Topic
The BC author of 'Made to Break' outlines the high price of planned obsolescence.
Itching for a sweet new Nokia? It's probably high time. Your friends have been knocking your phone for years. Face it, you're talking into the personal-electronics equivalent of Sputnik. The screen is cracked, the battery is flagging. And no Bluetooth!?
Well hold your horses, says Giles Slade.
In Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, the Richmond, B.C.-based author explains in painful detail why cast-off cell phones -- and countless other products and electronic devices, from pocket calculators to PCs -- are quietly creating the largest toxic waste stream the world has ever known. The situation is bad, and in three years' time, he notes, it's about to get much worse.
To be clear, Made to Break is not a book about e-waste. (There are several of those out there, including Elizabeth Grossman's excellent High Tech Trash.) Rather, it is a meticulous history of planned obsolescence -- the practice of engineering or designing products in such a manner that they become either socially undesirable or non-functional after a given time period. Under the banner of "innovation." Slade argues that this technical and psychological obsolescence -- and the parallel phenomenon of disposability -- have over the course of a century become so ingrained in western consumer culture that our very economy depends on it to survive.
For many decades, trash was simply the relatively benign end-product of the endless struggle to keep up with the Joneses. But the digital age marked the start of a darker chapter in our ongoing love affair with the latest-and-greatest. Our gadgets, it seems, simply get older much faster than they used to. This gradual tightening of product life-cycles dominates the final -- and perhaps most disturbing -- section of Made to Break.
We asked Slade to give us a quick and painless upgrade.
James Glave: You portray planned obsolescence and disposability as forces of evil and waste. But are there any obsolete products that truly deserved to die?
Giles Slade: Cloth diapers. Though disposable diapers are very serious pollutants, cloth is not very effective. Disposables are just so user-friendly. In the same way that Tampax tampons made Kotex obsolete, I don't think we can go back. I am a big fan of disposable diapers.
How do obsolescence and disposability interrelate? And did the initial architects of disposability foresee the issue of waste?
Disposability was first created with paper clothing products, like paper shirt-fronts, collars and cuffs. You'd take off your shirt collar at the end of the day and stick it in the stove, and it was gone. It was only later that metal watches and Gillette razor blades started going into landfills. Once disposability was invented, then planned obsolescence could occur. We had invented mass production, and we had to feed the machine -- we had to get people to buy new stuff -- and obsolescence emerged as the answer. Waste was simply the after-phenomenon.
When did this happen; can we pinpoint when American industry first embraced obsolescence as a business practice?
When Alfred Sloan took over General Motors in 1923, he found he had to bring a really bad Chevrolet to market. It was a piece of crap. He planned to improve the car, but he had no time. So he tarted it up with some styling changes, and then undercut the price of Ford's Model T. It worked like a charm. He invented psychological obsolescence.
Which one single invention stands out in your mind as the killer app of obsolescence -- the one product that prompted or compelled us to chuck its predecessor, with grim consequences?
It hasn't happened yet but it's just about to. By 2009, the FCC [the U.S. Federal Communications Commission] will have mandated the complete change from analog to digital television. All the older TVs have cathode-ray tubes that contain maybe five to 10 pounds of lead. Television enjoys a 95 per cent market penetration in the United States, which would mean that, conservatively, there are about 300 million of them out there in living rooms and dens and basements. And they are about to be chucked. The sheer amount of toxic lead that is about to enter the waste stream is simply going to overwhelm it -- there are not enough container ships to send these obsolete televisions off to Asia where they can be broken up safely. This is a massive biohazard that is about to enter America's groundwater. And it is going to happen because electronic manufacturers lobbied the FCC to mandate digital TV. The problem for them was, there is not enough obsolescence in the television market; they are built to last five to seven years. That was too long.
Is it too late to stop this?
In the U.S., four states have enacted take-back programs similar to the regulations in Europe, where electronics manufacturers have to pay to collect and disassemble TV cathode-ray tubes. About 19 others are considering similar legislation. There are four similar bills in the Congress and the Senate. But there is no political will to do this because it is an invisible issue.
