If I Wasn't Flagged Before...

 I find this to be quite interesting indeed! Read it carefully. It's all the stuff the Canada Revenue Agency can do to you if you don't pay your taxes. You can take this with a grain or even a few shakes of salt upon considering the source - a former Canadian politician, but I think it's accurate. I will never forget the economics professor from, I think it was Acadia University, doing a TED talk in which he said "If you make half a million a year in Canada you don't have to pay taxes and if you make a million, you don't." Of course I don't have a link to that cuz that sort of thing gets washed off the internet all the time. Suffice to say there are some people in Canada paying NO taxes legally because they have almost nothing. This is a good thing. One good thing about my country. I FOUND IT!!! But there are lots of folks in Canada paying no taxes because they have so much money they can take advantage of loopholes strategically inserted into the stories-high tax code of Canada - a work of art so thick precisely for the purpose of facilitating such penetrable holes. 

There are people in Canada who are walking tax havens simply because of the way in which they make their money. Passively. "Work hard and pay yer taxes" has been a fate relegated to the non-elite and to be honest the not-so-smart of Canada. If I could ever find a job here in Canada that put me into that class, why, I'd be outraged at the amount of tax I pay compared to the old money in Canada who don't rely on wages or salaries but investments and personal wealth that come with far too generous tax deductions. Holes penetrable only to the rich. It's not enough to say the government and the CRA know about this and don't give a flying fuck because they have actively contributed to this draconian system of taxation. 

You may think me delusional but I believe the very reason I have been withheld from financial success in and by my own country has a lot to do with my intelligence. I think there are other poor people like me in Canada who would be rattling cages and shaking things up here if they belonged to what we call the working class of our country. That's why we either end up in the upper class or the lower class. I think those of us, and our numbers are few, who would demand revolution even if we were in the UPPER class are systematically relegated to poverty or possibly pushed out of the country so our influence remains minimal. All I can do is write and who has time to read when they're working their arse off and carrying the country's tax burden? 

I probably AM a bit delusional but not entirely. Being passed over by jobs for which I'm massively overqualified; not being able to access websites on my computer while everyone else's computer has no problem with them - this includes numerous government websites some of which booted me out and wouldn't let me back in WHILE I WAS REGISTERING; being sabotaged by coworkers; having my credit rating mysteriously tanked by huge corporations (Telus) who harass me for money I don't owe yet don't allow me to pay it back; having my credit further subverted by a huge corporation (Koodo/Telus) that sold me a product that did not work and expected payment while I was trying unsuccessfully to tell them it didn't work and to shut if off; having every bank account hacked and stolen from; having all my bank cards hacked and stolen from; and being audited by the CRA, having money that I had earned withheld by the taxman and not returned even after I had done everything that was required to get that money UNwithheld. 

I believe at least some of this has happened to me because of what I write about Canada. The truth. The rich people don't want to give up their taxless existences and if loudmouths like me are heard, the masses could revolt. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The world is his who can see through its pretention. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance - by YOUR sufferance. See it to be a lie and you have already dealt it its mortal blow." Fair enough, Canadian taxes are an example of one of these overgrown errors and I see them for what they are: a huge lie. They are a custom we stone-blindly follow. And the phrases like "If you don't pay taxes, you aren't a good Canadian," comprise their cultural deafness. If I had to pay a lot of them I wouldn't suffer them, I'd protest. Luckily (or is it by design) I can't find work anywhere but overseas and therefore don't pay a lot in taxes. Taxes are no more than a pretention here in Canada. I know that. I don't feel like any of this makes the world mine, however. Maybe only the HONEST world and there ain't much of that left. 

But I'm not even writing today about how taxes in this country have ballooned into the massive monster of inconsistency and favouritism that they have... I've written at length about that here. (whisper: That's why I can't live in Canada) I'm here to talk about the swollen powers of the CRA and how their taxation without representation needs to be exposed. (Whispered: After this they might not let me back into this country even for a visit)

Allow me to draw your attention to that first article I linked. 10% of Canadians have 60% of the wealth. As shocking as that may be, take it from a guy who has tried to find accurate statistics on anything that might reflect badly on Canada, if that was up-to-date and if we had any honest stat sources in Canada I'm betting it would be closer to 1% having 60% of the wealth. It could even be worse. Be that as it may or may not, I think we can agree that it IS getting worse and the cavalier acceptance of that fact is, in my personal opinion, downright unCanadian. But on we mechanically wander...

I need to explain that. What I see, and again I'm not alone here, as part of the problem is our limited view of the scientific world as a well-behaved, objective, empirically sensible force that is more mechanical than wondrously abstract and undefined. It makes us feel arrogant comfort to view the world in this way but this is just another of the pretentions that cause problems. Part of this well-accepted vanity is the concept of humanity being composed of material stuff and working in mechanistic ways. If this were true, we could take a person apart and put them back together like a car or a watch. We can put the parts, the "stuff" back together if we are skilled surgeons, but there's one key force, power, entity that makes humans different from machines and surgery is almost entirely ignorant of it. For such a long time science has just ignored that part and tried to work around it. This is what has led to our view of human individuality and competitiveness that is absolutely a stone-blind, stone-deaf, overgrown error. We are taught that the only way to be significant is at other's expense and this is a pretention that has turned a whole world of humanity into a robotic, mechanistic nightmare in which we see 1% of people with the majority of the earth's assets as somehow acceptable, even normal. I'm sorry but I've always thought of Canada as being more human than that, hence my description of this thinking as absolutely unCanadian. I still hope I'm right...

I hate to flog a dead horse but the longer I stay here in Canada, the longer I feel the palpable... I don't want to dismissively (and maybe arrogantly) call it stupidity because I constantly see smart people contributing to a society that they are consciously aware is relentlessly slipping further and further from that which they desire to live in, but it's a general malaise of apathetic surrender, helplessness, and frustration that only the intellectually defeated would abide. Or "suffer." I've said it before, Canada is that elephant being held where it's at by a tiny peg pounded into the ground. We have the power to stop the government, the banks, the rich, and the CRA from hosing us by hosing them back! But it seems we are no longer the country of hosers we are reputed to be, Bob and Doug notwithstanding.

When was the Boston Tea Party? The 1700's? Yes it was. 1773 actually and according to this, it wasn't just tea taxed, it was glass, paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea. The Townshend Revenue Act was passed to get the East India Company back in the black and the hosers of the US said yeah, no! Lo and behold, their government listened! Governments listen to hosers, also, their tax code wasn't a mile high and full of crafty loopholes to benefit the rich either. No, this was not Canada, but we were closer to the States in those days. We were almost all British defectors and depended on each other to fight the power. The government dropped the taxes on everything but the tea! Hooray for the good guys! But can you guess what that tax was? THREE pence per pound! Even THIS was agreed to be outrageous and the colonists who still had spines and still recognized the power of protest launched the Boston Tea Party. For THREE PENNIES! We've been bent over so long by our governments we wouldn't even notice three pennies.

