The Rich Should Pay Their Fair Share

How often have we heard that refrain, especially from Democrats in the US? Whenever there is a budget crunch, the answer is to tax the rich more. The health care bill just passed does this, taxing the top 2%. If only the rich paid their fair share, everything would be better, we're told. Canada's NDP loves this refrain as well. The Left would pay for everything by increasing taxes on the rich. After all, it is common knowledge that the rich, the top percentiles, don't pay their fair share of taxes. Of course, like most things that are "common knowledge," this too is wrong.
Look at the income taxes collected in the US for example. As a percentage of all income tax that is brought in, here's who pays what:

So, the top 20% of income earners pay over 83% of all the income taxes collected. That sounds like a fair share to me. After the richest 20% get through paying taxes, the government has only 14% to collect form the remaining 80% of taxpayers. What's more, look at the bottom 40%. These people actually receive more refundable tax credits from government than they pay, so as a whole, they pay no income taxes at all. That's 40% paying on average no income taxes while the top 20% pay the vast majority of all income taxes. The highest earning amongst us should pay more tax than the poor and middle class, but let's not indulge those who suggest that taxing the rich is the obvious and equitable way to raise revenue.

Chickens in the City

Vancouver is inching ever closer to allowing residents to keep chickens in their backyards. I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. In general, I am strongly pro-chicken. For a while, I had three chickens in my backyard in Surrey and have had a soft spot for the feathered purveyors of eggs ever since. When I'm at the Safeway, I buy the free range eggs so I know the chickens could run around like mine used to. And the anti-caged chickens wing of the animal rights movement is the one segment I support out of a movement I find grating and naive. My own chicken fancy leads me to want to support allowing chickens in Vancouver. That is, however, until I really recollect my own chicken rearing experience. Chickens are loud. Chickens are really loud. Vancouver is not going to allow roosters, but the male chicken is not the only one who lets you know when morning has arrived. Bright and early each morning, hens have to pass an egg and they let everyone know about it. We never got complaints in the suburbs, but that's because it was the suburbs. With large lots and big houses, there was space between our chickens and our neighbours. Vancouverites won't have that luxury living as close as they do there. Chickens also can attract mice, rats, and play host to a variety of germs and viruses including avian flu and salmonella. These microbial side effects are certain to be worse in the close confines of a city than they ever are on a farm or in the country. And finally, what happens when people get tired of their chickens or the chickens die? What's a person in the West End supposed to do with an unwanted or dead chicken? Well, Vancouver City Council has come up with the solution: a $20,000 compound for unwanted and abandoned chickens. That's a $20,000 tab to the residents of a city with ever escalating property taxes so that they can subsidize the irresponsibility of some of their neighbours. But despite this $20,000 halfway home for farm fowl, I expect this resolution to pass because it helps the city and its eco-Mayor achieve the self-created title of Greenest City in the World. I presume having chickens across the city is supposed to help cut the emissions from all those egg delivery trucks zipping to and fro in Vancouver? But regardless of these concerns, I think I'm going to enjoy this chicken experiment anyways. And what I think I'll like most is the image of all those smug, holier-than-thou, eco-Vancouverites cleaning out chicken droppings and collecting the eggs for their organic egg-white omelets out of the backside of a living, breathing creature instead of from the bright and clean shelves of their neighbourhood Whole Foods. Now THAT will be worth the 20 grand!

