Sounds Like a "Poster Boy" to Me......

First, I have to clarify that I am not anti-gay, and I am mainly indifferent on the SSM issue (and slightly leaning on the pro-side). I just don't think it is that big of an issue, and if any two individuals want to get into a marriage, let them do it. I strongly believe that the state (or even other individuals) have no business in the nation's bedroom (one of the very few quotes that I can agree with PET.)

Remember when Brison defected to the Liberals, in 2004, he said that he doesn't want to be the "poster boy for the new Conservative Party on gay issues"?

I can understand where Brison came from when he defected to the Liberals in 2004. In fact, I actively supported him when he ran for the PC Leadership in 2004.

However, the more I look back, the more I think his defection to the Liberals "opportunistic". In fact, I know some friends of mine were asked by Scott, personally, to contribute various amount of money to help him to repay his debt, incurred during the leadership campaign, less than a week before his defection. Those incidences surely sound a little "shady" to me when Scott obviously knew that he won't belong to the Party for much longer!!

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Posted AT 9:44 AM EST ON 31/10/06

Brison's not just a politics buff

SCOTT DEVEAU

Globe and Mail Update

Canadians will soon be able to see an unexpected side of Liberal leadership candidate Scott Brison, after a nude calendar he recently posed for is released next week.

The Kings-Hants MP recently posed in the buff for the What Men Are Made Of, a calendar produced by the Women of Wolfville, a Nova Scotia theatre group.

The calendar, which is raising money for prostate and ovarian cancer, will be available throughout the small Nova Scotia community, 100 kilometres north of Halifax, starting next week. The theme of calendar is men doing non-traditional things, like dusting, knitting, and diaper changing.

"Scott was riot," said Wendy Elliott, one of the two members of the Women of Wolfville who produced the calendar. "When I told him the theme, he said 'Oh you mean like thinking.'"

For the local MP's exposé, Ms. Elliott said she thought it would be appropriate to have him looking in the fridge. (His first entrepreneurial achievement was renting fridges to university students.)

"You can see his chest and a line all down his body," she said, adding the MP, who reportedly spends an hour in the gym each day, looks quite buff in the shot.

"It's naked ambition for a good cause," Mr. Brison said in an interview Tuesday morning. "My father had prostate cancer. My uncle died of cancer that began in the prostate but spread. We're not unique to Canadians. Cancer research is a cause that's very close my heart."

Mr. Brison isn't concerned about how posing in the buff may adversely effect his leadership bid.

"I think I was less exposed than Bob Rae was on Rick Mercer," he said, alluding to a skinny dipping skit the former Ontario premier and Liberal leadership hopeful performed with the CBC comedian.

It's not the first time the community has put together a nude calendar. Last year, the Women of Wolfville put out of a one of local women, the oldest being 90 years old. The group raised $12,000 with that calendar and hope to do better this year, after learning a valuable lesson from a British documentary on nude community calendars, which have been made famous by the film Calendar Girls.

"What really works is selling men, because you have two markets," she said. "So we thought, we'll give it a whirl."

Mr. Brison, who is gay, reportedly joked during the shoot that is was the first time he'd undressed in front of women in a while.

But, Mr. Brison isn't the only local politician to strip down for the calendar. Wolfville's mayor Robert Stead and another town councillor also took it off for the camera, Ms. Eliott said.

The What Men Are Made Of calendar will be available next Wednesday for $20 each, but Ms. Elliott said it may be difficult to get the calendar outside of Wolfville.

"I haven't really thought that one through yet," she said. "I'm willing to give Scott's picture to anybody and everybody next week, because I don't want my phone ringing off the hook."

But it may be the only chance for those wishing to see a more cheeky side of Mr. Brison, because he said standing in front of an open refrigerator door for 15 minutes during the shoot without the benefit clothing has put a chill on any further nude modelling ambitions.

"I'm glad it wasn't a full frontal," he said. "I don't see any repeat performances in the near future. Nude modelling hasn't yet become a passion for me."

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This is FUNNY!!

I don't think we have that in the government.......

Anyhow, just want to put something "light" for once in a while. Hope that this will not offend anyone. After all, this is from a comedy show!!

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

I have been listening to this audio book on my iPod during my commute to and from work for the past week. I have to say that this is a great book, and I should get a hard copy some time.

For any one of you, especially marketers and political hacks, you surely don't want to miss it.

......And the Dippers Pull This Off Only Less Than a Month after I Left Saskatchewan???

I wonder what all you Saskatchewanians think of cutting the PST by 2-percent?

