“Somebody yelled something was falling,” firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman recalled. “We didn’t know if it was desks coming out. It turned out it was people coming out, and they started coming out one after the other.”
“I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament,” she said. “They were choosing to die and I was watching them and shouldn’t have been.”
ap
Out 90 stories up at the World Trade Center.
Written by jay on August 13th, 2005 with no comments.
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Stephen Taylor asks,
The price of gas is tied into the cost of living. Virtually every physical product we buy (whether food, furniture, home electronics etc.) is delivered by truck and figures into the price we pay. Air Canada raised its ticket prices as a reaction to the soaring cost of fuel. The daily commute to the office is becoming a significant expense.
Would it be in the government’s best interest to reduce taxes on the price of fuel to stop knee-capping the economy?
stephen taylor
I saw $1.08 a litre gas at my corner station today. As Taylor points out gas taxes are wildly unpopular and may act as a brake on the economy. But they are a very effective way of raising revenue.
It is a reasonable question whether or not moving away from personal income tax towards consumption taxes does not make a lot of sense. Basically, let taxpayers keep an increasing share of their earnings while adding the taxes necessary to meet what one hopes will be a declining government revenue requirement.
This would be significantly easier to collect and would mean that gentle souls like Blogette would be able to see a reward for leaving the car at home.
As importantly, it would begin to end the indirect subsidy which people who live in cities rather than suburbs and take transit rather than the single driver SUV to work are paying. And, better still, it would make that SUV look like a much less attractive option; but it would leave it as an option if that is what a person wants to spend their money one.
Real gas prices are going to rise over the next couple of decades regardless of tax. Oil is becoming scarcer and demand is growing: price will rise. We need to be weaning the economy away from cheap oil and towards some of the new and rather interesting technologies which are emerging.
You don’t have to buy into Kyoto to recognize that car culture has whole sets of nasty effects. Will emissions are one of those effect, sprawl and the dead worlds of cul de sac land are probably more pernicious in cultural and ecological terms. $5.00 a litre gas - which is not out of the question - will make the ‘burbs a rather less attractive option with or without a tax whack added. This would not be an altogether bad thing.
Written by jay on August 13th, 2005 with 12 comments.
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I am in the middle of the world’s longest move. My assorted computers are still on Galiano and are not likely to get to Victoria for a couple of weeks. I am working on a computer which came with this appartment and will be staying here. I was wondering if anyone living in Victoria had a spare computer and monitor they might be able to lend me for about a month.
Let me know.
Written by jay on August 13th, 2005 with no comments.
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