Tax cut best spent on cauliflower

It's January and the "middle class" tax breaks are taking effect. Did you feel it? A family with a combined income of $100,000 could be raking in an extra $13 per month! 

That's money that could go towards the kids' education. Or a couple heads of cauliflower. 

The average salary of a Canadian is around $50,000, so most people can expect a paltry $7 cut on their monthly paycheques. If you're one of those uppity upper middle class folks and rake in $90,000 per year, you can expect up to $57 per month.  

When I told one of my upper middle class friends he could be saving $50 per month, he said with a humph, "That's it?" (Yes, he's quite uppity.) 

While it's certainly nice to take home a little more each month, I would suggest it's not worth $4 billion. That's what the C.D. Howe Institute projected it would cost the federal and provincial governments to institute the tax break while at the same introducing a higher tax rate for those making over $200,000. 

The middle class tax cut/upper class tax increase was supposed to be revenue neutral, if you recall. As it turns out, the new government has already admitted it will take in far less than promised in the election campaign. But as with so many election promises, we fail to get too caught up in the details.

Many economists at the time indicated that while a higher tax rate on the rich sounds good in theory, it doesn't usually work out. While it's next to impossible for your average worker to prevent the government from clawing back its taxes, the wealthy have options. By taking advantage of tax loopholes and offshore tax havens, billionaires can somehow achieve lower rates of taxation than janitors. Unless you're a janitor who just won millions of dollars in the lottery (which I've heard happens), you're likely paying a higher portion of your income to taxes than Bill Gates. 

 The issue was recently highlighted in a report by Oxfam, where it was reported that $7.6 trillion of U.S. wealth is in offshore tax havens. They estimate $190 billion would be available to government if that wealth was taxed.  

Even more alarming, the report indicates the richest 62 people in the world now own as much wealth as half the world's population of 3.5 billion people. This statistic is difficult to wrap one's head around. Sixty-two people are worth almost $1.76 trillion. Over the last five years, those 62 individuals have increased their wealth by 44%, while the poorest 3.5 billion have had their wealth decline by 41%. 

There are many reasons for this divergence, and unfortunately, it's not a problem that can be easily remedied. As our newly formed government has shown, you can't just increase tax rates to bridge the gap. 

All that being said, we're still fortunate in Canada, where a "wealthy" person is considered someone who makes $200,000 annually. There's a reasonable level of equity in our country, much thanks to our strong social programs and progressive tax system. 

And while I criticize our new government's middle class tax cut, I applaud the enriched Canada Child Benefit, which will actually give the most to those who need it most. Low-income families stand to benefit as much as $300 more per month. 

There will be no, "Humph, that's it?" when these low-income families receive their cheques in July.  

For many families it will provide the means to feed the kids and pay the rent, rather than have to choose between the two.

Cleaning toilets never came natural to me

I never really learned how to clean properly. I know generally, but I've never read the handbook on bathroom cleaning. Now I kind of adlib. 

While my wife cleans as well, she tries to give up those responsibilities to the men in the household. My nephew vacuums weekly. I sweep and clean the bathrooms somewhat regularly. 

In a survey on marriage, many women wished they would have established a more even distribution of household chores earlier in the marriage. That makes sense and it's totally understandable. Why should women, even those who are staying at home with the kids, be responsible for everything? Looking after the kids is a full-time job unto itself. 

But I'm not trying to be self-righteous here, because I can't claim to do the majority of indoor household chores. My wife does the laundry and most of the cooking. That constitutes 90% of household work. While she likes it when I cook, she won't let me do laundry very often. There's too much risk involved. You know, clothing turning the wrong colour and tights coming out half the size they should be. 

There's only so much I can do wrong when cleaning the bathroom. Nevertheless, there's still some risk involved due to differences in standards of cleanliness. 

Back when I lived with my brother, future brother-in-law and his brother, our standards were quite low. Our bathroom was washed probably once the whole year, that being the last day when my then wife-to-be cleaned it. That was pretty swell of her. 

Nor can I ever remember washing my bed sheets. That was a new concept introduced during marriage, along with the folding of underwear (I never thought it was possible). 

