With Facebook’s population having risen to over 1 billion as of October 4th, it has undoubtedly become one of the world’s most influential forms of social media in an incredibly short time.  I don’t think when Mark Zuckerberg first created it however he would have envisioned it to be able to have the effects it had in the recent capital tax protests in France, as outlined by Varun Banthia’s post, “France’s Pigeons”.

I think it’s a remarkable achievement to say that in this day and age we need not trek into the streets to protest, which can result in violence like we saw with the 2011 UK riots, showing you don’t need to flip a car to get your government to change.

I disagree with Varun in the sense that I think we all wish to believe if our policy makers are making decisions that the majority of the public does not want, we should have some ability to tell them so.  Hollande came into office saying he wanted to create jobs, yet this capital tax would have discouraged investment into entrepreneurship which would in turn create jobs.  I don’t see it as backtracking, more as being steered back down the right course.

Word Count: 200                            France’s Pigeons and Rolling Back a Tax Increase via Facebook

Ever since the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, America has unfortunately been made to realize how vulnerable their reliance on foreign energy makes them.  For so long they have yearned for independence, but until recent technological changes they have been reliant on primarily Canadian and Saudi oil.  Now while the US looks to be walking towards one of the biggest oil booms in their history, Canada stands as the one with all to lose.

A huge part of our economy has been built around the premise of exporting oil to the US, an average of 2,324,000 barrels of crude oil were shipped a day to the US out of a total of around 3,580,000 produced.  With the US becoming less reliant on their northern neighbour to meet their energy needs, we lose the ability to fund our already ridiculously expensive ventures into oil sands which has already cost a staggering $125 billion.

I’d expect from this a few things, firstly an urgent need to diversify who we export our products too, as suggested by the article.  Secondly, as energy currently accounts for 6.8% of our GDP, a restructuring to our exports like this will surely be a blow to our spending in the coming years.

Word Count: 199        Canada says US oil boom illustrates need to diversify energy exports

With the recent election over, it’s time once again for America to focus its attention back to its deficit.  Moves are already being made by the Obama administration to remedy the deficit by hiking taxes back up once the Bush tax cuts expire, however many think the move is too drastic.

The term “fiscal cliff” has made its way into the mainstream as a way of describing what will happen when the government imposes the $670 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts come January 1st, however there’s still no agreed upon method for achieving them.

I think the biggest problem for the US at this point is realizing that they can’t just outright cut spending to key areas such as healthcare in order to extend tax cuts.  The US has an increasingly aging population that is going to be a huge drag on healthcare costs in the near future, so to start cutting out spending on the sector now would be ludicrous.

Most importantly the Republicans need to understand that keeping taxes at Bush levels is too idealistic with this demographic change incoming, taxes need to be sacrificed in order for the government to meet the social needs.

Word Count: 199                             Tax Reform: Opening Bids

With its abundance of natural resources left relatively untapped, it seems Brazil is one of the newest players to take an increasingly large interest in Africa.  Most might claim that historically ventures into the third world have been controversially exploitative (namely in the case of China), however I think that this is a misnomer.

The truth is these African countries are in dire need of foreign investment, unfortunately they’re at a point where they have all these natural riches lying under them yet they have neither the financial capital nor the proper infrastructure to be able to extract them.  The entrance of developed countries such as Brazil and China, whether the majority of the wealth is being funneled back home or not, is going to play largely into how quickly African countries will able to develop the infrastructure they need to be able to start doing the job themselves.

I think our perception of how business is done between the developed and developing world is largely skewed because of such misconceptions.  There’s almost a tyrannical image synonymous with African mining popularized by movies like “Blood Diamond” that does these countries no good.  They need investment, we need resources, simple trade.

Word Count: 200                 Brazil in Africa: A new Atlantic Alliance