I was offered a job at a school here in Calgary. As you can tell from my previous post I've been enjoying spending time with family since I've been back in Canada. I thought if I could find even a half-way decent job here I'd stay a bit longer. The offer was for guaranteed full-time hours, at least 24 a week with 12 extra per week whenever I wanted. $30/hr. So for my 24 hours a week I'd get 2880 a month. I plugged that into the tax calculator and immediately 30% was taken off the top! That's VASTLY more than a few pennies! And Alberta is the best province to avoid taxes! CPP $148, EI $46, Federal tax $387, Provincial tax $269. So my take-home pay was now $2031. I will need to pay a thousand at least for a decent apartment so now I have a grand left for food and such. So much for ever getting a car, insurance, and a license. Basically,

I could make a long list of other expenses AND don't forget once a year paying my taxes on TOP of all the other taxes I would pay throughout the year. It's far beyond a 3-penny tea tax and we drink coffee in Canada anyway. But what do we do about it? This sign is great but it's no Boston Tea Party and obviously we have gotten used to a LOT more abuse from our government since the 1700's. 

So what if we don't pay these taxes on the grounds that they are contributing to the dehumanization of Canada? We can be charged interest. It can be taken from your GST/HST rebates. Ever wonder why they don't just NOT charge those taxes instead of withholding the money from us then refunding it? Partially so they can use it to collect money you rightfully refuse to pay, but also to make us think (another pretention) that this is a nice bonus from our government. YAY!

Then there's the "jeopardy order." This is a legal document that allows the CRA to take immediate legal action to collect the debt. Needless to say, if this happens it adversely affects your criminal record and your credit rating. This could start the cycle of unemployment I seem to be in right now. Employers check these things before they contact you for interviews and whether you are right or not, they assume your bad credit and criminal record render you unemployable.

That's not all! The government may garnishee your wages or money. That's right, they can dip into your bank account - legally - and take what they reckon you owe them. 

They can collect from other people! That's right, the government of Canada can actually make some other person responsible for the debt you owe them! Imaging being THAT person.

Finally, (but there are probably other things they can do that I don't know enough about to print at this time) the government of Canada can put a lien on or even seize any of your assets. 

Here's the audit letter I received almost exactly a year ago:

"My Account" is one of many government websites and online services that has been disabled for me. I texted the documents they requested and emailed them to the person I reached at the number provided and was told that even though they were received, it was against policy to send them in that manner. I had to go to Staples and FAX the info they required of me. So I did. Well within the time limitation I was given. I guess they weren't expecting that so they tried several things: first they sent me a letter BEFORE THE DEADLINE stating that I had not submitted the documents by the deadline. Then I sent copies of the faxes and the receipt from Staples showing the number and that the fax had been received by that number long before the deadline. I guess they weren't expecting THAT either. People in Canada generally show more, what's that word again?, SUFFERANCE of the government's pretention and lying. I called their bluff. (In a whisper: ...which is why I can't live or work in Canada).

So they finally dropped the pretense and admitted that they had received the papers. They said I now qualified for the GST/HST and other taxes they had no right to threaten to stop withholding then reimbursing in the first place. And the retroactively withheld funds? I calculate about $3500 worth of them. They were not mentioned. I have contacted many people in many ways and have yet to receive an answer as to what has become of these funds. I will never get them back and I am being compelled to suffer this theft. 

Non-payment of taxes is considered theft and we know what the government can do to a citizen of Canada for this crime, but what can a Canadian citizen do if the government steals from him/her? Can we charge interest? Can we withhold future payment of taxes? Can we obtain a jeopardy order? The government has no credit rating, criminal record, or wages - per se - so we can't garnishee or affect those in any way. Can we hold another government responsible? "HEY US, Canada owes me money. They're your ally and neighbour, pay up!" Reckon that'd work? Can we put a lien on government assets or seize them? Or can we dip into the government of Canada's bank account? No, no, a thousand times no.

This is pure pretention, lies, corruption, and its practiced as stone-blind, stone-deaf custom by us Canadians. The government has all the power and we have none. It is only thus because we suffer it to be precisely so. Exposing this deceit is only the first step. Hopefully I'll be alive to see the day when we change this. Despite the modicum of hope I maintain, I don't feel a whole lot of Emerson's sentiment that the world is now mine and I have dealt any mortal blows here. But you never know...

I Can't Feel The Real

*** I'd better post a warning before this poem. It's not me. It's not me or I wouldn't be looking for a place to rent in Calgary so I can stay here and visit with family and friends some more. But this is what I see and what I fear as the result of the phoniness I've been on a posting crusade against. It's called I Can't Feel The Real. I reckon Johnny Cash could write a good song for these lyrics eh?

I can't feel the real. I need somehow to heal.

Family and all my friends

lose the hurt after it offends

but I have to conceal

that I can't feel the real.

 

They say that time can heal. That blood and love are real.

I used to share the joy and care

for brothers and sisters everywhere

but now put on the zeal

cuz I can't feel the real.

 

I have a hole in me that I can't let you see.

That which once was beautiful

is now becoming dutiful 

and even worse professional.

I wear a mask of steel

cuz I can't feel the real.

 

Lord disinfect my head or at least strike me dead

when I bypass the sanctity

of children playing happily,

of innocence and honesty.

I cling to the surreal

when I can't feel the real.

I have one thing to give, one reason left to live.

I will not share its counterfeit

of which there is a vast surfeit

I’d rather cease, surrender, quit

than lie and cheat and steal

cuz I can’t feel the real.

Update and Photo Dump

 Haven't posted in a while. Things have been pretty busy. Let's see... we got Mom moved to Alberta. Mark and Sherrilyn came with their truck and trailer and we loaded it to the nuts with Mom's stuff. Here's the load:

We had a riding mower, snowblower, two easy chairs, a freezer, trunks, boxes, bags, I mean this thing was chock o' block full. Then her bed and a giant mirror went in the box of the pick-up. I added my two bags and backpack and off we went April 18th. This April flower pic was 4 days earlier on my birthday.

Didn't do much for my birthday. Mom had a farewell brunch with the gals from her church. She got me a carrot cake. I was just excited to get the move over. I had spent a lot of time in Mom's place, mostly in the basement, and it wasn't action central there let me tell you.

This is a pic of what I did most of the time. My computer was used trying to sell Mom's stuff and/or find employment and for watching TV shows that weren't on Mom's cable. And the TV I used for watching hockey. I didn't manage to sell Mom's stuff or get employment so I mostly wasted time in the basement. I couldn't get wifi and my data tethering hotspot wasn't good enough to do my studying. To be fair, the course was pretty badly done so I probably wouldn't have studied anyway. 

We didn't get far before we decided to stop for a pee and a look around. We had left Montrose and travelled East toward Creston. I think the route is called the Salmo-Creston pass. I could be wrong. I'd never seen the cabin at the summit before. There was STILL a lotta snow up there! But it was warm and sunny. PERFECT conditions for avalanches! Hence, the sign below. This was taken inside the cabin. 

There's also a stove in the cabin in case some folks are trying to drive over the pass and the gates get closed for some reason. Probably avalanches or just a big snow fall. Then you have to drive back to the cabin and start a fire in the stove. There's usually wood piled in there for that purpose. The roads might take days to clear so it's a good idea to bring some food too. Maybe a sleeping bag or two.

Luckily we didn't get stuck at the summit. In fact it was a fun little stop. The lake near the cabin was frozen over and covered with snow and there were blue jays flying around and landing in the trees. We walked up to the cabin on snow that was probably way over our heads if we sunk down to the ground. But even without snowshoes we didn't. You can get a good idea of how much snow falls up there by the depth of the snow on the cabin roof.

Below is the wood stove. No wood but in a pinch a good BC traveler would have a chainsaw and be able to cut down some trees and burn 'em up. I bet the cabin would be right cozy with a roaring fire going. And if you're lucky you could catch something to fry up on top. Fish or squirrel or such. Boy howdy that's some good eatin'! 

