“Hung” is a new TV series from HBO starring Thomas Jane and Jane Adams. Thomas Jane stars as Ray Drecker, a down-on-his-luck, divorced Phys Ed teacher. As his ex-wife (played capably by Anne Heche) points out in a flashback scene, his one admirable attribute is that he’s well-endowed.
In an attempt to raise some money (to fix his house, to reclaim his children from his ex), he becomes a gigolo. Jane Adams plays Tanya, a sweaty, poor poet who becomes his pimp.
Fans of “Weeds” will recognize this premise: “Single parent in dire financial straits turns to socially unacceptable work and hilarity ensues”. Except that, in the case of “Hung”, hilarity definitely does not ensue. Its fatal flaw is that it’s simply not very funny. I watched the first episode of the newest season of “Weeds” last night, and there were more laughs in that show than four episodes of “Hung”. The writing isn’t particularly witty, and Thomas Jane doesn’t seem to be much of a comic actor.
The writing, I think, is at the core of the show’s problems. The characters are all caricatures: Jane plays a buffoon, Adams plays a hippy artist, Heche is the neurotic soccer man. “Weeds”, on the other hand, is populated with these nuanced, complex characters, and that’s often where the comedy stems from.
The writers also ask us to sympathize with Drecker, Jane’s character. This is tricky, because the protagonist is a jerk. Also, on a minor technical note, he’s depicted as pretty dimwitted. Yet in the second episode he uses the term ‘emasculated’ without missing a beat. This rang false to me.
There seems to be a fundamental law of television, that 80% of all potential greatness is locked inside 20% of the shows. That makes choosing what to watch easier, I suppose.
Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style. Isabella’s parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.
I have a confession to make. Until a few days ago, when I was invited to this Facebook group protesting the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), I had no idea what it was. In case you’re unclear as I was, the HST combines the Provincial Sales Tax (PST, at 7%) and Goods and Services Tax (GST, at 5%) into one 12% tax. Our province plans to implement the tax on July 1, 2010.
According to Wikipedia, three other provinces have a harmonized tax: New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia. Ontario recently announced that they’d be merging their PST and GST on July 1, 2010 as well.
I thought I’d try to dig up the arguments for and against such a move:
“Eliminating the PST and moving to an HST will remove a significant tax burden on businesses. The PST is an outdated, complex and inefficient tax paid by both consumers and businesses.”
Also from the government site: “A 2007 C.D. Howe Report written by Professor Michael Smart of the University of Toronto showed that, in the three Atlantic provinces who adopted HST, per capita investment rose by more than 11 per cent, total investment in machinery and equipment increased by over 12 per cent annually and consumer prices fell after the 1997 reforms.”
“With one tax rate, one substantially harmonized tax base, and one set of administrative rules instead of the duplication that currently exists, compliance costs for British Columbia businesses is expected to be reduced by about $150 million annually.”
“Thanks to sales tax reform, British Columbia’s overall marginal effective tax rate (METR) on new business investment will be reduced by almost 11 percentage points, a decrease of roughly 40 per cent, which will encourage new investment.”
From other sources:
From a Globe and Mail article, citing Premier Campbell: “the shift [is a] major cost savings for business, which will be able to claim HST rebates in virtually all cases”.
Again from the Globe: “The federal government will pay $1.6-billion to B.C. for transition costs, an amount that far outstrips the actual expenses of adopting the harmonized tax.”
From CTV.ca: “TD Bank economist Pascal Gauthier said studies show a harmonized tax does create lower prices for consumers down the road.”
Arguments Against the HST
From the aforementioned Globe and Mail article:
“But the savings for business will become new costs for consumers…A slew of goods and services formerly not subject to the PST will fall under the umbrella of the new combined tax, including hair cuts, restaurant meals – and far larger expenditures such as new homes.”
“In the Lower Mainland, where prices can easily top seven digits, buyers could end up paying significantly larger tax bills; a new $700,000 home would incur an extra $18,000 in sales tax, according to the B.C. finance ministry. “
“B.C. finance ministry officials pointed to a 2007 study from the University of Toronto. That study found that overall consumer prices fell after harmonization, but that prices rose for shelter, clothing and footwear, making the changeover “slightly regressive.†In other words, lower income consumers were affected more than those with higher incomes.”
NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston quoted on CTV.ca: “The biggest concern I have is that, just at a time when we are trying to come out of a recession, is this the right time to make people pay more tax for ordinary services people buy as part of their daily lives?”
From other sources:
From the Vancouver Sun: “‘The news is especially grim for the restaurant industry, which is already seeing business down because of the drop in tourism’, said Mark von Schellwitz, regional vice-president for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association…’That’s going to cost our industry in B.C. annually $750 million.’”
From a Bill Tieleman editorial in The Tyee: “So who benefits? Big business. That’s why the B.C. Business Council, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and a host of other business groups are supporting the tax. The HST will transfer $1.9 billion from individuals and give that money to big business.”
Also from The Tyee: “The HST is a highly regressive tax. That is, it disproportionately impacts lower income earners because far more of their limited income will be spent paying the tax than higher income earners.”
Conclusions
I’m no economist. The few economists’ opinions I could find on harmonized taxes seemed to be “short term pain, long term gain”. While the HST will be tax deductible (where the PST was not), businesses are likely to pass on costs to consumers. That will, of course, have the greatest impact on those earning the least.