More so, I want to know what Jack Layton has to say.............

I bet you that Calvert must have read my MA research paper, titled "The Incidence of GST and Income Tax Changes in the 2006 Federal Budget"!!

BTW, I read an article from The Star Phoenix, and the reporter either got a bad quote out of Ken Cheveldayoff or Cheveldayoff was off his game. Here is the excerpt:

Saskatchewan Party Finance critic Ken Cheveldayoff said voters will remember
that Calvert’s government hiked the sales tax by one point to seven per cent
just after the 2003 election.

But Cheveldayoff said the Saskatchewan Party does support the cut, pointing
out the Opposition has been repeatedly calling for the last increase to be
reversed.

“It’s long overdue and its sustainable if the Saskatchewan economy keeps
growing . . it’s sustainable under a Sask. Party government,” he said.

This is not the first time that I heard the Sask Party is agreeing with the government. I am not calling the Sask Party to oppose for the sake of opposing, but if the Sask Party agrees with the government with most of the major issues, why would people want for a change? Why should people vote for the Sask Party in the next election? Is it just because Brad Wall is better looking than Lorne Calvert?

Cheveldayoff should have said something like "the government should provide a transitional period, at least a couple weeks, for businesses to make adaquate changes to their operations to adapt to the new government policy. Giving a less-than-24-hour notice would create a lot of chaos among small businesses. This is another example showing the NDP does not understand how businesses are managed, etc, etc, etc."

--------------------------

Posted AT 2:03 PM EDT ON 27/10/06

Saskatchewan cuts provincial sales tax

Canadian Press

Regina — The Saskatchewan government is cutting its provincial sales tax.

Finance Minister Andrew Thomson stood in the legislature Friday and announced the tax will be lowered to 5 per cent from 7 per cent effective Saturday.

Mr. Thomson says the change was made because the province is currently enjoying an oil and gas boom and the government wants to share the wealth.

The next provincial election is expected in the fall of 2007, and the Opposition has said it believes the government will be trying to buy votes until then.

The cut puts the provincial tax one point below what it was when the current NDP government was re-elected in 2003.

© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

-------------------------------

Sask. government cuts PST to five per cent
James Wood, StarPhoenix
Published: Friday, October 27, 2006

REGINA – The provincial sales tax is dropping two points in a bombshell announcement by NDP Finance Minister Andrew Thomson.

The tax will be five per cent as of midnight tonight.

The move will cost the provincial government $325 million in revenue but Thomson said the cut is sustainable, not only because of the natural resource revenues that have been filling provincial coffers for the last two years, but mainly because of soaring personal and corporate tax revenue.

Ensuring Saskatchewan residents feel the full benefit of the province’s strong economy has been a key theme of Premier Lorne Calvert’s government in recent months and has been amplified as it headed into the fall sitting of the legislature and a likely provincial election next year.

“When we can have rebuilt the economy to provide this kind of benefit for families, I think this is a remarkable day,” a beaming Calvert told reporters after Thomson rose in the legislature to announce the cut.

It was the second major announcement by the NDP government in two days of the legislative session, following Thursday’s throne speech announcement of a new statutory holiday in February.

With provincial voters expected to head to the polls within the year, the Opposition said the move reeked of desperation from the government after its third-place finish in the Weyburn-Big Muddy byelection in June.

Saskatchewan Party Finance critic Ken Cheveldayoff said voters will remember that Calvert’s government hiked the sales tax by one point to seven per cent just after the 2003 election.

But Cheveldayoff said the Saskatchewan Party does support the cut, pointing out the Opposition has been repeatedly calling for the last increase to be reversed.

“It’s long overdue and its sustainable if the Saskatchewan economy keeps growing . . . it’s sustainable under a Sask. Party government,” he said.

But Liberal leader David Karwacki announced himself flabbergasted that an NDP government would follow the lead of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which chopped the GST by one point this summer and plans a further cut next year.

Karwacki said it would be more beneficial to cut education property taxes.

“We could’ve taken school tax off of homeowners, that massive burden that it places on seniors, that it places on producers, that it places on families . . . this is just a tax break for the most affluent in our society,” he told reporters.

The move means Saskatchewan will have the lowest provincial sales tax in the country except for Alberta, which has none.

The government will raise the taxes on cigarettes and cut tobacco to ensure those prices don’t drop.

It is also reducing the Investment Tax Credit for manufacturing and processing to match the PST cut.

Read more about the PST cut in tomorrow's StarPhoenix.

© StarPhoenix 2006

How to Curb Alberta's Inflation?

