economy

Leftist, anarchist Christians against the Winter Olympics in Vancouver

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My friend the Brooks pointed out a conversation at the blog of Nathan Colquhoun, in a blog post, “The Enchanting Economics of Death, Spectacular Resistance, and the Pursuit of New Life: a reflection from the streets of Vancouver“, in which Colquhoun repeats the anxious rant of an anonymous protestor at the games.  It has aroused a discussion in which Dan Oudshoorn, a.k.a. Poserorprophet, insults everyone who disagrees with him and basically condemns wealthy Christians.  Poser offered on his own blog another post by the same anonymous poster called “F— the police”.

Many of the institutions with which I do business, Royal Bank, oil sands, Latin American mining companies, TD Bank, were mentioned.  So I decided to write the following comment against Poser, against the anonymous Poster, and against the generally anarchist marxist tendencies among certain Christians today:

This conversation really baffles me. The other day on his blog Poser said that he needed to raise funds for his new job: amongst whom was he going raise this funding this except ordinary Christians who have money and jobs? He studies at Regent College which is richly endowed by wealthy Christians. He then condemns them all with a sweeping, Bourgeois Christians: “my friend is now being vilified by a bunch of bourgeois Christians who are far removed from the struggle for justice”.

I don’t have a particular ax to grind about the Olympics but the disconnect to me is related to the “economics of death”. Besides the poor Georgian luger, who has died? When Christians talk about the culture of death it is easy to see who has died, 100s of millions of babies. But “economics of death”? That is a play on the term “culture of death”, and yet it is hallow. Who is dying? Who did TD Bank kill that they deserve to have their windows smashed? And for that matter, just because RBC is behind the oil sands, why is that so bad? If it weren’t for oil, you poor folks would have to walk everywhere you go. That’s fine if you live in some African country where it is warm all the time, but some of them work 18 hours a day carrying firewood on small carts for $3 a day. I’d much rather burn oil sands in my Toyota than die at 38 of exhaustion in that kind of misery. But walking everywhere you go is not really an option for living in Canada, particularly in winter.

What are the protesters doing to create life. Anyone can smash a window. The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. Vandalism is theft by destruction. That is not what Jesus did. He overturned the tables to prevent the moneychangers from stealing from the people of God and thus charging them to worship God which the moneychangers had no right to do.

Finally, the poster refers to destroying the structures of the economics of death, forewarned that others who have done this (communists around the world) have created misery. Yet Canada is one of the greatest countries in the world and the envy of many millions who long to have an opportunity to come here to live, to study and to raise their families. Yet all the protesters, the poster, and Poser can think about is how to destroy what other people envy. Is that not a sign of their own envy? There is something deeply wrong with that. TD Bank, by employing thousands of people, by extending mortgages to allow young couples to buy their first house, and by providing a safe place where people can put their investments, has done more to promote the welfare of the many than these sad anarchists. That is why I am a proud, bourgeois Christian stockholder of TD.

“In order to construct a society that is more just, less just ways of organizing life together must be destructed. This should be obvious.” This is an extremely scary prospect. When people who hold such views have succeeded only misery results. Please name one case where death was not the result of destruction of capitalism. 100,000,000 people were killed by communists in 20th century alone. Is that not enough?

Signed, an investor in oil sands and Latin American mines, shopper at the Bay, a proud-soon-to-be Canadian, Bourgeois Christian, who owns more than one pair of shoes.

Poser responded, and I replied:

  1. dan says:

    Shame on you, Peter. That’s my cue to exit this conversation.

  2. P. W. Dunn says:

    Poser, your response confirms what one of the professors at Regent told me a few months back: he said there is among the students a new generation of Pharisees. This reminds me of Matt 23.4: “They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.” You leave in a huff, telling me to be ashamed, but you fail even to explain for what things I should be ashamed or even to give a single counterargument. I can only suppose it is because I am a proud-soon-to-be Canadian. Or is it just because I am wealthy, owning two pairs of shoes?

