Showing posts with label #elxn42. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #elxn42. Show all posts

Saturday, October 24, 2015

So the Liberals are back - Please keep us on track



MY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

Liberal governments can be good, they can do something other than tax and spend – the thing that is scaring me a little right now, this one has promised to spend, so taxing is sure to follow. Mr. Martin, with the reform party as cheer leaders fixed the Canadian fiscal picture. Mr. Martin spoke to us “hicks” in the west and forged relations with us. Mr. Martin did the Kelowna accord. Mr. Martin debt financed Canadian Steamship Company to the tune of $30 million and built a company of renown. Justin is a different cut of cloth than Paul Martin, I wonder if he will have the courage to draw on Mr. Martin’s experience.

The other concern I have is whether or not we are going to be exposed to another round of the central Canadian academics, some true liberals and some silk stocking socialist, attempting to engineer Canadian Society again. The last time they had their way we got, MASSIVE DEBT, pork barrel and more pork barrel, frivolous grant programs – all adding up to a fiscal train wreck and the advancement of a wishy washy ill-defined cultural soup that generated a single worthwhile cultural artifact – canoeing is good.

Cultural Identity Series 

The last thing that Canada needs and most importantly, the last thing Canadian children need, is a National Institution that takes them from the care of their fathers and mothers – Factory Daycare scares me, the last bastion of cultural diversity, the family is under attack by this proposal. We want to encourage family, we want parents’ love to guide childrearing as opposed to the stark white interior of a government daycare – the latest vehicle for building national group think – “give me a child for four years and I’ll give you a Bolshevik forever” says Mr. Lennon. The last thing I want is 1970 style “central Canada cultural imperatives” lodged in the minds of my grandchildren. The family needs support; parents should be lobbying for support, for more time with children, as opposed to less. Quebec spends about $9000 / year on a daycare seat, give that to the family – two children, $18,000 / year will let a father that is marginally employed choose to stay home – or give an extended family member the ability to care for children or facilitate a group of parents to work together to do childcare in a way that is agreeable to them – give the money to parents, say no to Factory Daycare.
Childcare Series 

Will we see the end of the fear mongering that brought C 51 into being absent sufficient civilian oversight, I truly hope so. Mr. Trudeau promises to let facts talk, to be rational about risk and response – to let reason rule. I will support him eagerly in this endeavor, most eagerly if he reopens the gun registry debate again.

Let Reason Rule - Say NO to Fear Politics 

Perrier Trudeau, when faced with tyrants in the form of the FLQ jabbed at “weak kneed liberals” when they objected to the War Measures Act.. Mr. Trudeau Senior stood up to violence, he said NO, sent in the army and took control – that was leadership.  Already Justin is watering down our NATO commitments, failing to stay the course in Syria. Canada was a proud member of the United Nations and was instrumental in forwarding as an imperative the obligation to protect people subjected to oppressive government or circumstance – so now we’re going to leave children in harm’s way and direct resources toward housing the ones fortunate enough to get away – with many perishing in the attempt to escape – we must do better.
There is one entity ensuring world stability at the moment, NATO, absent NATO as a hegemon, the world is in a pre WW1 circumstance, unstable and volatile. To take actions that make NATO look like a paper tiger, only serves to embolden the likes of Isis. Discontinuing Canadian military participation in the action in Syria, is irresponsible in the extreme and should be reconsidered.

Weak Kneed Foreign Policy 

So we are going to run up some debt, for what is the question. Money is cheap right now, so investing in assets with long term value makes sense. We do need infrastructure, so investing in infrastructure that facilitates economy is good – no to frivolous cultural extravaganzas please – build transportation, build out fiber optic, restructure, fix Canada’s crumbling urban centers and build out education. For those of us that lived through the 1970s and saw people getting $25,000 grants for the word “shit” black on white, well we’re once stung, now we are twice shy – please god deliver us from a repeat of that CRAP.

