Inflation – Good Luck Fed!

Tags

commodities, demand, economics, equillibrium, gas, Inflation, oil, prices, supply, wages

Inflation is making the news, but nobody seems to have a firm handle on what is causing it and how it will play out. Many have said supply disruptions due to Covid are the reason. It is certainly a concern. In the summer of 2020, I watched the price of a 2×4 stud rise from C$4.25 to C$12.50 because mills had been shut down. I looked a while ago and saw them at $4.28. As I type this, they are back up to $8.89 as lumber prices have soared again. If you listen to conservatives in America, it’s all Joe Biden’s fault for his support programs and infrastructure bills. Valid points, but while these do add inflationary pressure, they are not nearly enough to drive us into the 5% range let alone the 10% range which we are now beginning to see.

Inflation is the general increase in consumer prices at an unhealthy level. Our capitalist economies are founded on the principle of growth: we need to grow. You see this message everywhere. Our GDP is expected to grow by a healthy 2% next year. We need to bring in more immigrants so our city can grow. Whether this is right or wrong is a topic I won’t discuss further here. It is what it is.

Picture the economy as a train locomotive. It chugs relentlessly along the tracks transporting goods and making our lives great. But sometimes forces push this growth train a little too fast and if not curtailed, it runs out of control. A runaway train is inflation: prices rise then workers say we need more pay. When the workers have more, they spend more, prices rise, and the workers demand even more pay. And the cycle continues, chug, chug, chug, unabated until someone slams on the breaks.

The main tool our western governments use to slow down the inflationary train is interest rates. Wait a minute, both consumers and producers say, the cost of doing business just got higher. The cost of owning my home just got higher. The cost of borrowing to buy that new car just got higher. You want that much for using my credit card? Well, I’m cutting it up. High-interest rates throttle back demand, and prices eventually stabilize. At least that’s the theory. It worked in the 1980s, but my goodness it hurt. People were faced with 18% mortgage rates and 20% or higher credit card rates. People lost homes and went bankrupt. Businesses disappeared. But it stopped inflation in its tracks. Governments around the world are contemplating raising interest rates to dampen the current growth.

Our current inflation is not due to a runaway train. We are at the tail end of a pandemic and economies around the world are nowhere near their pre-pandemic levels. There has not been a robust let alone over-robust economic cycle to fuel inflation, yet stock markets have risen quite high, commodities have soared, and consumer prices and wages are steadily rising. We are also seeing wage increases.

One of the acknowledged forces driving inflation is supply. In supply and demand theory when you reduce supply, prices rise. If you watch car shows you’ll see comments like, oh, they produced a hundred thousand of those things, they aren’t very rare, I’ll pay you five-hundred bucks for it. Yet for the next car, you might hear, oh, they only made fifty of those, and I can’t afford to buy it from you. When supply of a product or service is low, people are willing to spend more to acquire it. This is because of competition. Picture a hundred people trying to buy the last loaf of bread and perhaps the last loaf any of them will see for a month. The person willing to spend the most for the loaf would get it. A bidding war. Then picture a single person wanting to buy a loaf from a store with shelves full of spoiling bread. Here, take two. When you lower supply, you make your goods rare and the price for it rises.

Raising interest rates will have no effect on this inflationary force. As I have shown, raising interest rates curtails demand, but it has no effect on short supply. If anything, it makes goods more expensive to make and lowers supply further. If we have closed lumber mills, do we really want to make it harder for companies to open them back up by increasing their cost of borrowing? And we do see this hesitancy in central banks around the world. Talk is we will see modest rates but no striking rises.

Supply has been reduced for several reasons. The main one is Covid. Besides lumber mills and operations, we have seen poultry and beef processing plants shut down for periods in Canada. These shutdowns reduce supply. We’ve seen international workers unable to travel. A friend of mine works in the mining industry, and what is normally a busy life of international travel has become a sedentary life of reading books and sipping bourbon. Meanwhile whatever he digs from the ground isn’t getting dug. Raw material production and manufacturing are coming back, but supply around the world is still low. Keep in mind, the USA is now largely open for business, but it’s the only country in the world that is. Most nations are still living with restrictions that reduce supplies. Again, raising interest rates will not get people back to work to reduce these inflationary forces.