There seems to be no question that it’s a business-friendly tax. I did want to question Mr. Tieleman’s assertion that it strictly benefited big business. The Sun quotes Brian Bonney, the director of provincial affairs in B.C for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business:
On the plus side will be the reduction of paperwork and the ability to deduct input credits, which will both have a “massive†impact on small businesses, he said. “Overall, this is a positive thing,†Bonney said. “But I think there are definitely some sectors in the economy that are not going to be happy with this announcement.â€Â
That suggests that small businesses aren’t unilaterally opposed to the tax.
So, what do you think? Through the history of the modern world, taxes have gone up. Assuming that taxes will continue to go up, is this the sort of tax you’d prefer?
In the past year or so, a number of social news, networking and community sites have implemented faux toolbars which appear at the top of your browser pane. They seek to extend the original site’s functionality to the rest of the web. They usually frame the page, so that your address bar displays a different (often shortened) URL than the page’s original one. There are plenty of examples already–Digg (here’s a screenshot of that one in action), Reddit, StumbleUpon, Facebook, HootSuite. There’s even a WordPress plugin that enables anybody to create such a framing bar for their own blog.
I’m not a fan of these tools. There are plenty of critiques around the web (here’s one on the DiggBar), but my particular complaint is that often the first thing I want to do when I visit a page is copy the URL (to email, blog about, tweet about, and so forth). These bars prevent me from accessing the page’s actual URL. Plus, I think it’s an incredibly tacky attempt at brand extension, and they’re taking valuable real estate away from the site they’re framing. Er, okay, slight rehash.
There are code samples (that’s the first Wikipedia article I’ve ever nominated for deletion) which enable me to prevent the bar from appearing on sites I own. That’s not really the problem I’m trying to solve though.
I was complaining about this on Twitter last night, and this little discussion ensued (er, that’s in reverse order):
invoker: See ow.ly/socialbar. It's a win for all and if you don't like it… opt out.
Here’s the problem with opt-out: I need to do it on a case-by-case basis. I know I’m an outlier, but I use two computers, and run two different browsers on each computer. Assuming there are just six of these bars I have to deal with, that’s 24 opt-outs. Assuming the trend continues, that number could easily become 50 or 100.
But there’s a simple solution. Set some industry standards around these framing bars that enable me–using a Greasemonkey script, plugin or browser setting–to opt out for all the bars at once. It’s not, for example, that dissimilar from turning off javascript or the auto-completion of forms. This would prove a much more customer-oriented solution to the problem than forcing users to turn the bars off on a case by case basis.
Or maybe such a script already exists, and I just missed it in my searches?
I forget how I found this charming blog, but it’s written by somebody who works at a used and rare bookstore. They post the forgotten bookmarks and other sundries that they discover inside purchased books. The discoveries are pretty diverse, from the mundane to the intimate, such as this Dear John postcard:
We are both at such profound transition points in our lives, and our situations are too unstable to offer the foundation necessary upon which to build the tremendous life changes that we idealistically believed possible. I want to know and believe, as I think you do, that I will always be a loving and caring friend & confidante to you – I know you would reciprocate that.
I heard from a friend of a friend that teachers in BC (and elsewhere in Canada) can choose to accept 80% of their salary and, in return, take one in five years off. They’re not guaranteed exactly the same job when they come back, but I gather they get a similar one. I searched the web and the BC Teacher’s Federation website (BCTF) in particular to confirm this, but couldn’t do so. Does anybody know if this is true? Various people on Twitter thought it did, but I’ve emailed the media contact at the BCTF to confirm.
It’s not that important, because I’m more interested in the abstract concept. If I were a teacher, it would seem pretty enticing. I know 20% is a significant salary reduction, but I imagine one could pick up work in the summer time to to reduce that to 10 – 15%.
If you make $55K a year, then that gets reduced to $44K. Given the nine weeks in the summer, one could, conservatively earn another $5000, bringing us back up to $49K, or a 13% reduction in salary. That seems well worth it for five years off over a 25 year career. Imagine the possibilities for travel, professional development, recuperation or just plain old leisure. You could, for example, write a novel every five years.
I see this model working best in highly ordered and predictable careers like policing, nursing and teaching, where seniority is a key determiner in advancement, and jobs are reasonably plug-and play. It’s also suited to careers where innovation is slow-moving (see also the academic’s sabbatical, though in those cases I gather that they’re expected to be producing academic work).
In a corporate setting, I’d imagine taking one in five years off would be pretty stigmatizing. In highly competitive fields, you might be labeled a slacker. I wonder if this is also the case among teachers, and what percentage of BC teachers take advantage of this job benefit? I’d also be curious to see if taking off one year in five has an impact on performance.
Often the best blogs give you access into a world you otherwise would never see, or even think about. Every Saturday Morning is written by somebody who escorts women into an abortion clinic, through a gauntlet of tens or hundreds of protesters. I had no idea such a volunteer service even existed:
We do this because clients of the clinic are often met at their cars by protesters. Between 2 and 5 protesters will follow/chase a client from their car parked in the public lot across the street to the private property line; talking at them, handing out literature, attempting to steer clients into the fake clinic down the block, shouting misinformation, slowing their pace, blocking the door and impeding clients any way they can.
I was under the impression that many clinics had the equivalent of restraining orders, that protesters couldn’t come within 100 feet (or whatever) of the building. Reading this bog, I guess that’s not the case in Louisville.
