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29
Oct
2017
I’m not convinced that even professional accountants fully understand all the 2700 pages of ifs, ands, and maybes in Canadian tax law.
Half a century ago, in 1967, the Carter Royal Commission on Taxation recommended a simple formula: “A buck is a buck.”
Kenneth Carter, a Toronto accountant, was appointed by the John Diefenbaker government in 1962 to study Canada’s income tax mess. Business leaders argued that the Canadian tax system was “unfair and needed reform” – even though it was vastly simpler then than it is now.
Five years later, in February of Canada’s Centennial year, Carter presented the government with a revolutionary report.
It said, basically, that it shouldn’t matter how you earned your income -- hourly wages, salaries, stock market, or real estate speculation. It could be from gambling, or even crime. If you made money, you paid tax on it. Period.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Morneau, income taxes, Carter Commission, tax reform
25
It rained on our drive home from Vancouver. Although “rained” doesn’t adequately describe the downpour. Genesis says that at creation, God “divided the waters above from the waters below.” On that drive home, the waters above and below re-united.
There was so much rain on the road that our car used four extra litres of fuel going home than going out, on exactly the same road, just squishing water out of the way of the tires.
I would have looked for an Ark, if I could have seen it through a windshield streaming with water.
Oddly, my rearview mirrors were still clear. Because the rain wasn’t hitting them at all. I could see clearly, back down the highway.
It reminded me of one of Marshall McLuhan’s aphorisms: "We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror."
It’s a metaphoric way of saying that we can’t see into the future.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Moses, McLuhan, future, past, rearview mirror, rain
21
Two weeks ago, I had never even heard the name of Harvey Weinstein. Since then, his partly-shaven face has appeared on almost every TV newscast or entertainment program, every day.
The Weinstein scandal has even changed the rules of what broadcasters can and can’t say on air. “Masturbation” and “erection” were once taboo words. But one can’t talk about Weinstein’s indiscretions without using them.
The Fox network listed 41 women who accused Weinstein of everything from vaginal rape to forcing them to watch while he masturbated, from fondling and groping them to forcing them to give him a massage.
The key word in that last sentence is “forcing.”
Tags: masturbation, Weinstein, sex, scandal, rape, massage, power, aphrodisiac, Kissinger
18
The mallet raps gently against the rim of the bowl. The bowl rings, sings, high and clear.
The sound slowly fades. Do I still hear it? Or do I just imagine that I still hear it? Sound consists of molecules of air vibrating against each other; I know their ripples continue to spread and interact, even when they are no longer audible to my ears.
There is no clear break between hearing and not-hearing. Between tasting and not-tasting. The boundaries blur.
Tags: hearing, Senses, sight, touch. taste, touch, memory
15
We humans are contradictory creatures.
Although many animals will assist the vulnerable among their own members, and a few will even adopt orphans of other species, we humans seem to be the only ones who will band together to help total strangers -- people we have never met and may never meet, people of different religion, culture, and origins. So we organize to help refugees in Syria and Myanmar. We fund charities that work in distant lands. And when a hailstorm of bullets felled a crowd in Las Vegas, we throw ourselves on top of others to protect them; we ruin the upholstery in our cars by rushing bleeding victims to hospitals; we risk our own lives to help others escape.
We have made compassion a primary virtue.
At the same time, we are the only species that kills for pleasure. Not even scorpions and cobras kill for the sake of killing.
Tags: Las Vegas, massacre, shooting, mass shooting, Stephen Paddock, Cecil the lion. Zanda