Your book seems to give Apple a reasonably positive treatment. But what about the allegations that the iPod is engineered to die after 18 months or so?
Steve Jobs came out recently and pretty much admitted that the iPod should be thought of as a disposable product. It is a slick, sleek thing, and you would never consider that it comes from a fundamentally dirty industry. In fact, the amount of toxins that go into an iPod is enormous. There are more than 68 million of these things out there, and they are full of cadmium, beryllium and lead. And Apple has deliberately created them so they only last a year. The company has a voluntary take-back program, but how many people use it? They won't say. I am hugely personally disappointed in Steve Jobs. He turned into Darth Vader.
But the real Darth Vader in your book isn't Steve Jobs, it's the mobile phone, which you explain is now on roughly a 12-month product life-cycle. You have given all the cellphone holdouts a whole new set of reasons to feel smug.
I do own a cell phone, a Motorola flip-phone. It is a wonderful device, but I plan to hang on to it for a long time. Cellphones are now deliberately underbuilt: They are so closely linked to style and fashion, that manufacturers realize people want to trade them in after a year or so, and so they make them to break. Some manufacturers are being smarter about it. Ericsson has designed a prototype cellphone that uses a process called "metal memory" to disassemble itself when you are finished with it. When it receives a signal from its owner, it will take itself apart into distinct recyclable components. Motorola makes a phone that contains a sunflower seed. Obviously nobody is going to plant the phone in the garden, but it illustrates a point that it should be disposed of properly.
Made to Break details a fascinating and obscure chapter in the Cold War, in which the West intentionally leaked faulty technology to the Soviets -- chips and software that, once installed, failed with spectacular results. What does this have to do with obsolescence?
The Soviets had this policy of stealing tech from other people -- they had a whole sector employing some 20,000 people who were dedicated to stealing secrets from the West. But the Americans learned where the agents were operating. The Soviets tried to buy pipeline-control software from an American firm, but couldn't, so they infiltrated a Canadian firm -- nobody will tell me its name -- and stole the software. But with some help from U.S. intelligence, this Canadian company had intentionally leaked them tampered software; it operated very well for 18 months, and then, in 1983, it collapsed. It directed volumes of gas into pipelines that could not withstand the pressure. Sometime that year, U.S. satellites picked up a tremendous blast in Siberia. It was a three-kiloton explosion, the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space. This episode is significant because it revealed how planned obsolescence -- the technological Trojan Horse -- had become such a cultural principal in the United States that it was elevated to the level of geopolitics, and in that arena it worked very well.
Your critics will say that the flipside of obsolescence is innovation. Isn't it a pretty fatalistic view that innovation is fundamentally making our lives worse instead of better?
In researching this book, I came to respect technology a lot more and to see it as another field of human endeavour like the arts. It is, in fact, heroic. I am not down on innovation, I'm not down on tool use. I am down on the careless and casual consumption of IT products for silly pleasures. This is a period in our existence that better end pretty soon, because we are going to poison our kids with it -- all for toys. We are at a similar point in the history of technology as what happened with the sexual revolution when HIV came along. All of a sudden, you had to be very careful and conscious. We have to practice safe and conscious information-technology consumption, so we don't junk an iPod every year, so we don't throw all this poison into the water or send it off to Asia where it can be processed. We are at a critical point where we either have to act now, or act when the crisis occurs. It is admittedly a very dark view, but it is also very mainstream.
Are we to blame, or is industry?
A lot of it is simply greedy IT manufacturers. In Europe, they have passed laws that make sure that electronic manufacturers can't use toxic substances in devices when they manufacture new things. They have to pay to back the old ones and disassemble them and reuse them.
Governments and companies would do the same thing here if we demanded it. But we don't. Why not?
We have become creatures of conscious self-display. You are what you drive or wear. You are the model Blackberry that you use. Life used to be better when things weren't that reductive. There is a sense of entitlement that we suffer under that doesn't exist in other cultures -- one that really makes us weaker. I am the last person who wants to give up my car, and I don't want my kids to go without food. But we are doing all this on credit, and I don't think it is going to last.
