The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

If I know that some pain in the arm has been trying to get me on the phone, I also know immediately that he or She wants me to do something that I don‘t want to do. Thereâ€" Some people, like me, believe in Tolling with the punches, rather than sticking out our chins to show how many we can absorb. 1 have found that, in general, if I avoid trouble, trouble avoids me. ~ fore, I take the phone off the hook and.leave it off until the pain has found some other sucker. O o y Another invention of mine to stay out of troyble is patentâ€" ed as Negaâ€"Prod. This is short for Negative Production, The theory is simple. The,more you produce, the more problems you have, whether it is children, manufactured goods or farm products. ‘ The more children you have, the more emotional and economic problems you create for yourself. The more goods you produce, the more you have to hustle to find customers and meet payrolls. The more farm stuff you raise, whether it‘s beef or beans, the greater your chance of being caught in a glut on the market.. Our great national railways caught on to this years ago. When they had lots of passengers, they had lots of probâ€" lems. People wanted comfort, cleanliness, decent meals, and some assurance that they would get where they were going on time. There was much more money to be made, and fewer problems, by transporting wheat and lumber and cattle. 2 & So the railways began treating people like cattle. Passenâ€" ger trains became uncomfortable and dirty. Quality of the food dropped like a stone. And they never arrived on time. Presto. End of problems. No more passengers. So the railways were able to cut off nonâ€"paying passenger lines, get rid of all those superfluous things like station agents and telegraphers and train conductors, and concentrate on taking from one point to another things that paid their way and didn‘t talk back: newsprint, coal, oil,.wheat. 6 liéfliaps this is the answer for our provincial governments, which are quickly and quietly building massive mountains of debt for future taxpayers. C i . "lw’éfl'iaps they should just stop building highways, and reâ€" pairing those already in existence. We‘d all be sore as hell for a while, but as the roads got worse and worse, most of us would S'wp driving our cars. The governments would save millions of dollars now spent on highways, and they could fire twoâ€"thirds of the highway cops. o O_ I don‘t quite see how the governments could use Negaâ€" Prod to get out of the liquor business, which certainly produces plenty of problems. The booze trade is so profitâ€" able that asking government to abandon it would be like asking a milltionaire to forsake his country estate for a runâ€" down farm. _ Perhaps if they had a Free Booze Day, once a week, every week, say on a Saturday, it would solve a number of probâ€" Impressions caused by government spending notwithâ€" standing. there is no Santa Claus. That‘s the bad news. The gBod news is that it is possible to fight unemployment without causing inflation at the same time. Compared to that, Santa‘s a piker, anyway. The benefits of the ETC program are so amazing that it s hard to imagine how Ottawa can avoid adopting the plan. Not only would it decrease unemployment. but the proâ€" gram in most cases would be better than free‘ Better than free? Yes. It works like this. The firm reâ€" ceives, for example. $2500 for hiring an extra worker at $10,000 a year. The cost to the government is $2500. But the government collects income taxes, unemployment insurâ€" ance premiums, and Canada Pension Plan (or QPP) contriâ€" butions which would amount to about a quarter of that $2500 amount. In addition. the unemployed worker might have been collecting unemployment or welfare benefits ; How can unemployment be cured? The answer is more obâ€" vious if we think of labour as soap. As every soap manufacâ€" turer knows, the best way to sell more soap is to reduce the price of soap. So the best way to increase the use of labour is to cut the price of labour. too. In the pastâ€"few months, the Canadian Federation of Indeâ€" pendent Business, the national organization that speaks for small business, has undertaken an extensive study of ETCs. In the latter part of September, the Federation proposed an ETC program to the federal government and called for a fall budget. The ETC program proposed by the Federation provides for a tax rebate of 25% of the salary for every new employâ€" ee up to a maximum rebate of about $2900 per worker. The rebate would be deducted from the firm‘s annual corporaâ€" tion income tax payments or personal income tax payâ€" ments in the case of a proprietor. * We touched on this issue a couple of months ago when we first raised the question of Employment Tax Credits (ETCs). Basically, an ETC program would reduce taxes for any firm which increased its work force. The reduced taxes would be equivalent to cutting the price of labour. By Jim Smith lems. It would certainly reduce the surplus population. This, in turn, would cut dewn, drasticglly, the unemployâ€" â€"Should the provincial governments find that Negaâ€"Prod is a}l I‘ve suggesied, some of it might spill over into the federâ€" al government, usually the last to catch on to what the country really needs.. . > ® Instead of the manna and honey flowing from Ottawa in the form of baby bonuses and pensions, we might get some terse manifestos : x * 4 “People' who have more than one and a half children will be sent to jail for four years. Note: separate jails." _ _ _ ‘"Persons who plan to live past 65 andâ€"claim a pensionwill be subject to an open season each year, from Octpber 1 to Thanksgiving Day. Shotguns and bicycle chains only." _ _ "All veterans of all wars may claim participation by reason of insanity, and may apply to Ottawa for immediate euthenisation."‘ s These might seem slightly Draconian measures, but they sure would put an end to a lot of our problems and trouâ€" bles. Think of what they would do for such sinful activities Final results of the political survey of Waterloo are now in. The changes from the preliminary results reported here September 21, 1977 are few and relatively small. There were only*3 questions where the final result varied more than 1 percentage point. Over 1,500 people returned their quesâ€" tionnaire to me. Thank you for your involvement and your contribution. I am firmly convinced that such expressions of the collective will are listened to and influence decisions. In other words, the exercise was worth while. 