More reasons to hate the 1%

by Jonathan McLeod on February 22, 2012

Okay, so this could be seen as my second consecutive post that attacks the wealthy. I don’t mean to get into any sort of class warfare, but, sometimes, things just come up.

Recently, Jonathan Kay (an editor for National Post) wrote a column for Toronto Life titled, Almost Rich, that detailed the difficulties of living in Toronto on a 1%-ers salary ($196K). This prompted a pretty solid takedown (if a little mean) by Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan. Mr. Kay, who has always seemed like a stand-up columnist, offered a rather sporting response to being “Gawkified”.

I had been tempted to write about this, but, thankfully, didn’t, as Chris Tindal has written a better assessment than I probably could have:

And Kay does make some arguments to that effect. He writes that “for many Torontonians, that $10,400 [the after-tax, monthly income of someone making $196,000 a year] disappears fast.” By way of example, he points out that living in a $1.5 million house, spending $1000 on a stroller, renovating a kitchen to add granite counters and “spending a fortune on artisanal cheeses” to host a “casual” weekend gathering is really expensive. (“No shit,” replies Nolan.)

But the profiles that follow, like Kay’s examples, don’t support this argument at all. Instead we’re introduced to one man who spends $800 a month on wine in addition to his $1,000 a month on clothes. We meet a retired couple who buy a new Mercedes every three years using cash. One family of four owns a Toronto house, a cottage and two cars including a BMW while still managing to put away $20,000 a year in savings and go on an annual $7,000 vacation to an all-inclusive resort. Another family’s reported monthly expenses only came to $5,780, presumably leaving them with a $4,000 a month surplus.

Most people would agree those sound like pretty rich lifestyles, as Nolan ruthlessly and convincingly asserts, so if the point of this feature is to argue that $196,000 isn’t that rich, these are very strange examples to hold up.

Mr. Tindal notes that some of the issues at play in Mr. Kay’s columns are worthy of discussion. Unfortunately, they’re not sufficiently addressed by Mr. Kay, nor are they explored in the Gawker rant.

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This is why people hate the 1%

by Jonathan McLeod on February 21, 2012

Woe is the lowly millionaire with nothing to do but worry about what might fill up his time:

I’m a 34-year-old father of two living in Regina. My wife and I plan to retire in eight years with a net worth of about $1.1 million. What started out as Freedom 45 has become Freedom 42 — even in a weak economy — through a combination of paying down my mortgage debt and a modest increase in my investments.

As Rhea and I consider the future for ourselves and our boys we have turned our discussions away from “if Freedom 42 is possible” to “What, exactly, are we going to do with all the extra time?’” There’s the mythical image of retirement — the perpetual holiday sitting on a hammock in the backyard, a life of travel to exotic destinations, volunteer work that will reward us in non-monetary ways and a chance for a second and completely different career. All of the above? some of the above? Which will it be?

Whatever he does, I don’t think I’ll be reading about it.

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Unions are their own worst enemy

by Jonathan McLeod on February 15, 2012

One of the most talked-about Super Bowl ads in Canada was a Budweiser ad in which they crashed a beer league with a few thousands fans, a jumbotron and announcers. It was, as you can imagine, an exciting moment for the players – the closest they’ll get to the NHL.

Here’s the ad:

 

Putting aside the awefulness of Bud, it was a pretty cool ad, and many of the players wound up being interveiwed for days afterwards. They were all pretty stoked.

So, a nice little story, isn’t it? Apparently, no, it’s not.

The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (an actors union) is howling mad that the players were not compensated and that the extras did not receive a union wage (the casting call noted it was a non-union job). Putting aside how ridiculous it would be to “hire” the players for their role in this flash mob (or how ridiculous it is for the union to assume that adults can’t make their own decisions), the height of folly comes with this:

ACTRA also noted that had the union been notified, the players would “have had the protection of a qualified professional stunt co-ordinator.”

Umm, yeah, words fail.

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Torture and security

by Jonathan McLeod on February 10, 2012

I saw many tweets describing Chris Selley’s column on torture as the most sensible take we’ve seen recently. I must agree:

Never mind, for now, the implausibility of such a scenario and the unreliability of torture-derived information. What’s really interesting is that Mr. Toews is using the classic pro-torture argument while declaring himself utterly opposed to torture: “Our government does not condone torture and certainly does not engage in torture,” he said.