There is an oil shortage in the world and while some of it may be due to Covid and even diminishing reserves, most attribute it to diminished exploration. And most attribute this reduced exploration to environmental concerns. The rabid environmentalists view oil as evil, and much money has been redirected away from oil. Group pensions for example not investing in oil companies to appease their members. Anyway, you can read a lot about this and I won’t get into the details. The only point I want to make is that oil supply shortages are here, will likely remain, and this is an incredible inflationary force. Everyone, even the rabid environmentalists, uses products made from oil.

The final force at play, and perhaps the most significant and least understood, is the money supply. The basic premise is the more money there is in the economic system, the more there is to spend, and this equates to increased demand for goods and services. It pushes the demand curve upward on the supply and demand graph and the equilibrium price follows. Inflation. If I put an extra $1,000 in your pocket, you are going to buy more of whatever it is you buy. You might go for a few extra meals, you might go on a vacation, you might buy whatever. And you might stow it away for a rainy day. Give it to someone else to invest and then hopefully pay you for that down the road. Mutual funds are the primary investment tool today as interest-bearing securities pay nothing anymore. But all that does is shift money around. It temporarily takes it from your pocket and moves it to someone else’s. That investment firm you gave it to bought shares in companies. More increased demand for those shares makes their prices rise, so the value of your mutual funds rise. Then buddy down the road cashes in his gains and buys a new car. The lines are not always clear but rising money supply results in increased demand which raises prices.

The problem for inflationary control is this money supply will be spent regardless of interest rate hikes. It’s out there in the system and fundamentally equates to permanent demand. It needs to be spent and it will be spent, interest rates be damned.

In March 2020 the U.S. Federal Reserve bought some $12 trillion worth of bonds. That basically means they pumped that much money into the economy. They created an extra $12 trillion out of nothing as shown in the M1 money supply graph. That’s $12 trillion that needs to be spent. Now M1 is not the best measure, and this amount is somewhat hyperbolic. A more meaningful measure is the M2 money supply. It only rose about $3 trillion at that time. Still, that’s a lot of coin to be spent. And they haven’t stopped. The latest numbers show M1 up about $4 trillion more, and M2 up about $1.5 trillion. That’s a $4.5 trillion movement of the demand curve upward. Prices have to follow.

Not only has the U.S. federal reserve thrown gas on the inflationary fire, but so have policymakers around the world. Every country has expanded and extended unemployment programs, given out business support loans and grants, implemented infrastructure programs, business incentive programs, and other unplanned incentives to kickstart their economies. Yes, they were needed to stave off mass unemployment, starvation, home loss, and general rioting, but they added to the inflationary train push. Many of us have been sitting around, paying down our debts, and waiting to get back to spending mode. And when we all do, it will be with a vengeance. Kinetic inflationary pressure is put into play. We’re just getting started down this very steep inflationary slope.

This current inflation is not due to a runaway train but a fundamental shifting of the supply and demand curves. The supply curve can and will eventually be corrected back to equilibrium levels, but it will take time. Many nations that supply raw materials have very low vaccine rates. Oil shortages are now pretty much entrenched until greenhouse energy takes over or more oil is found and exploited. At today’s prices, the monetary incentive is there for it if the environmental appeasement isn’t. Most importantly, the excess money created will remain created. This is a demand-pull that cannot be easily shifted back without taking money out of the economy. And nobody wants depression. In my opinion, it’s a perfect inflationary storm, so hold on tight.

The Writing Walls are Crumbling.

Tags

Biden, bipartisan, debate, discussion, left wing, moving forward, right wing, Trump, walls

I have had a very hard time blogging over the past four years. It wasn’t just Donny and his insane cabal but his many followers. I have unfriended many people during this reign, and I have blocked many of them. And I did try to listen. I tried to understand the divide, not just in America but in Canada and around the world . I have teased and ridiculed not only Donny but these followers. I knew converting the mindless was not possible, but they were never my target. I targeted the middle-of-the road centrists, the non-partisan voters who see truth above party politics. Unfortunately, these people tend to be more laissez-faire and vote less than the indoctrinated [on both sides]. Biden winning the vote feels like a victory but a tainted one. We are not in a good place.

Now that we have a change on the horizon, can I dump the farcical memes and get back to arguing with logic? I hope I can. I hope we all can. I would much rather see far-righters and far-lefties write out what they believe and openly discuss their arguments. I would hope we can all sit down quietly, read others’ stances on issues, and work to some consensus. It is this back and forth playing with ideas that moves us forward. It is how I move my writings forward. I don’t write knock-out stories in one go. It takes many tries of pushing that theme or pushing this character or pushing that conflict. All of my best writing has come from pushing into areas I never ended up in. The same is true, I believe, for moving forward in social and political discourse. Life is story, and those of us who write a lot of story can attest that what we think is best almost always is not.

