The Citizen, 1998-02-25, Page 5A Final Thought
You cannot depend on your eyes when
your imagination is out of focus.
— Mark Twain
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1998. PAGE 5.
A four-letter word
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire ...
The Wasteland
T. S. Eliot wrote that, and for my money,
T.S. Eliot was all wet. April isn't the cruelest
month. The wettest month maybe, but not the
cruelest.
That honour goes to the one-twelfth of the
calendar Canucks are currently slogging
through: February. Now there's a cruel month
for you.
February: the Waiting-For-Godot Month.
The As-Bad-As-It-Gets Month.
The merry roisterings of Christmas and
New Year's are but a distant memory, a
thousand shovelsful of mow behind us. And
what's to look forward to? Spring. Sometime.
Eventually. We hope.
Which is what makes St. Valentine's Day
so important for our mental health. St.
Valentine's - Feb. 14 - 24 hours of frivolity
in a vast sea of slush and frost and frozen car
batteries.
Herewith two tales of love, one bitter, one
sweet, to get you over the hump from Yule to
Spring:
The grim one first. It concerns a sprightly,
five-foot-two harbinger of love by the name
of Tracey Lyn Sargent. I haven't met Tracey,
but I have it on good authority that she is a
'stunning' blonde, elfin and captivating, more
than capable of snatching the average man's
How expensive
is red tape?
It is a long time since I had to deal with a
work permit but I found out that such things
are alive and well in the Czech Republic.
While I had no trouble getting my "green
card," (they use the same expression there as
the Americans do), the question was the cost
of all the red tape involved.
When it came time to leave, I was
informed, almost in passing, that I would
have to get permission from the government
to leave the country. That sounded
suspiciously like the rule I had to obey when
I was in Czechoslovakia in 1960.
Thus I duly appeared at the state police
office and the first question I was asked was,
"Has your employer given you permission to
leave and, if so, where is your form?" I
replied that I had no such form but, if he
wanted, the official could call my "employer"
and ask him if it was all right to leave.
The upshot of all this is that I have a
sticker which takes up a full page of my
passport which states that I can officially
leave the Czech Republic. I also had to hand
in another form at Prague airport before I got
on the plane.
I can only wonder what would have
happened if I had got mad and came back to
Canada on the spur of the moment.
But the Czechs are not the only ones to
blame. All governments like to have their
regulations that forbid some things, permit
others and limit yet other activities. The
heart and playing a brisk game of Ping-Pong
with it.
She certainly did that last year with four
Toronto businessmen, from each of whom
the whimsical Ms Sargent managed to extract
tens of thousands of dollars. These guys were
all successful, savvy business- men, looking
for a little romantic action on the side.
They called up a Toronto Escort Service,
were introduced to Tracey Lyn Sargent and
got taken to the cleaners.
Well, they certainly had their bank
accounts vacuum-cleaned courtesy of
Tracey.
The men weren't dummies. One was a
doctor, another was a crown attorney. The
other two were self-made businessmen.
Hard nosed guys, one would think, and yet a
petite blonde who weighed maybe 98 pounds
soaking wet, had these guys falling all over
themselves in their rush to give her their
money.
Tracey didn't use a gun. Or threats. Or
blackmail.
All she used was a pair of lethal baby-blues.
As one of the guys summed it up later:
"Love is stupid."
Well, maybe. But there is the story of Bill
Gottlieb. Bill wanted to propose to his
sweetie, Emily, in the worst way.
Actually, make that in the 'words' way.
Emily is a crosswords puzzle freak. She
never misses The New York Times
brainbuster. She does it even when she's with
Bill at lunch. She was puzzling her way
through the Jan. 7 edition over brunch with
By Raymond Canon
trouble about all this is that voters are
seldom, if ever, told the true cost of
implementing such red tape. Perhaps if we
knew the real cost of some of these
regulations, we would get them off the. books
in a hurry.
I recall once that the Canadian government
decided to put quotas on the number of
Japanese cars that could enter the country in
one year. As an economist I was naturally
curious just how much such quotas would
cost the Canadian taxpayers. Since the quotas
were for the expressed purpose of protecting
Canadian jobs, I approached the question as
to how much each job protected would cost.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out
that the most conservative estimate was
$125,000 per worker.
I'm sure that the Canadian Auto Workers
union was happy but it would have been nice
if the government had seen fit to tell
taxpayers just how much this bit of red tape
was costing them.
Incidentally I checked my figures with
another economist. His calculations were
even higher than mine.
Whether we like it or not, regulations are
here to stay. The trick is for governments to
stop treating them as if they cost nothing to
implement.
One solution would be to subject every
regulation to cost benefit analysis.
