Waking up this morning to the news of the United States reaching a deal to add/increase taxes on their fiscal situation but not doing a single thing to cut spending.
A short text stream flowed by on the canadian news channel that said something abuot taxes in Canada going up as well. This has nicely slid under the radar with all of the news focussed on the US.
So we start looking around, only to find confusing and contradictory info about income tax, CPP and EI rates.
The only item all of the sources agreed on were CPP rates going up about 4% over last year.
I guess we will have to wait for all of our public civil service types to go back to work and slowly add the updates to the various web pages that citizens depend on in this day and age.
Budget information is particularly hard to find.
Which segues into this story found on Jerry Pournelle’s website this morning.
Aguy stopped at a local gas station & after filling his tank, he paid the bill and bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola and watched a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet behind filling in the hole. The men worked right past the guy with the soft drink and went on down the road.
“I can’t stand this,” said the man tossing the can into a trash container and heading down the road toward the men. “Hold it, hold it,” he said to the men. “Can you tell me what’s going on here with all this digging and refilling?”
“Well, we work for the government and we’re just doing our job,” one of the men said.
“But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You’re not accomplishing anything. Aren’t you wasting the taxpayers’ money?”
“You don’t understand, mister,” one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. “Normally there’s three of us: Me, Elmer and Leroy. I dig the hole, Elmer sticks in the tree, and Leroy here puts the dirt back. Elmer’s job has been cut… so now it’s just me an’ Leroy. We’re saving the taxpayers money because now there’s only two people doing the job of three.”