I originate from Brooklyn, New York where the resident grey gnomes simmering within their violent thoughts pinch pennies so hard that Abe Lincoln gets a nosebleed. I hail from Southern California where the car is God and a parking space is Her temple. California gas stations are fonts of holy liquid hydrocarbon presided over by Third World immigrants too stupid or putrid to run a donut hut. You relinquish a few dozen bucks and they sullenly condescend to unlock the gas pump for a few gallons, which you personally labor to obtain. California gasoline prices are unlawfully fixed somewhere in the stratosphere by the most unholy of industrial/political alliances. I bristle with the tightfisted legacy of my ancestors and my upbringing every time I surrender cash into a system of blatant corruption in which I do not participate except as victim.
The People's Republic of Canada is a Second World country. That means that not only are the prices for all goods and services (in constant dollars) higher than they would be in a developed nation and higher than they would be if the government kept its nose out of private affairs, but that a 14% sales tax is hooked onto everything from postage to baby food to rub a little parliamentary salt into fiscal wounds. Canadians suffer under the highest taxation rate in the history of Canukistan while Canadian government is realizing its lowest tax revenues in 36 years. The folks wearing the funny wigs are flogging a dying horse while doing their best to strangle it, hence the Canadian gas station.
I pulled into a local gas station and saw $0.89/liter gasoline. Canada went metric to lessen sticker shock. Before I could pop the driver's side door a youth in a company jumpsuit was busy pumping gas, washing my windows, checking the air in my tires, running down a 93 item checklist under the hood, and generally making a damned nuisance of himself. I hate teenage enthusiasm - they lack the omnivorous greed of maturity while expecting to cash in on its rewards. As the pump tab hit the $20 mark and kept rolling a certain fear crept into my mind: This was my first purchase at a Canadian gas station. Was I expected to tip this nimble idiot?
A $23 tab to fill the tank, whether in liters or gallons and even in what passes for Canadian tender, hurts like a frozen ice pick punched into a lost filling. I handed him a $50 bill and said "take out $24."
On the one hand, my rear window was not shattered by a shotgun blast as I drove off. On the other, private firearms are illegal in Canada because they would bring home to local politicians the true meaning of the word "attrition." On the third hand, the kid might have been found in a gutter the next day after spending on booze, drugs, and fast women a tip which equaled his whole day's salary after taxes. Cross-cultural experiences are not a pretty sight.
More than 24% of all people with post-secondary education are unemployed in Canada. The running joke is that by the year 2010 today's unemployed youth will finally be just unemployed. Of the 76% of degree holders with an income, 9 of 10 work for the government as consultants, aides-to-ministers, or on government make-work projects. We joke that America's economic recovery - its continuing intractable economic depression - has created a generation of MacJobs. Canada got there first, folks, and if you don't hop to! when my car pulls into the bay there are ten unemployed college graduates with resumes in hand willing to work harder than you do.
Canada's leviathan forests contain the finest and most abundant timber in North America. They are being clear cut down to dirt and the raw logs - with government subsidy! - shipped to the Far East. Were those trees locally manufactured into finished lumber or semi-finished goods Canada would be importing labor from the slums of India, or Quebec, to keep up with the demand. The Canadian people are not impoverished, only their country is - and purposefully so. Tremendous political advantage is to be had from victims. Canada harbors about 29 million of them.
The Athabasca region of Canada is officially assayed as containing 600 billion barrels of recoverable petroleum in its tar sands. It is strip mined and steam-extracted. The whole of Arabia comes in at perhaps 200 billion barrels. Energy accounts for as much as a quarter of the cost of a finished and delivered item. Were Canada flooded with cheap petroleum its industries would be world competitors. A modest rate of taxation would harvest bountiful revenues from a thriving industrial base.
I looked back at an adolescent whose political despots were most content to secure their advantage by denying him his.