Your conclusion calls for a new emphasis on education and techno-literacy. Where is this awareness going to come from?
The world is becoming so much more complex that intelligent people are casting around for areas of knowledge and experience that they've put off informing themselves about for too long. There's almost a glut of books, articles and programs about global warming and the environment. Young people are concerned about the environment, hip to new tech, and they see that they need to know more about the connections between the two. After all, this generation's cultural hero is an iPod. The world is becoming an enormously complex place in many different ways, and anyone who wants to participate is watching, reading, scanning, and listening, trying to find pieces of the picture that will help them cope, become successful, make their way. Technology and the environment are now primed to become mainstream issues -- and election issues. So things are looking up.
James Glave (james@glave.com) is a writer living on Bowen Island, B.C. He blogs about climate change and sustainability issues at The Big Melt. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Grumpy
6 years ago
Comments on "The iPod Is Bad Garbage"
Do we need all this crap that being foisted on us? Really 25 years ago we got on very well without computers, Ipods and cell phones, now if you do not have, you cannot go to school, work or even function. We have been seduced by big business to buy this stuff and we are more hooked on it thana heroin addict and we are more dangerous if we cannot get our fix.
Really, we have created a hell, were instead of saving money we spend on electronic trinkets, soon to be made obsolete!
freebear
6 years ago
I have always said, if its new and improved, what was the previous version - old and crappy?!!!!
dorothy
6 years ago
But what an absolute paradise for those who don't subscribe to the tyranny of 'must wear THIS year's colour'.
People throw things out like you wouldn't believe. Since raiding the villages on the coast from your dragon ship is now illegal, thrift-store hunting is the next best thing!
Goweropolis
6 years ago
I must take a bit of exception to the first question. I agree that disposable diapers are more convenient, and I use them when travelling with my child. But for most parents, who spend quite a lot of time at home, cloth diapers are surprisingly easy to use and beneficial from both an environmental and financial standpoint.
"cloth is not very effective"
?!? I would never say in the first six months of my baby's life that cloth is not very effective. It does the job just fine. I think that if people give cloth diapers a chance, they would see the benefits and realize that it's not so bad as some (disposable diaper producers and the stores that sell them) would have you think.
deeby
6 years ago
Interesting....I've been thinking of my iPod as relatively environmentally friendly, given that I can store music digitally without ever purchasing CDs, (i.e. consuming the plastic, paying for their manufacturing, transportation and distribution, etc.). I've no information on the usable life of flash memory (it's a Nano), and lithium batteries, but without any moving parts I've assumed it would last a while.
A more general point though: assuming playback devices that are manufactured without planned obscelence, the digital download and distribution paradigm ushered in by the iPod is far more benign than one in which we manufacture, ship, and otherwise handle physical chunks of plastic, or other media. Same goes for the new film-less paradigm in photography or video.
twitchy
6 years ago
i also agree with the user "goweropolis" about the disposable versus cloth but also have a question to ask.....how many tampons have you used this past year james glave?
bbb
6 years ago
Giles Slade's argument seems all too typical of mainstream society: he sort of cares about the idea of toxic pollution but wants the problem taken care of without any personal sacrifice or inconvenience. Legislating producer cradle-to-grave responsibility for products or recycling programs are only a small part of the issue. Coonsumer responsibility and overall industry regulation play much larger roles, but Slade doesn't really seem to know how this will happen. One comment, in particular, smacks of his inability to conceptualize how change might happen: "Young people are concerned about the environment, hip to new tech, and they see that they need to know more about the connections between the two. After all, this generation's cultural hero is an iPod." Has he already forgotten the previous questions regarding the environmental problems with the iPod? Is it the problem or the solution?
Even more troubling in his argument is his lack of understanding around non-existent recycling programs for electronics. His missive, "there are not enough container ships to send these obsolete televisions off to Asia where they can be broken up safely" demonstrates his overall lack of ability to see the larger ecological and social justice crisis behind the electronics industry. Most often electronics are shipped to Asia for dumping, not for recycling . . . and when they are broken down, it's done in Asia because of lax worker protection and environmental laws. There are much more serious human rights and social justice issues at hand in the ecological problems of the electronic industry than simply feeling good about the "out of sight, out of mind" aspect of recycling programs.