I could not write much about life these past four years because so many have adopted views of life I do not agree with. And no, it is not just the righties. I am anti-government. When governments in my Canada want to implement new programs, I cringe, because I know my government’s debts will rise with no compensating benefit. Too many pay no service at all to our enormous debts.

What do I want to Write About?

The list is long, and I don’t claim to be qualified to write about much of it. But the following is a quick list.

• Socialism
  • what is it?
  • where should social policies fit in a capitalistic society?
  • what do Liberals really want?
  • what are Conservatives afraid of?
• Competition
  • I am for competition, when it makes sense
  • when does competition not make sense?
  • how do we manage non-competitive units so everyone is happy?
• Executive Accountability
  • this is currently a critical problem in not only America but in Canada and around the world
• Taxation
  • does the low-taxation-of-billionaires model make sense?
  • what is the logical management perspective on achieving good government?
  • of course, taxation of expatriates and management of tax fraud.
• Reading and Writing
  • I work at my writing every day. I have many ideas on making writing more interesting and relevant
  • reading is a forgotten skill. We have millions of experts who do not read anything more than Facebook posts or their favorite news headlines
  • how to correctly punctuate lists 😉
• Racial Injustice
  • unfortunately, the list is endless!
• My many other interests: books, fountain pens, inks, poetry, nutrition, diabetes, and more.

There is so much to write about and such little time to do it. I’ve been sitting on my hands for so long, I don’t really know if I can do this. Is Humpty Trumpty falling off the wall enough to get me back into this? But of course I have to write. The only way we’re going to move forward as a civilization is through discourse and debate. I remember when the Berlin Wall started to come down. It was the day my firstborn entered the world. I was so hopeful. The world really did seem to offer a brighter future. But of course we’ve erected replacement walls, and unfortunately we always will. I think the purpose of my writing and many other blogs has to be the dismantling of walls. These ideological walls need to crumble.

Andy Scheer, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, IRS Tax Target!

Tags

America, American, Andrew Scheer, Conservatives, FINCEN, IRS, Taxes

So Andrew Scheer, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, is an American citizen. I don’t know the details, but it seems his father was an American citizen and Andy is too by way of birth. He’s a form of what we call an accidental American. Many others are persons born in the U.S. while their foreign parents were working or studying there and who then moved back home. Boris Johnson is one of those, and he got nailed by the IRS.

As an American expat who relinquished his American citizenship – I arrived in Canada in 1970 and will never live in the U.S., so why keep the burden? – I am somewhat familiar with the tax laws Boris and Andrew are facing. Somewhat. I am not a wealthy person like Andrew Scheer. I say wealthy because one internet site has his personal wealth estimated at $961,000 and I’ve seen references that It may be much higher. His government pension alone has him set for life.

That is until the IRS comes calling.

Yes, the American Internal Revenue Service taxes Americans no matter where they live. You might think it’s silly and wrong, I do, but it’s the fact. Andrew Scheer is required to file income taxes annually to the IRS as well as file FINCEN reports (Formerly FBAR) to the Treasury Department of all his foreign financial accounts and balances. And let’s hope he has; because if he hasn’t, he’ll be making the news for all the wrong reasons. How insane is that? If he becomes Prime Minister, he will have to disclose his entire financial situation to the American government or face severe penalties. He may even be arrested if he crosses their border.

Pause: these American tax practices are wrong simply because American colonists revolted for flimsier reasons, a silly little stamp tax. They claimed at the time it was wrong for a power in a different land to tax its people in another, yet this is exactly what America has done since Lincoln decided traitors fleeing the country could not flee his new income tax. Moving on.

I don’t know Scheer’s salary, investments, or the details of his pension. I’ve seen numbers of $259k, and undisclosed amount in three RELPs, and $3,000k respectively, but whatever they are, he’s still potentially in a mess. I’ll address each of these as parts one, two, and three.

Part one: American persons get to deduct about USD$103.9k of foreign salary from their income. This only makes sense if the majority of your income is salary and if it’s within this modest range. Andy’s salary is roughly USD$195k , so using this deduction won’t help him. He will have to file the long form and deduct Canadian taxes paid from his taxes owed to the IRS. In Canada Andy will only pay taxes on his salary, maybe on some of these part two RELPs, and on none of his pension. Could be a clean wash and he’ll owe nothing to the IRS. Except nothing is ever a clean wash with the IRS.

