Quotulatiousness

March 2, 2010

Linking Olympic glory with jackbooted thugs?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:14

Frequent commenter “Lickmuffin” responded to the post entitled SWAT forces now spend more time doing non-SWAT policing with a long comment tying together the Olympics and the omnipresent SWAT teams:

I have to say that I really don’t understand your views here.
Olympic fascist spectacle: A-OK!
The actual functional trappings of a police state: Boo, hiss!
You can’t have one without the other. As the man said, you have to break a few skulls to make Olympic Gold. Or something like that.

Lickmuffin then provided an extended discussion on the same theme:

It’s quite simple, really: if you want to host the Olympics, and you want to have a succesful national Olympic team, you have to have armed-to-the teeth SWAT teams.

To fund the Olympics and Olympians, you need to have confiscatory tax rates.

When you have confiscatory tax rates, you’re going to have people trying to avoid the taxes.

Some of those people are going to engage in dodgy and risky behaviour, such as importing, growing, manufacturing or just generally dealing with narcotics.

Some of those people are going to use violence to protect their businesses.

To deal with those guys, you need heavily armed and specially trained police.

Just three degrees of separation there, really, but it works out to something like this:

Publicly funded Olympics = SWAT teams on every corner.

What do we tell people whose family members are killed in no-knock raids where the cops had the wrong address? “Sorry about that, but that snowboarding dude needed a gold medal.”

It’s ironic that the first snowboarder to win a medal for the sport — a Canadian — tested positive for weed.

It’s not ironic at all that the same dude wants to become a Liberal MP. Snowboard boots, jackboots — same thing, really.

It really does cover all the ground, doesn’t it? Just lacking the obligatory German rendering of SWAT as Sturmabteilung, and we’re golden, as they say.

February 11, 2010

Montreal’s U.S. airport – Canadians voting with their feet

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

A new study shows that Canadian travellers can do basic math (which means bad news for Canadian airlines and airport authorities):

It’s not just the cheap fares, many Canadians report it’s simply easier to pass through United States customs via land than air. They also report security lineups at the small regional hubs offer a fraction of the waiting time of their Canadian counterparts.

Self-employed Toronto business owner Mike Payer says the past two years he has flown out of Buffalo’s airport for Christmas vacation because the price difference has been too hard to ignore.

“I saved $3,000 flying to Fort Lauderdale. It was $4,500 [for a family of four] to fly from Toronto but only US$1,200 from Buffalo. On top of all that it’s just so much simpler with U.S. Customs. You stay in a hotel overnight and most of them will even let you leave your car there [while on vacation]. I guess the only risk is the weather and missing a flight.”

I suspect there’s a mistake in the second paragraph of the linked article: no matter how much you can save, I strongly doubt that 18% of Canadians flew out of their closest US airport. 18% of Canadians who flew, maybe, but not 18% of the whole population.

Some regional airports are booming with the new Canadian traffic:

The pitch has been probably the strongest in Plattsburgh, a little town of 25,000 that spent millions in 2007 to convert a former air force base into an airport that would attract Quebec passengers. The airport, which is 100 kilometres from downtown Montreal, is fully bilingual.

“They don’t even call us Plattsburgh. We’re known as Montreal’s U.S. airport now,” said Michele Power, vice-president of marketing with the Plattsburgh-North County Chamber of Chamber of Commerce.

Greek underground economy: “Vlacha means stupid”

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Greece — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:56

Greece has a thriving economy . . . but it’s not the official, tax-paying one:

The Greek government is trying to recover billions of euros lost to tax evasion as part of its austerity programme, but as the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant finds, many Greeks see it as their right to keep as much black money as possible.

A good friend of mine bent my ear with a vengeance on the day the Greek government cranked up its austerity programme another notch.

“My husband is thinking of writing the word vlacha on his forehead in very big letters,” she said.

Vlacha means stupid.

Her husband’s name is Stelios and he is anything but a stupid man.

Stelios is a leading cancer specialist whose dedication to saving lives is such that he rarely takes time off, or holidays.

But he has come to the conclusion that he is stupid because he has been honest.

January 29, 2010

High taxes/low taxes, it’s all relative

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:27

Lorne Gunter finds that what were once considered “intolerable” rates of taxation are microscopic compared to what we pay today:

The American colonists, by comparison, felt they were groaning under a crippling tax burden. Many of their staples, they felt, were onerously taxed while they received little from England in return and had no say in how large the levies against them would be.