Fiscal Policy 

Perrier Trudeau never bought a quart of milk in his life, he was detached from economic reality and Canada paid the price. It took that detachment however, to give us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – a most worthy document, with some 300 years of blood spilled in the enlightenment as equity. Save the absence of property rights, it is pure poetry. I can take some more of that, a document that makes Liberalism equal Freedom, the challenge is that somehow, the 1970 “liberal” government forfeited “Freedom” for a nannystateism. The legacy of 1970 “liberal” government’s “culture” and policy are still at play, it resulted in a decrease in choice and a namby pambism that gags me. I wonder if political pragmatism will prevent this type of boldness from Mr. Trudeau Jr. and push him so far over to youthful enthusiasm that our economy ends up in a heap, with so many hopes and dreams with it.  
We need to access the full value of our resources, prudent use of the oilsands should be part and parcel of our way forward – we need pipelines to market. Will Mr. Trudeau have the fortitude to forge ahead or will our prosperity machine wither on the vine; the prosperity machine that will finance the transition to an eco-friendly economy. 

Oilsands & Pipe Lines

Granted, Mr. Harper managed to alienate the Maritime Provinces, this fact came through loud and clear this election. It rocked us all out west when Mr. Trudeau Jr. whispered National Energy Plan, the insensitivity Mr. Trudeau Sn. to the west and our way of living spurred the whole Western Concept movement, which morphed in to the Western Separatist movement. Then we’ve had Quebec threatening to go for decades now. The derision toward the west, exacerbated by pandering to Quebec and the rest of central Canada put our federation in peril – Mr. Martin built bridges as Prime Minister, so liberals can do it, the party has the bench strength for it, will this one put much effort into it. I’ve seen Mr. Trudeau Jr. cozy with “vote rich Ontario”, in spite of the fact Ms. Wynne has been running up debt funding operations, rather than investing – lets hope that Mr. Trudeau Jr. takes his fiscal lead from elsewhere. Mr. Trudeau’s recent invitation to the provinces for a powwow is encouraging; I hope he has the good sense to give Mr. Wall his ear.   

I think there is hope for Mr. Trudeau Jr.’s liberals; there are some good people there. Maybe I’m too much a westerner, but when I hear the echoes 1970s central Canada’s academia’s arrogance bouncing of the walls of the recently dusted off press gallery, I am screaming blue murder – they can store that in a dark and in accessible place from my perspective – let culture emerge from the strong Canadian people, from the land and the actions we take on it to live each day – leave the social engineers at home Mr. Trudeau, we’ve all seen their handy work before.   

MY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

ON CANADA'S CULTURE

Monday, September 21, 2015

Party politics and the media – distortions and spinning mountains out of molehills





Click here: MY PROFESSIONAL WEBSITE

In the words of Winston Churchill, democracy is the worst possible system except for all the rest, in another quote he suggested, if you ever want to shake your faith in democracy just spend five minutes talking to your average voter. The contrast to the voter of his day and the contemporary voter is that, the voter of his day had five minutes. It is very difficult for the average voter today to gain the knowledge required to be really informed, as people are running at an extremely fast pace; so even if the press were providing information unaffected by political distortion by which to form opinion, voters of today hardly have time to think. In this context there is instability in the voting public, resulting from people susceptible to a 30 second news clip asserting a scandal that would be contrasted to earlier times when opinion was formed slowly and changed slowly. In view of this battle for the “swing vote” or “vital middle” parties seek to differentiate by exaggerating differences that are really minute, spinning mountains out of molehills.

What emerges from this process is a polarised public by party but really possessing nearly identical beliefs or political outcomes. There then exists the absence of substantive difference in policy direction. This dynamic diminishes real choice, but what is worse is the distorted view of government policy that emerges out of the process.

The media feeds the political rhetoric by attaching undue saliency to occurrences in society at large and in response to political prompting. The events of September 11, 2001 where ghastly and warranted acute national attention, yet only 3000 people were killed. In that same year 100,000 people were killed by preventable medical accidents. The medical accidents received no attention at all. Both were horrible occurrences, yet only one, 9/1,1 received coverage. 

