to do something other than ROI-maximization would negatively impact the public fund and therefore negatively impact everyone, because it would leave the higher-ROI investments open for private capitalists, and therefore lead to higher returns for private capital and lower returns for publicly-owned (and therefore theoretically publicly-beneficial) capital, I think that's a reasonable argument, and then that would tie back to larger questions of how we manage public versus private investments overall. But I think there has to be a better way than just letting loose $400B of our money and telling the people managing it that we don't care what they do as long as it makes a good return. If they're off strip-mining the Amazon and killing our grandparents, I feel like we should have the right to demand that they not use our money for things that are actively harming us, our present, and our future (I should note here for context that the CPPIB's ROI-maximization strategy has also been criticized for its contribution to climate change). I mean to be fair I also feel like we should have the right to demand that of private investments, so maybe this is all just a roundabout excuse for me to critique financial capitalism in general. quote:Lastly, I'm not an expert, but I think there's a good chance that it is impossible to run a long term care facility that is humane, does not exploit its workers and turns a profit. The best case scenario is likely that you can pick 2/3 of those things. To me the solution to this seems really, really obvious: nationalize all long term care facilities, incorporate them as crown corps with charters that specifically lay out the services that they are to provide to their inhabitants, and subsidize them with whatever funds they need to operate. I couldn't agree more. Long-term care should be a public good paid for the way we pay for healthcare, and the fact that it isn't is a crime. vyelkin has issued a correction as of 20:58 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 20:54
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vyelkin posted:This might just be me misunderstanding what you're saying, but the CPP and CPPIB are not just a public sector investment fund, they're the investment fund for the entire Canada Pension Plan which every worker in Canada (except Quebec) pays into. It is the largest single investment fund in the entire country, it owns assets worth $410 billion, and it is theoretically under public control, but we have legislated that public control to require that it take nothing into consideration when choosing investments except maximum ROI. Revera is a subsidiary of The Public Sector Pension Investment Board, which manages the pension funds pretty much everyone employed by the federal government. I can see your argument if we are talking about CPPIB but I think that would lead to either a big push for privatization of the CPP (on the argument that the public sector can make more money with it, which would be true if they could only invest in certain things instead of chasing the best returns) or a bunch of provinces splitting off their contributions and managing their own funds like Quebec does. jettisonedstuff has issued a correction as of 22:20 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 22:07
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jettisonedstuff posted:Revera is a subsidiary of The Public Sector Pension Investment Board, which manages the pension funds pretty much everyone employed by the federal government. I can see your argument if we are talking about CPPIB but I think that would lead to either a big push for privatization of the CPP (on the argument that the public sector can make more money with it, which would be true if they could only invest in certain things instead of chasing the best returns) or a bunch of provinces splitting off their contributions and managing their own funds like Quebec does. Oh, that's my mistake then, I must have misread one of the news articles about Revera because I definitely thought this whole thing was about it being owned by the CPP. Forget everything I wrote about CPPIB then lol
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Nov 10, 2020 22:14
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Now that I think about it more, it might be possible to run some sort of scheme where the CPPIB invests a small portion of its funds in poorer areas of the country, and it would basically work as a capital surplus recycling program, since by definition the CPP is always being paid into mostly by relatively more prosperous areas of the country. This might actually be a more efficient thing to do than dumb poo poo like putting various government agencies in Miramichi or Shawinigan or whatever.
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Nov 10, 2020 22:21
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Manitoba's no social gatherings with people outside your household lasted -1 days
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Nov 12, 2020 17:17
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Roussin sounded like he wanted to throw Bartley through a window this morning on twitter.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:34
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Fried Watermelon posted:Manitoba's no social gatherings with people outside your household lasted -1 days It was so badly worded. From what others are telling me it was originally "Max 5 including members of household" but then people with big families cried, so they turned it to zero. The zero social contacts assumed that people have a spouse and 2.5 kids around. For someone without that, the zero contacts is essentially a solitary confinement sentence, which is not sustainable. Nobody should be having dinner parties, but people who live alone should be able to have a friend over for coffee every so often. I work at home and my SO works long hours, sometimes over night. I'll go loving crazy if I can't maybe see a friend every so often. Both of my parents live alone too, and now I'm glad that I can go see how they're doing and if they need anything.
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Nov 12, 2020 17:48
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Wonder how broad the list of "essential business" in Winnipeg will be this time
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Nov 12, 2020 17:52
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Michael's is actually closed this time round, so it sounds like the province has shortened the list (or Michael's realized it may look bad if they kept insisting they were essential when they had the curb-side pickup already in place).
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Nov 12, 2020 17:55
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#noContextLayton
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Nov 12, 2020 22:27
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Gringo Heisenberg posted:Wonder how broad the list of "essential business" in Winnipeg will be this time Toys r us was open when I drove by. Someone going in to do a return.
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Nov 12, 2020 23:24
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https://twitter.com/JenLeeCBC/status/1327017540984451076?s=20 https://www.alberta.ca/enhanced-public-health-measures.aspx Here is the measures... they suck. apatheticman has issued a correction as of 23:43 on Nov 12, 2020 |
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Nov 12, 2020 23:37
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Hey, maybe he'll take it seriously now! I kid, I kid. We all know that anything short of death means he'll just say Covid is no big deal and we need to keep the province open because ~the economy~
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Nov 12, 2020 23:41
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Fashionable Jorts posted:Hey, maybe he'll take it seriously now! He's gonna show up maskless on a balcony in three days, preaching the gospel of opening the economy like a lovely coughing jesus
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Nov 13, 2020 00:29
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Kenney is a loving idiot he deserves to get covid. hopefully my at risk in laws can continue to stay safe in Calgary despite the government trying to give people covid
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Nov 13, 2020 03:34
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Do it ironically posted:Kenney is a loving idiot he deserves to get covid. hopefully my at risk in laws can continue to stay safe in Calgary despite the government trying to give people covid 
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Nov 13, 2020 03:53
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CrcleSqreSanchz posted:Toys r us was open when I drove by. Someone going in to do a return. "covid isnt real," i assure myself as i close my eyes and ram the toys r us with my lovely bronco
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Nov 13, 2020 06:02
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Gringo Heisenberg posted:Wonder how broad the list of "essential business" in Winnipeg will be this time this is still what is open at brandons mall sooooooooooooooooooö 
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Nov 13, 2020 07:19
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lmao, showcase
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Nov 13, 2020 08:03
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people will literally die if they can't go to showcase and buy baby yoda funko pops realtalk though, they're "essential" probably because they sell lovely masks and wipes if this website is for the same storefront https://ca.shopatshowcase.com/ (i've never actually bought anything at a showcase, it looked like that old "As Seen on TV" show that just had garbage)
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Nov 13, 2020 08:15
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Yah that's what I thought they were, the as seen on tv.. But I suppose if they see a way to make some bucks selling off brand hand sanitizer and knockoff N95 respirators they'd be all over that.
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Nov 13, 2020 08:25
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priznat posted:Yah that's what I thought they were, the as seen on tv.. But I suppose if they see a way to make some bucks selling off brand hand sanitizer and knockoff N95 respirators they'd be all over that. They were selling small bottles of sanitizer for $10-15 during the brief shortage in stores at the start of the poo poo hitting the fan
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Nov 13, 2020 08:32
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