I know for a fact that some of my Alberta friends would not like this idea. However, I think David Dodge and Peter Lougheed were right about creating a trust fund to save those extra oil revenue for future generations.

So, some of you may ask why is it a good idea, and how does this work?

Well, we need to know that the country's inflation is going up moderately - mainly driven by Alberta. The central bank can curb the inflation rate by rising interest rate (aka the Bank rate). However, the current rate is serving very well for most regions in Canada, as inflation is very mild all across the country, except Alberta.

Jacking up the interest rate will affect the whole country. Canada is experiencing an economic slowdown in September and the coming months, except Alberta. To hike up the interest rate just to curb inflation in Alberta will dampen economic growth for the rest of the country, and is not a good nation-wide policy.

Inflation in Alberta is mainly caused by high economic growth - by oil revenue. To make inflation under control in Alberta, the government will have to dampen economic growth. In other words, lowering their GDP growth will do it. The national income (GDP) is calculated by the following:

National Income (Y) = Household Consumption (C) + Private Investment (I) + Government Expenditure (G) + Net Export (NX)

Putting oil revenue in a trust fund will lower G, hence, lower the growth of Y.

Now, some other would say that Alberta can create a trust fund and invest in other provinces. My take is that would be a bad idea. Why?

Because that will hike up inflation in other regions of the country, and in the end, it would not do much good if the policy is to curb the nation's inflation rate.

That is why Norway has been investing their reserves in foreign countries rather than in domestic projects.

-----------------------

Too much, too fast: Can Alberta learn from Norway?

Soaring revenues, rising inflation and an uncertain future. A province wonders if a country has the answers, writes HEATHER SCOFFIELD

HEATHER SCOFFIELD

ECONOMICS REPORTER,

Yesterday's inflation data highlighted a problem that has engulfed Canada for the past year: Prices rose at a 0.7-per-cent pace on a national level, but in Alberta, where the global commodities boom has set the provincial economy on fire, inflation was up 3.7 per cent.

The disparity holds true for almost every economic statistic, as Alberta's fortunes surge while Central Canada and the East plod along listlessly, ground down by high energy prices, a strong dollar and now, a U.S. slump.

And since monetary policy looks to national levels of inflation, and doesn't take into account that Alberta's economy-on-steroids distorts national figures, interest rates have risen over the past year, mainly to quell the Alberta inflation fire.

Now, there's a partial solution blowing in the wind -- all the way from Norway.

A consensus is forming among economic and political leaders that Alberta could learn from a successful and time-tested Norwegian fiscal policy of setting aside all its oil and gas revenue and investing it outside the country.

Top economists, provincial politicians, and even Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge have closely examined the Norway model, and the idea, in various shapes and forms, is gaining traction as a way to put Alberta's economy on an even keel and allow future generations to benefit from today's bounty.

"I don't think it's much of a quantum shift to say, let's enact this," said Ken Kobly, chief executive officer of the Alberta Chambers of Commerce.

Mr. Dodge recognized the Norway model this week as an "appropriate" option for an economy overwhelmed with energy revenue. While he stopped short of publicly endorsing it for Alberta, sources say he sees much merit in it. And the central bank has made it clear that the solution to Alberta's overheating lies in Alberta's fiscal policy.

". . . The fundamental point is that when you have unexpected increases in revenue, whether you stick them in a separate fund or whether you simply allow the surplus to increase, that is the appropriate stabilization measure to be taking," Mr. Dodge said Thursday at a press conference. He did not explain further.

Norway, the world's third-largest crude oil exporter, has set up a special fund to stabilize the economy today and make sure oil revenue works for the country's future.

Norway puts all of its oil and gas revenue, plus earnings from its state oil and gas interests, into the fund every year. All of the fund is invested outside the country in stocks and bonds, and interest earned in the fund is reinvested. Only 4 per cent is made available for government spending.

Norway's Petroleum Fund, worth more than $250-billion (U.S.), serves a dual purpose. By investing all government earnings from non-renewal natural resources, the government ensures an income flow for the country even after the earnings abate. And by removing the windfall from the country's books and economy, the fund imposes an immediate and strict fiscal discipline on budget makers and removes much of the inflation-fuelling heat that would result from the spending of such revenue.

The result: Growth is strong and steady -- not boom-and-bust, like a typical oil power. Inflation is very low -- unlike in Alberta. Norway's exchange rate does not rise and fall in tandem with oil prices, like Canada's. And the fund is so huge that it could cover all of government spending for two years.

