There will be a two week break in our publishing schedule, as your editor goes offline to a cottage in the remote bush. Deep apologies to all paying subscribers. We compensate with a longer than usual issue this week, to keep you going….

Followups

* Harper’s Census– there’s method behind the madness. Tyee has an excellent piece on why he wants to kill the census. An economist, the prime minister understands the value of statistics. He appreciates that authoritative statistics on the relative social and economic well-being of individual Canadians empower the disempowered to demand government programs (higher taxes) to reduce poverty and disparity and promote upward mobility.

He also appreciates the need to dumb them down to facilitate stripping government back to its core functions: a strong military to defend the nation abroad, more police, prisons and tougher justice to defend the citizen at home and an unfettered free market to create wealth and employment through ever-lower taxes, especially on business and the well-to-do. Addressing social and economic inequality should be left to individual initiative and private charity.

* Why the Rich Should Not Contribute Their Wealth to Charities Not everyone agrees with Harper that “Addressing social and economic inequality should be left to individual initiative and private charity.”. A great piece from Der Spiegal focusses on why the German super-rich disagrees with Bill Gates’ approach. Germany’s super-rich have rejected an invitation by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to join their ‘Giving Pledge’ to give away most of their fortune. The pledge has been criticized in Germany, with millionaires saying donations shouldn’t replace duties that would be better carried out by the state….“It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?”