With Saskatchewan's minimum wage now at $7.95/hour as of this month, I really don't see why someone would want to be on welfare. Welfare is something like $350 a month for one person, which is nothing compared to a full time minimum wage job which is over $1,000 a month after taxes.

A crappy bachelor apartment in Regina's ghetto runs about $290 a month (I'm sure utilities are extra) so that leaves very little for food. Even if someone uses the food bank (hey that's what it's for), it's located a good 4 kms away from the poorest end of the city. Have you ever tried carrying groceries as a pedestrian? It's not very fun, even in mild weather. All the while, society keeps expecting you to get a job (a person on welfare needs to get an "unemployable stamp" every month).

Minimum wage is adequate if your are single. If you have children, that's a whole new story. Childcare is really expensive (try $750 a month for an infant) so it makes no sense to work for $1,000 a month. I guess you can say that people shouldn't have kids, but poverty often means lack of education.

Also, people are often thrown onto the street bacause of reasons beyond their means. I know people that were kicked out of their parents place because of their sexual orientation or deadbeat parents. You could try to find a job, but remember it often takes days or weeks to find a full-time job. Meanwhile you're hungry, have no place to sleep, and are highly susceptible to joining gangs, etc (because at least that's one family you can rely on). At least welfare is immediate, but you have to have a mailing address first!

And honestly, I think the bureaucrats that run the welfare program cost way more money than the actual $350 cheques that are given out. I'm sure our government funded Saskatchewan Transportation Company (which hasn't seen a profit since 1978) costs taxpayers way more money than funding homeless people.

I also find it really interesting that society opens their arms to help mentally disabled children, but as soon as you hit 16 or 17 years old and have no supporting family, suddenly we just think they should all die off. Really sad.

haha nice mower. they use to have lawn tractor races here, my buddy made one, stuck a motorcycle engine on an old tractor. unfortunately i never got to watch him race, and now the tracks been shut down:mad:

aw that sucks... id love to find a track or anythign around here (even liek a trail or somehting). theres none that i know of...

Hey, I wanted to say that you guys inspired me to FIX my mower instead of pitching it. It would run for a couple of seconds on the gas I squirted in with the priming bulb, but wouldn't keep running. I have never worked on a mower before, so I took it to the local mower repair place. They refused to work on it because it was too old and cheap. <snif> But the guy said it was probably the carb, since I haven't used it in a while, and because the ethanol gasoline we are getting here now tends to leave deposits like hard candy. Ugh. So anyway, armed with that knowledge, and the overwhelming desire to save 200 bucks, I bought a can of carb cleaner, took a bunch of the carb apart, and hosed it down good with the carb cleaner. I put it all back together, and it started on the first pull! Ran better than it had in 10 years!

Anyway, if not for hanging out with you guys, I probably woulda just bought a new mower. Thanks for the inspiration!

nurr otherwise i woulda snaged it, fixed it, and sold it for $40 (done that 3 times now) hehehe

but yea, whenever it will start but then die its usually a fuel related issue, either vaporlock, somehitng clogging the line, or carb dirty. you did the right thing by getting carb cleaner and going to town. 99&#37; of the time its the float bowl needle valve getting stuck.
i let gas sit in our mowers (4 ones a rider) all winter with no stabilizer and it works perfectly fine come spring. (weve had E10 around here since the mid 80's)doing that for as long as i can remember. ethonal is just fine. if you let the gas sit in an open container for a winter or a year then yes it will form somehitng along the lines of silly putty but if you keep the caps on the can and mowers it should be fine. that will even happen with regular gas. The alcohal in the E10 doesnt accualy cause things to "gum up" the alcohal disolves all the varnish buildup from the fuel and breaks it loose and it clogs the filter or in your case the carb jet.

Well... this thread is a little old... But....

Two weeks ago my university cleaned out the senior design lab in the engineering department... And dumped all sorts of goodies behind the engineering building for trash pickup....

-I got a big box full of virgin and scrap balsa
-A bunch of rechargeable battery packs
-3A Battery Pack Charger (but needs a power supply)
-A 12" propeller
-Servo Cable For model planes (Brand new in a sealed Bag!)
-Other misc. Bits :)

A few months ago... again, behind the engineering building... a HUGE multi phase compressor was being tossed... allong with a bunch of vibration isolation springs, several 480V 3 phase motors, drive belts and pulleys.
We grabbed a motor (weighing 80lbs), some belts and all the springs we could find :D

Bill -

That sounds great! My Dad kept his mower going for maybe 20+ years before getting a new one, but I think he still has the old one as backup. You'll never know how many times I pulled that starter cable thingy over the years!

CarloSW2

Ya, maybe the ethanol wasn't the problem. Maybe it's just that I hadn't done any maintenance on it at all in 16 years. :-) Well, I did change the oil...

haha i should probably change the oil in my rider. its been about 6 or 7 years. and ive used ti all summer for at leats 2-3 hours a week

Yeah, man, go crazy and change that oil. :-)