August1991

I'm no expert on Chomsky but I've always thought of him as a charlatan windbag.But if it's true MS that Chomsky alludes to these ideas in his writings (admittedly Chomsky seems to allude to alot of things in his writings), then he knows little about people. People change their behaviour. If the government were to try to tax the rich, the rich would stop working/leave/hide their money elsewhere. MS, you assume that the rich are going to stand still while you change the rules.

Really? What is Europe?

Kimmy, kerosene was probably on their minds (although I have found no evidence). Oil was found in Petrolia in the 1850s and it was used primarily to produce kerosene for lighting, heating and cooking, I suppose. I suspect that Ontario did not want to share the revenues of this taxable resource with Quebec or the Maritimes. Hence, the wording in the BNA Act. First, the purpose of equalization, as I understand it, is to make it possible for provinces to offer similar services across the country. The purpose is not to share out resource rents collected in one province. Second, because of equalization, Albertans are under the mistaken impression that they pay their own way but everyone else is on welfare, at Albertan expense. "Those Quebecers eat in those fancy French restaurants with our money..." Sorry, but I hate discussions about confederation that start with definitions. The standard line in Quebec now is that Canada is not a real "confederation of sovereign states" etc. etc.I suspect the "Fathers" used the word "confederation" because it was in vogue at the time. It also gave Quebecers the notion that they were a race a part, or something. Who cares! More relevant is that the Federal government could have kept a monopoly on taxing resource rents. The Fathers in any case gave the Federal government residual powers, including the power to tax anything it wanted. The perception in Alberta that Canada is unfair and the perception in Alberta that the federal government spends (Albertan) money to appease Quebec are closely related...

Whose skills and developed the industry is irrelevant. It is just as irrelevant to split hairs about who "owns" or "administers" the oil.By chance, there is oil under the ground in Alberta. By chance, the Albertan government gets to tax this oil. Your neighbour by chance wins a lottery. The government taxes his winnings and gives you some. Your neighbour complains that his lazy neighbour (you) is benefitting from his lottery win. Does his argument make any sense?

The simple fact of the matter is that we wouldn't be in this position if Harper had been elected PM. The Liberals have bungled this issue. In this case, as in others, I agree that Albertan interests are badly represented in Ottawa. If the issue concerned Ontario cars being blocked at the border, it would have been resolved. And Parrish wouldn't have said the nonsense she said.

And when the government comes next year to get another dollar, it won't be there because you won't have earned it. You'll be waiting like the other guy for the government to give you a dollar.

Fair point BD. The Left wants to understand why Jeffrey Dahmer did what he did because there must be an explanation and with an explanation, maybe we can cure him. The Right simply wants to stop him in such a way that any new Dahmers, whatever their motivation, will not follow through. As to your history of Chechnya, the Chuvash Republic is essentially autonomous and sovereign within the Russian Federation. The Chechens were offered such and the radicals refused. Chechnya became an outlaw territory of all kinds of contraband. Now, the issue has become inextricable from a broader, radical Islamic movement.

That's simply not the case. About 200 banks participate in the market and they have their own methods of ensuring compliance without reference to any "State" law. In effect, it is self-enforcing.TS, you seem to be stubbornly adamant that the world have a punisher who sends people to prison if they commit a crime. I seem to be stubbornly adamant that the world need only an agreed upon way to exclude someone from the club. Are we discussing semantics here? But there is a very powerful way to enforce grammar rules. And it ain't 'enry 'iggins! To fit in, you gotta speak the lingo.The same enforcement method ultimately applies to contracts. Look, I would not go as far as agreeing with Hugo that the State could whither away. But I am willing to entertain the question of what tasks the State need do. Enforcing contracts is simply not one of those tasks. And as a practical matter, it enforces far less than you imply and I suspect badly at that. Sigh. Except (as I have been saying) where information asymmetry and/or hidden variables prevent other participants from knowing what you know, or enforcing against you if you cheat. Now we're back into the realm of market failure because of "unenforceable" contracts. Or in effect, no mechanism to get you to reveal your true valuation.Will the State have any better luck at enforcing the contract than private individuals would? I'd be more inclined to look at clearly defining property rights - I suspect the State might succeed there - and then letting the market decide.