In theory, at least, Canada could use some results like that. Alberta's inflation rate has soared in recent months and has been well above the national average for more than a year. Inflation in most of the rest of the country is well under wraps, and is forecast to average only 0.9 per cent in Ontario next year.

The loonie has soared on Alberta's oil riches, driving down profits and cutting into employment in the manufacturing in Central Canada.

And the country's economy has become so dependent on the spinoffs from oil and gas that many analysts wonder how it will cope when the prices inevitably fall.

So now, leading Alberta politicians and think tanks are proposing Norway-style hybrids for the province. Several of the candidates to replace Ralph Klein as head of the Progressive Conservative Party support a savings plan of some kind. The perceived front runner, Jim Dinning, has been pushing the idea for years, and a proposal to legislate at least 30 per cent of annual oil and gas revenue to the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund is a central plank in his campaign.

"It's lucky money," Mr. Dinning explained yesterday in an interview. "And if we fall into the trap of budgeting on the basis of lucky money, then we're heading toward disaster again."

The Alberta Chambers of Commerce recommended a similar fund in a major report earlier this year.

And the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank, has been arguing for Alberta to set aside 50 per cent of its fiscal windfall into the Heritage Fund, to invest for future generations.

In Alaska and Norway, "they've turned their natural resource endowment into a financial endowment for the long term," says Casey Vander Ploeg, a senior policy analyst at the foundation. "That's what we need to do."

Alberta's Heritage Fund was set up in the 1970s and received 30 per cent of resource revenue and kept all earnings. But the province strayed from its plan in the 1980s when oil prices fell, and the fund was essentially capped. Since 1976, Alberta has collected $123-billion in oil and gas revenue, but only 8 per cent of that amount was saved, while 92 per cent was spent, Mr. Vander Ploeg calculates.

If Alberta were to blow off some of its steam by taking the fiscal oil and gas windfall and "sequestering" it from the economy, through foreign investment or some other savings scheme, inflation in the province could well cool off, and growth could be put on a more even, sustainable track, economists argue.

Still, Alberta is not Norway. As a province, rather than a national government, it can't control national monetary or fiscal policy. Its political culture may not support such a savings plan like Norway's population does.

Plus, Alberta's royalty structure is not nearly as generous to the provincial government's coffers as Norway's, leaving relatively less money for the provincial government to stash away. And much of the Norway fund's windfall comes from a state-owned oil company.

Marie Iwanow, a spokeswoman for Alberta Finance, said the Norway model is not a perfect fit for the province.

"It's a country and we are a province."

She said that while the province doesn't have a policy that dictates what percentage of resource revenue has to be injected into the Heritage Fund, Mr. Klein urged last year that about one-third of resource revenue be socked away into several of the province's saving accounts.

Earlier this year, the Klein government also began inflation-proofing the large fund. However, he refused to get rid of a policy that still allows the government to take money from the savings account to pay for program spending.

However, both Mr. Klein and his Finance Minister, Shirley McClellan, have said that increasing the savings is unaffordable because there are so many pressing financial demands on the province's red-hot economy, which is attracting thousands of newcomers every month.

Norway's Petroleum Fund

How did the fund come about? Created by the Norwegian Parliament in 1990 because it believed energy revenues had peaked. The fund was formed to stabilize the current economy and make sure future generations would receive dividends from the country's natural resources.

How does it work? By law, 100 per cent of the Norway government's oil and gas revenues are put into the fund annually. The principle is managed by the central bank, and invested in stocks and bonds outside the country. Net earnings are redeposited into the fund. The annual budget is drawn up excluding oil and gas revenue, and any resulting deficit can be covered off by the fund, as long as it does not exceed 4 per cent of annual deposits.

What are the benefits and disadvantages? The fund is now enormous and generates enough income to support government spending far into the future. Inflation is low, and the currency has decoupled from oil prices, cushioning the country's economy from the ups and downs of global commodity prices. But the fund is always surrounded by political tension, with pressure from opposition parties and parts of the population to spend the money now.

Nov. 30, 2005: $$215.5-billion

1996: $8.04-billion

****

The Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund

How did the fund come about? Then-premier Peter Lougheed created it in 1976 to save for the future, diversify the economy and improve the province's standard of living. Payments into the fund were abandoned in the 1990s, and only recently has it started to grow again.

How does it work? There is no predetermined contribution required, and deposits are decided on annually. Most of the fund's income has been transferred into the province's general revenues. Investments are handled by the provincial Treasurer, with the mandate to obtain a reasonable return.