There are issues were political saliency becomes detached from mathematical reality and this distorts public perception and the political process. In Canada 171 people per year are killed in gun related incidents (one would be too many) yet we spent $2 billion on a gun registry and nothing on a medical records system, when in Canada 25,000 people die each year from preventable medical accidents. In the context of rational thought medical accidents should be our priority. It seems that journalists should give more consideration to saliency and the way it affects public opinion, as public concern is often misdirected with the most serious of consequences.



I've used gun control as an example above, there are many other examples to draw from.

A useful concept to consider this phenomena by is called the Availability Heuristic Salient. In these instances, the ease of imagining an example or the vividness and emotional impact of that example, becomes more credible than actual statistical probability. Because an example is easily brought to mind or mentally "available", the single example is considered as representative of the whole, rather than as just a single example in a range of data. Salient events tend to distort the judgement of risk.

 It is difficult to imagine a means by which this can be addressed, but the distortion in the public’s view of issues as a result is worrying. Even the application of ideology would give some stable means by which to anchor support. For the most part, political party’s position is so nebulous its hard to see what is being supported and so fungible that today’s policy is something else tomorrow, depending on which direction the windsock of public opinion is pointing. Young people see this, particularly the informed ones, and turn away from the system. One understands the nebulous stance holds political advantage at its core. In the effort to promote brand over substance in defining political parties, the overall brand of democracy is waning.  

Friday, September 18, 2015

Taxes - KISS THIS - Keep it simple stupid




In watching and participating in the discourse around taxation in the election, I became guilty of a very dangerous frame of mind – like the blind man feeling the elephant’s parts and failing to assess the whole – I find myself making comments on the minutia, rather than looking at the whole. At its base, the Canadian tax system, beyond just collecting revenue for the government, is a societal manipulation program. That is to say, the government takes our money and then gives a very small portion of it back if we do what the government wants. We as a people should be permitted to be autonomous agents and when government through coercive means or pecuniary means alters choice, it is an encroachment on personal choice. At what point is government exercising excessive control over us?

On average Canadians pay 42% of their earning in TAXES to the government, that’s average, higher income earners, not the 1%, but people who work hard every day for their families pay more. 42%, plus permits, airport fees, environmental levies & then there is the ambient circumstance of massive government complexity in remitting and reporting income. I remember setting about the task of understanding the Canadian Tax Act, the act is 1200 pages long, I could hardly lift the book. In that book are; tax loopholes, corporate welfare, redistributionist policy. The tax system is a means by which the government attacks our choice as to who and what we want to support under threat of expropriation or incarceration.


I shudder to think what the administrative cost of compliance to the Canadian Income Tax  Act is by itself, then add administrative costs of remitting GST or the multitude of other taxes we pay – what people forget – taxes, in of themselves are a massive cost, but the collection and remittances in the context of such complex regulation eats up millions of person hours – in economics this is often referred as a “transaction cost”. Transaction Costs are like bank fees, they steal capital, they steal food from the mouths of babes, they steal the money for the symphony ticket – they are costs that neither purchase a good nor produce a good. They are necessary, but we must seek to limit them. Take a moment to consider in your life, the time it takes to do your taxes or the cost to have them done - and further your interface with government generally. 

We have the Canadian Revenue Agency, it employs in excess of 40,000 people, an army of people to collect taxes. At $60,000 total cost per person that is $2,400,000,000 of “transaction cost”, I punched that in my calculator – is that right – how much is that – it is a lot of help for families to be sure. These are all good people, smart people, capable people, honest people doing honest work - the real cost is wasted is human capital, this bank of highly capable people could be redirected to productive work – calculate the lost opportunity of their productive work, it is staggering. Worse, however, there is another larger army of people, also highly intelligent, highly motivated and capable, also wasting human and financial resources trying to avoid paying taxes – hours spent finding loopholes and more hours spent fighting it out in court. Think about it and you will begin to see the lunacy in it.