Part Two point one: I don’t know anything about these RELP investments, but let’s assume the worst. First, Scheer has to include them on his annual FINCEN Form 114. Failure to do so incurs severe penalties. I don’t want to even think about what might happen to him if he’s noncompliant, but he can kiss those RELPs goodbye.

Part two point two: income earned in these RELPs is taxable in the U.S. as the tax deductions are not covered under the AmU.S.-Canada tax treaty. So Andy’s tax savings benefits in Canada are useless. Pay up Andy!

Part two point three: these RELPs are likely considered Passive Foreign Investment Companies or PFICs. I’ve never investigated the ins and outs and I don’t care to. What I’ve heard helped drive me to relinquish as I may wish to create my own corporation. Basically, and this is anecdotal from memory, Andy will have to pay 2% excise tax on the value of these investments biannually as well as pay the maximum 35% tax rate on all income, basically making the investment worse than worthless, if deemed PFICs. If not, he will merely have to add the full income of these devices to his American income.

Sigh. Not double-taxation, but clearly serving two masters inhibits one’s ability to minimize taxes and save for retirement.

Part three: pensions not registered with the IRS are likely considered PFICS as well. I don’t know these rules either, and it is possible, though not likely, the Canadian Federal Government pension plan is registered with the IRS, but in a worst-case scenario, Andy will have to include all government contributions as income, pay the 2% excise tax twice a year on the value, and 35% tax on all earnings. If the value of a government pension after 14 years in parliament is $3,000k, then basically Andy will go bankrupt to the IRS while serving our country. Oh, and he also has to include these in his FINCEN report or else.

There are other considerations too. His free living at Stornoway might be considered a tax-free benefit for a leader of the opposition, but is it under American laws? Tax, tax, tax!

Finally, Andy is planning on renouncing his American citizenship. Good call, but he will have to become compliant with the IRS before they will let him go. Then, any net worth over $5 million USD will be subject to a 35% exit tax. He might be there and suffer even more draining from his retirement funds. Renouncing will incur at least a USD$2300 charge from the State Department. Funny, acquiring citizenship only costs $700. Apparently the security risk of leaving America is three times that of joining.

Oh, by the way, I write for the satire magazine The Manatee, but this is not satire. This is the truth as I know all too well. A million American persons, many also Canadian citizens, live in Canada and are subject to these outrageous laws. And our (Canadian) government has done nothing to stand up to the bully. So far, the IRS has not come after private pensions. But Andy is a public figure. They have to press him. They can’t set a precedent for the rest of those to escape from this stupid net.

No wonder Andy has tried to hide his American citizenship.

 

 

NAFTA – Financial Services Excluded

Tags

Broken, cbt, citizenship-based taxation, expats, fatca, Financial Services, NAFTA, Sucks, TBT, territorial-based taxation

International financial services need an overhaul. The first North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) did diddley for competition in this area — any restriction already in place was to remain in place. Fine. Makes sense to some degree. Nations should have control over their own tax systems, retirement programs, and investment incentives. Unless of course it is deemed as an unfair restriction of U.S. sales, then it’s evil.

Some examples.

• Americans cannot buy Canadian mutual funds.
• Americans cannot buy Canadian Life Insurance
• Americans cannot buy Canadian stocks
• Americans cannot participate in Canadian private pensions
• Canadians cannot buy American stocks unless protected by a registered plan
• I am not sure if Canadians can buy American mutual funds. I think we can, but generally such investments are hidden from us as those of us who purchase such things tend to bury them in registered plans and buy them through management companies. My financial advisor is Sun Life, and I have no idea which funds I own. Some of everything. But as they live in an RRSP, the IRS cannot touch them.

These might seem abstract concepts and do not affect you as a Canadian or American. After all, why would an American want to buy life insurance from London Life or participate in a provincial government pension plan?

In reality, these policies do not affect the everyday Joe or Jane, but they do affect at least one million American Persons living in Canada, maybe more, maybe double that. We do not have an accurate count of active Canadian citizen green card holders (those people who were resident in America but returned without cancelling their card. And why would you cancel it as they are so hard to get in the first place, especially if you have any hints of non-white or non-Christian ancestry.) now resident in Canada.