What are the benefits and disadvantages? The fund, and many other smaller endowment funds created by the government, have absorbed much of the excess revenue Alberta has found itself with since paying off its debt recently. The funds will pay for various health, education and sustainable development initiatives over the long run. But income flowing into the funds is not steady nor mandated, and long-run benefits for the province as a whole are hard to judge.

Dec. 31, 2005: $14.6-billion

1977: $2.17-billion

Where was this Version of Lucien Bouchard Ten Years Ago?

As much as how politically incorrect it is, especially to Quebecors, I agree with Bouchard.

Union leaders are arguing that it is a choice of "lifestyle". But then, when their standard of living goes down, Quebecors will look from the government for more. If provincial government can't deliver, they will go after the Feds. This mentality is making Quebec a permanent burden within the Equalization program.

The reality is Quebecors can't have it both ways - an up to par standard of living with the rest of Canada and not work as much. How long do you think the rest of Canada is willing to subsidize Quebec?

Quebec already has one of the largest government in any North America jurisdictions. Quebecors will no longer be able to afford a decent health care and social welfare system in the next 20 years if the size of government, debt, and deficit do not come under control.

-------------------
October 18, 2006

Ex-leader to Quebecers: Get to work!

By CP

MONTREAL -- Former premier Lucien Bouchard has angered Quebec labour leaders by suggesting the province trails Ontario and the U.S. economically because Quebecers don't work hard enough.

"We work less than Ontarians and infinitely less than Americans," Bouchard told the French-language TVA television network.

"We have to work harder."

But while labour leaders concede the statistics show Quebecers work fewer hours per week on average than workers in Ontario or the U.S., they say it is a question of "quality of life."

"I think that people make the choice to spend more time with their family," said Daniel B. Lafreniere, vice-president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, the second-largest labour federation in the province.

Last year, Bouchard was among a group of high-profile signatories to a manifesto aimed at tackling the province's massive debt and the impending demographic crisis as the population ages.

A Blow to Those Who are for the War in Iraq

From today's London Free Press.

Now, what other reasons are there to justify the War in Iraq?? I am not anti-American. However, don't give me that "we are there to build a democratic country BS", because democracy is not necessary the best for every country. It is not a "one size fit all" system that works all around the globe.

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Human cost of Iraq war
A study finds 655,000 extra Iraqis have died since the March 2003 invasion.
Byline: BY GWYNNE DYER, FREELANCE WRITER
Dateline:
Section: Editorial/Opinion
Page: A10
Length:
Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Edition: Final

The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy, blown apart by a car bomb or an air strike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, is that U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will deny your death even happened.

The script they are working from says (in Bush's words last December) that only "30,000, more or less" have been killed in Iraq during and since the invasion in March 2003.

So they have a huge incentive to discredit the report last week in the British medical journal, the Lancet, that an extra 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion in excess of the natural death rate: 2.5 per cent of the population.

"I don't consider it a credible report," said Bush, without saying why. "It is a fairly small sample they have taken and they have extrapolated it across the country," said a spokesperson of the British Foreign Office, as if that were an invalid methodology. But it's not.

The study, led by Dr. Les Roberts and a team of epidemiologists from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was based on a survey of 1,849 households, containing 12,801 people, at 47 different locations chosen at random. Teams of four Iraqi doctors -- two men and two women -- went from house to house and asked the residents if anybody had died in their family since January 2002.

If anybody had, they then inquired when and how the person had died. They asked for death certificates and in 92 per cent of cases the families produced them. Then the Johns Hopkins team of epidemiologists tabulated the statistics and drew their conclusions.

The most striking thing in the study, in terms of credibility, is that the pre-war death rate in Iraq for the period January 2002-March 2003, as calculated from their evidence, was 5.5 per thousand per year. That is virtually identical to the U.S. government estimate of the death rate in Iraq for the same period.

Then, from the same evidence, they calculate that the death rate since the invasion has been 13.3 per thousand per year. The difference between the death rates over 40 months is 655,000 deaths.

More precisely, the deaths reported by the 12,801 people surveyed, when extrapolated to the entire country, indicates a range of between 426,369 and 793,663 excess deaths -- but the sample is big enough that there is a 95-per-cent certainty the true figure is within that range. To reject this, you must either reject the whole discipline of statistics or question the integrity of those doing the survey.

The study, which was largely financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, has been reviewed by four independent experts. One of them, Paul Bolton of Boston University, called the methodology "excellent" and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on: "You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ball park."

This is not a political smear job. Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and MIT are not fly-by-night institutions and people who work there have academic reputations to protect. The Lancet, founded 182 years ago, is one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world. These numbers are real. So what do they mean?