Until Slade beefs up his research and refines his arguements, anyone serious about understanding the real racial, gender and ecological inequalities behind the electronics industry would do well to read The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy by David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park.
jglave
6 years ago
No tampons here, twitchy, but my two kids have been through a few dumptrucks worth of disposable diapers over the years. Cloth just didn't work for us. I also drive a 17.5 MPG SUV (can't afford to replace it), and have a dead ipod in the drawer (havent had the chance to mail it back, but I won't toss it in the trash).
Deadend
6 years ago
Slade is very good to bring this whole topic to light. I for one, have been completely pissed off having to purchase roughly 2 cell phones for every contract because they just don't last. Every time I'd bring one in the sales clerk would gleefully tell me that yes, that's all they're suppposed to last for but hey - wanna buy this new one?? Here listen to these cool new ring tones!! Built-to-spill products seem to be everythig these days.
However, there certainly is a bit of a half-baked nature to the analysis of what are the problems and what are the solutions. My Ipod has saved the world from it's own weight in CD cellophane alone several times over. My Digital camera gallons of chemical developer.
Both of these things are a couple years old now. And here's where I do agree with Slade's suggestions - education. My Ipod I have fixed twice. That means that yes, I have opened it. It looked like it was cooked after yes, just over a year, but a little research and I found out that tightening up the hard drive cable is all I needed to do. Apple's repair costs are of course uneconomical and it would have have been more economical to buy a new one had I not had the skill to do this myslef (with video!).
Of course these actions cut down on profitability (because of course - I had a spare $500 around to replace my iPod when it took a dump), but they actually increase the actual wealth of working class consumers. Broken window economics. No wonder there are lobbiests trying to make back-engineering of consumer devices somehow criminal.
mikev
6 years ago
Yes we should worry about planned obsolensence and the electronic waste of our cell phones and ipods and video game consoles and televisions, but how about planned disposability? Disposable cameras, disposable swiffer mops, disposable contact lenses, disposable toilet scrubbers, It seems it's all I see in commercials these days. It's not new and improved anymore, now it's disposable and more 'convenient'. It's a real shame. I'd like to see an expansion of mandatory deposits to anything that is meant to be discarded after one use. Is there any other way to make disposable products less attractive than to include more of their true life cycle costs in the initial purchase price?
Don't get me started on wasteful packaging either!
Stump
6 years ago
"In the same way that Tampax tampons made Kotex obsolete, I don't think we can go back."
Ummm, stupid guy guestion here, but what's the diff. between Tampax and Kotex?
mikev
6 years ago
hehe I was kinda curious too - I'm sure I've seen Kotex around still, didn't know it was 'obsolete'.
http://www.kimberly-clark.com/aboutus/kotex.asp
"creped wadding" - I can see how that must be obsolete!!
dangrice.com
6 years ago
Alberta, who gets the brunt on this board for being oil land, and rebuking things like the Kyoto protocol, has a mandatory fee to provide for recycling services for electronics and tires.
http://www.albertarecycling.ca/
The challenge is not to blame businesses or manufacturers for having business models, but to come up with societal solutions to address these concerns. If its going to cost me a lot more to recycle than to throw away, or require me to go across town without having a car, things are going to end up in the garbage, and I'm going to feel bad about it, but only because I'm not sure what else to do with them. I don't mind paying a bit more for a better world, but without some wholistic solution, we're not going to have a good solution.
Paying a recycling fee up front, as we do for deposits on cans, is a much better way of shaping consumerism than to cry out at manufactures. Manufacturers and companies are not benevolent parents, they ultimately are competing with each other and have to make profit, otherwise they collapse, throw our economy out of whack, and we all suffer. A fair playing ground on the market rather than the manufacturer is all thats needed.
IAMC
6 years ago
I hear all the buggy whips are buried beside Jimmy Hoffa. What do you think?