It affects us because the U.S. taxes its citizens and green card holders no matter where they reside. A cash value on a whole life insurance policy that is not registered in America is treated as a savings account, and it does not grow tax free. That private pension plan we may participate in (often we are required to as a condition of employment) is nothing but a savings account, It does not grow tax-free in the eyes of the IRS. Investments into non-American mutual funds are subject to harsh PFIC taxation rules making them prohibitive. Dividends of American stocks by Canadians and Canadian stocks by Americans are exempt from favourable dividend tax credits*; so if you want to invest your millions in foreign dividend generating companies for whatever reason, you won’t because there’s no way to benefit as much as even a marginal company of your own country, For Americans in Canada who are subject to both the CRA and the IRS laws, what one grants the other takes away. We cannot benefit from any dividends. Again, RRSPs grow tax-free, so as long as your money is buried in one (not a private pension plan) these laws don’t matter much. *I won’t get into the mechanics of dividend tax credits.

What this all means is

• the majority of people do not have a full range of choices. These are protectionist policies and only the major corporations benefit. Individuals do not.
• Americans living in Canada are severely restricted when it comes to investing, protecting their families, and saving for retirement.
• The major financials are in no way impacted.

Let me rant about the banks. Canadian charted banks operate in the U.S. They are major financial players. The services they offer in Canada are offered in America. They can sell American things to Americans and Canadian things to Canadians. They are happy and are not raising a stink.

The real people impacted here are Americans living in Canada, and we are being hurt by the U.S. policies.

Does this rant matter? Not int he least. President Obama was the American Expat’s worst enemy; Trump is too stupid to understand the problems (and he has other, more important problems); Prime Minister Trudeau is a two-faced ******* who promised to help us fix these problems but now brushes us off; and because the financial institutions are not really impacted, they couldn’t care less. After all, it’s all about their money, not ours,

 

 

Blizzard

Tags

blizzard, chronic pain, shoulder pain, sleep deprivation, weather

I write this from the middle of a blizzard, our second in four days. I don’t use the term blizzard lightly, but I live in a winter storm belt and 30 plus centimeter (1ft) snowfalls are common. The National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a storm which contains large amounts of snow OR blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for an extended period of time (at least 3 hours). Being unable to see the road from a sidewalk is not unheard of. The image below is from two years ago.

 

My life the past few months has been blizzardy. In August 2016 I somehow partially tore a tendon in my shoulder. I’ve lived with nearly constant pain since then. It is not intense pain but it wears on you. The worst part is trying to sleep. An arm hangs straight when I sit or stand, and the tendon likes that. But lie down and the arm wants to move sideways or backwards. Ouch. Most of my sleeps have been two-hour sessions, and I wake in stiffness and pain. I stay up for a couple of hours, try to write, let the pain dissipate, and go back to bed for hopefully two more hours sleep. I’ve slept six hours maybe three times in the last six months.

Lack of sleep is an insidious condition. It slows your thinking, your memory, and your concentration. Writing, editing, thinking, learning, exploring a poem, whatever I try to do is impacted negatively. Yet somehow I finished NaNoWriMo, Robert Brewer’s November Chapbook Challenge, have written at least a poem a week, have studied poetry, and have edited some of my novel. Short sessions. Even now my mind drifts back to my throbbing shoulder.

Then there was the election. The election affects my novel as my story is set in Canada’s political environment. It is a trip across the nation and explores various protests, the divide between left and right. It is not so much a political book, but it is. It was written when this extremist divide was more or less defined in my head. left likes this; right likes that. But now President Trump has thrown a bag of hammers into the political machinery. I struggle with trying to understand him, people who support him, and people who defend him. I struggle with the left too but on a more purely ideological scale. The question of whether my story is relevant haunts me, and it has hobbled my progress.

I think it is still valid, and in many ways I think my message is more relevant than ever. I’ve been through reader feedback and am now reading to myself aloud.  I am up to page 65 of 303 in my Word document, and I hope today I might knock off a hundred more pages.

Anyway, I wrote a poem this week after the last blizzard ravaged us. I had originally written it with longer lines, but it didn’t work very well. Too much wallowing image and emotion and not enough tension, so I busted it into short, tight lines. I had it all in one stanza, but I do have some logical breaks in scenery. I don’t know if it will speak to you, but it speaks to me. I have lived through at least one blizzard a year for the last 46 years.

Oh, and the shoulder is slowly improving. Motion is up, MRI was definite, and back to physio today if the storm lets me.