So we got some fresh air and Mom went to the outhouses that are there. Lots of people were stopped to stretch legs. Even a few dogs. I had driven over this pass at least 20 times before and never stopped at this cabin that I could remember. It's crazy how easily you can miss some really cool things if you don't take the time to get out and smell the roses. Or the pine trees as it were. 

So we piled back into the truck and kept going. But it wasn't much longer before we got to Creston and yet ANOTHER of the best things in life I missed out on the whole time I had lived in the Kootenays during my childhood. Tim's Fish 'n Chips in Creston. Do yourself a favour... It's a small place but the food is plentiful and it'll stick to yer ribs! And if I do say so myself it is DEE licious! Since we were able to get gravy I think this might have been the best fish 'n chips I ever had in my entire life. 

That's Sherrilyn and Mark. They shared a three-piece fish 'n chips. Mom had the chicken. The two-piece meal with the gravy beside it is mine. MMM-MMM good! I even liked the coleslaw. You can just barely see Mom's onion rings on the right side of the pic. She agreed to pay for the meal although I think she thought it was a bit pricey. I thought it was a pretty good deal given the huge portions. Word to the wise, if you aren't hungry, don't go to Tim's Fish 'n Chips. 

Just look how happy Mom and I look! It was that magnificent meal. I think we were all so satiated we were ready for naps. Mark and SL look a bit happier than me and Mom. Probably cuz they had a little break from the chaos that is home life with their family. You will see them later in this post but I'll tell you their names now just so I can type to the bottom of the last picture... Natalia is the oldest, then Hazel, then Hugo, Elanor, Gwinnie, and E/B. Ernie/Bronson. I usually call him Ernie but he responds to either. There are two other kids both older than Natalia, Hayden and Lexy, who are not currently living in the house. 

So, we got to Mark and SL's place, parked the stuff in the driveway, unloaded Mom's bed, set it up, and crashed. We all stayed there for a while. Can you imagine that? It was chaotic but I kinda liked it. It was nice to get to know my nephews and nieces a little bit better. And it was nice to play cards after they all went to bed too! We even taught a couple of the kids to play Euchre, an Ontario game that nobody plays out west here. During the days we played lots of games with the kids and went out to the ball park to play Cherry or 500-up, or we just played it in the back yard dog trail. 

This was a hike to some caves we took in late April. There was still snow and those waters had fish in them. That's Sherrilyn with Ernie on her back, Mark in the red, Hugo in his soccer clothes (we all went to soccer/walking after), that's Elanor at the water, G-dawg (Gwinnie) in the green, and Hazel in the turquoise out front. I think Natalia was studying at home.

This was Big Hill Springs park. A light hike in early May. Mark was taking the easy way across the crick. 

This is in M &SL's front yard just before doing Hazel's flyer route. The flyers are in the buggy. I think we broke the speed record that day. Doesn't it look like a Sears Catalog pose? 

This was taken at Fish Creek Park. That's not too far from M &SL's house. Gwinnie and one of the Shaw kids (maybe Ivy) on the back of the log, Hazel doing her gymnastic balancing and Elanor running back to the spot where we were chucking rocks into the water to splash each other. By this time SL and Ernie had gone home. Natalia was there just not in the pic. Some Karen came by walking her GREYHOUND don't you know and chastened me by saying, "How did you break your leg while hiking with grampa?" "Screw you lady, I'm just their uncle and if more Canadian kids had so much outside time and so little screen time they might be as good at climbing and balancing as these kids are. But you be satisfied with Jr's participation trophy while these girls are winning the sports," is what I DIDN'T say. 

Elanor's 8th birthday cupcakes with candy floss. Or do you call it cotton candy? Shows how old I am...

I buried Ernie in the playground gravel. We were using our hats as bulldozers too filling them up and pouring them out. He loves vrooms!

G-dog asked me if she could borrow my jacket cuz it was cold in the Superstore. Didn't fit too great. 

Some avuncular lasagna made from the stuff we bought at the Superstore. 

Hazel doing the ninja stuff again. She's really good at gymnastics. She can do flip after flip after flip on the trampoline. 

Hazel jumping the crick to join Natalia. I like the shadow. 

This is my almost useless hand when Mark, Sherrilyn and I were up late playing 9-5-2. I didn't even get a trick with the King if I remember right. 

More log walking. This is with Grampa George too. He came out from Ontario to help with Elanor's baptism. I actually went to church a few times. Once for Easter, once for the baptism, once to game night, and once to do some cleaning.

This is Hugo and Bronson at church one of those times. 

THERE'S Grampa George. He's a whiz at Euchre! Hugo is not quite as impressive as Hazel at working those posts. He got right in the water. Him and Dad both.

By the end of the hike even Ernie got to play in the water. It was a fun day except for the mosquitos. There weren't many but I managed to kill 6 of 'em. Nobody else was bothered much. They love to feast on my blood no matter what country I'm in.

So after the hike we decided to go out for ice cream. It was a real treat!

MacKay's in Cochrine, Alberta. Again, do yourself a favour...

It was a hard choice but I had the Haskap Berry Cheesecake. I'm happy with that choice. Haskap berries taste like a cross between blueberries and raspberries.

Then it was time to move Mom. We didn't stay long at Mark and Sherrilyn's. Mom didn't stay much more than a week I think. Luckily she got into a good place and we were able to move her almost right away. We didn't have to unload any of Mom's stuff. It just sat covered up in M & SL's driveway while we were there. Then on moving day Rob and Terri joined us and Kiera stayed overnight to help too.

Here's Rob looking like most of us felt. Where are we going to put all this stuff?

This is Kiera loading stuff into one of Mom's closets. It was nice of her to help Gramma move. 

And that about covers it. I'm now at Rob's. I sent my final document to Korea today.

If this is sufficient for immigration, my next step is to buy a ticket to Korea and get on over there. I teach my first class on June 2nd I think and I will be starting my final class of my master's degree just over a week later. By August I should be a certified, papered up Master of Education. THEN I'll be dangerous! I haven't yet figured out the financing but I'm working on it. I'm sure you'll read about that later...

Plausible Deniability

 So we have spent another half-billion taxpayers' dollars on another in a long series of public performances we euphemistically call elections here in Canada and what did we get? A banker. Number 5 on a Yahoo list of least respected occupations in Canada: banker. But I don't need Yahoo to tell me, I KNOW we don't trust bankers. Why would ANYBODY after what we learned in 2008? There are movies about it! Bankers are scum! They CHEAT people. Every one of them should be approached with the lack of eye contact and primal fear with which you'd slink up to THIS guy:

What is this guy? He's a carney. What is THIS guy?

He too my friends is a Carney. Of course you know I'm not talking about the OTHER figure in the picture who should never under any circumstances be sidled up to EVER... I'm talking about the person receiving the gift from the Orange Menace to the south. What IS that gift? Why, it's the Canadian federal election, that's what it is. I've explained it in the blog before but for those of you who don't trust my predictions even though they have proven to be right, here's another article you can read about how fighting the tariffs and takeover threats to the south has transformed another election loser into PM in a very short time. See the third guy thinking, "Did I leave the iron on?" That's Pierre Poilievre. He's the Conservative candidate who had this election in the bag before the "Canada Strong" defense against Trump narrative was manufactured. He (and of course Canada) is the loser in yesterday's election. 