How about the ' Iron Horses" ? Opp's I forgot, China melted them down.
G West
6 years ago
dangrice.com
Fine with me, so long as these wonderful profit-driven corporations you're talking about stop creating artificial demand and devote their advertising budgets to promoting a holistic approach they are not now (and I think seldom have been) part of. And regarding corporate earnings: if a little less went to executive compensation (which always seems to grow even when companies are actually losing money I’ve noticed) I’d be more inclined to think you have a point. It hasn’t happened. Unless we force companies to clean up their messes by striking hard at their bottom line absolutely nothing will be done. The mining, forestry, automobile and oil industries are proof of that. Your solution is no solution, period – to rely on the market is to throw in the towel to the highwaymen that have created the problem.
A lot more than a fair 'playing ground' is really needed, in my view
dangrice.com
6 years ago
Ah GW, its either carrots or sticks that make this world turn, and I'd pick the slick rather than the whip any day. Corporations, unions, political parties, sports teams, they all have their self interest, is one's bottom line better than another.
You can complain about companies creating artificial demand, but everything in life is artificial: happiness, pleasure, drugs, religions, peace of mind. Its all based on us thinking what's right for ourself. Consumerism and profit has created the ipod, just as it has driven technologies that have ended up eradicating diseases.
Its about shaping demand, not ceasing it. Charge a recycling fee. Label harmful foods. Go with a carbon tax. Have environmental incentives. Change the rules of the game if you want to win. If companies want to make a profit, then change where their profit is. Or change where their buyers go.
Be positive, not reactive. Guide the river, not damn it!
IAMC
6 years ago
Alberta, Edmonton and Calgary are awesome responsible citizens by composting and recycling.
They have been for years.
Two million people between them., and many more coming.
' Go West young man. '
G West
6 years ago
Disagree dangrice - noticed you didn't touch my other claims or concerns about corporate fiscal responsibility as regards executive compensation levels – remember those were supposed to be tied to profitability – but they aren’t. The market is an artificial creation designed to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the few and it does that very well - to the cost and dismay of the rest of us and the destruction of the natural world, period. 'Slick' by the way was an apt Freudian slip for the way the modern corporate entity operates. All, repeat all, the rules need to be changed. The modern corporation is a deadly anachronism and it needs more than a little change – now!
As for Alberta's recycling, IAMC, it is irrelevant as long as the Athabasca River is being poisoned and the province contributes 1/3 of all the atmospheric pollution for the whole country each year. Besides, you don't give a damn about it anyway, do you, because you think you're the modern Dr Pangloss – and you don’t actually believe human have any effect on the environment you fool!
twitchy
6 years ago
my apologies to james glave, i realize now i meant to direct my question to giles slade.
IAMC
6 years ago
The mighty Athabasca is fine.
Every river is polluted. Whatever that means?
No waterway is immune to pollution.
G West
6 years ago
Dangrice
You might want to take a quick look at this, for example, before you decide to continue your love affair with the market:
http://www.g-r-e-e-d.com/GREED.htm
G West
6 years ago
The mighty Athabasca is fine.
You are crazy!
DO you know anything of the health effects that are currently being manifested among the native populations that use the river for potable water, washing and the like? Obviously not. How can you continue to post such rubbish?
Right to Bear
6 years ago
G West said in response to IAMC's outragous comments: "The mighty Athabasca is fine.
You are crazy!
DO you know anything of the health effects that are currently being manifested among the native populations that use the river for potable water, washing and the like? Obviously not. How can you continue to post such rubbish?"
He is crazy "G"... (IAMCrazy). The natives are sick and dieing up in northern Alberta at rate almost unequaled accept in the most contaminated places in the world. This was in the Calgary Herald the other day,"There's more: leukemia, lymphoma, colon and cervical cancer in patients as young as 17, as well as immune system diseases such as lupus and Graves' disease.
None of the other communities O'Connor visited in the area experienced the same health problems.
And when he pointed out that none of the other communities in the area drew their drinking water from the Athabasca River, some suspected the source of the problem lay in waste water from the proliferation of oilsands operations downstream".