Blizzard

a biblical plague
snowballs from
the fists of God
smack you in the face
the wind sucks
the breath from your lungs
a frozen sneeze
spraying your world
the howling ghosts
of dead trains

slippery footing
hobbling
plunging bodies
shoulders lean into
conflicted heat differentials
slams you hard
into the boards
grabs your collar
throws straight punches
tight knuckles

a father and son
killed
the New Jersey Turnpike
doesn’t care
if you are hunkered and afraid
the raid comes
brave cower
the regretfully stupid
quantum motion
of infinite chaos

the day before
calm
wet and clammy
you could smell it
coming up the coast
throbbing temples
filled with supplicants
refugees
nobody lays claim to
a blizzard

The front window view at 6:20AM

Can we stop trying to grow our population?

Once again I read a Facebook plea from my mayor Don Darling that, “Growing our population in Saint John,” is a key success factor for our future.” It is a rather ubiquitous political stance. Former NB premier Frank McKenna wrote in the Globe and Mail a year ago, “…parts of Canada are dying for lack of population growth.” In Ottawa, a 14-member council formed to advise the Trudeau government on economic growth recommends tripling the Canadian population to 100 million people.

I am not against immigration; I am an immigrant. My wife is on a team helping a refugee family, and I help out. I am all for open borders, globalization, and economic well-being for all. But I am tired of us killing our planet.

Have you ever thought about the finiteness of our planet?  We have water shortages worldwide; we are very close to killing our oceans to the point of the only fishes it will support are jellyfish (enjoy your jellyfish casserole!); our air literally stinks; global warming is a fact; animal extinction is accelerating; and I could run on and on and on. The cause, while seemingly complex, stems from one simple fact — we are growing the human population base unfettered.

Did you know we cannot make iron ore? We can make oil, but we don’t want to yet. We can desalinate water. We cannot make rare metals. We can grow more trees, but we keep cutting them down faster than we plant them. We can probably grow more food in the ground, keep adding fertilizers, and … no, before much longer all our food will be hydroponically grown as all our topsoil will be dead. What is, what isn’t, what can this planet sustain, have we passed its limits: these are arguments that meet resistance. People oppose the thoughts we need to cut back; because we like our elite lifestyles and want to defend them. We want our children and our descendants to live in an advanced society where they can flourish. It is a noble goal, but can the planet support us?

Let me ask you resisters a simple question: how big is too big? We have 7.5 billion people now. What’s your cap? 20 billion? 40 billion? A trillion? An alt-right man argued to me once that we could fit the world population in the state of Texas; therefore we are not even close to maxing out this planet. In my opinion, 7.5 billion is way too many people, yet at the rate we are growing, in 100 years it will top 22 billion. Enjoy wearing your life-support suits.

In the 1950’s, geophysicist M. King Hubbert realized that Earth’s resources were finite and devised his peak theory to predict the lifetimes of its resources. Primarily applied to oil, it has been expanded to other natural and renewable resources. We will at some point exceed the earth’s capacity for human demand in many if not all categories: oil, iron, copper, food, air, water, minerals, etc. At some point, humans will stop growing because they cannot grow anymore, and at that point, it is more than likely that great reductions in human populations will occur. Laws of nature. Foxes and rabbits.

It might take decades, centuries, or even millennia to prove the finiteness of this planet, but we will discover that population growth is not sustainable, so why do we push it? Short term gain? Let our kids worry about how to feed themselves?

Saying we need to grow through population growth is lazy. Think about what you are really saying when you say Saint John, NB, or any other jurisdiction, needs more people for its economic well-being. Its area population base is about 100,000 people. You are basically saying any city with such a population base is too small to sustain itself. Sussex at about 5,000 cannot possibly survive. Bathurst at 12,275 people is a hopeless cause. Every other community around the world less than what, a million people maybe, is pointless. If population is so vital to economic well-being, then let’s merge Canada’s population into one single city: Toronto.

These are stupid assertions, but that is what you are implying when you say we are too small. We are not too small, we are too lazy. If it’s good enough for much of the world to live in small communities, then why can’t it be good for us? Let’s get innovative. Let’s put our heads together and find ways to be prosperous. But let’s not keep expanding our footprint on this beautiful planet; because it just cannot sustain us that much longer.

Novel Finished!

Tags

Canada 150, editing, nanowrimo, novel, Writing

As if novels are ever finished.

I have finished draft number 6 of novel 2011. A review: I start a novel every year during NaNoWriMo and have won that contest six years in a row. I spend the rest of the year re-writing these novels or working on other projects. Here’s a list of my novel WIPs:

Year – My Ranking of Potential (1 to 5) – Draft – Words – Status – Plan

2010 – 4 Stars – Draft 3, a complete story – 80,000 – not touched since 2012. Needs a setting overhaul and a major rewrite. – Indefinite revisit.