Are Canadians so easily fooled? Well, if, like the household in which I currently am staying, you have any misplaced faith in Canadian elections, then even YOU have to admit they are no indication at all of what the country thinks. First of all about 73% of the seats are in two provinces: Ontario and Quebec. So election results tend to reflect how THEY voted - nothing more. But to even believe election results reflect how the people of our two dominant provinces THINK is wishful thinking at best, brainwashing at worst. Elections aren't real folks and as with most things (because there is a magnifying glass on everything they do) Americans give us the best examples of this. Watch the documentary called 537 Votes about the 2000 "vote" in America. Gore won, Bush lost but for 4 years the whole country acted like their democracy wasn't completely eviscerated. 

We already have an election vote collector from an important Ontario riding called Durham reporting that he saw CTV televising a Liberal victory in that riding before he or any of the other official election workers had even submitted their votes for counting. Is this dude lying? Probably not. Should we be surprised? Probably not. But like those who believed in Gore 25 years ago, people who believe this dude more than the election results will eventually be spun into lunatics and conspiracy theorists. 

Add to the inexplicably unrepresentative set-up and the ease with which our voting system can be manipulated, the most consistent result of Canadian elections - the fact that what voters want is never what the candidates offer and even if it appears as a small part of their platform, it is almost always what they do NOT get accomplished after being elected... you really should be able to see this ritual for what it is. Yet over 67% of registered voters voted according to this report. Mind boggling! 

If I believed everything I read in the media I'd consider the people of my country a bunch of Pavlovian suckers. But I don't. I know a lot of people who, like me, don't vote and someday we may even be able to feel proud that we are not contributing to the downfall of our own country like the reported 67% of us are. For years I have maintained plausible deniability and peace of mind that I have contributed in no way to the fraud that is our election ritual here. Maybe someday a majority will see it my way (if we already don't). Maybe someday we'll have democratic elections in Canada or even (GASP) candidates worth voting for. And as me and old Plato believe, only those who do not seek power are worthy to wield it. It was one of the many cool themes in the movie "Conclave." <<< which didn't win the Oscar by the way even though it was psychically topical. 

I remain unconvinced that the person we have elected is not one of the insanely dangerous men who wanted the papacy... er I mean position of PM. I guess time will tell...

Scamada

 As you may be able to surmise from the title, this is going to be a post about something that has filled me with sadness since returning to my once beloved home and native land, the veritable plague of corruption, cheating, and outright scamming that has replaced a business culture that I remember being more honest. Oh sure, there has always been all of the above but, correct me if you disagree, they are now the norm and they weren't before. There was a time in Canada when business could be done on a handshake. Now you are a fool to leave yourself so exposed. Trusting people is just opening yourself to a thorough butt pounding. Employers take full advantage of such "weakness" with no governmental or legal reprisals, giving them the conscience-saving feeling of teaching the employee a lesson by just doing what someone else would have done if they had not. I used to attribute this more to Asia but now here in Canada employers are legally screwing employees with no regulation and no loss of sleep. Canada has transformed into Scamada.

I won't rehash my stories about Canada's cable companies. The most expensive and the worst internet in the world I think, not to mention the scammy phone plans and service. My most recent is Chatr which has been very good. Month-to-month so the long term contracts that are easy to get but impossible to cancel don't exist. That's good. But for two months the internet speed I get on my hotspot when I have no wifi like here at Mom's place has gone from the promised 4G to 1980's pixel-by-pixel page building speeds. We're talking NEGATIVE 4G. That's bad. But that's not the scam of the hour.

I'm not going to talk about every phone call I get from telemarketers in either Manila or somewhere in India that Chatr gave me as part of my phone package either. I'm also not going to talk about every Canadian government agency and the website/phone labyrinths they have set up to take you VERY slowly but surely to dead ends. I have talked with representatives from every sector of the CRA, (Canada Revenue Agency) some of them not even Indian or Philipino, who have all either referred me to another department or told me they don't know why over three thousand dollars of my income tax returns for the last 9 years I was overseas has been and is still being withheld. The government of Scamada effectively STOLE over three grand from me! Not the first time either. But that's not what I want to talk about either. 

Just bear in mind the line from the first paragraph as you read today: Trusting people (in Scamada) is just opening yourself to a thorough butt pounding.

Okay, bearing that in mind, the scam I want to outline today is ongoing. We may (or may not) hear about it sometime in May I reckon. To be honest I don't know exactly how it will go yet either. What I know is I fell for it for about a week. I thought I had finally found a good job here in Canada that would pay for my transition to Korea. I still need to pay for an apostilled criminal record check, ($300) a plane ticket, ($600-$1200) and expenses during my first month in Korea (June, about $1000). I was contacted by the PISA test administrators in Canada. That stands for Program for International Student Assessment. It's something that I have blogged and written papers about and I hate. They are standardized tests which I believe I have mentioned in this blog as the worst thing to happen to education in the past 100 years or something to that effect. So right off the hop let's establish that I don't like these things. They put massive undue pressure on 14 and 15-year-olds around the world to basically prove their countries' intelligence. Schools are closed, people lose jobs, children are shamed, a LOT of suicides have been attributed to these cursed things! 

However... I am in a financial pinch here and I got a call Thursday April 10th from a 1 800 number so I can't call back (red flag number 1) and talked to an Indian gal (sorry but red flag number 2) named Rupaul. She told me that she had found my resume on Indeed (red flag number 3???) and was impressed. She felt I'd be a good candidate to not only be a PISA test administrator but a PRIMARY T/A. She told me that for every test I administered I would receive $250 plus a $40 per diem plus 50 cents per kilometer if it was at a school more than a certain distance away. But as a primary T/A I would also do pre-assessment interviews with the contacts of the schools, usually the principals, and for those I would receive $125 plus the $40 per diem plus kilometers. I would have to do some training which included online study of the T/A manual and participation in a couple of webinars. But that should only take a couple of days and I would be paid $250 per day so $500. She even mentioned that rides and hotels would be covered upon request when necessary.

Needless to say I was interested! I kept saying I didn't want to count my chickens or get my hopes up, but I did. I always do. I'm SO stupid! This sounded too good to be true so for the next few days I kept my eyes open for the catch. There HAD to be one, right?

Over the next few days I completed the onboarding, sent some reference contact information (and they DID call one of them), did an online criminal record check, sent them the one I had recently done myself, and made it to stage 4 successfully. This is the stage where they give you all the training manuals and tests and scripts and papers you will need for the job. This was also the stage where you receive a contract. I got the email yesterday (my birthday, April 14th) and started studying. They said that even if you haven't received the contract to go ahead and start reading the T/A manual and do the testing and the live webinars. Unfortunately there was a webinar today at 9 AM but I couldn't attend it because you are required to use as your ID the name with which you signed your contract plus your PISA T/A I.D. number. Mine is 5746. (Red flag number 4? I see this as a childish attempt to make something unofficial seem official. Like a treehouse password to keep icky girls out)

So I started studying. The first thing that needed to be done was the initial contact with the schools. This needed to be done on or after the first day of PISA procedures April 22nd. During the call you were to set up pre-assessment meetings. Let's say I was able to set up appointments and go to the schools for the pre-assessment visits when we make appointments and arrangements for the actual assessments in about 5 business days. Schools aren't open on weekends and I don't know how many schools I would be assigned, but I'm guessing about half a dozen. It'll take some quick organizing and some double booking but I think it could be done in 5 days which is 5 business days which is really a little over a week. Allowing a day or two for scheduling eventualities, we're finished with April. 

