Honest Abe

Also prescient Abe. This passage appears in a letter from U.S. president (1861-65) Abraham Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864. (The war he’s referring to is the American Civil War, but you know how history repeats itself.)

We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood…. It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.

God did not grant, and 144 years later we are living what Abe foretold. I have long felt that reining in the giant multinational corporations will be the enterprise that ultimately decides our collective fate.

Today, thanks to Guy Dauncey‘s laudable EcoNews newsletter, i learned about an interesting take on this: Dr. Riki Ott wrote a book (Not One Drop) calling for a 28th amendment to the U.S. constitution, one that constitutionally separates corporation and state. This would effectively negate the judicial rulings (since 1886 in the states) that corporations have the same rights as human beings, including trial by jury and protection against the taking of property.

Ott was involved with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Prince William Sound, which Exxon recently wriggled out of — after nearly 20 years in the courts — with a fine of $507 million. (The original award was $5 billion plus). Exxon’s constitutional protections played a key role in that that legal wrangling. The “suit’s” side of the case is presented in this CNNMoney.com article. From the other side, a 4-minute video by Ott is on YouTube if you’re interested.

Hmm, 20 years in court, Exxon versus a small Alaskan community … you pretty much know how that’s going to turn out.

The Tofino curse

I’m getting a smattering of emails like the following from friends in Tofino. (Details altered to protect the … accomplices?)

Hi greg,
A friend of mine has an apartment, it’s a new one near [location in Tofino]. Its not a bad deal, $1,200 plus utilities that run $100-150. It’s set up nicely for two people — two bedrooms & a bathroom upstairs, bedroom & bathroom downstairs. Faces south, catches a lot of sun. It feels warm. Not furnished. Its cheap with a roommate, and it’s long term!

–[Friend]

Now for …the math

Let’s go way, way out on a limb here and assume i actually want to work full-time, 40 hours a week. An optimistic local year-round wage would be, say, $11 an hour — a bit low for the summer, perhaps, but a reasonable average year-round. This yields a gross income of:

$11 x 40 hrs/wk x 52 wks/yr = $22,880 per year.

I haven’t been in that stratospheric wage bracket for years, but at a guess it’d come with, what, a 25% tax rate, leaving a net of $17,100 a year or $1,425 per month.

The accepted cost of affordable shelter (i.e. paying other people’s outrageous mortgages) is widely cited to be about 1/3 of your annual gross. The government’s BC Housing site provides the following info:

Financial support for subsidized housing is generally administered based on “rent-geared-to-income.” Rent-geared-to-income is for low- to moderate-income households. Tenants pay rent based on the gross income of the household rather than paying the market rate. Affordable rent is defined as costing no more than 30% of a household’s total gross monthly income….

So in my hypothetical case, an affordable rent would be $ 22,880 gross x 30% = $6,864/year or $572 per month.

The cost of shelter in the aforementioned apartment, assuming i could find a reliable year-round roommate, would run to at least $675 a month with utilities (not including phone, Internet, cable), or $8,100 a year — 18% above the “affordable” rate.

It also means that 47% of my take-home pay would go to shelter, leaving another $725 a month with which to feed, cloth and entertain myself — not to mention save toward a house purchase (hah!) and my retirement (double hah!).

Factor in that i have zero interest in working a full-time, low-wage tourism job and you can see why i’m camping here on a friend’s floor in Vancouver, trying to figure out how to make the move to Tofino possible.

Thanks, amigos, and keep your eyes peeled for me!

If you have any comments on the above calculations, please make a comment by clicking the “comment” link above.

Atwood, free & easy

While i think of it, this year’s Massey Lectures were delivered by Margaret Atwood, under the stunningly prescient title (given recent events) of Payback — Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. As the blurb says, it’s not about practical debt management or high finance. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies.

I caught one lecture live on Ideas but couldn’t work the rest in. However, i now have them all as podcasts. The plan is to get together with a bunch of people, listen to them (one at a time) on subsequent evenings, and discuss. Let me know if you’re interested.

All five lectures can be downloaded as podcasts here, for a limited time, courtesy of the good old CBC — the best thing to happen to media in this benighted country since, well, ever.

BUY NOTHING DAY–tomorrow

I dunno where the publicity has gone for this seminal anti-celebration, launched 17 years ago by the visionary ADBUSTERS–journal of the mental environment. Probably buried under the landslide of alarmist press covering the economic meltdown.

But its message is even more relevant today, so ladies and gentlemen, i beg you, keep your wallets closed for one day and contemplate the message that

You are NOT what you buy.

BUY NOTHING DAY

Friday, Nov. 28

‘Tis the season, groaned the Earth

Here at Aimless Ranch, we’re preparing to get and give our usual roster of gifts this Christmas season: nothing at all for or from anybody. I don’t advocate that for everyone. But please, in these sensitive environmental times, if you’re going to indulge, please think about what you buy and its effect on the bigger picture.

Based on an article in the shrill and inimitable Republic of East Vancouver newspaper, here are some worthy suggestions for alternative gift-giving.

Memberships — the gym, the RES, the Botanical Gardens, or some other worthy facility about town.
Classes — music lessons, yoga sessions, karate, pottery studio time, or anything put on by our WestCoast rec departments.
Fab food — organic chocolate, artisan jams and honeys, homemade pie, killer coffee.
Local art, created by people you pass on the street every day.
Sports gear — running shoes, hockey sticks, rain gear, camping supplies.
Vintage rags from the second-hand shops in town.
Gift certificates for your favourite shop in town.
Donations or memberships to organizations you know the giftee would support — the Friends of Clayoquot Sound, the arts society, the streamkeepers … pick a cause!

More suggestions? Leave ’em in the comments below.