Saturday, April 16, 2011

hrm

sometimes you hope for something..anything. but really, you can't be all that surprised when you get notta, nothing.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Does Cutting Corporate Taxes Really Translate Into More Jobs?

In the last number of years the Conservative government has been touting that them reducing the taxes paid by corporations is good for Canada. The argument they make is that if corporations are paying less money on their income that they will surely reinvest these funds into making more jobs for Canadians. And if more Canadians have jobs then THEY can pay more income tax themselves, not to mention more personal spending, thus resulting in no net loss to the federal coffers, more employed individuals, and a stimulated economy. It is the age old Top to Bottom Trickle Down Effect. Only problem is that you are relying on corporations to do their part and create more jobs. Corporations are, by the nature of capitalism, concerned about their bottom lines. They have investors to answer to. If the corporation doesn't boost per share dividends for investors their share value can erode. If there is less demand for their shares than the company loses its market value which is instrumental in their ability to issue bonds to have debts and major spending ventures secured against. So why should a company suddenly given an extra 2% of income reinvest this into jobs? Surely some companies who are expanding will do so. But they likely would have done so regardless.

Well, just in time for the federal election the Conservatives have released attack ads aimed at the Liberal party stating that the Cons have increased jobs whereas the Libs would increase taxes. Truth be told, the Libs WOULD increase taxes. But on corporations, not the public. The Lib argument is that our original levels of 18% are very competitive with the world market place. Their is no need to have the lowest corporate tax rates in the world. In fact, not many, if any, major international head offices have relocated to Canada to take advantage of our lower rates. And now the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study which shows that despite a 50% increase in profits and a 20% decrease in corporate taxes paid 198 of Canada's leading companies were BELOW the national average of 6 per cent employment growth between 2005 and 2010! So, even though their profits increased during this time, and they were allowed to keep more of these profits, they reinvested LESS into the labour market, growing by only 5%. Throw in that the job market took a stutter step this month by shedding 1500 jobs instead of gaining the 30 000 economists had expected and you get the feeling that corporations aren't playing the way the Harper regime suggest they should be. Perhaps it is time that we stop molly coddling big business and instead provide support to the people who need it most during these economic down turns, the individual consumer.

Addendum

Did you know that one of the world's largest corporations GE made $150 billion in revenue with $12 billion in net profit in 2010 and yet paid NO taxes? Not only were they able to avoid paying a single penny to the US government but they did so while shedding thousands of labour positions in the United States. They were able to do this by successfully lobbying the US government for tax breaks and by writing their profits as off shore income. Maybe it is time for us to clamp down on these big businesses and keep them from having too much clout in their roles in government and defining acceptable accounting practices.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Don't Trust Big Business to Protect Your Private Information

It is never a surprise to read of a large corporation having their cache of data of private customer details being compromised.  Credit card companies have had customer names and card #s stolen by savvy online thieves. Retailers have had their databases cracked with large numbers of client names, account #s, billing information and sales history taken. No company is safe from those desiring to do onerous deeds through the internet. Multi billion dollar corporations that promise you that your information is safe and invest millions in security are still having their safes cracked. We live in a time where identity theft and fraud are an ever burgeoning part of crime. And while we become ever more reliant on technology we have yet to step up how to protect the public from internet crime. We keep putting more cops on the streets while crime rates continue to go down yet government seemingly ignores this growing problem. The government of Canada's own computer databases were successfully hacked last year in a number of instances.

So think twice before giving anyone your personal data. Companies don't need any more information than that which is absolutely necessary. Why am I writing about this? Well, because I received the following note from the Best Buy Reward Zone :

Dear Marcus Bassett,

We have been informed by our email service provider, Epsilon, that your name and email address have been exposed by unauthorized entry into their system. Epsilon deploys emails on our behalf to our Reward Zone members. Click here to read Epsilon's statement.

We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that has been exposed was your name and email address. A rigorous assessment by Epsilon has determined that account details, passwords or any other personal information were not at risk.

It is possible that you may receive spam email messages as a result and we would advise you to be very cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown senders. More information on spam and protecting yourself from email fraud can be found here.

In keeping with security industry best practices, Best Buy will never ask you to provide or confirm any information, including credit card numbers, unless you are on our secure e-commerce site, www.bestbuy.ca. If you receive an email asking for personal information, delete it. It did not come from Best Buy. The next scheduled email from Reward Zone about our Trade In Event will arrive to your inbox on April 15, 2011.

Our service provider has reported this incident to the appropriate authorities.

We regret this has taken place and any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we are working diligently to fully investigate this situation and continue to protect your personal information. If you have further concerns or questions please contact us: 1-866-BEST-BUY (238-7289) or customercare@bestbuycanada.ca.

Sincerely,

Angela Scardillo
Vice President of Marketing
Best Buy Canada


Sure, it was just my name and email address which were compromised but smart data thieves will use a Best Buy seeming email/logo/request to misdirect people on these lists to further divulge data to them in order to use those details. Unfortunately, this is a very lucrative practice for these thieves...otherwise they wouldn't bother doing it.

Here was my response :

Dear Best Buy,

Thank you for warning me that you and the company you are in cahoots with have compromised my email address. I appreciate the warning.

That I will likely receive an even greater # of spam emails (not including the ones you already send me on a regular basis) has caused me to review my policies in reference to trusting big corporations with my private contact details. As such, kindly remove my email address and name from your databases and that of Epsilon as well. I do not wish to receive further emails from you in any ongoing manner (save to confirm the following actions). I also desire that my email address no longer reside in ANY of your computers/databases. Please do confirm to me that you have deleted my information so that I can sleep slightly better at night.

Yours actually (and not just some computer program auto dialer),

Marcus Bassett


Addendum 

I received an email from Airmiles this evening. Guess what it said? Yep, their email service provider "had an unauthorized entry into their email platform." Again, my first name, last name, and email address may have been compromised.

Great! Airmiles doesn't say who their email service provider is but i wouldn't be too surprised to hear that it is Epsilon. Makes me wonder just how secure a system Epsilon is using. I will soon be sending a similar email to Airmiles as I did Best Buy. Still haven't received a response from Best Buy.

2nd Addendum

turns out the 2 companies do use the same web marketer. The following article appears in the Globe and Mail and advises that MILLIONS of individuals email addresses and names were taken. wow.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/canadians-among-millions-at-risk-following-us-security-breach/article1971001/ 

Further Hacker Damage


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/playstation-network-hacker-stole-user-data_n_854106.html


Playstation's network was hacked and they have, really, no idea how much information was compromised. Surely names, addresses, and passwords were stolen. And quite possibly credit card info and purchase history.