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Don’t regulate prostitutes. Rescue them
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
October 5, 2010
In the pathetic demi-monde of lower-tier prostitution — streetwalkers, drug addicts, child-trafficked aboriginal children — it isn’t regulation that is needed. Robert Picton’s victims wouldn’t have taken advantage of (or been welcome at) legal brothels. Such women, neither autonomous nor opportunistic, are victims of circumstances, who haven’t the luxury of choice. These women don’t need the “harm reduction” of legal enablement. They need rescue. Their plight would only worsen with legalization, because it would discourage efforts to save them.
Tags: crime prevention, Health, poverty, rights, women, youth
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
The math of inequality
Friday, October 1st, 2010
October 1, 2010
Mr. Corcoran did not seem to do his math before publishing his editorial… / Mr. Corcoran’s assiduous analysis of a particular graph does not persuade that there is no inequality of income. We’re past that — we can all see for our own eyes the glaring disparity. And it’s such a huge disparity that the direction hardly matters… nobody deserves anything; just as no one deserves to be born with Down’s syndrome or fetal alcohol syndrome. How would Mr. Corcoran have fared if he was born on a reserve?… First step: Tax the super-rich (start with inheritance tax) and eliminate poverty in a week.
Tags: ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Records show which lobbyists have the prime minister’s ear
Friday, October 1st, 2010
Oct. 1, 2010
Lobbyists for Canadian industry — particularly those representing the country’s leading chief executives and the oil sector — top the list of those who got the most access to Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the last two years, government records reveal. By comparison, groups lobbying on issues such as health care and the environment barely got a foot in the door — even though the state of medicare and climate change have been major public policy issues.
Tags: ideology, participation, rights
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
McQuaig versus Reynolds [taxation & inequality]
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
Sept. 28, 2010
If only tax policy could be so simple: Tax the rich and everybody else gets richer and incomes get equalized. Even more complicated is the underlying assumption of the equality seekers, including Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, whose premise is that there is some optimum level of inequality… In a forthcoming paper for the Cato Journal I use data from Piketty and Saez to show that most growth of top 1% incomes since the 1986 tax reform has been the result of shifting income from corporate tax forms to individual tax forms… There were also unusually large increases in reported capital gains and dividends after those tax rates were cut in 1997 and 2003.
Tags: ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Don’t blame our doctors
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
Sept. 28, 2010
Ultimately, we get the optimum use of drugs when it’s the suffering individuals bearing the costs, since only they can know how much trying or continuing a particular treatment is truly worth to them given their situations and conditions… While over-prescribing is a legitimate concern, it’s important to be mindful of the fact that even the widespread and expensive use of medication can actually be a hidden cost-saver, reducing even more expensive treatments such as hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
Tags: Health, ideology, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Canada’s EU trade talks could fall apart
Monday, September 27th, 2010
September 22, 2010
… instead of limiting our negotiators to gaining access only for our products, we should direct them to prioritize our services trade with the EU. Barriers to Canada–EU services trade are often related to difficulties in moving people or establishing a local presence. The deal should therefore cover such issues as facilitating movements of temporary workers and opening up opportunities to invest and set up foreign affiliates.
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Give fathers their rights back
Sunday, September 26th, 2010
Sept. 22, 2010.
s there anyone who believes that our family court system doesn’t need reform? Perhaps some aging radical feminists who are content with the fact that fathers are offered shared or sole residential custody in only about 6% of court-contested cases. And of course the myriad of professionals — lawyers above all — who benefit financially in dragging out litigation, mostly unrelated to children’s best interests, and who perpetuate a dehumanizing and heartbreaking — but lucrative –winner-take-all style of “justice.”
Tags: ideology, rights
Posted in Child & Family Debates | 1 Comment »
An economic cancer
Sunday, September 19th, 2010
Sept. 18, 2010
… fully one in three cigarettes bought in Canada were contraband as of 2008–up from one in six just two years before… The state’s failure to tackle this problem makes it effectively complicit in the illegal tobacco trade… Effective immediately, it should enforce the law against illegal tobacco products, as well as lower tobacco taxes. In the long term, it should reform the Indian Act to empower aboriginal Canadians to start legitimate businesses instead of resorting to crime.
Tags: crime prevention, economy, Health, Indigenous, poverty
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
After the Indian Act
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
Sept. 17, 2010
First Nation leaders have been calling for the end of the Indian Act for decades… it is widely recognized that the act is paternalistic, distorts First Nation democracy and locks reserves out of the economy… Recognizing problems is only the start of useful reform. The real challenge is replacing the Indian Act with something that’s actually better… The elephant in the room is economic self-sufficiency… First Nations need a realistic plan, not just to free themselves from federal dependency, but to become independent.
Tags: Indigenous, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The equality obsession
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
September 17, 2010
The key to understanding the modern liberal position is that it seeks — consciously or unconsciously — to promote and exploit primitive, moralistic, economically challenged assumptions for political ends (which is pretty much a definition of left-wing politics). The alleged answer to “inequality” is “redistribution,” of which modern liberalism is the champion. The problem is that such redistribution is both morally dubious and economically damaging, not least to “the poor.”
Tags: ideology, philanthropy, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
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