Quotulatiousness

June 10, 2013

Happy Tax Freedom Day

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:29

Today is the day that Canadians start earning money for themselves, having worked the year up to this point to pay for our various levels of government:

Tax Freedom Day, the day Canadian families have made enough money to pay off the total tax bill levied by all levels of government, falls on Monday, June 10 this year, according to the Fraser Institute’s annual calculations.

Tax Freedom Day arrives two days later than 2012 when it fell on June 8.

“Canadians are waiting an extra two days to celebrate Tax Freedom Day partly because governments across the country continue to increase taxes in an effort to make up for their overspending and deficits,” said Charles Lammam, Fraser Institute associate director of tax and budget policy and co-author of Canadians Celebrate Tax Freedom Day on June 10, 2013.

“What’s worse, some governments are relying on the most damaging types of tax increases including higher tax rates on personal income and investment, which will ultimately discourage economic growth.”

Among the tax increases announced so far are hikes to BC’s corporate income tax and top personal tax rate as well as its Medical Services Plan premiums; a new top income tax bracket in Quebec; increases to Manitoba’s Provincial Sales Tax and financial corporate capital tax; increases to New Brunswick’s corporate income tax and all four personal income tax rates; increased taxes on small businesses in PEI; cancellation of a corporate tax decrease in Saskatchewan; and increased Employment Insurance premiums federally.

Tax Freedom Day also comes later this year because Canada’s progressive tax system imposes a higher tax burden on families as their incomes increase.

You can use the Fraser Institute’s Personal Tax Freedom Day calculator to find your own tax freedom day here.

When recycling makes sense – and when it doesn’t

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:14

Michael Munger examines two of the most common myths about recycling:

Almost everything that’s said about recycling is wrong. At the very least, none of the conventional wisdom is completely true. Let me start with two of the most common claims, each quite false:

  1. Everything that can be recycled should be recycled. So that should be the goal of regulation: zero waste.
  2. If recycling made economic sense, the market system would take care of it. So no regulation is necessary, and in fact state action is harmful.

If either of those two claims were true, then the debate would be over. The truth is more complicated than almost anyone admits.

There are two general kinds of arguments in favor of recycling. The first is that “this stuff is too valuable to throw away!” In almost all cases, this argument is false, and when it is correct recycling will be voluntary; very little state action is necessary. The second is that recycling is cheaper than landfilling the waste. This argument may well be correct, but it is difficult to judge because officials need keep landfill prices artificially low to discourage illegal dumping and burning. Empirically, recycling is almost always substantially more expensive than disposing in the landfill.

Since we can’t use the price system, authorities resort to moralistic claims, trying to persuade people that recycling is just something that good citizens do. But if recycling is a moral imperative, and the goal is zero waste, not optimal waste, the result can be a net waste of the very resources that recycling was implemented to conserve. In what follows, I will illustrate the problems with each of the two central fallacies of mandatory and pure-market recycling, and then will turn to the problem of moral imperatives.

No surprise here – there’s also a maple-flavoured PRISM

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:05

In the Globe and Mail, Colin Freeze covers the Canadian data collection program that was approved by the Martin government in 2005 and “renewed” by the Harper government in 2011:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay approved a secret electronic eavesdropping program that scours global telephone records and Internet data trails — including those of Canadians — for patterns of suspicious activity.

Mr. MacKay signed a ministerial directive formally renewing the government’s “metadata” surveillance program on Nov. 21, 2011, according to records obtained by The Globe and Mail. The program had been placed on a lengthy hiatus, according to the documents, after a federal watchdog agency raised concerns that it could lead to warrantless surveillance of Canadians.

There is little public information about the program, which is the subject of Access to Information requests that have returned hundreds of pages of records, with many passages blacked out on grounds of national security.

It was first explicitly approved in a secret decree signed in 2005 by Bill Graham, defence minister in Paul Martin’s Liberal government.

It is illegal for most Western espionage agencies to spy on their citizens without judicial authorization. But rising fears about foreign terrorist networks, coupled with the explosion of digital communications, have shifted the mandates of secretive electronic-eavesdropping agencies that were created by military bureaucracies to spy on Soviet states during the Cold War.

The Canadian surveillance program is operated by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), an arm of the Department of National Defence.

Daniel Ellsberg on rolling back an “executive coup” against the US constitution

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

In the Guardian, Daniel Ellsberg explains why the Snowden leak is so important:

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material — and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa — but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: “It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.”

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense — as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time — as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads — they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.

The fact that congressional leaders were “briefed” on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.

Edward Snowden is “one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:03

The identity of the NSA whistleblower is revealed by the Guardian:

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations — the NSA.

[. . .]

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. “I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me.”

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. “I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in.” He added: “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”

He has had “a very comfortable life” that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

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