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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