Yet even then, I was still one of the tidiest young men in my high school. In my high school dormitory I was rewarded for this by getting to clean a storage room where a cat had been secretly held captive for half the year. I never did get those stains out. 

And I still don't really know how to clean. 

Like how do you properly clean a low-flush toilet with toilet bowl cleaner? Beats me how to get the gooey gel off the sides without flushing it fifty times.  

And who really needs rags when you can use toilet paper, tissues and paper towels? It's just a rag you're gonna have to clean anyway.

Lesson #1: One wipe might be all it takes.

The best trick is to do a quick touch-up every now and then with the wipe of a tissue. Just wipe down the chrome and the dirtier parts of the sink, and it looks like you've cleaned the whole bathroom. 

That's a lesson in cleaning that a man will teach you. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of the bathroom each time you clean. Just a simple touch-up here and there is sometimes all that's required. Why waste energy on things that are still relatively sanitary? 

I really shouldn't make this public, but my wife likely already knows. Women can sense when something is one-wipe cleaned and when it's really cleaned. It goes back to that standards thing. In general, there is a little more attention paid to detail. 

I notice it in my eight-your-old daughter already. The other day she was aghast to see me stick my hand in the toilet's water tank to try to fix the overflow mechanism. I had to assure her that no feces ever got in the water tank, only the toilet bowel.  

She was relieved to hear this, but still wouldn't touch my hand for the rest of the day. 

She's not ready yet, but one day I'll show her how I clean the toilet bowl.

Leap year must go

            So 2016 is a leap year.

Leap years are about as confusing as daylight saving time, a baffling concept for someone from Saskatchewan.

            Each year we have a leap year, humanity is reminded that it has not conquered the modern calendar.  The fact that we have a leap year is a testament to our ineptitude.  With all our scientific advancements, we still cannot figure out how to account for an extra quarter day every year.  Earth’s orbit around the sun refuses to give us our constitutional right to 365 days a year.

            To make matters worse, it’s not just a quarter day, it’s 0.242199 of a day.  It’s as bad as pi. 

            That’s why we don’t have leap years on years that are divisible by 100.  But we do have leap years on years that are divisible by 400, hence the leap year in 2000. Yes, it’s that complicated.

The Julian calendar, which our current calendar replaced, messed up royally by not accounting for the extra decimal places, resulting in Christmas being shifted to January 7^th.  Can you imagine waiting that long for Christmas??

            Even with all of the fine-tuning of our current calendar, we will still be off by one day every 3,236 years.  I’m sure there are some people who actually worry about this, like me.  They are at this moment trying to solve the riddle of our modern calendar, engineering a new system of time.

            My initial thought was to simply increase the length of our seconds.  Just by a fraction, so that 365 days equals one full orbit around the sun.  Then I realized that would put our days out of whack.  Eventually our days would turn to nights and nights to days, and well, I don’t know if society would welcome that. 

            So there’s no easy answer.  It makes daylight saving time look like a piece of cake.  You see, the answer to changing the clocks twice a year is to simply not do it.

            Saskatchewan and her sister-state, Arizona, have caught on.  Why won’t the rest of the world?  Why not just set our clocks to permanent daylight saving time?  Get the extra sunlight in the evening when it’s most useful.

            Saskatchewan couldn’t decide which time zone to join, so it decided to join both.  With Mountain Standard in the summer and Central Standard in the winter, Saskatchewanians hardly notice the difference until they watch a TV station from a different time zone. 

            President W. Bush did at least one good thing in his presidency by increasing the period of daylight saving time each year.  The summer hours now start in March and extend into November.  Why he didn’t go ahead with the full year is a mystery (as were many of his decisions).

            Now most of North America has to endure absurdly short evenings for only four months of the year.

            But back to the leap year...

            What to do with an extra day in 2016? 

Just think of all the people paid monthly salaries who have an additional day of expenses to deal with in February.

Just think about all the babies born on February 29^th, cheated out of a true birthday three out of every four years (seven straight years on those years divisible by 100 but not by 400).

            Poor kids.  They feel the pain the most.

For their sake, let all of the greatest minds of the earth come together and commit to ending the leap year once and for all.