2011 – 5 Stars! – Draft #6 – 129,000 words – Ready for pitching – About to undertake a major submission agenda.

2012 – 4 Stars – Draft #4 – 130,000 words – Needs a story trim; much too much happening; needs a writing overhaul, a killing of bad habits. – Indefinite revisit.

2013 – 2 Stars – Draft #1 – 51,000 words – Need to find the tension. I have characters and ending but the plot falls down in the mud. – Indefinite revisit.

2014 – 4 stars – Draft #1 – 51,000 words – A Sequel to 2012; I really like this story and it could become 5 star – Indefinite revisit.

2015 – 1 Star – Draft #1 – 50,000 words – an attempt at writing in an additive style; I cannot function in this style, not solely – XXX

Undecided Upon

2016 – 5 Star! – Concept – 0 words – A story with social implications I am not sure I am qualified to pull off, but if I do …
2016 – 4 Star! – Concept – 0 words – A less defined story with social implications I feel more comfortable attacking, but the story itself is mostly undefined.

I’ve had to overcome some major writing issues since I undertook this journey, and I don’t claim to be finished. My writing has been a rebellious child.

I tend to write weak conversational sentences which overuse stage-management verbs: she looked, she saw, she felt, etc.. I also tend to generalize. I know the story, so I don’t need to write all the details. I don’t need them. And putting myself in my readers’ shoes has been a struggle. Even when I try hard, I tend to slip into the internal know-it-all mode. Yet whenever I read others’ writings, their generalizations jump out at me. It is a pattern I have yet to resolve.

I think I have figured out the tension and drama of sentences, paragraphs, sections, scenes, chapters, and stories. I have a series of blogs in progress where I elucidate my understanding of pattern in prose: the general narrative arc we so easily apply to story also applies at each sub-level. My daily reading and analysis of narrative prose has been a tremendous help as has my attacking of several writing craft books.

I think it is all coming together, finally, but of course it seems held together by fine threads.

This 2012 novel feels really good. At least it does to me. I have concerns how others will take it, and I have been mindful of the differences between my own thinking and the common person’s. I am an INFP who lives in his diffuse-thinking half of his mind and who easily visits all angles of an argument but has difficulty taking sides. He hates run-on sentences but sometimes uses them to demonstrate how he thinks. This novel has political implications, and I fear staunch wingers, left or right, may view this story as wishy-washy. Yet our world is full of wishy-washy people, and I might argue these people should run the world.

2012 is also uber-Canadian. You can’t get more Canadian than my story, and I mean that in every conceivable sense. I cant see the rest of the world reading it (especially Americans) and saying, “Wha?” Yet they will never find a better guide of our country 😉

2017 is Canada’s 150th birthday. It’s going to be a hell of a party. My guts say this story needs to be out there for much of next year, and there’s only one sure way I know of doing that, and that’s not really the route I want to take. I’d rather a major publisher take it on and pump it out in six months rather than the twenty four they a lot new authors.

If they’d only read it!

Anyway, wish me luck on this journey.

 

 

 

 

NaPoWriMo/PAD 2016 Day 30

Tags

8854, citizen-based taxation, fatca, IRS

For today’s prompt, write a dead end poem. Of course, I was thinking in terms of the challenge, but a dead end can literally mean the end of a person’s life, a dead end road, a dead end job, dead end mortgage, and so on. Take the phrase “dead end” and apply it to a noun, and the possibilities are nearly endless (except, well, there’s the whole “dead end” finality to it, I suppose). I hope it’s fun and that the blog is alive and well today.

Dead end. An easy prompt. A dreadfully easy prompt for someone who has spent their life running into walls. While I admit most walls were of my own construction — John builds the greatest walls! — some walls were built by others. One wall in particular, the United States citizen taxation walls of laws, has been a huge road block in my life. And there was only one way to get around it, so I took it. I left the American side of me behind that wall and moved forward. Thank you presidents Lincoln and Obama for being so un-American.

Perhaps these two gentlemen will eventually be seen as two of the greatest presidents. While I am not an Obama lover for many reasons, I am not a hater. He’s a smart, reasonable man, but maybe he’s too reasonable. I’d rather he did more his first term while he had control. I wish he have made even more changes: cut government, implement true universal healthcare, and get America on a path of world participation. Instead, he’s blocked financial growth. He’s implemented FATCA which has pissed off ever foreign financial institution, over 160,000 of them. Foreign banks if my words are too big.

