HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-06-05, Page 5International Scene
By Raymond Canon
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1996 PAGE 5.
Weather predicting
has degenerated
into free-fire game
Have you noticed how the highly
imperfect science of predicting the weather
has degenerated into a free-fire game of
Shoot The Messenger? It's bizarre. There
was a time, not so very long ago, when we
took the pastime of meteorological
prognostication the way it should be taken —
with a half pound of granulated Sifto salt.
Somebody might say "it looks like rain" or I
feel a dry spell coming on."
Fifty per cent of the time, the call would
be right. The other half of the time we might
get anything from a blizzard to monsoons.
But that was okay. We knew that the
weather was a capricious, headstrong filly
capable of changing its mind from minute to
minute. And even wrong guesses made for
good conversation.
Not anymore. Now, right after the news
some perky little twerp comes on our TV
screen and tells us that tomorrow's
downtown high will be 16.5 degrees and we
can expect clouds to move in at 1620 hours
Greenwich Mean Time.
The geek with the pointer is usually smug
and self-assured. He smirks while the
anchorman says things like "Well, Bill, what
kind of a weekend do you have lined up for
Flat tax
concept keeps
afloat
During the past decade the concept of a
flat tax has been floated both in Europe and
in North America, generally without too
much success. It has risen into prominence
again due to the current election campaign in
the United States.
I'm not sure who resurrected the idea but,
regardless of the origin, it has gained
adherents, notably presidential candidate
Steve Forbes. With Mr. Forbes out of the
race right now, it might be expected that the
flat tax would lose another of its nine lives
but it soldiers on, arousing interest
everywhere.
This interest is generated by the intense
dislike most of us have for the current tax
system. In spite of a lot of tinkering, the fact
remains that this system still remains too
complicated and engenders a lot of
smoldering resentment. This smoldering
consists of finding ways of avoiding paying
any more tax than is absolutely necessary,
either by accepting, or should I say
demanding, cash for services rendered to
finding off-shore shoe-boxes in which to
us?"
What exactly is going on here? Why are
we pretending that some schmo with a fistful
of satellite printouts and a mess of Arctic
flow charts has a lock on tomorrow's
weather?
I've heard TV weatherguys say things like:
"Well, it's going to be a fine weekend Frank.
I can promise you lots of sunshine..."
Whoa, buddy. There is only one entity in
this mix who can "promise" any kind of
weather and he answers to the name of God.
You, on the other hand, are a minuscule
meteorologist. A messenger. An entrails
reader. A coin flipper. When it comes to
weather, you can guess and you can predict,.
but you cannot promise.
In fat, it's risky to do so. I watched a BBC
newscast in London a few years ago, just
after a bruising storm had swept across
England, knocking down trees and washing
out bridges - none of which had been
predicted by the weatherman the day before.
The host of the news turned to the
weatherman and said something like: "Well,
you made a right balls-up of yesterday's
forecast, didn't you?"
Embarrassment is the least of the dangers
courted by over-confident weather
forecasters. Ask the weatherman who reads
the charts of Channel 2 television in Haifa,
Israel. He is currently facing a lawsuit from
a disgruntled viewer who took his word for
it when he called for a sunny day. In fact, a
storm hit Haifa that day and the woman,
who'd left for work wearing a light,
summery dress wound up catching the 'flu,
missing four days and spending $52 on
stash one's money.
While our underground economy will
never likely reach that of those bastions of
accounting duplicity - Italy, Greece and
Spain, whose underground economy is said
to be as high as 30 per cent, and probably is,
the fact remains that ours is rising and the
botched GST only adds to the flames of
discontent.
Thus there is interest shown in Canada in
this flat tax, especially when some of the
claims for its effectiveness reach
monumental proportions. I should point out
when I hear such claims, exaggerations play
the same role as they do in your description
of a girl with whom you have just fallen
madly in love.
There are flat taxes and then there are flat
taxes. To begin with you have to determine
how many exemptions are going to be
incorporated into the framework. By
exemptions I mean such things as personal
and child exemptions.
In the U.S. the plan peddled by Mr. Forbes
included the disappearance of mortgage
deductibility (did you know that Americans
can deduct such payments?) as well as the
abolition of all charitable donations. When
you start tampering with one's pet deduction,
the flat tax may not look so enchanting after
all.
As far as businesses are concerned, they
are treated equally in their totality,
incorporated or non-incorporated. Ne,
income no longer plays a role; instead it is
net cash flow. Furthermore you do not pay
any tax on investment income, which would
medications. She also says she suffered
stress and undue misery because of the
faulty forecast and would like $1,400 in
compensation for her tribulations.
It gets worse. Last year in Sicuani, Peru, a
flash flood ripped through town killing 17
unsuspecting residents. Sicuani only has one
TV station, and the weatherman, one
Francisco Arias Olivera, had not mentioned
anything about an impending flash flood on
his weather report the day previous. He had
predicted two inches of rain in the next 24
hours. The town of Sicuani received
nineteen inches of rain in twelve hours.
