HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1993-05-05, Page 5International Scene
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THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1993. PAGE 5.
Impressive
human creativity
goes into
making excuses
There is hardly a man so strict as not
to vary when he is to make an excuse.
Lord Halifax
Very sorry can't come to dinner.
Lie follows by post.
Telegram from Lord Beresford to
King Edward
Ah, the humble excuse. Could modern
civilization function without the veritable
vermicelli of little white lies we all tell to get
out of things we don't want to do each and
every day? Probably not. It's early morning
as I type this, but already I've fended off a
flock of Jehovah's Witnesses by telling them
I'm a practising Buddhist; I've deflected a
telephone sales pitch for magazine
subscriptions by claiming I'm stone blind,
and I've promised my Boon Companion and
Faithful Cohort that you bet, for sure I'll get
those storm windows off this afternoon, first
thing.
Just as soon as this twinge in my back
eases off.
Who are
today's
spies?
One of my favourite expressions in the
world of economics is a statement credited
to Colbert, the finance minister of Louis
XIV of France, who said that taxation was
the art of plucking the goose to get as many
feathers as possible with the least amount of
hissing. A few centuries have passed since
that notable comment but it still has, as I am
sure you will agree, a great deal of validity.
History does not tell us how much hissing
really went on during the days of the French
Sun King but history will record that today
there is a great deal of it, not only in Canada
but elsewhere.
While I realize that every case is a bit
different, due to deductions and the like,
what I want to give you are round figures for
a number of countries. Let's assume, for
openers, that you are a person earning about
$35,000. In Canada you would be paying
one of the highest income tax rates in the
industrialized world, exceeded only by
Australia and Sweden. However, when you
take into consideration what social security
payments do to your take-home pay, the
odds swing much more in our favour. With
the two types of deductions in mind, the
worker with greatest take-home pay lives in
Switzerland, the one with the lowest is, not
surprisingly, Sweden. Canada comes in
about the middle. Looking at the total
deductions as a percentage of gross earnings,
Italy and the Swedes are the highest with the
Swiss and the Dutch the lowest. Canada is
Lies, all lies. Well, not lies, exactly.
Excuses. Little dabs of social lubricant that
help to smooth the meshing gears of
everyday life,
An awful lot of impressive human
creativity goes into making excuses -
sometimes we expend more mental sweat
trying to avoid a job than we would if we
just went ahead and did the damned thing -
but that's human nature too. And sometimes
the excuses themselves become somewhat
twisted works of Art.
Consider, for example, the excuse of
glamour girl Zsa Zsa Gabor, explaining why
she slugged a Beverley Hills cop when he
ticketed her for driving with expired plates
on her Rolls Royce:
"I am from Hungary. We are descendants
of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. We are
Hungarian Freedom Fighters."
Or how about Chrysler shill Lee Iacocca,
making excuses for not cleaning up
automobile emissions:
"We've got to ask ourselves: how much
clean air do we need?"
Then there's Jessica Hahn, Jimmy
Bakker's ex-playtoy, excusing herself for
doing a 10-page, full-colour nude layout in
Playboy:
"It brought me closer to God."
Not as famous, but just as inventive, is the
spokesman for the U.S. Defense Contractor
Pratt and Whitney, desperately trying to
excuse the fact that his company charged the
Pentagon $999 for pairs of pliers. That's
$999 for each pair.
slightly below the average.
Nor does this percentage change too much
if you are looking at someone who makes in
the vicinity of $70,000. At that level of
income, Sweden has the highest tax rate,
Japan and France the lowest. Work into
these statistics the social security deductions
and The Belgians along with the Swedes
have the lowest take-home pay while Japan
and Switzerland have the highest. Again
Canada ranks at about the middle of the pact.
Another interesting statistic is the
marginal tax or what you have to pay on
extra income earned. Sweden has the highest
at both the 35 and $70,000 rate; Switzerland
and Holland have the lowest at the former;
Japan and Switzerland have the lowest at the
$70,000 level. Again Canada is at about the
middle in both categories.
As I said above, there are other
considerations. The Swiss obviously get to
keep more of their money than, say, the
Canadians but prices are, on the whole,
higher there than here. This situation is not
improving for the Swiss; they have about
double the rate of inflation compared to that
of Canada. Since we have about the lowest
rate of inflation in the industrialized world,
our take-home pay looks better and better as
the year rolls on.
Where we do not fare so well is in the
realm of a tax break on mortgages. Cana-
dians, along with Australians, get no break at
all; the Americans on the other hand, get the
most generous of all the industrialized
nations. Germany is somewhere in the
middle; they get a deduction for their first
house only and then for a limited time, not
the whole length of the mortgage. If
President Clinton really wanted to reduce the
bad budgetary deficit in the U.S., all he
would have to do would be to eliminate the
tax break on mortgages. The hissing would
Explained the spokesman: "Well, they're
multi-purpose pliers".