Even with this FACT, government and industry and, well paid,sell-out scientists are disputing the obvious, and suggesting it does not surpass the provincial average... Cover-ups and half-truths are going to kill off this FN's society before the public finds out the truth. Why IAMC---Money...
My client is CEO of a well know oil sands company... It seems no matter how many times I play "When the Garden is Gone" by Neil Young, he is still the willing executioner of of these FN's people and the Boreal... And get this, he is doing it with his eyes wide open... Sad...
I will however keep playing him Neils music though.
Peace all
RTB
nightbloom
6 years ago
Excellent review of an (apparently) fascinating book. I'm going to forward this, as its a subject that's come up a fair bit in conversation (i.e. planned obsolescence). I also appreciate that a clear conceptual connection is drawn between the technology issue and deeper issues related to society and culture. It's about the return of Consequence to both human civilization at large and individual behaviour more specifically, albeit in scientific guise rather than in the form of outdated religious proscriptions and edicts.
This is a poignant statement about the Sexual Revolution, which illustrates the point, and which links it to the broader movement of society:
"We are at a similar point in the history of technology as what happened with the sexual revolution when HIV came along. All of a sudden, you had to be very careful and conscious."
Phude
6 years ago
IAMC
I would suggest that Alberta has been forced to recycle at high rates because it consumes at very high rates. Where else can you find so many large trucks, SUVs, and sports cars that have such poor gas milage? One word - Texas!
To say that all rivers are polluted is most likely accurate, however, to even suggest that this should be acceptable and possibly harmless only once again proves that you are truely a fool.
Heavy metals, carcinogens and other pollutants tend to amass in high and very harmful concentrations at the top of the food chain. IAMC, that is you and I and the rest of humanity.
Stump
6 years ago
"everything in life is artificial: happiness, pleasure, drugs, religions, peace of mind."
I feel very sorry for you if that's the way you think. There are very real sources of happines, pleasure, and peace of mind. They just don't come with a price tag and can't be found in 'the market'.
jglave
6 years ago
In response to an emailed question, a non-profit organization called Call2Recycle recyles Cell Phones and IT batteries of many varieties here in B.C. in many locations.
If you visit their site at http://www.rbrc.org/call2recycle/dropoff/index.php and select B. C. as a general location, they'll identify several drop off points.
dangrice.com
6 years ago
G West, skimmed through the article but found it to be a little too abstract with few concrete examples so may look at it later.
I'm not going to argue that execs are all paid their sum. I'll agree that no one should make more than a McWorker, if they can't lead their company to profit. Nor will I lay a tear for Kenneth Lay or any white collared thief who tries to swindle us. I just don't hold a blind mistrust for corporations or execs or marketers or consumerism. I don't like polluters, I'll give you that.. but I hold nothing against capitalists. They're either smarter or luckier than me and you..well, lets assume most are the later to keep our egos up their. We're jealous and envious, just admit it. We wouldn't turn down 80 million bucks a year and a private jet.. but we wish for their downfall.
Anyways, below is a link to forbes 500 executive summaries.
http://www.forbes.com/static/execpay2005/rank_476.html?passListId=12&passYear=2005&passListType=Person&searchParameter1=&searchParameter2=&resultsHowMany=25&resultsSortProperties=%252Bnumberfield1%252C%252Bstringfield1&resultsSortCategoryName=Rank&fromColumnClick=&bktDisplayField=&bktDisplayFieldLength=&category1=&category2=&passKeyword=&resultsStart=476
Look closely, you get a lot of bums at the top, but the best execs in the world receive $0 if they don't turn a profit. Steve Jobs, the guy cramming 3 million ipods a month into our land fills --no salary, option only. The head of Amazon. 80,000. Google, 86,000. Warren Buffet, 100,000. The same with the heads of Delta Airlines, Microsoft, and Costco all make less than a million if they don't show huge growth. Luckily, all these guys have done their jobs, and have walked away with rather fat wallets. See not all evil corporations are evil. The evil ones are your stock brokers who invested your goose egg in a company whose exec gets 100million a year and owns 40% of voting stocks.