[. . .]

So out of curiosity, I asked the historian what the level of taxation was in 1776 that caused the U.S. to declare its independence.

I will always recall his answer: “the equivalent today of about 5% to 7% of their income.”

What?

Today, in Canada, all levels of government, through all their taxes, can confiscate as much as half or more of a taxpayer’s income, in total. Income taxes, pension claw-backs, the GST, gasoline excise taxes, import duties and tariffs, estate taxes, property taxes, capital gains and on and on and on.

And yet, like the abused spouse rushing back to an abuser, many Canadians continue to sing the praises of ever bigger and bigger government. They rush to it in any crisis looking to be saved, whether through “free” health care during times of personal crisis or through auto company bailouts that demonstrate solidarity with distant workers in distant communities during times of global crisis.

The problem has been that Canadians expect the government (at all levels) to do something any time there’s a real or perceived crisis. Governments are happy to oblige by (at least appearing) to do something. Inevitably, the scope of what the government does increases every year. As “Steve the Pundit” wrote in the comments to the original article:

It’s true that Canadians have become far too dependent on government to save us from any crisis, large or small, much in the same way that the citizens of Metropolis continually looked to “Superman” to save them from all of their ills, whether it be an irradiated mutant bent on mass destruction … or a purse snatcher. Any crisis, it seems, “… look(ed) like a job for Superman!”

Exactly.

January 18, 2010

How much are the Vikings worth?

Filed under: Economics, Football, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:52

An interesting Wall Street Journal article tries to put a dollar value on the “intangible” value of a professional sports team to the fans . . . in this case, the Minnesota Vikings:

Christopher Slinde, a lifetime Minnesota Vikings fan who has endured decades of heartbreak and lots of overpriced beer in supporting his team, believes Vikings fandom is priceless. According to economists, it’s worth $530.65.

“This is deep,” said Mr. Slinde, a 33-year-old X-ray technician, outside the Park Tavern near Minneapolis on Sunday. He had been handed a recent economics paper that is tattooed with equations and attempts to value, in dollars, the joy and pain Minnesotans get from the Vikings.

“Don’t economists spend their time on more serious stuff?” he asked, after thumbing through the paper in the cold.

As fans pack stadiums and couches to watch the National Football League’s divisional playoffs this weekend, they care about victory. Economists are tackling a more abstract challenge: putting a price on the emotional benefits of having a pro sports team in town.

Interestingly, the one question that doesn’t come up is why non-fans (the rest of the taxpayers being asked to pay for a new Vikings stadium) should use their tax dollars to subsidize their sports-mad fellow citizens. The answer is, of course, that if Minnesota won’t then some other state or city will do. It seems reasonable to me to ask the billionaire owners of these sports franchises to pay for their own buildings . . . but there’s a long, inglorious history of these very well-off, well-connected folks being able to get politicians to pry the coffers open and paying public money to benefit private interests.

January 4, 2010

Ohio moves to protect wine drinkers from themselves

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, USA, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Ah, those Ohio wine drinkers . . . they must be consuming wine at much higher than the national average. How else can you account for the state government legally imposing limits on how much wine you can buy each year?

As laws go, Ohio’s limit on wine purchases appears to be simple:

“No family household shall purchase more than 24 cases of 12 bottles of 750 milliliters of wine in one year.”

That’s 288 bottles per year — plenty for most people. But it raises questions if you’re a collector, entertain a lot or just prickle at the thought of another government regulation.

How do they know how much wine I buy? Why do they care? How many cases have I purchased this year?

Of course, the limit isn’t really a limit: there’s no mechanism to track your actual purchases from retailers, Ohio drinkers, it’s only to limit sales direct from wineries to consumers. This limit was introduced after the US Supreme Court decision a few years back which struck down state-level restrictions on shipments from out-of-state wineries.

In several ways, it’s a typical bureaucratic response to a non-issue, providing work for several new civil servants, requiring uncompensated form-filling and legal compliance on the part of the sellers (over and above the normal requirements for selling alcohol), and being remarkably ineffective, to boot:

All wineries or importers for wineries that produce fewer than 250,000 gallons per year pay the state $25 for a license that allows them to ship directly to customers here. They have to pay the state’s alcohol and sales taxes. They also have to tell the state who received the wine — and how much that person got.

