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An Open Letter to Covid Deniers
An Open Letter to Covid Deniers Recently a close acquaintance of mine advised me that he was “so done with all this Covid BS”. He went on to explain that the precautions we’re being asked to take are seemingly illogical and arbitrary, and in his opinion not doing much to make us safer. And he…
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Population Pressure and Immigration Policy
Population Pressure and Immigration Policy Today is November 24th. It’s the day that something like 27 people drowned trying to emigrate from France to the United Kingdom in a large open inflatable dinghy. This comes days after Belarus created an international incident by routing migrants to the border and urging them to cut fences and…
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Greta Thunberg – Heroine or Brat?
Greta Thunberg – Heroine or Brat? Greta Thunberg… what is she? Global heroine fighting to preserve a dying planet? Or an obnoxious little brat? The Nobel prize lends credence to the first view, but her social media coverage demonstrates that many people are inclined to the latter. I predict that in fifty years, some 17-year-old…
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Population Pressure & An Absolution for Baby Boomers
Population Pressure An Absolution for Baby Boomers I’ve been puzzling myself with concerns about population pressure, so I looked up a couple of articles on population growth. I’ve begun a practice of trying to check the credibility of sources when I do any quick google research, and to that end I use a site called…
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Voluntary Taxes and Summary
Voluntary Taxation and Summary The fourth mechanism for governments to raise money is voluntary taxation, by which I mean gambling. I have a short little diatribe on the use of gambling as a government fund-raiser, and then I’ll try to summarize these four sermons. I buy lottery tickets. I maintain that if I don’t buy…
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Consumption Taxes
The second source of money for the government is taxation tied to our spending habits. GST, HST, PST – every time we buy an article, we get to send money to the government for the privilege. Some articles have direct taxes associated with them – gasoline, “sin taxes” on alcohol, and tobacco and now cannabis. …
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Taxing Income Streams
Taxing Income Streams How many ways are there for the government to separate us from our money? Fundamentally, there are only four. They can take money as it’s coming in, they can take money as it’s being spent, they can grab what we’re trying to hold onto, or we can give it to them voluntarily.…
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In Search of Fair Taxation
Taxation Systems Some time ago, I watched a news story which said that people working in the tax system believe that it is unfairly biased in favour of the rich. It went on to discuss what the survey information meant and how tax loopholes are being used to enable tax avoidance. More recently we went…