But why not? What if everyone else stopped torturing? If our security officials risk lives by ignoring torture-derived information, then logically they would also risk lives by not torturing if they, and only they, had the chance.

On the other side, you have people like Ms. Turmel, who confidently declare they would consign every piece of intelligence that might have been derived from torture, unread, to the incinerator — even in the ticking time bomb scenario. I don’t buy it from Ms. Turmel. I’m not sure I’d buy it from anyone. I certainly wouldn’t buy it from anyone involved in the Liberals’ shameful post-9/11 performance.

There’s more.

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What does a caterpillar do but slink away?

by Jonathan McLeod on February 4, 2012

Do you remember the story about the lock-out of Electro Motive employees in London, Ontario? Well, the union stood firm, and we have a resolution. Unfortunately, that resolution is the shuttering of the plant, as Caterpillar (the owner of Electro Motive) moves the operations of the London plant to a new facility in Muncie, Indiana.

It’s a harsh move – harsher than their demand that employees take a 50% pay cut – but it can’t be that surprising, as Caterpillar held all the cards.

For my money, Andrew Coyne as provided the most honest and accurate assessment of the issue:

Force may be effective against a handful of frightened replacement workers. It is not so easily deployed against a determined multi-national company. As nasty as Caterpillar may be, the reality is that it has something the workers and the community want: investment capital, and the jobs that go with it. It does not, God knows, provide these out of the goodness of its heart. But neither can it be compelled to invest in a location if it does not find it in its interest to do so.

For that matter, it can’t be bribed into it, either: not for long. Much has been made of the “$5-million in tax breaks” the company received in the 2008 budget, and of the failure of the federal government to extract promises of job security in return. In point of fact, the sweetened writeoff went to the purchasers of locomotives, not the manufacturers, but never mind. If the only thing keeping jobs in a particular place are the subsidies attached, then the jobs will last only as long as the subsidies do. Moreover, so long as the jobs are effectively hostage to these negotiations, the terms of the ransom can only grow: witness the escalating demands of the auto industry over the years. In the end, the jobs are not saved, but only traded, since subsidy does not create jobs or investment but only diverts them, from other firms and sectors across the economy.

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It Gets Better Jukebox

by Jonathan McLeod on February 3, 2012

Back in October, the son of an Ottawa city councillor killed himself. Jamie Hubley was 15, gay and constantly bullied. His death led to a new round of It Gets Better videos, as well as a prominent comedian’s complaint that telling gay kids that it’ll get better just isn’t good enough (similar to the thoughts Jason had a year earlier).

Anyway, inspired/saddened by Jamie Hubley’s death, a Canadian country singer, Drake Jensen, has come out in his recent video:

(H/T: Ricky Barnes.)

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If you can’t kill murderers, you might as well kill freedom of expression instead

by Jonathan McLeod on February 3, 2012

Remeber that Senator who suggested that convicted murderers be allowed to kill themselves? Yeah, he may now be facing a criminal complaint:

Jacques McBrearty, a Saguenay resident, said he was disturbed by Boisvenu’s remarks and decided to file a complaint with provincial police.

“I was quite shocked and upset about the way he talked about the people in jail,” McBrearty said.

“If I don’t [file a complaint], who will? I’m the kind of guy that if something needs to be done, I do it myself.”

Sadly, this guy might have a case. Counselling suicide is a crime in Canada, and with the way Canadian law is going, freedom of expression is an endangered species.

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Racism and the GOP

by Jonathan McLeod on February 3, 2012

Johnny Williams, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tinity College, throws down the gauntlet in The Mark:

Republican presidential contenders Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich ramped up their racially bigoted rhetoric in their primary two weeks ago to convince white Euro-Americans that if they voted for them, their interests would always trump those of other racial groups. A day before the Iowa caucuses, Santorum, while denouncing state efforts to enroll poor citizens in the Medicaid program, implied that being black is synonymous with being poor and lazy: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” Days later, in South Carolina, Gingrich tapped into his bigoted repertoire to proclaim U.S. President Barack Obama “the greatest food-stamp president in American history.” In addition, during the Jan. 16 South Carolina debate, Gingrich lectured a member of the audience about the amount of federal handouts blacks receive, bringing into question African-Americans’ work ethic.