Under this system governments would be
required to calculate the economic costs of
implementing a policy and weigh it against
the benefits that the policy would offer and
implement only those policies that would
offer a net benefit to taxpayers. Under certain
Bill at a restaurant.
The theme of the puzzle was A Modest
Proposal.
But it was a weird puzzle, even by New
York Times standards. For one thing, Emily
found her name in one of the answers. Then
she found Bill's first name in another.
Scooting down to 38 across, she read the
clue: 1965 Gary Lewis and the Playboys Hit
was the clue.
That was easy. Emily filled in This
Diamond Ring.
Then she got to the clue for 56 Across. It
read 1992 Paula Abdul hit,
Well, Emily knew that had to be Will You
Marry Me?
Her name. Bill's name. A Modest Proposal.
A wedding proposal. All these matrimonial
clues ...
Emily scrunched up her nose the way Bill
loved as she looked across at him munching
on a bagel. "Bill," she said, with a sense of
bafflement, "this puzzle...."
And Bill just took her hand - the one with
the ball-point pen in it, looked at her and
said, "Will you marry me?"
That's when Emily realized that this guy
had gone to the trouble of getting the
Crosswords Puzzle editor of The New York
Times to let him propose marriage to her - in
a crossword puzzle.
Not surprisingly, her response was the
same as the answer to 57 Down: a three-
letter word indicating agreement.
Love is ... what's a six-letter word for
love?
circumstances such benefits might be
difficult to measure and in such cases it
might be preferable to create what could be
called a "regulatory budget" at the same time
as taxpayers are presented with a traditional
budget.
This sort of budget would engender a
debate not only among our MPs in
Parliament but also among taxpayers.
Far too often, as I indicated in my little
research on the true cost of imposing quotas
in the car industry, the taxpayers, who are at
the same time consumers, are left totally in
the dark about the true cost of regulatory
measure.
This is not to say that all figures would be
totally accurate. However, the main benefit is
that it would lead to more debate among the
taxpayers. Any interest group would be able
to challenge a given set of figures. It would
also, I would hope, bring about a realization
of the total true cost of regulation.
European countries are masters at the art of
regulation and one area that sees a most
blatant misuse of regulation is in labour
markets. We might, therefore, start things off
by forcing governments to reveal what the
true cost is of our minimum wage legislation.
If you are in doubt where to start, ask any
economist what he or she teaches about it in
the classroom. You can then make up your
mind where to go from there.
The
Short
of it
Exposing the up side
Through our great good fortune, in our
youth our hearts were touched with fire.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Young people do not often get their due.
We talk of their misfortunes and
misadventures, we read of their mistakes and
missteps.
But for every one of them who loses his or
her way, we would do well to be reminded
there are dozens who are doing everything
they can to get on in this world. The more
confident loudly, and proudly, promote
themselves in a positive manner. They are
the award winners, the go-getters. Their self-
effacing counterparts simply travel the
straight and narrow, their mind focussed if
not on the future then on the potential for
one.
So there are two sides of this generation.
Yet more often, it is the dreary down side
rather than the sun-bleached up which is
exposed. The faces and names of the
misguided or confused are seen regularly in
the news and in the courts. The continued
notoriety contributes to an image of abject
youth.
It is good then that occasions arise when
the exemplary character of young people is
presented in a public forum. Last week's
Sears Festival, for example, provided
audiences with the chance not just to see the
performances, but, if they cared to look
closely, the dedication, effort and
enthusiasm these kids put into learning more
about a craft they love.
Certainly, there were times when their
abundant exuberance may have been
intimidating to their more reserved elders,
who witnessed a vitality that made their
numbers appear greater. They danced in the
streets, sang in the halls, hugged and
congregated. But generally, the hundreds of
teens assembled in Blyth proved that the
future of tomorrow is not really so bleak. In
addition to the organizational and public
relations skills developed while planning this
major undertaking, the youths also displayed
a commitment to the art and a desire and
willingness to work and learn.
This attitude is typical of most situations
where youths are gathered together for a
purpose. Whether on debate teams, in
entrepreneurial pursuits, or in sports, the
admirable qualities of young people are
there to be seen.
Last week this newspaper paid tribute to
members of the Scout-Guide movement,
who through their affiliation are developing
leadership qualities and life skills that will
serve them and society well in years to
come.
At summer's and winter's end hats go off
to the baseball, soccer and hockey teams,
which, when they behave, define the
competitive drive and team play that make
them special.
Kids will be kids. They are all capable of
anything. They can be good or bad, not
necessarily because of their parents, but in
spite of their parents. Their negative
members are a daily slap in the face. They
frighten, they bewilder and dumbfound. The
positive among them are a little harder to
find, camouflaged as they often are in the
same degenerate fashion as their angry
peers. The trick is to look under that attitude
to find the style beneath.
Arthur Black
International Scene