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Fredericton Daily Gleaner ~ Capital Appreciation ~ Thanksgiving ~ October 9, 2006 - 29 Oct 2006 by TaxHelp
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The kids were home from school this weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. While it doesn’t seem like Labour Day was a month ago, I’m sure that’s a function of age. After all, thinking about getting detention for skipping math feels like it was only a couple of years ago. Anyway, both the calendar and the weather tell me that the taste of snow is just around the corner. And so this long weekend is the pregnant pause before the holiday season is upon us. And today is the perfect time to give thanks, since most of us are so busy the rest of the year that we don’t have time to think about it. While reasons for giving thanks are personal in nature, here is something to chew on before you tuck into the turkey.
The United Nations publishes a report each year based on a set of measures formally referred to as the Human Development Index. It began in 1990. The HDI measures life quality and expectancy, education and standard of living. This year’s global version has yet to be released so it’s interesting to review the 2005 findings. If you’re looking for something to give thanks about, you could begin by considering how fortunate we are to live in Canada. Since the grading began, our country has been for the most part consistently ranked in the top five. In many of the years we have either been first or second. In this report we are number five while Norway ranks first. Comparatively, our American neighbours rank tenth.
This report indicates that the best country for life expectancy at birth is Japan where one will live on average to the ripe old age of 82 years. In Canada, it’s expected that we will live 80 years. One can be thankful they are not a resident of Swaziland where the life expectancy is 32.5 years. Want to consider change and health care? In Canada, in 1970 the infant mortality rate was 1.9 per cent. Put another way 1 in 52 infants died. In 2003 the rate had dropped to 5 per thousand or 1 in 200.
A broad measure of a country’s wealth is Gross Domestic Product, which is the value of all goods and services produced within a geographic territory. Leading the list far and away is Luxembourg with a GDP per capita of US$62,298. Far behind is number two Ireland at $37,738. Slightly farther down is Canada at $30,677. Be thankful that you don’t live in Sierra Leone, which has a per capita GDP of $548.
Of course, not everything is rosy here. Just over 8 per cent of those born today are not expected to live to 60. More than 14 per cent of adults lack functional literacy skills. When looking at poverty, nearly 13 per cent live on less than 50 per cent of the median income. Still, we don’t have bombings as a daily way of life.
An interesting note in the report from a couple of years ago that I didn’t see in the latest dealt with national pride. Of those countries surveyed, we were second in this measure. Close to one hundred per cent of Canadians were most likely to answer with the highest responses when asked the question “How proud are you to be a national of ____?” A large part of this is because of the stellar performance of our military around the world, and just another point to be thankful for. We’ve been too often reminded lately of the grave inherent risks these men and women undertake. And might I add the report points out that military spending as a per cent of GDP is 2 per cent. Compare that to Kuwait where it is 48.5 per cent.
While everyone has personal challenges to consider, we know that somewhere moving forward there are better days ahead. In the meantime, as the HDI reports, most of our global neighbours would be delighted to live in Canada.
Roger Haineault is with Help 4 Taxes. He can be reached by email at roger@help4taxes.ca or by calling 1 (888) 450-1212. His column appears Mondays.
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