Same diff. But if you prefer, OK. An exchange is a contract. Lawyers use the word "contract" whereas everyone else says "exchange". (To be technical, to have a contract, both parties must gain.) "... and law comes from states or state-like entities..." Definitely not true. Contract law is merely a set of rules that assist people to trade. (Identically, grammar rules help people to communicate.) The State or a State-like entity is not necessary for grammar rules, nor for contract law. If you publish a document, or even open your mouth to speak, it is in your interest to speak grammatically. It helps if we have an agreed way to know what is grammatical. Hence, grammar books. It you engage in trade, it is in your interest to follow the terms of the trade. It helps if there is an agreed way to know what those terms are. Hence, contract law. TS, you seem to be under the illusion that trade is like the Olympics where competitors are locked into an involuntary, non-repetitive battle. On the contrary, trade (like conversation) is based on voluntary relations in a repetitive game. In more direct terms, if an arbitrator finds against me and I don't pay damages, I lose my reputation and no one will trade with me again. A practical example is the international forward foreign exchange market. It is entirely self-enforcing. ---- We really should move this thread over to the Moral & Political & Philosophy column. The topic seems more general than Canadian politics.

Eureka, what you have written is frightening, and thankfully wrong I believe.The posters to this forum are evidence of the fact that there are many free-thinkers, obstinate in their own way, who prefer to reason ideas on their own rather than blindly accept another person's idea. The closer the ideas are to one's own desires, the more independent people are. Romeo and Juliet is evidence of that. I would argue that Islam creates more than its share of broken hearts.

Let's say I'm thinking outside the box. Kimmy, I'd say fine: Let the federal government tax all resource rents and share those revenues with all Canadians. (Oil and natural gas are the big ticket items right now.)But here's my main point, Kimmy: Albertans have the mistaken impression that they are paying for the rest of the country. For example, Albertans seem to feel they pay for the lazy folly of all those French bast**ds in Quebec. In fact though, the constitution by chance confers on the Albertan government the right to tax what is purely a chance gift of geology. And then Albertans turn around and complain that Canada is unfair to them! The Constitution also gives the federal government the right to impose any tax it wants. Completely off topic. The idea indicates however the resentment below the surface in Canada. The CBC/Liberal Party prefers, Soviet style, to believe we are one big happy family.

This guy doesn't mince his words. And he speaks in a controled manner. He's an original and doesn't pander to the PR types. The Guardian Note in this case that the Guardian doesn't elaborate a complex theory based on Putin's remarks. It simply reports them, with a headline about a public inquiry.

Nationalization? WTF?Stoker, at present, the Albertan government imposes a special sliding tax (a royalty) on oil pumped out of the ground. Most governments in oil producing countries impose such taxes. In Canada, this tax is collected by the provincial government. I am asking why this should be? Why not the federal government? Nobody has yet given me a good argument except to say "well, that's the way we've always done it". ---- But you are right, Stoker, why not let the owner of the mineral rights keep all the profits from the sale of the oil? Indeed, why not? Well, this is Canada where governments get to impose taxes. And in the case of Canada, it seems only the Albertan government gets to win in this chance gift of geology.

You apparently answered my question. As I say, that is most unfortunate. I have generally found in life that when someone makes broad generalizations about a group of people, it says more about the person than about the group.

All 60,000 swore allegiance? That is nonsense. The Quebec Act was written under very different circumstances than you imply.In addition, your reading of Acadian history is selective and biased. More pointedly, your repeated suggestion (in this post as elsewhere) that the French language survived in North America because of the kindness of the British is wrong. It survived because French-speakers had very large families. Argus, it seems that you don't like French-speaking people, and Quebec in particular. Many people have such emotional biases. It's not a big deal. But your opinions are not objective and your knowledge of history blinkered. That is unfortunate for someone with an apparently sharp mind. Argus, can you say anything good about the French-speaking people in Canada?

Thelonious, you have written utter nonsense. It's not as simple as you state but even so, do you not see a distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union? Or do you see them both as agressor, imperial states? [i see a large difference between the US and the Soviet Union.] But the causes were utterly different. Churchill, a good man defending goodness, was fighting against the evil of an evil man. I use strong words because I know no other to describe this fascist regime. There was no moral relativism - no attempt to understand the other point of view except with a view to defeating it. Are you suggesting that Bush sacrificed 3000 citizens so that al-Qaeda would not discover that US intelligence had a mole? That's silly.More likely, thelonius, you simply believe that Bush organized this for some convoluted reason. The Left claims to stand for human rights but is quick to criticize anyone who takes concrete measures to protect them. The Left similarly claims to stand for freedom of thought but is intolerant of anyone who disagrees. The United States, ultimately, is a country that allows ordinary people to find their own way. The country was founded, for God's sakes, on that principle. Why can't the Left admit this obvious fact? Are you blind, ignorant or just thick?Like children, we don't know what our parents have done.

How far down? What has the farmer done to 'own the surface' that he did not do to own what is underneath? Well, you'd have to look at his deed. What did he buy exactly? What does he own? Typically, he doesn't own the "mineral" rights. Nor does he own the overflight rights. And even if someone owns the mineral rights, they will have to pay special taxes once anything is extracted and possibly sold. It depends. The "sovereign" had different ways of collecting these "royalties". These roylaties are designed to collect "rent" on the use of a resource.

