Human Develpment & Freedom

Here's the world as depicted by the Human Development Index (published by the United Nations). Green is high development, yellow is medium and red is low.











Here's the world as depicted by degree of freedom (determined by Freedom House). Green is free, pink is somewhat free, red is not free.











Notice any trends?

So It Goes

We lost one of our best today. Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has passed away. Wherever he is now, I hope Adam Smith was there to greet him.

Hard to Spell Candidate Names

A lot of candidates face the challenge of a hard-to-spell name. My own candidate for City Council - Alan Halberstadt - tackled this obstacle by using www.VoteAlan2006.com. So it's no wonder that London Mayoral candidate Anne Marie DeCicco-Best picked the URL www.votedeciccobest.com - after all Anne Marie is hard name to spell.

Spread the Net

Rick Mercer and Belinda Stronach are teaming with a campaign to Spread the Net and purchase 500,000 mosquito proof bed nets to reduce malaria in Africa.

The good news is that this is certainly a worthwhile goal, and one that has ranked highly on both the 2004 and 2006 editions of the Copenhagen Consensus.

The bad news is, as Chris Edey dicusses in this excellent blog, that programs of this type are prone to failure. Notably because when something is free people tend to think of all kinds of ingenious uses for them (in the case of bed nets apparently the make good fishing nets and wedding dresses).

Here's hoping the Stronach/Mercer team are able to come up with an innovation to make this program more successful, rather than merely joining the ranks of the development set.

In other news, I'm disappointed that trade liberalization slipped in the rankings for the '06 Copenhagen Consensus - but it's still the only significant thing we can do to help the third world at no cost. An excellent value for money if you ask me.

Phogged in with Lindy

Last night we paid a visit to Phog to catch a show by Canada's premiere libertarian recording artist Lindy while enjoying a few pints of delicious Wellington beer. If you were there good work. If you missed it I hope you have a good excuse.

Oh, and Papermoon was also really good as the opening act. If you like clapping, this is the band for you.

David Suzuki Fact Check

According to David Suzuki (The Hour, CBC, November 3, 2006) he met with Stephen Harper when he was a Reform MP and Harper expressed his disagreement with the Kyoto Protocol.

What's wrong with this? Well, Stephen Harper resigned as a Reform MP on January 14, 1997 while the Kyoto Protocol didn't exist until December 1997.

To be fair, it's a minor memory flaw for Suzuki but it does seem representative of the way the doom and gloomers take liberties with the facts. If only they would express concern for global warming (stil a hotly contested theory) rather than harping on our impending global doom.

For a classic example check out some doom and gloom government propaganda from 1976. Looks like global warming wasn't an issue then, mostly because the armageddon du jour was that we'd be out of oil by 1986 (thus reducing emissions to near zero!).

We Need Broad Based Tax Relief

Despire the headline of this National Post article Jim Flaherty seems to be downplaying the idea of a spring GST cut. While also talking about the fiscal "balance" (I guess imbalance polled badly) and capital gains taxes.

So far the new Conservative government's fiscal record is disappointing to say the least. The first GST cut was good, but it was accompanied by an income tax hike, redistribution of wealth from those without young kids to those with young kids, and now wiping out billions of dollars of investments (with a compensating tax cut only to those who are over 65). Personally speaking the new Conservative government has been a big negative to my finances. I'm sure a lot of other people are in my situation.

While I'm completely supportive of a capital gains tax reduction the benefit is skewed towards certain segments of society. The new Conservative government's focus should be on broad based tax relief like the GST and personal and corporate tax cuts.

Our EDA has a couple hundred "Cut the GST" lawn signs in storage, maybe it's time to break them out.

I Demand An Apology

More righteous indignation from BCs Chief Justice because the BC Minister of Justice suggested there are improvements to be made in the court system. Meanwhile Norman Spector is getting the desired publicity for his comments about Belinda Stronach. The Ontario minister for Aboriginal Affairs has his nose out of joint over a cancelled meeting with Jim Prentice - a political response to a political action by McGuinty.

The link between all of the above? They're examples of how i) politicians can't make the kind of common sense statements that regular people make all the time, ii) the kind of jibes regular people make in real life become an offense to (insert group here) everywhere, when everyone knows they're not and iii) political factors cause far more time and money to be spent on some issues, while others are neglected.

Who's to blame? Well the politicians are just playing the game that's laid out for them, and it's hard to blame them for it. Until voters demand our politicos shape up it's going to be more of the same.