The Ohio Division of Liquor Control, which receives the reports on wine sales from the S permit holders, uses the reports to determine whether someone might be violating the purchase limit, said Matt Mullins, a spokesman for the division. “It’s the division’s interpretation that it’s related to the amount of wine shipped from an S permit holder. That’s what we believe the intent (of the law) was.”

The reports are due each year in March, he said, and the first came last year. No one was flagged as a violator.

If the reports did show that someone had purchased too much wine by mail, Mullins said, the information would be turned over to the Ohio Department of Public Safety Investigative Unit, which enforces state alcohol laws. The law allows a fine of up to $100 if someone is found guilty.

I’m not at all in favour of this sort of legalistic bullshit, but if they’re going to go to the effort of setting up this system, it’s farcical to — a year or more after the fact — track down a “perpetrator” and then fine them “up to $100”. A hundred bucks wouldn’t pay the state for the time and effort to track down that criminal mastermind who legally ordered an extra case of wine . . .

Of course, the statist’s response would be to substantially increase the fines, rather than dismantle the whole ridiculous tracking system.

November 5, 2009

Rick Mercer on Canada’s Economic Action Plan

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:40

October 29, 2009

There are many ways to destroy a neighbourhood

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:36

Chicago is contemplating one of the more effective ones:

Breaking down communities by creating incentives for friends and neighbors to betray one another is a much more effective tool in developed nations with less salient cultural cleavages a ruler can exploit. Creating distrust in society increases the public’s demand for government and reduces our ability to create (market and non-market) voluntary institutions to compete with government. If we think our neighbors are out to get us, we’re less likely to want to deal with them on a voluntary basis and more likely to demand they be controlled by government. Destroying community is good for government.

The Chicago city government seems to have realized this. It is considering a “Tax Whistleblower Program” which would pay people to rat on “tax cheats.” Grassers will most likely be paid a percentage of back taxes collected. The city officials are claiming that it’s “just another way of bringing people into compliance.” No doubt it will be an effective one too, since community can be a fragile thing.

All it takes is one neighbourhood busybody being financially rewarded for squealing on the guy down the street. Everything tends to snowball as trust evaporates and everyone starts to view their neighbours as potential threats.

October 7, 2009

Jon writes to his Member of Parliament

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

I sent a link to Jon the other day, asking if he’d really voted for this guy. This prompted Jon to send this to his Member of Parliament:

Dear Mr. Van Loan —

Just wondering if you could comment on the Michael Geist article that appears at the following locations:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4424/135/
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/701824
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/curious+case+access+request+that+wasn/2045337/story.html

I am wondering if you could elaborate on why you are using the kidnapping case mentioned in the article as an example of why law enforcement agencies require increased access to internet service provider (ISP) information without oversight by the courts. Considering that ISP information seems to have played no role in this case, the case does not sound like a particularly good example of why such access is required.

Also, should the “lawful access” legislation pass, what guarantees are there that government agencies will not abuse such access for political purposes? I suspect that this sort of thing already happens in Canada, but such abuse is currently (in theory) illegal. Removing the requirement for a warrant and providing open access to an ISP’s customer records is something that seems to be wide open to abuse.

Please advise as time permits.

Thanks and best regards —

Jonathan [Redacted]

In a separate email, he also explained that he’d met Van Loan once before, with less-than-perfect meeting of the minds:

Ah yes. We knew however many years ago it was when we first voted for the guy what he would be doing. That whole telepathy and prescient seeing thing is working very well for us. Explains my success at Casino Rama.

Snark aside, though, I will admit that I put on the badge of shame years ago when I asked the guy at a local event about the child care tax credit — you know, the $100-per-month-per-kid-beer-and-popcorn fund. When I asked why they did not just reduce parents’ taxable income by $1200 per year rather than give us back our own money (less interest and opportunity cost, of course), he said that “But then people who have no income wouldn’t get anything.” My wife and I responded in unison: “Well, that’s their problem!”<flea-asterisk>**</flea-asterisk>

Van Loan and I looked at each other and I think we both regretted that I had voted for him.