This is not communism at all. The farmer owns the land (at least the surface) and provides any effort to produce anything.The Albertan government has arbitrarily said that it will impose special taxes (royalty payments) on any oil taken out of the ground. (Why does it do this? Because it can.) My question is why not let the federal government impose this kind of tax. IMV, provincial governments should raise tax revenues from activities more closely related to their own policies.

MS said: IMR replied: I rarely (if ever) agree with MS. And frankly, I don't see this as "sharing" someone else's wealth. But I'll agree with MS for once. What did the Albertan government do to deserve this wealth? It is not as if someone in Alberta worked and created it. It's not even as if someone in Albertans' ancestry worked and created it. This was a chance gift. That's all. People have noted the NEP. Well, the economy went into a recession in the early 1980s and things were bad every where, not just Alberta. But Trudeau was standing up to the Albertan government in a perfectly constitutional way. The idea that Alberta is paying everyone else's way in this country is nonsense.

I somehow doubt she got no benefit - when she phoned you, I suspect she expected a benefit . And I suspect you got benefit too, or the expectation of a future benefit.I obviously don't know the details. And I certainly don't mean that people make a cost-benefit analysis. But when we say "To do good is to be moral" then I take the idea seriously. Maybe you both should have gone to sleep instead.

The Albertan government hasn't done anything to deserve the royalties either. How does that change anything? Other jurisdictions in the world obtain the royalties from natural resources in different ways. I see no obvious reason for the roylaties to go to the provincial governments, and many reasons for them to go to the federal government.The royalties from oil and natural gas are far and away greater than from any other natural resource. In the case of fish, none unfortunately are collected. Indeed, the federal government collects all royalties on offshore oil. I have not found any reference to support the idea that kerosene influenced the framers of the Constitution. But who cares anyway, that's not my point.At present, the provincial Albertan government is winning a lottery every day. This game is rigged. I see no reason for that to continue. The federal government has the means to collect the difference between exploration/production costs and the market price. In fact, it does this now in part. More fundamentally, provincial governments should tax those activities over which they can have an effect by their policies. ---- Reading through this thread, I see comments from posters who don't realize that Canada is one of the few countries where local jurisdictions receive oil royalties. And those same posters are quick to blame Quebec for supposedly using the federal government to get what it wants. In Canada, we have the official CBC/Liberal Party prozac version and then we have reality. A bunch of children afraid anyone will touch their toys which, I must note, were gifts in the first place. And the biggest babies apparently are Albertans.

I think you mean 'profitable', not 'moral'.The Terrible Sweal wrote This should be expanded to not only include the detrimental, but also the amoral and unethical. No, I meant moral - although it may be profitable too. Thelonious, why would you undertake a task if the effort exerted was greater than the benefit received? To my mind, that's foolish and, let me say, immoral. [Why immoral? Well, in purely practical terms, some good could have been done if your efforts had been otherwise employed. That good is now lost.] As to profitability, forget about money and think in terms of how you spend your time. Do you not choose to spend it in a way that makes you happiest (or will make you happiest) given the choices available?

They most certainly are.Anyone receiving welfare will lose one dollar of benefit for each dollar earned in work. In effect, the tax rate is 100%. In fact, the effect is worse. To work, there are transport costs, clothing to buy, babysitting expenses etc. In addition, welfare recipients need not pay certain medical costs. This policy is an invitation to fraud and a disincentive to find work. ---- Our social service system has become a large bureaucracy that few want to fall into. There are forms to be filled, documents to show, offices to go to, numbers to take, rooms to wait in and agents behind glass to talk to. I sometimes feel immigrants manage better in this minefield because they get advice from fellow recipients in their community. The homeless in large cities are clearly people who want nothing to do with bureaucrats or bureaucracy. In any case, the single greatest group in poverty in Canada are native Indians. They are also treated like children by the federal government.

This is a really dumb debate but it does show that the Queen, like some cities in the world, gets to have different spellings for her name. The Artist formerly known as Prince must be jealous.I refer you to this communique from the British Embassy in Paris.

The BNA Act gave control of natural resources below ground to the provinces. This means royalty payments for extracting oil go to the provinces, primarily Alberta. These payments are large when the world price of oil is high, like now. But why should that be? Why should only the Albertan government benefit from this chance gift of geology? The federal government has a variety of Constitutional ways to collect all of these royalties. It should do so. The oil beneath the ground, by rights, should belong to all Canadians. Royalty payments should go to the federal government, not a provincial government, and then be shared among all Canadians. Why do Albertans through their provincial government get this largesse - but no one else?