Two-thirds of a million Iraqis have died since the invasion who would almost all be alive if it had not happened. Human Rights Watch has estimated that between 250,000 and 290,000 Iraqis were killed during Saddam Hussein's 20-year rule, so perhaps 40,000 people might have died between the invasion and now if he had stayed in power. Of the 655,000 excess deaths since March 2003, only about 50,000 can be attributed to stress, malnutrition, the collapse of medical services as doctors flee abroad, and other side-effects of the occupation. All the rest are violent deaths, and 31 per cent are directly due to the actions of foreign "coalition" forces.

More than half the deaths -- 56 per cent -- are due to gunshot wounds, but 13 per cent are due to air strikes. No terrorists do air strikes. Air strikes are done by the Americans and British, and air strikes in Iraq have killed more than 75,000 people since the invasion.

Oscar Wilde once observed "to lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." To lose 75,000 Iraqis to air strikes looks like carelessness, too.

I am Speechless!!

If you read Mankiw, you would have heard of the "Pigou Club". Now, the National Post (yes, it is the National Post in Canada) have this, and the Editor of the Financial Post (part of the National Post publication), Terence Corcoran, started this and this.

Here is the text of the column, "Nopigou Club".....and personally, I do not buy Corcoran's arguments.

---------------------

Join The Nopigou Club

Terence Corcoran, Financial Post

Published: Thursday, October 12, 2006

We don't know much about the Conservative government's national green plan, except that it seems to involve a lot of blustery emissions from ministers on the need to "replace rhetoric with results," as Prime Minister Harper put it yesterday. A new clean air act to be unveiled next week, he said, will "get things done" via "strict enforcement" of clear national standards.

Many puzzling signals have been sent out by the government, including the idea -- repeated again by the Prime Minister yesterday -- that greenhouse gasses and pollution are one and the same. The government plans a "holistic approach " that "doesn't treat the related issues of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions in isolation." If you didn't know about the pollution-greenhouse isolation problem, you're not alone. But the government promises to fix it.

Whatever the plan, so far the Harper government appears to have resisted the great siren call sweeping some parts of the murky world of economics: Pigovian taxes. A New York Times column on Sunday by Daniel Gross, "Raise the Gasoline Tax? Funny, It Doesn't Sound Republican," listed all the big-name economists, many of them Republican, who have lined up behind the idea of higher gasoline taxes -- really higher gasoline taxes -- to solve a number of alleged U.S. economic and environmental problems.

The Times column makes a big fuss about Alan Greenspan's recent endorsement of the idea of higher gasoline taxes, even though Mr. Greenspan has backed the idea often in the past. At a recent conference, however, Mr. Greenspan said he would support an increase in the U.S. federal gas tax. "That's the way to get consumption down. It's a national security issue," he said.

With that, Mr. Greenspan appears to be jumping aboard a campaign by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw to enlist support for higher gas taxes. His blog promotes membership in The Pigou Club, named after Arthur C. Pigou, an early 20th century welfare economist who promoted the idea of using taxes to fix social and other problems allegedly created by a free market economy. Among the backers of Pigovian taxes, especially on gasoline, are economists often associated with Republican governments, including Martin Feldstein and Mr. Mankiw himself. Other not-so-Republican members include Al Gore and Paul Krugman.

Canadians, of course, will recognize the idea as a core element in Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff's environmental program. A new carbon tax, to be paid at the pump, would reduce demand for gasoline and also provide government with revenue to shift around to subsidize other fuels, ethanol and bio-fuels, and transfer money perhaps to other levels of government.

The Pigovian idea is that you can use the tax system to correct market failures and clear up what economists call "negative externalities." By driving your car around, you leave behind a number of problems you don't pay for: smog, for example, or greenhouse gasses. An added issue in the United States is the high volume of oil imported from largely unstable areas. By raising taxes on gasoline, perhaps to European levels, consumption would fall, improving the environment and relieving the United States of dependence on foreign oil. How that would work is far from clear.

With Mr. Greenspan enlisted in Mr. Mankiw's Pigou Club, and with the Times column circulating, the idea of a gasoline tax is likely to sweep the econosphere. Whether it will sell politically is another matter. In the meantime, it is time to start up a little opposition to Mr. Mankiw's operation. If nobody in the United States does it, let me offer up the services of the National Post. The NoPigou Club starts here. To join, e-mail nopigou club@nationalpost.com.

The Pigovian tax concept is based on the same old, same old economic theories that supported the idea that a government can plan and run the economy better than the market. Arthur Pigou was a great interventionist, his premise being that markets fail and in the end we need socialism to put things right. Among his policy prescriptions: deficit spending, public works projects, nationalized industries and major taxes and redistribution.