The New Berlin Wall: Heroes Earnings Assistance and Relief Tax Act 2008

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Yesterday I sent my application for Canadian citizenship via registered mail to the Sydney, Ontario, Processing Centre.  An American citizen from birth, I’ve lived outside the USA, first as a student then as a permanent resident of Canada, since 1986.  I’ve never really felt that I needed Canadian citizenship.  My reason for applying now is that it is inconvenient being an American living in Canada.  So before my citizenship ceremony in a year or so, I will be renouncing my US citizenship.  Likely, for a few days while awaiting the ceremony, I will be a stateless person. [actually, I became a Canadian on February 28, 2011, and informed the US Consulate in Toronto of my relinquishment on April 7, 2011]

The United States is the only country in the world that requires that all its residents and all its citizens, even if living abroad, pay tax, though there is an earned income exemption of $70,000 [over 90,000 today] and foreign tax, dollar per dollar, credit.  The threshold for filing is ridiculously low.  As a married person filing a separate return, I must file if I make more than $2000; this despite the knowledge that as a resident of Canada, it is difficult to imagine very many scenarios where I might be liable for tax, since the rate here is higher than in the USA, particularly for lower income earners.  But it is a hassle to file every year, and it creates a lot of anxiety for me.  Last year, my accountant forgot a certain form and he was sick when I was required to send the amendment, and so I had to do it myself and that created a huge headache.

So I am not going to renounce my citizenship because I owe tax.  I am liable to the IRS for nothing.  I am doing it first of all because I am tired of filing a frivolous return to the IRS each year; frivolous because I owe nothing, and cannot possibly owe anything living here in Canada.

But there is another even more important reason which I call the “New Berlin Wall”.  Since 2008, the US has placed particular restrictions on wealthy people who wish to expatriate.  If I were to own 2 million in assets or if my average net income tax liability over the last five years were $139,000 , I would be a “covered expatriate” upon renouncing my citizenship.  The law penalizes these individuals with exorbitant expatriation tax that boggles the mind.  Why?  To keep them in the USA.  So it is a Berlin Wall designed to keep people from leaving the US.

I am long way from being a covered expatriate.  But with the devaluation of the dollar due to hyperinflation, I foresee being there soon.  Therefore, I’ve decided to leave before the law applies to me; because it was much easier to leave East Berlin before the Wall was built.

Oh and by the way, Go Canada Go!!!

[corrections, 20 April 2011]

Paranoid fear of government

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Craig Carter wrote an insightful post at his blog, “Applying the hermeneutic of suspicion to the state.”  Liberals, he says, are afraid of big business but trust the state.  He shows that such trust is utterly unfounded.  In my view there is insufficient fear of government.  Consider if you were a car manufacturer.  Now you are competing with Obama Motors (GM, Chrysler) and the US government is your competitor.  Wouldn’t it be frightening if all of a sudden your company was being investigated because of floor mats? I mean it isn’t as if everything in my GM cars works all the time.

Lord Conrad Black is in a federal prison today because he received non-compete payments which are perfectly acceptable in Canada. The Canadian media was urging the confinement of this Canadian because he is rich and a conservative.  But if you are terrorist in Guantanamo or subject to extraordinary rendition, or if you are on death row, the Canadian media gets out the handkerchiefs and begins weeping for you.  But with Lord Black, it was, “Throw him in prison and lose the key!”  Black’s conviction has put a huge dampening effect on my desire to do business in the United States.  In fact, forget it.  I told my brother on Saturday that I wanted to settle my 19% interest in our limited partnership in Austin, Texas, before the end of 2010.  It is too much hassle for me to conform to all the tax regulation.  I have enough problems worrying about what the CRA is going to do to me.  I want to stay out of US federal prison.  But I assure you, dear Reader, that the US federal government already has the power under the current federal law to throw me in prison for a very long time–not for substantial crimes but for procedural errors.  Not that the Feds would want to throw me in jail–there are bigger fish to fry–but the very existence of such powers makes me afraid, very afraid.

We test drove a RAV4 last week.  We made an offer and hopefully our new vehicle (for my wife) will be delivered by Saturday.  It was built here in Ontario.  It is our first “foreign” car (before we were married I owned a Mitsubishi pickup).  Currently we drive a Chevy Malibu and Pontiac Montana (which I’m keeping).  The 2002 Malibu has an appraisal value of $900 CDN from the original price of $28,000.  The A/C and heat don’t work, the ABS brakes are faulty, and the electrical system diagnostic light is malfunctioning.  Apparently, our new car is much more likely to maintain its value over the long haul.  As consumers, we are voting against government owned car companies and we believe that it is incorrect for the government to harass the competition. Therefore, we are using our own funds to support a NGCC (non-governmental car company).  We believe that the government should not have the power to eliminate their competition through unfriendly regulation and harassment.