<flea-asterisk>**</flea-asterisk><flea-snark>That sentence could also be emphasised as “”Well, that’s their problem, [right there]!”</flea-snark>

October 4, 2009

Nearly half of American households face no income tax burden this year

Filed under: Economics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:43

Jeanne Sahadi writes that the direct income tax burden is far from evenly spread this year:

Most people think they pay too much to Uncle Sam, but for some people it simply is not true.

In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks.

The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero — or less — is on the rise. The center’s original 2009 estimate was 38%. That was before enactment in February of the $787 billion economic recovery package, which included a host of new or expanded tax breaks.

I guess that “soak the rich” plan really is working, then?

For those of a more “progressive” orientation, this is all to the good: those filthy rich paying disproportionally high rates is good, in their view. What it doesn’t take into account is human nature . . . just because they’ll pay that much this year doesn’t mean they’ll do nothing to change that picture next year or the year after that. The big risk being run here is that it will encourage “the rich” to reduce their taxable income (which often means switching from economically more productive uses to less productive ones) or even to remove themselves from the picture altogether (tax havens exist for a lot of reasons).

If only 1% of taxpayers are paying over 40% of the total tax collected, it only takes a few of them to move to a lower-tax jurisdiction to seriously impact the total taxes collected.

Doug Mataconis hopes that this will have a positive outcome:

Once the American people realize that “soak the rich” isn’t going to pay for all the things they claim they want from government, it’s entirely possible that they’ll decide that maybe the state doesn’t need to be as intrusive as it’s become over the years.

I’m not as confident that this is the lesson that most people would draw: once they’re comfortable with the idea of the government providing everything, they’ll be unwilling to go back to the “less civilized” model of having to provide for themselves.

October 2, 2009

Don’t tax the soft drinks: remove the subsidies instead

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:29

Katherine Mangu-Ward thinks the US government has an easier fix to the problem than taxing soda pop:

Subsidy packages to corn growers have been sweet in recent years, with an average of about $5 billion annually since 1995, and a bumper crop of cash in 2005 clocking in at about $9.4 billion. Many of the acres of corn grown in the United States wouldn’t be profitable if it weren’t for federal subsidies (as chronicled in the excellent documentary King Corn), yet those billions keep the cheap corn piling up around our waists.

But on the other hand, debt-ridden congressmen are now terrified for their livelihoods. They’re desperate for a way to fund healthcare reform — and taking credit for solving the obesity problem would be nice, too. So the Senate Finance Committee held hearings this spring to brainstorm some ways to gin up some cash. One of the proposals they entertained was a 3 cent tax per 12 ounces of soda, which would generate $24 billion over four years, according to a December report from the Congressional Budget Office.

The application of a little basic math reveals an interesting coincidence: The expected revenue from a soda tax and the expected subsidy payments to corn farmers come to almost the same amount — somewhere between $5 billion and $6 billion a year.

August 4, 2009

California looking for all kinds of new sources of income

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:34

Neil Gaiman has some issues with the California tax department (individual Twitter messages, in sequence):

It wasn’t identity theft screwing up my credit rating. Twas the idiot state of idiot california deciding I lived there & wasn’t paying tax.

I know that California is bankrupt and stupid, but ohhhh the stupidness and ohhh the cupidity. Twerps.

They decided I lived there & wasn’t paying tax & took out a Tax Lien; then cancelled it when we yelled, but it lives on in the credit rpt.

Right. I just spoke to a nice man who pretended he wasn’t in India who said he’d get onto fixing it. We shall see what happens.

July 27, 2009

Audax toujours

Filed under: Economics, Government — Tags: — Nicholas @ 14:12

Thaddeus Tremayne may appear to have gone off his medications when he proposed this:

I think it behooves us to begin spreading this idea: that people who work in the public sector should be exempt from having to pay tax. All tax.

But he really does have a valid and interesting point:

No, what I am proposing is the stripping away of a fig-leaf that disguises the very important distinction between tax-payers and tax-consumers.

Currently, only those who earn their living in the private or voluntary sector are tax-payers and while public sector employees do file tax returns and, on the face of it, pay their taxes too, this is a mere bookkeeping fiction. They are the recipients of tax, adding nothing to the public purse. The number of people who fail to understand this distinction, holding instead that “we are all taxpayers” is alarmingly high. By forcing the public sector to lead tax-free lives, we make their true status not just clearer but undeniable.

Consider the meme-spreading to have started.

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