I’m not so much endorsing this view as I want to highlight. The GOP has a big image problem, from what I can tell. Though a metaphorical ex-pat, I still have a soft spot for conservative nation. I’d rather the Republicans came off looking better than they often do, these days.

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Defending sex-selective abortion

by Jonathan McLeod on February 2, 2012

On January 16, the Canadian Medical Association published an editorial penned by their Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Rajendra Kale, “It’s a girl!” – could be a death sentence. The issue of sex-selective abortions was stirred to life with this bit of paternalism:

A pregnant woman being told the sex of the fetus at ultrasonography at a time when an unquestioned abortion is possible is the starting point of female feticide from a health care perspective. A woman has the right to medical information about herself that is available to a health care professional to provide advice and treatment. The sex of the fetus is medically irrelevant information (except when managing rare sex-linked illnesses) and does not affect care. Moreover, such information could in some instances facilitate female feticide. Therefore, doctors should be allowed to disclose this information only after about 30 weeks of pregnancy — in other words, when an unquestioned abortion is all but impossible.

I’m not sure how equality is served by a man deciding what information a male-dominated profession should allow women to have, but I do know that Dr. Kale has presented a solution to a problem that does not exist in Canada. There is no epidemic of “lost women” in Canada, nor is there any grand social unrest in the ethnic communities he damns as bastions of sexism.

No, this issue isn’t about sexism. It’s about abortion and tribalism. We have decided, roughly speaking, that abortion is okay. Canada has zero laws prohibiting abortion at any stage of pregnancy (though doctors tend not to perform late-term abortions other than for dire medical reasons).

People are concerned about pregnant women aborting little girls. They’re worried about lost women. So much so that some 60% want laws against sex-selective abortion (or maybe they’re just xenophobes). But this is all just about the yuck factor.

Legally, no girls are being aborted. No women are going missing. Women who are pregnant are receiving information from their doctors and deciding how they will (legally) act upon it. If girls and boys are ‘being aborted’, it is occurring whether or not anyone sees an ultrasound.  

Equality will not be achieved by passing insignificant laws that infantilize women.

Bonus link: National Post’s Chris Selley notes the hypocrisy when a near-identical matter is raised:

We know, for example, that Canadians travel to the United States to have sex-selective in-vitro fertilization. It has been reported that they tend to request female children. This strikes me as sex selection, plain and simple. But after I wrote about this last week, I was surprised to find that some Canadians draw a very definite line between sex selection (which is bad) and what’s called “family balancing”: That is, arranging to have a girl because you already have two boys, or vice versa. This can involve anything from pre-implantation gender determination to simply aborting a naturally conceived fetus of the unwanted gender.

The distinction doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny, in my view. Sex selection isn’t inherently sexist or coercive (though of course it often is), and “family balancing” isn’t inherently free of those problems. There are perfectly rational economic reasons, abhorrent though they are, in many countries to prefer male offspring. In Canada, we properly see them as cultural relics. But if Dick and Jane of Kitsilano are going to be congratulated on the boy they engineered for themselves just because they wanted a boy, I don’t see what right we have to inquire as to Deepak and Sanjana’s motives. For all we know, neither couple’s motives are any more “cultural” than the other’s.

Bonus link II: David Warren goes there:

On other fronts, we find the whole range of “eugenic” issues raised by selective abortions; the horrible prospect of enabling people to do by “choice” what Hitler chose: to eliminate those groups he deemed to be “inferior.” To order “designer babies” for a new master race.

Well, at least we’ve got the Hitler comparison out of the way.

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I’m against the death penalty… I just want to kill that guy.

by Jonathan McLeod on February 1, 2012

It’s the death penalty, but DIY style! From The Globe and Mail:

“Each assassin should have the right to a rope in his cell to make a decision about his or her life,” senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu told reporters ahead of a meeting of the Conservative caucus on Wednesday.

…

“I’m against the death penalty, but in horrible cases such as [serial killer Clifford] Olson, can we have a reflection on that issue?” said the senator who was appointed to the Upper Chamber by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009.

It’s kind of funny that a member of our unelected senate would complain about government institutions that cost more than they’re worth. It’s not really funny that such a callous, vindictive man would have an official role in the process of “sober second thought“.

Couple this outburst with the recent serious deliberation about whether we should replace the beaver with the polar bear as our national animal (really, it happened) and maybe we’ll be that much closer to replacing this un-democratic institution.

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