G West
6 years ago
Sorry Dangrice, still disagree, The tax system, capital gains tax examptions, inheritance holidays, dividend tax credits, flow through shares, deferrals, trusts and the like are all unfair welfare giveaways to corporations, their shareholders and the rich. If you like, I'll give you a whole fistful of other materials that show clearly that upward mobility is a cruel myth. If we desire a more equitable society there is only one way to do it and kowtowing to corporate pressure isn’t it.
We have to start treating every dollar earned as a dollar available for progressive taxation and end corporate welfare. The Carter Commission on Taxation (a Diefenbaker initiative) that reported to Pearson's Government in 1966 suggested all these things but the banks and the corporate suits who run the federal parties nixed it. It's time to bring it back. NOW. The fact that there a few decent corporate players like Starbucks who actually treat their employees like human beings and not ciphers just proves the rule. For every Starbucks there are dozens of Tim Hortons, Walmarts and (undisclosed) Enrons.
As for Steve Jobs the fact that he doesn't draw a salary shouldn't disabuse you of the idea that he's any different from the rest of the corporate sociopaths in the executive suite. Google Archer Daniels Midland, corporate collusion and price fixing if you want to find out what corporations really think of their employees and customers.
IAMC
6 years ago
To quote G West " every dollar earned as a dollar available for progressive taxation "
That really sums it up doesn't it ?
Boy am I glad these guys aren't in power.
dangrice.com
6 years ago
Yeah, evil rich. They keep on finding ways to weasel themselves out of paying 60% of their income in taxes down to a measly 40%! Upward mobility is far from being a myth. I mean we may never own our own jet and island, but a majority of people find a way of owning their own car, tv, and retiring by 65. If you live in Vancouver, the house may be a myth, but if you live anywhere else in BC, prairies, or anyplace else in Canada besides Northern Alberta, Calgary, and Toronto, it is possible as well.
Now I'm not saying our economic system is perfect, and I personally agree with you that the giveaways are excessive. (You missed write offs!! Such as that work trip to holiday, those $600 dinners with clients, the company plane) But we live in a global economy, and the more you go after companies, the more you loose them. Which means we get all the walmart jobs but not of the Waltons tax $$ or inheritence).
Now lets continue this in the fall, its too nice to waste time convincing you that the economic system is on my side. That the poor here are better off than in Belarus. Cheers! Now off to my private jet. I'm out of here.
G West
6 years ago
Remind me in the fall then - I'll post the links. If things get any more pear shaped in the middle east or the world moves to Euros for oil trades this won't just be academic. They'll be shoveling US greenbacks out the windows on Wall Street before the speculators jump.
The economic system is not on your side unless you DO have that private jet, Belarus just proves the point. You clearly haven't tried to buy a house in Calgary lately and in S/toon real estate prices over the last 12 months are up 16+%. Oh and did I mention the US federal minimum wage - $ 5.15 / hour (set in 1997). In California restaurant workers often get less than half that. And did I mention graduates 5 years out of medical school are making more than $500,000. per annum with 22 weeks holidays – and you’re paying for their education. I could go on………. Corporations must either go on a starvation diet………or……….die!
IAMC
6 years ago
Corporations are a necessary part of our economy. Are you suggesting that Corporations should be replaced with Government?
This argument is a ruse intended to get us on the slippery slope to Socialism.
I don't want Socialism. It would plunge us all into poverty.
I work for a Corporation as do most people I know.
We need Corporations to give us jobs.
Are you saying we should all work for the Government ?
Forget it. There should only be 1000 Government employees in Canada, total.
To say that one can curtail the profits of Corporations, and redirect that money to the poor, is a message from a fool.
This is why I get so defensive of Capitalism, or the free market.
Stump
6 years ago
Too bad corporations do everything they can to make sure the 'free markets' are a joke.
G West
6 years ago
No, IAMC I'm not saying that. You are the fool. I'm saying a dollar is a dollar no matter how earned.