*** Actual assessments need to be scheduled a minimum of two weeks AFTER the pre-assessment visits. I am not sure whether this means two BUSINESS weeks for just two weeks but now we're doing assessments in the latter part of week two and week three of May. 

I read on. There will be some occasions in which the school requires regular assessments AND "UH" assessments. These are "une heure" assessments for SPED kids which are shorter than the regular 2-hour exams, one hour or une heure. So a good scheduler is going to need to space these tests at least two days apart. Further apart allowing for eventualities like flat tires, sickness, who knows what? Suffice to say there's gonna be a crunch. 

I read on. I found the whole process description to be almost unreadable due to its pedantic, detail-oriented nature, I can only imagine how harsh the actual procedure would be. Filling out STF's Student Tracking Forms with all the detailed codes in all the correct boxes. For example O for absent. Oa for temporary remote learner. 1 present. 1a computer problem. 1b hardware problem (I don't see how this is different from 1a so it could easily cause discrepancy... red flag 5). 1c internet issue. 1d absent >10 min. 1e might have skipped several questions. 2 parental refusal. 3. lack of accommodation for SEN (special educational needs. 4. changed school. 5. enrollment unknown. 6. permanently online studies. 

We need to go over all of these we can verify with the principal or contact in the pre-assessment visit and compare with any other T/A to be sure they are all identical. THEN we need to take attendance before the first part of the test, the second part, and before the questionnaire part. This is excluding the pure unadulterated tedium of inputting all this info on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and submitting them to CMEC the Council of Ministers of Education Canada. There they are scrupulously pored over and who knows how long this could take? I'm only boring you with part of the procedure so that you will know that with the time crunch, with the superfluity of data that needs to be recorded by multiple people, there are bound to be discrepancies. Only an idiot would expect all of this (plus the stuff I haven't told you about) to go off without a hitch. That's why red flag number 6 is important. "If there are any discrepancies, CMEC will not be able to remunerate the test administrators." 

However, I am used to exacting expectations from uploading grades in Korea to crappy university portals using antiquated hardware and software. I still figured I'd be able to pull this off. Then I read red flag number 7. No pay will be received by the T/A until the completion of his/her first assessment, the submission of all the forms, and the receipt, verification, and approval of said forms by CMEC. How long that will take... well there's no tellin'. 

I need the money for my job in Korea that starts June 1 but with all the submission, re-submission, editing, double, triple, quadruple-checking that is GOING to be necessary, it could be July before I see a dollar from these scamsters! To make things even more stressful (red flag #8) there will be make-up assessments if there is deemed to have been less than 85% participation during the original assessment. I think there can actually be TWO make-up assessments (I'm assuming with different test questions) but there will not be a third. This means, again I'm assuming, there will be no payment for the T/A. It's possible that THREE assessments could be done FOR FREE!

Think back to the phrase I told you to bear in mind. Trusting people in Scamada is just opening yourself up to a butt pounding. We've now established that I wouldn't be receiving any money for all the work I'd be doing until at least the third week of May. Allowing for discrepancies, make-up assessments, eventualities, scheduling mix-ups, (and you'd be an idiot NOT to allow for these things) AND assuming CMEC will take the requisite governmental time, whatever that is up to now, AND considering the sheer volume of PISA documents they'll have to process from every province in the country AND taking into account the time it takes to get bank account numbers, set up direct deposit, submit tax forms and other information to the employer, NObody's getting paid till June by these scammers. BUT how much money will the T/A's spend traveling all over the country staying in hotels, HOPING, or maybe I should say TRUSTING that CMEC will pay them what they say they're going to be paid?

This was enough to change my excitement to the familiar depths of Scamada job market despair, but wait, there's more! There always seems to be, doesn't there?

I got the contract. WHILE typing this! Oh it's a beauty! The very first thing it says is that my contract is NOT with the council of ministers of education of Canada but the CORPORATION of the council of ministers of education of Canada. CMEC is not a government ministry as the title obviously wants people to assume, it's a corporation. Not only is it a corporation, it's a fucking LOBBY! Their job is to get money from the government. That's it. And I've said it before many times, the government has no money. This is taxpayer money. They work in cahoots with Stats Canada who have lost all credibility with me. Just check their laughable statistics on immigration and you'll know what I mean. Red flag number... what are we at now 9? 10?

I read on. As a private contractor you are not an employee of the corporation and are therefore not covered by the Employment Standards Act, Workplace Safety Act, Canada Labour Code or other such laws. So I guess if I have a car accident while driving to an assessment I'm on my own. There are minimum standards that employers are NOT allowed to contract out of in Canada but maybe for private contractors it's different? I dunno. Too scummy for me at any rate. Red flag number 11.

I have to agree to indemnify the corporation against any claims by CRA or any other agency or entity with respect to withholdings they make of any kind. So if they can't find a discrepancy, they can make one up and not pay me for an assessment or WITHHOLD my pay and I have agreed to that by signing the contract. Red flag number 12.

30 days notice required to quit a 40-day contract. They are required to give only 14 days notice to fire you. They have 100% assignment rights, I have 0%. Intellectual property waiver so I can't write anything like this after signing the contract. And there is the expected secrecy promise. This requires a new paragraph at least.

As calculated, if I or any other T/A make a visit to a school on the second day of work, April 23rd and set up an assessment exactly 2 weeks from then, which would be the earliest possible date, May 7th could be an assessment date. This is unlikely, but during the second week of May I expect some kid to bring a phone into the test, take some pics of the questions and upload them for all of Canada to see. We are instructed to take precautions against this but nowadays... good luck. I would suggest metal detectors or even just stickers over the camera lenses of students' phones. But some clever kid will find or MAKE a combo calculator/cam, body cam, pen cam, whatever. What are we gonna do then? Will these tests all be disqualified? Certainly then nobody will get paid!

I'd have to be absolutely hurtin' for a butt pounding to accept this job, wouldn't I? Especially since I'll need a driver and no WAY will I find one who will wait till June to get paid! So I'll be going hundreds of dollars into the hole AND extending an idiotic amount of trust to a frigging corporation of lobbyists if I accept this job. 

But they almost hooked me! Fucking Scamada! It's hard NOT to get hooked. This is a pattern I've seen that has transformed Canada into Scamada: You get lobbyists to schmooze money out of the government however they do it. Probably I don't WANT to know how they do it. But that's their job. They don't teach English or administer PISA tests. They need to subcontract. Who gets the contract? The lowest bidder. Who is the lowest bidder? The entity that can figure out how to set something up to fracture a few Canadian laws, sidestep a few of our business ethics, and cleverly cheat desperate workers into accepting jobs that will never be full time (and have benefits) or jobs that have built-in pitfalls like this one where you KNOW you will be doing some work for free. These are the ethics that never used to be part of Canadian business and I think if we're honest with ourselves, we know where they come from. We've adopted business practices that overpopulated countries with insane levels of dog-eat-dog, do-or-die competition have developed. We're not big enough to need these practices and we need to smarten up and stop using them. Turn Scamada back into Canada.

Anyway, watch the news for stories of T/A's who weren't so lucky. Mid to late May this year I'd expect. 

So now it's off to Calgary to cut lawns or walk the streets for money till June. You want big bear? I love you long time!

Wish me luck...