Why do foreign banks matter?

Because now foreign banks do not wish to do business with America. FATCA poisons the waters. If you are a medium-sized company say in Hong Kong and you need financing (all companies use financing), then you need to give your banks certain documents: business plans, financial statements, cash flow, risk analysis, etc. It is now risky for banks to deal with the US. I can envision foreign bankers telling foreign businesses to ditch the American sourcing. Sell all you want; because we want their money, but if you buy from them, no money for you. Source your expertise from China or even the hated Japanese. Just don’t source from America.

I don’t know this is happening, but I do know banks around the world are shutting American citizens like myself from basic banking services, and millions of individuals and an estimated one million small businesses are scrambling to rid themselves of their American ties. I relinquished my citizenship and this last week signed a form with my bank confirming I was no longer a risk to them. No, I didn’t get a toaster.

Corporate inversions are another form of disloyalty — in the eyes of homelanders, but to me it’s common sense. If a large corporation has operations around the world — a common example is Ireland with its 12.5% corporate tax rate — they want to be able to compete; they need to be able to compete. America’s corporate tax rate is 39%, so if company X, American,  makes a million dollars in profits and company Y, Irish, also makes a million dollars in profits, Company X nets $610,000 while company Y nets $875,000. That’s called unfair competition, and that’s why American multinationals are inverting to foreign ownership. They want to be taxed 39% on American operations and 12.5% on Irish operations. It’s only fair, right? Obviously there is room for cheating, and that needs to be controlled, but as it stands now, the US is the biggest tax cheater of the all. These troubles are its own fault, instituted by Lincoln in 1863 and reiterated by Obama in 2010.

Taxation without representation!

Representation is not a vote. Sorry, but a American vote means nothing to me because no elected official can impact my life: I drive Canadian roads, work for Canadian employers, use Canadian schools, use Canadian health care, use Canadian retirement vehicles, and pay Canadian taxes (as I should). What possible claim does the US have on my life as a US citizen when I use zero of its services? That’s the way the rest of the world thinks, it’s the way I think, and it’s the way any common sense person thinks. Just as the US taxes foreigners living and working in its borders.

The original law was drafted to stop Confederate sympathizers expatriating to Canada to avoid the new income tax act. It was the only logical tool at the time. But this is no longer  1863. Our world is computerized. We don’t need to tax citizens abroad, we can tax them as they leave, like Canada and some other countries do. We could give citizens a choice: be taxed on everything you own (with a much lower than $2 million limit) as you leave, or keep filing with reduced foreign income exclusions until you return from your temporary stay.

This is no a hard concept. It’s called fairness. But Americans are too wrapped up in their own aggrandizement to care. America is number one, and everything outside her borders sucks and should be leached because they are subhuman civilizations.  Maybe that’s not what you as an American think, but it’s how the world sees you. The US sucks in every comparative category: healthcare, education, standard of living, satisfaction, freedom, or whatever. The only thing Americans are first in is saying they are number one.

My rant’s not over, not by a long shot, but it’s time to post a poem. Another rant about, not my dead end, but the potential dead end for America of it doesn’t get its shit together. FATCA, Corporate inversions, and more recently a ubiquitous fear of trade deals. Listen to me: if you kill all free trade deals, it will send a clear message to the world that you do not want their business. This might be an eye opener to you, but the rest of the world no longer needs American know-how. And most nations are more than willing to try and fail on their own. Obama brags of his $2 trillion trade surplus. Don’t wait until that turns into a $2 trillion trade deficit before you believe me. I might no longer be a citizen, but I care about my country.

#FATCA

Today I’m filing my 8854, what the FATCA for?
Because my fellow Americans have forgotten
life, liberty, and the illusive pursuit of happiness
were intended to be inalienable.
Taxation without representation has caused previous revolts
financial slaves of the free world
you have no right to bury your heads and hide from, the oxymoron
President Obama, the thinker
The biggest tax cheat of them all
The American People

I am angry and sad, my home nation
dying in a world of progress, more intent on building walls
than living its propaganda. Freedom.
Hate cannot defend right
A bully cannot pretend might
The myopic will never be able to write, happy endings
A blinded horse is incapable of leading the way
straight roads only with shallow ditches
a future without curves.
A nation with the least common sense and the most guns
can only lead to dead ends.