If you had any sense you'd know that such a change would likely reduce your own tax paid. ...like so many clueless people you don't even know what's in your own best interest - FOOL
IAMC
6 years ago
I know that my best interests are not served by Socialism, that's for sure.
Every dollar earned is my money. I would be happy to pay tax as I spend it.
Frank_OnHoliday
6 years ago
IAMC said 6 days ago :
"I have been doing business in Victoria for 29 years. "
Then said tonight :
"I work for a Corporation as do most people I know."
In your previous post IAMC you inferred that you ran your own business. In fact Working Man also assumed that's what you meant and you didn't correct him.
Which is it?
"To say that one can curtail the profits of Corporations, and redirect that money to the poor, is a message from a fool."
Jesus was a fool? Charity is the essence of Christianity is it not?
"Every dollar earned is my money. I would be happy to pay tax as I spend it."
Not true, you support Harper's military spending. How would you pay for a military on a user-pay system? Mortgage your house when the gov't declares war?
IAMC
6 years ago
No no no no Frank, you are mixing me up with someone else. I never claimed to be running my own business.
I run my own budget. That's similar, but, no, I never claimed to be a business owner.
Sorry if I gave that impression.
You asked how we could charge citizens for military protection within " The Fair Tax " model.
It's simple, part of the money collected upon consumption would go to National Defense.
What's so hard to understand about that ?
G West
6 years ago
IAMC
Furthermore, you still haven't understood the implications of a rational tax system and you have no idea where your own self-interest lies. A couple of days ago you posted material that showed you have no knowledge of the way a wife's income affects her husbands tax payable even if she doesn't earn enough to be taxable herself. You believe in freebies and Harper’s mindless promises and you don’t understand why it is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
I don't think you are anything but a poor wage slave hoping someday he'll hit the jackpot. If I thought you'd understand I'd post the evidence that shows there has been no upward mobility in this economy since the end of the 70s. It's nothing but a dream that's slowly turning into a nightmare while the rich sit back and laugh at you because you facilitate their continued misfeasance with your own resources.
Frank_OnHoliday
6 years ago
He's right IAMC, since the days of Mulroney, Reagan and Thatcher the rich get richer and the poor get poorer but at least there's more channels on tv and more imported spirits to divert your attention from the facts.
Obviously I miscontrued your post of 6 days ago. No problem.
Anyway, you can't pay for big things like a military through fees. Why should the guy paying the toll on a bridge also pay for the military while a guy driving around the long way pays nothing? Maybe the guy driving around is a modern day remittance man who has all the time in the world and the guy paying the toll is a regular guy just trying to get to work.
There's no fairness in that.
Right to Bear
6 years ago
G West says: "Corporations must either go on a starvation diet………or……….die"!
Amen G
RTB
Bytesmiths
6 years ago
I'm sorry, but when the first thing Slade utters is to urge an end to cloth diapers in favor of disposables, he loses all credibility in my eyes.
The problem is not obsolescence it's consumption!
Alcibiades
6 years ago
No kidding!
Glad to see you posting again bytesmiths. How's it going?
Mitzi
6 years ago
I agree with Bytesmiths: I was interested in reading this book until I came across the disposable diapers answer. All Slade's credibility vanished at that point. Cloth works just fine and lasts a long time.
And as to tampons and (Kotex) pads, is anyone old enough to remember Toxic Shock Syndrome? I switched to pads at that point and never looked back. The latest "technology" in this area is washable cloth menstrual pads, among other non-disposable things. If you're interested, see http://www.lunapads.com/ (Victoria company) or http://www.gladrags.com/ for more info.
Marysue
6 years ago
Cloth diapers are re-usable, but even if you have an unpollutted river and clean rocks you're willing to pollute, and a yard with laundry line, you're still going to pollute cleaning the cloth diapers. They are easier on your kids' bodies than the paper products. Pads are, indeed, better and safer than tampons. However, the world does not allow women much time to deal with their body functions, never mind any children that ensue. The male-military heirarchy that drives the world of work for the last couple of hundred years is neither planet friendly or user friendly. There is no allowance made for families.