History Repeating

 By way of reinforcement and update of my previous post called, "What Does A Carney Do?", check out this article of how invested Trump, and by extension the USA, now are in the digital currency scam. The article tells us that economist Paul Krugman says that the digital currency market value rests on "nothing but technobabble and libertarian derp." Does that make you feel secure? Not me. 

Now, if you haven't exceeded your free article limit at Forbes this month, go ahead and read our current PM's views on digital currency and if he gets elected (which it looks like he will) how invested CANADA will soon be in it. 

Cryptocurrency, which Trump likes, and CBDC, which Carney likes, are the same but slightly different. I doubt it would take much convincing to get Trump on board with a central bank backed digital currency once Carney explains that it could make him infinitely richer and more powerful than the crypto currency backed by technobabble and derp that he is investing in now. And as I said in my former post, this is what I'd expect from 4 years of these two crooks in charge of our countries. Carney will likely get elected based largely on his fake anti-Trump stance but we are already seeing signs of THAT facade breaking down. Maybe this was part of their "constructive, productive" conversation and part of their future "comprehensive negotiations." I doubt it will be long before they're smoking cigars, drinking snifters of port, and screwing our taxpayers together.

*** I have to sneak this in here before posting: This I am writing about a week after writing the above and imagining that Carney and Trump now ARE smoking those cigars and sipping that port. All the while people like the Blundell twerp I referenced before are PRAISING Carney for pulling off some ingenious money moving that actually hurt Trump. The explanation you will probably have seen posted by some anti-Conservative friends on Facebook by now is straight out of the past. The past when money was backed by concrete items like gold or government bonds. Nowadays, as explained in previous posts, banks just print money or pull it out of the air or some other fundamental orifice. Essentially the explanation is that Carney bought up US Treasury bonds while Trump was crashing the economy. He also told the leaders (central bankers) of other cuntries to do the same. I doubt it was only bonds they bought, they could have been investing in almost anything since everything was diving in price as the stock markets plummeted. The idea that Blundell and others are trying to push (and they know is bullshit) is that selling them off en masse would hurt Trump and the US so he'd better smarten up and by golly he did! What a bunch of heroes! 

Here's what probably REALLY happened: That little meeting between Trump and Carney was an agreement that included Trump blustering about Tariffs all over the place and causing the stock market crash (which even I had predicted). What I hadn't predicted was that it would be just a taste of things to come. It was an illustration of how easily they could make piles and piles of dough for the rich people in their countries and others. It was probably arranged that Trump would postpone or cancel the tariffs causing a stock market recovery and allowing the governments to sell what they had bought cheaply for tremendous gain. He would announce the time to buy the cheap stocks somehow... maybe a social media post like "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" This is just classic stock market manipulation and it's yet another crime the convict in chief has committed and will get away with. Do I even need to type that exactly NONE of these massive gains would be distributed to any citizens but the already filthy rich? 

Trump and Carney both probably made themselves tidy little sums - something Trump's not good at doing. This undoubtedly cemented the love between the central banks of these countries and Trump rather than hurting him. The tariffs are still only on hold and this pattern could repeat itself to a much greater extent when the tariffs are back on the table. It also will be related to Trump that this is peanuts compared to what they could do with CBDC. But they needed his trust before making that jump. They probably have it now cuz what does Trump trust more than piles of money? And the most delicious part of it all is that Carney will get elected by accusing Trump of market manipulation among other things in his posturing against him. Like Trump conjured this up on his own!

And in case you are now saying, "Yeah but Dave, it DID hurt Trump. How's he going to recover the losses?" Easy. Same way any financial crash is "recovered from" nowadays. Print more money that is backed by nothing causing the NON - filthy rich to pay for it all. This is just recent history repeating itself. 

The current political shenanigans bring a song to my head. I hear Shirley Bassey saying it's all just a little bit of history repeating. 

There are a lot of people dancing right now, but do we know who's singing? Let's go back... waaay back to 1890. This is when Trump's hero President William McKinley was doing something remarkably similar to what is happening now. How similar you ask? I'll tell you a few things that will undoubtedly ring bells for everybody and I'll tell you some results of these things that really ought to ring warning bells, alarms, emergency sirens, and danger Will Robinsons. 

Canada was a young nation with our first PM John A. Macdonald who had been elected in 1867, was getting old, and probably wasn't going to win the upcoming election. He resigned in 1873 after getting busted for taking bribes but got re-elected in 1878 cuz - what do you expect from a PM? Honestly! The US was a bit older and well-established and thought their northern neighbors were a good source of raw materials. One example of our "trade" then is the fishing ships that stole wood and water from us while pretending to fish. But Canada was doing the exact same thing in Minnesota. "Reciprocal tariffs" of the 1890's trade war actually included colourful entrepreneurs like "timber pirates." I dunno, to me it seems somehow more honest than the entrepreneurs of today who just move money around in such an impersonal way scamming billions from the working stiffs of the middle and lower classes. 

What I'm getting at is our current situation with that tariffying menace to the south is shockingly similar to what we had in 1890. Here's a summary of just a few of the similarities.  Back then the tariffs backfired but part of the reason for that is they didn't have the stability of the central bank behind them. That would only come a couple presidents later along with the beloved income tax. Basically charging your own people directly instead of making it look like you are charging other countries but are charging your own people directly. And how did Woodrow Wilson get away with the temporary/permanent income tax? A huge crisis. WWI. Anyway, let's not get too far ahead. What McKinley DID have was the backing of the richest man in the world. 

Andrew Carnegie was not in cars or tech like Elon Musk because they were not the huge industries of the time, steel was. Steel was important to railway, building, and military construction. Carnegie was a "robber baron" abusing the workers, extending their hours and cutting their pay, and notably busting unions in the 1880's and 1890's. In his "The Gospel of Wealth" he wrote about his version of trickle-down economics which clashed with his earlier belief that "amassing wealth was one of the worst species of idolatry." He clearly caught what I call in this blog the "money disease," but toward the end of his life he found some sort of cure and gave a LOT to charity which is the ONLY significant way in the history of economics that wealth trickles down from the ultra rich to the poor. Carnegie can be partially forgiven for his late life philanthropy, but I can't see Trump or Musk ever doing that. Back to our history lesson...

Carnegie used strategies of vertical and horizontal integration, basically buying all the raw materials and shipping and absorbing competing companies respectively, along with some market manipulation in concert with other robber barons in oil (Rockefeller), and banking (J.P. Morgan), to make his vast fortune. He supported McKinley's tariffs as part of his protectionist efforts to eliminate foreign steel companies as competitors. He also liked the idea of Canada becoming a friendlier (US state) source of raw materials. 

The McKinley-Carnegie partnership was pretty similar to the Trump-Musk axis of evil we see today and so was their market manipulation. It also involved the central bank (personified by JP "Jupiter" Morgan) and a financial crisis - the worst to that point in American history. The stock market crash of 1893 was largely triggered by Canada's failure to become a state going so far as to re-elect the aging and unpopular Macdonald who won on the platform of "Canada Strong" and the counteractions of business diversion away from the US to Europe. Lower trade with Canada, and lower trade with Europe, which was now being supplied largely by Canada, and the bankers' scrupulous maintenance of the gold standard in favour of just pulling money out of their asses, caused a bank run. This triggered a proposal by Morgan and some other banks to purchase gold in exchange for - you guessed it, government bonds. This stabilized the US money supply and virtually instituted JP Morgan as the central bank of the time. Not the first, mind you, Andrew Jackson dismantled the 2nd Bank of the US in 1832 for being subversive and dangerous to the rights and liberties of the people. He was so right!