NOTE: I've had comments wondering what these people would do if a policy that government pursues renders their present position redundant, the government would be obligated see to their redeployment is some way. This is in no way a suggestion to abandon people, it is a suggestion to deploy funds better in the interests of people. 


There is good news, however, this is all completely unnecessary. There is another way, a way that promotes compliance and reduces the transaction cost that is the Canadian tax system. No matter what the entity, no matter the place, when that entity generates an income to pays an amount. No tax loopholes, no tax incentives, no complexity. Entity X makes a $1, entity X pays an amount – just that simple. As soon as you do that, you save most of the $2,400,000,000 in wages and other governmental overhead. There are examples of jurisdictions with similar tax systems as Canada opting to collect a flat 10% tax on income, and their revenues increased – why, because of compliance increases. When income tax is low enough no one wants to take the risks associated with tax avoidance.

Simplifying the tax system makes our lives easier and better, this is true of all government systems. There is undue complexity in government, ASK YOURSELF WHY.  

More Thinking on the Subject
Click Below 

Friday, September 4, 2015

Refugee Crisis - How many children have to pay the price.


The recent politicization of the death of two young boys escaping a civil war has been a low point in Canadian politics; I’m unsure who introduced these boys misfortune into the mix first; they should be ashamed of themselves. Given that the Conservatives had nothing to gain from the assertions that Canada is AWOL on the refugee front, one can deduct then it was someone else.

Now that refugees are front and center on the campaign trail the topic is at hand and it presents an opportunity to point out where refugees come from. We have refugees because we have conflict and disruption, we have conflict because the world community has failed to manage the region effectively. Please look at the history of the Middle East and you will make the following observation, the pain incurred there by these people is a product of incomplete effort on the part of intervening nations in our contemporary reality and the fracturing of regional order as a result of European management post Ottoman Empire.

Click the Links below for more thinking on the subject
  
Russia attacked Afghanistan so they could have a fossil fuel transportation corridor to the lucrative Pakistani and Indian markets; the United States intervened by supporting Afghani warriors “freedom fighters” as they were called and they drove the Russians out, this gave birth to the Taliban.  The Taliban gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and a stronghold for al-Qaeda in the Pashtun region of the country. It then became necessary to bomb the al-Qaeda stronghold and invade the country. It is important to note that many in the United States governing body wanted to take a stronger presence in Afghanistan post the Russian occupation, had they done so the Afghanistan story would be much different – because of passive foreign policy however, in excess of a decade of war and hardship ensued. Even now, having been through the cycle before and post a trillion dollar military adventure, we (the west) are poised to make the same error in Afghanistan. We need to focus on effectiveness in the Middle East, on outcomes there and stop letting western election cycles and the whimsy of the populous politics determine our course.

Having seen this same process unfold several times elsewhere, we had to once again repeat history in Iraq. The Coalition took Iraq handily militarily speaking and then invested trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, millions of civilians killed, injured and displaced to win the peace, to effect a secure living circumstance for the country. This was a herculean undertaking with an unspeakable human toll, only to walk away to let the cycle unfold again, in was popular to take US troops out of Iraq – it was just stupid in the extreme. Granted there are other causal elements at play in the rise of ISIS, the “desert spring” and the collapse of several national orders in quick succession has played a role as well, the point is that had the US maintained military presence, there would be remaining a point where order exists. The two little boys who drowned were Kurds, “Kurdistan” or the Kurdish region of Iraq was beginning to prosper before the war do a degree and then gained momentum as the new order in Iraq took form; most of Kurd’s progress took place with just western air support. Had we (the west) exercised our obligation to protect, had we stayed the course, those two little boys would have opportunity to be living in a stable and prosperous place.

The generous country of Canada never killed those boys; a dismal circumstance and extended western neglect did. 

Click the Links below for more thinking on the subject