C. Edmond Wright, shrugging entrepreneur

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C. Edmond Wright has become one of my favorite writers at the American Thinker.  He is an entrepreneur who closed his business on the day that President Obama was elected.  He explains today why he considers that to have been the right choice.  In his article today, “Dear Mr. President: Why We Are Not Hiring” he trys to explain to Mr. Obama about risk [italics his]:

And since you clearly do not understand business at all, let me give you a short primer:

Any business idea, from the first day it is hatched, is nothing more than a series of cost-benefit analyses that the idea-holder either acts on or passes on. Sometimes the first decision is to forget the idea. Sometimes the first decision is to move ahead and invest some cash.

Perhaps a few million cost-benefit analyses later, you might have Microsoft or Home Depot or ESPN. Or you might have Bill’s Plumbing or Johnson’s Quality Homes or a café or an electrical wholesaler, and so on. And those businesses still operate on a constant stream of risk-reward decisions. In the business world, there is no neutral gear.

(There: Now you have more useful information than Jamie Gorelick or Franklin Raines got from Harvard.)

Thus, each time a risk factor is changed, the small business man has to determine whether he is going to hire, retain or layoff employees.  One huge risk factor in the US is the promise to raise tax on people making over 250K (or was it 100K? the number keeps changing).  Many limited partnerships and sole proprietorships are thus exposed to the full brunt of such taxes. Thus, the risk response will be to lower the number of employees and make less than that threshold where the extraordinary taxes kick in.  It is a promise based upon class envy and populism, and it is a real job killer.  The small business owner will not risk great amounts of capital unless the reward is also great.  Therefore, most will simply downsize their businesses to the point where they have few or no employees, or they will just simply shut their business down completely.  Now, the Bush tax cuts are expiring and there will be across the board tax increases on everyone.  This will obviously not help the employment situation in the US either.

Mr. Wright also mentioned how the environmental movement has sabotaged energy production in the USA and has increased the risk to business by raising the cost of energy.  Yet much of the current environmental pressure is focused on AGW (anthropogenic global warming), which is a hoax and based on counterfeit science.

Well, Mr. Wright, I for one have greatly benefited from this energy crisis because I’ve invested in Canada’s mid-cap (e.g., cpg, erf, nae.un) and junior oil and gas companies (mel, cta, psx, mox).  Now that Obama has announced further plans to remove tax cuts from oil drilling in the US, we can expect the whole Canadian oil industry to take off, as long as nothing stupid is done on the levels of our provincial or federal governments here in Canada, such as cap and trade or carbon tax.  (Perhaps the Luddites of the environmental movement want us to live as poor primitive peoples–but I’ve been to place where people live like that and I don’t know a single sane person who would ever choose to live like that.)

This is my comment on Mr. Wrights article at American Thinker:

Posted by: pwdunn Feb 12, 06:52 AM

Mr Wright: I found your article riveting; I too have decided to shrug for 12 years now for two reasons: (1) Taxes in Canada are so high that my wife already works for all levels of government until June 11th  or something like that [**actually June 17], and so why would I want to work for 6 months of the year for government as well? (2) I could teach at University level but I am neither black nor a woman, nor any other under-represented minority (actually I belong to an over-represented minority)–thought about changing my name to something Yupik, and I’d get a job in minute–but then who wants to be involved in higher education when the profs are hired on the basis of their gender or skin color. Not me.

More articles like this from business people would be greatly appreciate. Thank you American Thinker!

One-child policy favors the rich

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A couple of days ago, Diane Francis of Canada’s National Post wrote a disgusting column in which she advocated the world-wide application of China’s one-child policy. She of course is completely ignorant of the consequences that this policy has had on the psychology of China. One such consequence is as follows:

One of my very best friends is Chinese. A young man studying engineering in a Canadian university, he has informed me that no girl would ever be interested in a poor man. Apparently, this notion is widespread amongst young men in China. Why? There are now many more young men in China than women, because if you are allowed only one child, you will abort a baby girl. This has led to an imbalance in the Chinese population. What this means is that girls can be extremely selective in whom they will marry. So when there is parity in the population, a girl would choose sometimes a poor person, because she would otherwise be left a spinster. But now, if every girl has two or three boys from which to choose, she will naturally pick one who is better off financially. The result is that poor young men have much less chance of finding a suitable partner.

Another reason that one-child favors the rich is that the poor depend on their children in their old age, not upon a retirement portfolio.  Poor people with one child are in great danger of complete abandonment in old age because their one child may die or rebel against them, and they will be left destitute.  But also, upon a single married couple falls the burden of four elderly parents (in 60s), and potentially eight elderly grandparents if they survive into their 80-100s.  This is more than any couple can handle, unless they are wealthy.  One child favors the rich.