In fact, in 1901 McKinley made a speech on the virtues of dropping the tariffs and protectionism in favour of diversifying international trade once again (with Canada and Europe). It might as well have been entitled "This Tariff Shit Don't Work." He was assassinated the day after the speech by a dude who was one of MANY people who had been adversely affected by the tariffs and economic policies of the times and resorted to anarchy. Leon F. Czolgosz worked at a wire mill (steel) in Cleveland where the wages had been cut resulting in a strike. He eventually was fired and blacklisted but got his job back as Fred Nieman (nobody). He was so affected by the inequality between workers and the wealthy that he quit work and got more involved in the anarchist movement. 

Are you noticing any parallels yet? More to come...

Morgan, now the central bank, merged some railroads into a huge hideous conglomeration and did the same with steel by, with Carnegie, forming US Steel the first billion-dollar corporation ever. Unfortunately for them, McKinley's replacement, Teddy Roosevelt, was a strong believer in antitrust and limiting monopolies. This, and some more unscrupulous banking, led to the 1907 financial crisis which was averted by the "central bank" (JP Morgan) bailing out the banks that were failing to meet the demands of the panicked public demanding their savings back. How did he do it? You're starting to get this aren't you? More bonds. ... and a further monopolization of the steel industry by US Steel. Some even accused JP Morgan and others of manufacturing the panic to increase their profits, which they humongously did. But, now I'm just GIVING you parallels, it was never proven. 

This created a "need" for a central bank to be the lender of last resort so that scheisters like Morgan couldn't do such things in the future. What Morgan did and what central banks do now is vulture capitalism and it's been repeated over and over again. It's going on now if you ask me. If you have the time, read about it here: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://teachdemocracy.org/images/pdf/jpmorgan.pdf

It's all just a little bit of history repeating. 

Sel-fish-ness

 In 2007 while teaching at the leading language school in the country of Korea, Hangook University of Foreign Studies, I made a blog for my students and on that HUFS blog I posted the results of the test I am going to write about today. Here's the whole thing, make-up classes, syllabus, class pics, and the Kiss experiment. 

"Hmmm... make-up and kisses in English class? This sounds like it could be good! Ngo ooooooon...."

It's nothing so scandalous I assure you. It was just a social experiment I stumbled upon at the time and even in 2007 it was hard to find it again online after I'd heard and read about it. If I had posted the link on my blog it would most certainly be dead now. These are the things we're not allowed to know about and THAT concept is a very big part of the illustration of the experiment. 

Okay I'll get to it. I cannot post a link to the original experiment and I dare you to find it. It is zealously wiped off the internet as fast as it can be uploaded and has been since before 2007 so good luck. It was a lady who taught in the USA. She put something like 100 (for the sake of easy explanation) Hershey's Kisses in a jar. She lined up her students in no specific order. When replicating the study in Korea I chose to line my students up in the order they volunteered so as to encourage future class participation. It's not a strong suit of the average Korean student although at HUFS, as you can see, the students tended to be above average. Anyway, she told the kids the rules were as follows: Grab as many chocolates as you want and they're yours. Then pass the jar to the next person and they do the same. When the jar reaches the last person (again for convenience we'll say there were 10 students) the chocolates in the jar will be doubled and the process will be repeated. 

I'm sure you can guess what her results were and why this social experiment on the damage American culture does to the mentality of its children has been whitewashed from the internet. It's almost unnecessary to type but I'll do it anyway. She did this with several classes and the jar never made it to the end of the line with any Kisses left in it. In EVERY stinking class there was a Johnny Capitalist who selfishly and ignorantly emptied the jar. I only call the student Johnny because of the Little Johnny jokes. You've heard at least one of them. If not: An elementary school math teacher asked her class one day, "If there are three birds on a wire, and a farmer shot one, how many are left?" One little boy said two, but little Sally, realizing it was a trick question, said, "None, 'cause everyone knows that if you shoot at birds they all fly away." The teacher congratulates her on her correct answer.

Little Johnny, however, disagreed. He said, "No, there would be one --the one that the farmer shot."

The teacher replied, "No, Johnny, you're wrong, but I like the way you think."

"OK, teacher, I have a riddle for you," boasted Johnny. "Let's say three women are at a bar and they each order a single scoop ice cream cone. The first one eats it by gently licking it around the edges, the second slowly sucks the ice cream off the cone from the top, and the third gobbles the top and then sucks the rest out of the cone. Which one is married?"

After a few seconds of contemplation, the teacher replied, "Well, I think it must be the third, the one that gobbles the top and sucks out the inside."

Johnny responded, "No, teacher, you're wrong --it's the one with the wedding ring. But I like the way you think."

I first heard it with popsicles and the descriptions of how the popsicles were eaten was far more graphic but you get the idea. I particularly like this Johnny joke cuz it leads to good comments from married people afterwards like, "No, it's the one who has a headache and refuses the ice cream cone but I like the way you think." Or "No, it's the one who orders the cone by phone cuz her husband won't let her go to the bar, but I like the way you think." or "What is the married lady doing at the bar anyway? She should be home making dinner for her husband! I DON'T like the way ya'all think!" 

At any rate, I'm sure it wasn't always a boy who hoarded all the chocolate and I'm sure he wasn't always named Johnny but I AM sure that one of the problems WAS capitalism, or more specifically American capitalism. Don't get me wrong, there IS capitalism in the Korean culture as well and if I had done this experiment in any other place I had worked I KNOW there would have been a Johnny Capitalist and I have a very good idea the specific students it would have been. However, I doubt there is any classroom in the US or Canada that could replicate or even come close to the results I got at HUFS. Take a close look at those class pictures. NONE of those kids will be the CEO of Samsung, a partner in a large Korean law firm, a central banker, or president of Korea. They're too smart and too nice.

But hold the phone. I want to analyze the experiment a little more closely because I don't think it's just about capitalism, greed, selfishness, parenting, socialization and such. There is a major factor that I think I missed at the time and I think it would skew the results in Korea more closely to or even beyond the results the original teacher obtained. What I'm saying is I doubt teachers would be able to get such positive results even at HUFS in Korea today. It may not be so much about the capitalism entrenched in the culture, however. 

There is a worldwide shortage of what have become known as "soft skills" and every employer is looking for the kids who best exhibit them. You all know what they are. It's actually a military term. If you don't know, the skills they call soft are things like critical thinking, emotional intelligence, teamwork, cooperation, collaboration, the ability to describe the same thing in three different words, communication, adaptability, time-management, stress management, and my favourite - creativity. Basically they are not "hard" skills because hardware like machines, computers, or robots can't do them very well. There are those who believe they can now but I do not include myself among them. Machines, in my opinion, are not now as good at soft skills as people can be, nor will they ever be. 

"MMMmmmmm... Strong with irony this blog post is!"