7 The thing that surprised me the most was the support of government controls on economic freedom and the necesâ€" sary cost of controlling inflation. Although you felt that the Antiâ€"Inflation Board had not accomplished its purpose (51% said no and 41% said it had) you felt that we need some form of continued control on costs, wages and profits (62% for, 30% opposed). The answer on rent controls demonstrated a similar attitude. A clear majority favored continuation (61% in favor and 29% opposed). In that apartment buildâ€" ings were not canvassed, that result is rather dramatic. A View from the Grass Roofs There is a message. People in Waterloo are worried about inflation. Another manifestation of this concern is found in the questions involving government spending.. We are prepared to reduce governmental services if it will lower taxes (50% to 46%). And we are prepared to do without the 1981 Summer Games (60% to 32%). Interestingly, we are not as concerned with Kitchener spending its money on a conâ€" these would stop once the worker is hired Moreover, the newly employed worker increases the outâ€" put of the firm. This additional output is taxed by the govâ€" ernment. And, when the worker spends his wages, part of every dollar is collected in some manner of sales taxes. Members of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario answer your questions in Dollar Sense. Mrs. Drozd is with Touche Ross & Co., Toronto. Traditional approaches to budgeting encourage us to look at family or personal activities and programs as ongoing commitments with attached price tags which tend to increase each year. The "zeroâ€"based"" technique â€" The same ‘innovative technique that U.S. President Jimmy Carter hopes will lead to a balanced federal budâ€" get by 1981 can be used to balance your family budget. It‘s called "Zeroâ€"based" budgeting and since Mr. Carâ€" ter â€" when he was governor of Georgia â€" experimented with it, literally hundreds of comapnies as well as banks, universities and governments have adopted it. a simple, stepâ€"byâ€"step system based on common sense â€" forces us to look at all activities and programs as though they were completely new. This spurs creative analysis of all activities that cost money. A ‘"zeroâ€"based" family budgeting session should begin by getting the whole family around the kitchen or dinâ€" inf _ table, listing all the family‘s money consuming activities and needs. and assigning priorities under three headings. At this stage your "zeroâ€"based budget lists should look something like this: Add all of the savings and additional revenues together You and your money By Anne Drozd, CA playing checkers. _ .«~ _ ul we nalt aiso think of the economic benefits wi; plug put into that river of paper money flowing from Otâ€" tawa, taxes would drop, inflation would vanish and unâ€" doubtedly; separatism would wither on the vine. People would be lined up six deep at the U.S,; border, trying to get across, and that would solve, in ome swell foop, our unemâ€" ployment difficulties. We could go back to being hewers of water and carriers of wood, which was our manifest destiny before the politicians got into the act. Fishermen or lumberjacks, in short, which most of the rest of the world thinks we are anyway. j Negaâ€"Prod may seem a bit lofty and abstract at first glance, but it works. I know from personal experience. Every time I try to make something, or fix something, it costs me a lot of money, and I get into a lot of trouble. . _ So, I have a policy of never trying to fix something or make something. It‘s a lot less trouble to put up signs: ‘"Beâ€" ware of falling bricks; Not responsible for slivers from picâ€" nic table."* And so on. vention arts centre (45% favored it as against 40% opposed). This result varied slightly from the earlier tabulation (42% in favour and 40% opposed). The question on tariffs shows that the residents of this industrial community want government to protect our manuâ€" facturers (74% favored tariffs and 20% opposed). Of course this is a very technical area and the tools that are available to government must be used to create jobs. Some manufacâ€" turers in this region have been told by high ranking Federal civil servants that it is government policy to abandon secâ€" ondary industry so as to concentrate on primary products such as wheat, mineral resources, fish and pulp and paper. If this is so it is not a popular policy in Waterioo. f I sent Mr. Trudeau a copy of the survey. I hope he readsâ€" it. He‘ll Also learn that people here are fed up with strikes in the public service. 75% of the replies said end the right. to strike in the public service. (The preliminaryâ€"result had indicated a figure of 77%). As well, many of your comments showed dissatisfaction with indexed pensions even though this was not a question on the survey. _ _ All in all, you couldn‘t call Waterloo residents buoyantly optimistic at the moment. Worried is more like it. I hope those of you who participated in the survey have benefited from the experience as have I in conducting it. It‘s been most interesting. I‘ll do another one in the springâ€" and the sum is much greater than the small amount that the government pays out in the ETC. There‘s not â€"another method of job creation which can come close to fighting unemployment this cheaply. (Household maintenance, gifts, recreation, savings, etc.} LUXURIES L (new home, new furniture, vacations. etc.) Next, write in all the alternative ways you can think of to perform each activity or supply each need. For example, if you drive a car to work, consider a car pool, mass transportation, a bicycle, or walking. BASICS: ~ (Food, shelter, clothing, utilities, OHIP, etc.} NONâ€"ESSENTIALS You now have what "zeroâ€"based" budgeters call decision lists. At this point, insert the cost opposite each alternative. In each category, you will have preferences as to how you would like to accomplish activities or supply needs. Total the cost of your preferences and subtract that total from your anticipated income. Unless yours is a very unusual family, you will be facing a deficit. Basically, budget balancing decisions are made in two steps. First, try substituting less expensive alternatives for your preferences. If this doesn‘t balance your budget, begin chopping items from the bottom of the "luxury" list and, if necessary, continue into the ‘‘nonâ€"essential" list. You should find it is easier to argue over facts, figures and decision lists than to decide instinctively whether a new set of golf clubs is more essential than a microwave oven. â€" gtowing old, and hanging around the Legion Hall, by Rich Hobson