The chart above is a classic economic portrait of how a new tax works in theory. But these are merely superficial presentations of a logical scheme that cannot possibly apply to any reality.

The problem with a Pigovian gasoline tax is that it means using the same tools that failed planners everywhere over the past century. None of this stuff is measurable. What is the planned reduction in gasoline consumption? And what's the price to be set at? How high will the tax have to go before it changes behaviour enough to reduce demand? Will the government just wing it and see what happens? Will the alternative behaviour be any better or create new externalities and unintended consequences? What does government do with the money collected -- except launch a program of subsidies and spending to run alternative economic initiatives?

There is no end to the planning mayhem that could be generated once Pigovian taxes become the economic norm. Taxes on cigarettes have risen hundreds of per cent over the years, in part to offset the alleged externality of rising costs of treating cancer and other diseases caused by smoking. Still people smoke. Anything that can be politically whipped up into an unwanted development -- taxes on food to reduce obesity, taxes on alcohol to reduce alcoholism, taxes on babies to reduce population growth -- or subsidies on babies to boost population.

There's nothing new in Pigou, no matter how he's dressed up by Prof. Mankiw.

© National Post 2006

Muhammad Yunus

This is interesting. An economist won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

For those of you who have not heard of Yunus and his "invention", the Grameen Bank, you should read the article. It is a very successful credit system, and I am sure that most students who took a class in Development Economics would have learned about the Grameen Bank and other microcredit systems.

The first world equivalent would be borrowing money from your parents or close relatives (of course, unlike the Grameen Bank, relatives don't usually charge you interest.)

I believe that this is a much better way to pull poor countries out of poverty than foreign aid.

Could somebody call up Bono and get him to read Yunus's speech???

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The Times
October 14, 2006

Follow me and beat poverty, Nobel winner tells West

From Nick Meo in Dhaka

MUHAMMAD YUNUS, this year’s surprise choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, used his award yesterday to make an impassioned appeal to the West to overhaul the way it tackles poverty in the Third World.

Speaking to The Times at the modest headquarters of his Grameen Bank, the Bangladeshi economist urged the international community to adopt his system of microcredit to help to pull the world’s poorest out of destitution.

“It is not the fault of poor people that they are poor,” Professor Yunus said. As he spoke, he was mobbed by colleagues and well-wishers who posed for photographs and brought flowers to his office in Dkaha.

“The banking system is based on collateral and guarantees and we have proved that you can loan money without them. Our microcredit system until today was a sub-system. Now we should be in the mainstream,” the man dubbed the “banker to the poor” said.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose Professor Yunus, out of a field of 191 candidates, as this year’s winner, citing his work as an important step to peace. “Peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty,” said the citation for the award, which is worth Kr10 million (£730,000). “Microcredit is one such means.”

The 66-year-old economist was inspired to create the microcredit system after witnessing a famine in Bangladesh in 1974. He founded the Grameen Bank, which means village in Bengali, to lend small amounts to impoverished villages.

His first loan, worth £15, was made in 1976 to 42 women in the village of Jobra, near his home town of Chittagong, who made bamboo furniture. They sold these items back to moneylenders to repay usurious loans that they had taken out to buy the bamboo. Since then the bank has lent £3 billion to 6.6 million people, 96 per cent of them women. Of this, £2.7 billion has been repaid. The model has been copied in more than 100 countries.

Professor Yunus, who was wearing a cotton shirt made by one of his clients, described the award as fantastic, and pledged to donate the money to good causes. “We have been working for 30 years and we have demonstrated beyond doubt in Latin America, Africa, France, the UK and the USA that microcredit works,” he said.

“The problem with the conventional banking system is that it focuses on a privileged group of people. Two-thirds of the world’s population does not qualify to take out loans from a conventional bank.”

His remarks were seen as a criticism of the way development money is distributed by countries like Britain. Critics claim that little of the billions donated reaches the poor and much is squandered or stolen by corrupt officials.

“Blair and Bush pay lip service to fighting poverty. But they should forget charity. They should be business people, instead,” he said.

Professor Yunus, who makes a point of never giving money to beggars but is prepared to offer them loans, believes that the only way to defeat poverty is helping people to help themselves. “The mindset [in the West] is here is some money, go away. It’s just like with a beggar. They dish out money but that money is going to the rich and corrupt. You have to rethink the way you do business to get people out of poverty.”