Think about the choice every student of mine and that long since anonymous teacher had. And let's use the convenient numbers I suggested. These were not the numbers in either of our experiments but... there were 10 students and 100 Kisses in the jar. It wouldn't take much cooperation, collaboration, teamwork, the ability to express the same thing in three different words, problem solving, critical thinking, communication, etc., etc., to figure out that the possibility of endless candy for all exists. All it would take is basic math skills and some common sense to figure out that if each kid took 5 kisses the jar would have 50 left, that would be doubled, and the process could be repeated until they all died from diabetic shock. So what stops every single class from doing this? Perhaps a couple of better questions might be "Did they even realize this?" and "If so, THEN what the hell kept them from doing it?" I think in a LOT of cases the students DID realize the possibility of endless candy for all. Let's analyze together what caused them to suppress this knowledge and allow the group not to do it. During our analysis you will undoubtedly begin to realize that this is a microcosm of the countries of Canada and the US and you will also understand why this is something the owners of those countries DESPERATELY do not want their assets (or citizens) to know.

1. The Johnny Capitalist argument. This is Johnny and we already know that he wants all the candy for himself, fuck everybody else! This rare psychotic, anti-social tendency will take him far in our countries. Be honest, do you know a Johnny? Do you have a Johnny in your family? Is one of your kids a Johnny? Have you ever contemplated harming or even killing Johnny? It might even be a genetic tendency. If might even be possible to remove this putrid gene from the world pool but you just KNOW there would be that one country, North Korea, Russia, the US, Canada, that ONE evil country that would nurture the gene due to its power and its world-domination possibilities. There are those who believe this is inevitable, that this gene just occurs naturally in kids. I LOVE this cartoon:

On this I think it DOES occur naturally but it can be culturally nurtured to be dominant or recessive to the point of stigmatization. In US and Canada it is now the former but all of our original peoples proudly maintained the latter for many glorious generations until some people from Lord of the Flies countries invaded and rubbed it out. William Golding, fittingly, is from the UK and it was largely the British who I am talking about. (He's the author of Lord of the Flies) It may be even MORE fitting that the boys on the island in LOF were evacuated from a war that was raging in Britain, in order to keep them protected from it. 

A little literary break might be needed here. In the LOF story the evacuated kids initially choose a good boy, Ralph, as their leader but eventually a Johnny named Jack, who had been appointed by Ralph to be the food hunter and gatherer for the boys, becomes overwhelmed by his lust for power and the violence with which he can increase it. I think Bill Golding leaves us to surmise that the very same thing is what had led to the war from which the boys were evacuated. Eventually Jack and his followers end up hunting Ralph and burning down the island - the very source of the resources and power they think they are killing him for. The fire is seen by a British naval officer who meets the boys on the beach just before they can kill Ralph and asks what the hell is going on... and they all end up crying in shame. I remember reading that book in school and wondering if the soldier chastened the boys and they cried because their consciences exposed their shame... or did he have a fucking machine gun? Were they stopped from killing Ralph AND the officer because of morality or superior fire power? They probably saw the officer's ship too. I guess we'll never know...

Even as a youngster I had some soft skills. Analysis is one we haven't mentioned yet. OVER-analysis? Well I think it's still a soft skill but maybe a lesser one. In fact I think I'll go lesser and lesser by bringing up another of my favourite literary examples of this very same microcosm of some countries and possibly the planet: Catch 22. I definitely believe a great deal of the major problems nationally and internationally killing us all qualify as catch 22's and so does Yoda. (Yoda believes, he doesn't qualify, although maybe he does... okay that's over-OVER-analysis) The main catch 22 in Joseph Heller's novel was Yosarian, a bombardier during WWII, wanting to be grounded due to insanity the evidence of which is flying more missions, which you'd HAVE to be insane to do. Knowing this, however, proves his sanity and disqualifies him from being grounded thereby mandating the flight of further missions, which is insane. There are many more like when he's sweet-talking one of Nately's whore's co-workers and they agree that marriage is insane (with which I heartily agree!). Nevertheless he proposes to the ho proving his devotion to the match through the insanity that elicited the proposal. She refuses him on the grounds that he is too crazy to marry because he is crazy enough to propose something as insane as marriage.

Maybe the best catch 22 in the book was when American soldier and entrepreneur Milo Minderbinder, possibly the best Johnny Capitalist in the entire literary canon, comes to an agreement with the German military to take some product off his hands - I think it was cotton - in exchange for agreeing to bomb his own bomber base all the while announcing on the base PA that what is good for M & M Enterprises, his syndicate, is good for us all because we are all share-holding member of this syndicate. 

Bombing the base, burning the forest, taking all the Kisses, do I need to belabour the obvious associations here? Perhaps the mentality, the catch 22 mentality of Johnny Capitalist, Jack, and Milo Minderbinder goes something like this: Exhausting your own profit base is something only an insane person would do, but only an insane person would pass up the opportunity for so much instant power/chocolate that could be taken by another if I don't take it right now, and I, Jack/Milo/Johnny, am not insane, which proves I am insane. This is the Johnny Capitalist argument which is one I recognized at the time of my experiment and post. I'm sure you can see why the government and our owners would not want us to know this. 

There is another cartoon I'd like to show here that I just can't find. Perhaps like the study it has been diligently taken down by the internet censors. It's a man talking to some kids in dystopian times with nuclear bombs exploding in the distant background saying, "Yeah but for a while we sure had some great return on investment!" 

I don't know if it's ethical or even possible to eliminate all of these kids from existence. My suggestion would be to find them and mark them. Maybe force them to wear wristbands with a clear demarcation of their insular thinking, WWJCD, on them. "What Would Johnny Capitalist Do?" No? That wouldn't work? Why not? 

2. The fish-kids argument. Okay here's the other one and it's one I have recognized since the original 2007 post because it has increased a great deal since then. We need to start with the goldfish analogy. You've seen this I'm sure. 

Attention span has been decreasing. By now it's probably less than 8 seconds and I've heard the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. I don't know for sure but I think they measure this by the length between incidence of the goldfish sucking up a piece of its own shit, realizing it's not food but shit, and spitting it out, then 9 seconds later doing the same thing. As far as the attention span of a kid, I can tell you it's getting shorter just from my teaching experience. I see more kids than the average person and I do things with them that are good indicators of attention span. Here's an article that explains it more thoroughly and even though this article misleads you by calling it a myth, it basically says it's NOT a myth. 

I have a theory, and I think back and I probably should have recognized it at the time, that some of the kids who took more or ALL the Kisses from the jar may have done so out of FOMO or the instant gratification to which our current tech-driven age has allowed them to become accustomed. If we think about the mechanics of the studies, giving the first student the jar, waiting for his/her decision, waiting for the student to count/take the chocolate then pass the jar and wait for the next student to perform the same sequence, it's time consuming. Is it possible that a student could become so bored with the exercise that he/she would just empty the jar and say, "Okay, move on teacher, this has become tiresome."? You might not think so but I've witnessed more of just such behavior as we have fallen deeper and deeper under the spell of our devices. Like the Eagles said, "We are all just prisoners here of our own devices." Or something like that. 

The massive irony in all of this is that almost every one of the people skills or soft skills that are so prized by employers and what separate us from computers and machines require patience and sticktoitiveness that are the very things being systematically drained from us BY the machines. It's almost as if machines are making machines of our kids so that they won't steal their jobs in the future. I'm sure there's a catch 22 in THERE somewhere too. You can't get a job without computer skills and soft skills. The computer contributes to destroying the skills you need to get a job. You can't afford a computer without a job. But you can't get a job without a computer or the skills you learn from it.

I tell ya, I wouldn't want to be participating in a job market so rife with moral relativism and catch 22's... oh wait, I AM! Maybe this is one, or two, of the reasons why I'm currently contributing to that job market as a job hunter rather than a gainful employee.