Anyone who starts off most of his
sentences with a long, drawn-out
"Wel1111111," is bound to be a good excuse-
maker. Ex-U.S. President Ronald Reagan
proves the point. His excuse to Chief of Staff
Jim Baker for not reading his briefing notes
for an important economic summit meeting:
"Wel111, Jim, The Sound of Music was on last
night."
And then there's Bill Clinton's classic - an
excuse that will go down in the annals of
Born Again Pot Smokers Everywhere:
"I didn't like it and I didn't inhale it."
My all-time favourite excuse? I give the
nod to Lighton Ndefwayl. Mister Ndefwayl
isn't a household name in Canada, but he is
in Zambia, where he's known as the best
tennis player that country ever produced.
Until last year, that is. Last year Mister
Ndefwayl was defeated by another Zambian
tennis player - one Musumba Bwayla.
Mind you, Mister Ndefwayl has an excuse
for his loss. "Msumba Bwayla is a stupid
man" says Ndefwayl, " - and a hopeless
player. He has a big nose and is cross-eyed.
Girls hate him. He beat me because my
jockstrap was too tight and because when he
serves, he farts, and that made me lose my
concentration for which I am famous
throughout Zambia."
Well, perhaps so, Mister Ndefwayl, but
you're still the number two tennis player in
Zambia.
According to the last report.
undoubtedly go up a few decibles.
Taxpayers do not like paying taxes any
more than they have to in any country.
However, as I have pointed out in past years,
Canadians are not too badly off when it
comes to comparing them to their
counterparts in other countries. We also have
a few things going for us in, for example, the
very low rate of inflation, political freedom
and the like.
Perhaps it is not such a surprise after all
that the survey conducted by the United
Nations ranked Canada No. 1 as the nicest
country in which to live. It is doubtful,
however, whether this will do too much to
reduce the amount of hissing that goes on in
this country when it comes to considering
the taxes that we currently do pay.
Now, if we could only do something to get
that horrible debt under control.
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The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Time to stop
the free rides
Even as a child I hated Veronica Lodge.
Rich and spoiled, she always had
everything she wanted and more than she
needed. And if something didn't go her way,
someone paid. The neat part was that it was
usually her.
As a cartoon character Veronica, of Archie
fame, often found out that you can't have
everything, but in real life that's not
necessarily the way it works. There have
always been kids who have had too much
and don't understand that life isn't a free ride.
When I look at the young people today, I
really wonder how many of them are going
to face a future as challenging as theirs
promises to be, successfully.
The babies of boomers, I think most will
agree, have been indulged; at least more than
most of their parents were. I recently
overheard an exchange between child and
parent, typical of many conversations today.
The child asked for roller blades, whereupon
the parent reminded this child that he had
just recently been given a new bike and ball
glove and will be attending a costly hockey
school in the summer. The child was
nonplussed, failing to see the relevancy.
I did not come from a particularly destitute
family; unlike most children of my
generation I had two working parents so
there was some money. But, if I received a
new bike for the summer, I didn't have to be
a rocket scientist to know I needn't expect
anything else that year. Whether we feel
guilt for not being home like most of our
mothers were, or just a desire to let them
know the best of everything we may have
done our kids a disservice, by not giving
them something of true value — a
willingness to sacrifice, compromise and
above all earn what you get or at least pay it
back. We may have left them with the
impression that it's there for the asking, or in
some cases wheedling.
Though we perhaps have our children
wrongly believing that the world is just one
grab bag, it is becoming even more difficult
to put them on the right track. Any attempts
we may make are thwarted by the free
handouts they see, in a time when they are
constantly hearing that there is no money to
hand out.
Resentful of restriction, many selfish
youths run away from home knowing
welfare will dole out the dollars as long as
they attend school and maintain a reasonable
attendance record and grades. While some
have legitimate problems, the rest just feel
like most teens do at one time or another —
Mom and Dad really tick them off! Probably
wouldn't get them those roller blades.
This troubles me even more, when I see
the child for whom life has never been easy,
who is unable to attend college or university
because there is not the money to send them.
Looking at the two scenarios I can't help
wondering, would money not be better spent
on people who seem sincere about making a
contribution than on giving free rides to
those who think they have the ticket for a
lifetime?
No young person should be deprived of
getting an education, but when the reason is
a result of rebellion we're not setting any
kind of example with welfare. Students
accepting loans for post-secondary education
realize they are expected to pay it back: The
same should be true of high school students
leaving home. Why should their ride be
free?
Arthur Black