Professor Yunus insisted that he was not against the free market, but that he wanted the market to be free for everyone.

“I am a free-market guy and even the poor people should be part of the free market,” he said. “Two thirds of the population in the world are not able to participate, so it is not free.”

Ole Danbolt Mjoes, the chairman of the Nobel Committee, said that one reason Mr Yunus was chosen was his positive role in the Islamic world: “This idea was generated in a mostly Muslim country.”

LESS IS MORE

Microfinance, the system pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, is the supply of loans and other financial services to low-income households and micro-enterprises where people do not have access to normal bank loans

It has spread to more than 100 countries, benefiting more than 100 million people

Most microfinance loans are less than $100

Peer groups of about 12 clients guarantee each other’s loans, and repayment rates exceed 95 per cent

Borrowers are typically self-employed with a relatively stable source of income. While most are women, many loans are used by men

The average rate of interest for microfinance credit is 35 per cent

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Edmund S. Phelps

Phelps is the latest winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. For the record, macro is much harder than micro in economics (that is, of course, my own opinion.) I found that you need to have a good knowledge of micro to do macro, because many macro theories are built on micro foundation.

To Beaumont Cote:

Phelps's biggest contribution in economics is modifying the Phillips Curves - blending rational expectation in the model. I think I left some extensive comments on the Phillips Curves and rational expectation on your blog before. The Phillips Curves is a model that links inflation to unemployment. According to the model, those two are correlated.

Attending Harvard

So, you never admitted to the Harvard University and have always been wondering if the education at the Ivy Leagues are really that much better.

Apparently now a bunch of lectures delivered at Harvard are on the web. Here is a law course that they teach at Harvard.

And of course I was searching if they put any economic classes on the web and I found this.

For those who have never taken economics, maybe you should take some time to watch those lectures. I watched the first couple by Mankiw, and it was not bad at all.

I Wonder How Those Researchers Conduct the Research

First, I want to apologize for not being able to post anything for the past three weeks, as I just moved to a new city and started with my new job.

Anyhow, this article I found on the Globe caught my eye. I really wonder how they conducted the survey. I mean, how would orgasms (for women) have anything to do with individuals' socio-economic status?? I somehow can't see the correlation there.

Let's say somebody goes from rich to poor or poor to rich, would the number of times that they reach climax during sex changes?? I kinna doubt it.

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Smart, rich women more likely to have orgasms, study suggests

SCOTT DEVEAU

Globe and Mail Update

A new study suggests that women may be learning more in the corridors of academia than what goes on in the classroom.

According to revealing new research, heterosexual women with post-secondary degrees are more likely to reach orgasm than their less educated counterparts. There is also a higher incident of orgasm in women who speak English at home, have a higher household income or hold a managerial or professional job, the Australian study found.

Confirming a widely held belief, the research also found that men were far more likely than women to experience an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, 98.4 per cent and 68.9 per cent respectively.

While men in their late teens were less likely to report having an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, women were substantially less likely to have an orgasm if they were in their late teens or in their 50s.

Aside from age, there is no significant association between a man's ability to reach a toe-curling climax and his household income, occupation, education or religion. Men were less likely to have an orgasm if they had been sexually active for two years or less, were uptight about sex or if they were engaging in casual sex, rather than with a regular partner.

There were much greater associations between socio-economic factors and female orgasms, however. Higher levels of education and income were associated with a greater prevalence for climaxing in women. Women were also more likely to reach orgasm if they used sex toys, or had sex more than twice a week in the month before they were surveyed.

Becoming sexually active before age of 16, length of time they were sexually active, number of past sexual partners, whether they masturbated, trolled Internet porn or watched X-rated videos had little association with a woman's ability to have an orgasm.

“The association between orgasm and demographic characteristics suggest a social-effect, with better-educated, non-immigrant women more likely to have orgasms,” the researchers state in their report. “Use of sex toys and orgasm in women may indicate a link between orgasm and sexual interest or adventurousness.”

The telephone survey was conducted by researchers from Sussex University, England, and the universities of Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. More than 10,100 men and 9,100 women aged 16-59 across Australia participated in the survey.

The study, “Sexual Practices at Last Heterosexual Encounter and Occurrence of Orgasm in a National Survey,” asked respondents what practices they engaged in during their last sexual encounter and whether they had an orgasm as a result.

Almost all the men surveyed said they reached orgasm from vaginal intercourse. Roughly 80 per cent said they did from oral sex.

For women, however, it was a different picture. Only 50 per cent reached orgasm from vaginal sex, while 70 per cent said they did through manual or oral stimulation.

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