Preventative Treatment Not Always a Wise Investment

I often hear proponents of increasing health care spending arguing for more preventative care. "More diabetes tests, mammograms, PSA tests, gene testing, blood work ups" they demand. More power to them. Mammograms save lives. PSA tests can find prostate cancers early when survival rates are north of 90%. I like preventative treatments. However, those calling for them often parrot the same refrain: prevention saves the health care system money. This statement seems logical, it seems reasonable. It is also, unfortunately, not true. In many cases, preventative care ends up costing the health care system more than the illnesses they prevent would have cost. I dug up an old Charles Krauthammer article that I read a while back, and he explained it well: "Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care." Since you have to provide preventative care to everyone, even those who may have never gotten the disease in the end anyways, the preventative care will often drain more out of tight health care budgets than it saves. Why am I writing about this now? Last week, the Cancer Advocacy Coalition of Canada released a report calling for many health care innovations, including cutting-edge genetic testing for cancer. These gene tests, or 21-gene assays, can determine whether particular breast cancers will benefit from radiation treatment. Apparently, roughly 25% of breast cancers will not respond positively to radiation treatment, meaning it is essentially useless. Interesting stuff. The group goes on to argue, and the media reports, that Canada should have more access to these $4000 tests. By telling us which 1 out of every 4 breast cancers won't benefit from the $15,000 radiation treatment, these tests will save the health care system money. Got that? If we test all breast cancers at $4000 a pop, we will find out which 1 out of every 4can forgo the expensive $15,000 radiation treatment, thus savings our health care system a bundle. Let's run that math down one more time:
$4000 tests x 4 = $16,000
1 x $15,000 radiation treatment avoided for every 4 tests = $15,000
In the end, doesn't this particular preventative procedure actually cost the health care system $1000 more for every 4 breast cancers?
Now, albeit, this is a rather cold method of determining appropriate care. You could argue, and I would strongly agree, that the $1000 is money well spent for sparing women the agony of radiation treatment that's not going to do any good. Any innovation that can help in the fight against cancer is a welcome one, even if it costs more. However, I'd just rather here our leaders simply say that, instead of masquerading behind disingenuous arguments about "savings."

Earth Hour Dims to New Lows

British Colombians who participated in this year's Earth Hour saved the least amount of energy yet, achieving only a 1.04% drop in energy use. Earth Hour is designed to raise awareness for global warming--er, climate change, an issue I would have thought didn't need any further awareness. I think people are aware enough, I think fewer people this year care. Whether its the leaked Climategate emails showing that scientists fudged data and blocked any dissenting scientific opinions from being published, or its the Nobel-winning UN science team citing anecdotes, off-the-cuff comments and articles from hiking magazines as scientific sources, people have had their faith in the global warming threat shaken, and are accepting less the doomsday scenarios painted by environmentalists. To me, Earth Hour is yet another in a long-list of stunts that do little but grab headlines. After all, dimming the lights for an hour will do nothing to halt whatever climate change we may be experiencing. Perhaps this year's decline in Earth Hour savings is mere coincidence, the result of a few too many people watching a movie instead of genuflecting to this newest eco-tradition. But just maybe, the dim Earth Hour this year is due to people realizing that climate change is too complex an issue to be dealt with by do-gooder yet do-nothing stunts. Perhaps they realize that any reasoned debate on the issue doesn't revolve around the tar sands or the seal hunt or the Chicken Little posturing of the David Suzuki crowd, but rather involves painful trade-offs and implications for our future growth, prosperity and our very way of life and dimming the lights only dims the debate on these real-world obstacles and issues.

An Open Letter to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson

Mr. Nicholson,
I am writing to express my strong support FOR the extradition of Marc Emery. I understand that a small group of MPs, unfortunately including one of your own Conservative colleagues, has presented a petition to you and asked for you not to sign the extradition order for Mr. Emery. Mr. Nicholson, I urge you to sign that extradition order. Marc Emery is a cheap provocateur and a tacky rabble-rouser. He clearly was not satisfied with the kid-glove treatment he has been getting from Canadian authorities for years, which I also do not support, and smugly decided to try his hand at selling drugs across an international border into the United States. It is well within the jurisdiction on the United States to punish Mr. Emery for these actions and Canada must not stand in the way. If Canada is to continue to be taken seriously on the international stage, we cannot cheapen our diplomatic efforts by refusing to honour our extradition treaties. Under the Extradition Act, we would have to claim that the United States has conducted "unjust or undue or oppressive actions" in order to justify refusing the extradition request and that is absurd. Marc Emery is petty agitator who rolled the dice and must now face the consequences of his actions. Let us not legitimize his "activism" by refusing the extradition request.
Thank you,
-Cory Redekop