Francisco Olivera had been an extremely
popular TV personality - right up until the
day of the flash flood.
On the day after the flood, outraged
residents barged into Olivera's hacienda,
dragged the meteorologist out to a nearby
oleander tree - and lynched him on the spot.
"It was his job to warn us that a flood was
coming" said one citizen, "but he failed to do
his job. Many of us lost our homes, lost our
loved ones, lost everything we had."
Senor Olivera lost a little more than that.
Francisco Olivera might be dabbing on
makeup for his appearance on the six o'clock
Sicuani News Hour right now — if only he
hadn't appeared so smugly certain of his
prediction.
If there is any Canadian weather predictor
reading this who has grown bored with
Canadian weather patterns and wants to
inject a little challenge and adventure into
his or her professional life, I understand
there's an opening for a TV meteorologist in
Sicuani
make a lot of people happy who are not in
the lower income tax brackets. On the plus
side you can't write off perks such as
basketball, baseball or hockey seats which
might have a silver lining in that the sporting
world might see something of a reduction in
those inflated player salaries.
One of the things you have to watch out
for is the claim that everybody would end up
paying less tax as the government could save
a bundle of money and thereby reduce tax
rates. I have already suggested why this
would not necessarily be so (i.e. removal of
mortgage deductibility in the U.S.) Even the
ones being floated around in Europe do not
make the universal claim that everybody
saves money.
The lowest flat rate I have seen is 15 per
cent on a British plan; the Forbes proposal
worked on a 17 per cent rate once it got
going. By way of comparison the ones in
Canada which have been make public to date
are hovering around the 20 per cent level
and the middle class income group still get
hammered pretty hard.
I don't think there is going to be a great
rush to get into a flat tax, either here or on
the other side of the ocean. It may come
gradually given that there are a great many
people who are going to scream when their
favourite tax exemption (i.e. RRSPs,
charitable donations, etc.) gets eliminated.
Still, every time that proponents of the flat
tax look at the growth rates of Hong Kong
with its 15 per cent flat tax, the juices begin
to flow and yet another proposal is born.
Don't look for the flat tax idea to go away.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Time passing — suiTeal
In retrospect, if I really reflect, it was quite
a weekend.
Granted, it was not one of wild fun, but
rather a time to acknowledge the passing of
time as well as the fact that it is
accompanied by joyous and often bittersweet
occasions. It was a time spent with the best
kind of friends, the forever ones, who knew
you before you grew up and actually still
like you.
The first item of pleasure was Saturday
evening when we attended the wedding of
the daughter of longtime friends. Events
such as this are always a bit, of a culture
shock for me. They are the celebrations that
give meaning to our time here, yet I often
find them a little surreal. When I'm not
looking in a mirror, when the joints aren't
aching and I actually can manage to stay up
past midnight, I occasionally forget that
these effects are the result of the climb up
hill. It takes me a moment to reconcile that I
have made it to the pinnacle, that it is now
our children who are taking exciting new
steps as independent adults, beginning
careers, starting families. It is not that I
cannot accept getting older, it is just, as I
have said before, that I am rather
overwhelmed by how quickly I got here.
It was therefore a rather fortuitous
situation that the following day was to be
spent with good friends, whom we had not
seen in close to two years as they just
recently returned from a teaching exchange
to Australia. When I first met the female
partner in this partnership close to 20 years
ago, my caution and reserve was a little
daunted by her spontaniety and boisterous
exuberance. Her warmth and candour was
the antithesis to my reserve and inhibitions.
While others have been intimidated or
unenthused by my social reticence I am
grateful she never gave up on me. Her
genuine fondness for people, for adventure
and her laissez-faire attitude towards that
over which we have no control, has always
been a balm for my intensity. There is
common sense and humour in her outlook on
most subjects and she reminded me once
again on Sunday that we've worked hard for
every new wrinkle. There's nothing sad in
getting older. Her realistic outlook reminded
me that there should not just be
bittersweetness as we get older. Each
passing phase in our lives marks another era
which brings its rewards, its joys and its
advantages too.
That she was with me on this particular
Sunday with her rationale and positive
outlook was, I see now, indeed timely for
me. For this was also the same day that one
of my babies packed up her belongings to
begin a new stage in her life. The first on
this branch of the family tree to leave, it is
an occurrence that comes with some sadness
for me. While I am proud to see them
stepping toward their future on flagstones of
discovery and achievement it is with a
heaviness in my heart that I'm certain most
parents can empathise.
Yet, the clear-eyed wonder with which my
friend views the world helped me to gain
some perspective, reminding me of how
fortunate I am to watch my child move on to
an exciting new phase that will build
independence, one that may well tie the
lines between parent and child tighter.
Arthur Black