What's Going On With SR&ED Administration?

Garron Helman of Venbridge recently posted an article full of interesting SR&ED stats. Garron has kindly allowed me to post it, but I'll paste the link to it instead.  Easy enough to click and be transferred to it. His post is found at https://venbridge.com/sred/venbridge-insights-innovation-on-the-rise-in-canada-sred-statistics-tell-a-different-story/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nov. 

I did not need to see the stats to know that the SRED landscape has changed. I do think that we may see the pendulum begin swinging the other way as both the courts and the economic policy-makers in government start realizing that the law is being applied rather narrowly and that the SRED program is not having the efficacy that it could have. We'll see....

 

Greeks and the Four States of Matter

Recently I commented on Thales of Miletus and his notion that water is the substance of the universe. He seems to have been a brilliant man. He also is said to have said “Nothing is more active than thought, for it flies over the whole universe.” The statement reminds me of Genesis 1:2 which says that the spirit of God was moving over the waters (which then covered the whole earth). Not an exact parallelism, but close enough to trigger the connection.

The ancient Greeks more generally saw there as being four elements. Maybe you remember those from grade school: earth, water, air, and fire. I think even Thales recognized the multiplicity of elements but thought that water was the one that gave rise to the others. I long thought the whole 4 element view rather inobservant, but lately I realize that earth, water, air, and fire correspond to what we see as the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. I feel a bit dull to have not made that connection until recently. What has my brain been doing? I need it to wave a bit more vigorously.

Social Unrest Worldwide

We are seeing a disturbing trend in the spread of social disruption around the world. We had the Arab Spring several years ago, which I think was primarily triggered by economic difficulties of the masses. Food prices had gotten very high, seemingly in response to USA economic policy.

This was followed by some years of relative social peace until Venezuela imploded. Now we see Chile, once considered an oasis of South American prosperity and peaceful stability, erupting in unrest that has destroyed numerous supermarkets and injured thousands of people, while other thousands have been arrested.

We’ve had recent riots in Iraq and in Lebanon which seem like delayed Arab Spring phenomena. South Africa is experiencing unrest born of people’s frustration with government corruption and rolling power blackouts. France is experiencing demonstrations, and so is Ecuador. Even Alberta seems to be in the beginnings of such social turmoil.

None of the foregoing have the potential for damage as does what is going on in Hong Kong. China, as I keep saying in this blog, has a major economic problem. China was able to grow capital simply by forcing people to work, but its workers have aged and its population pyramid no longer looks like a pyramid. It is more like a fire hydrant with the big bulge of 50s, and a smaller bulge of millennials. Gen X, born at the start of the one child policy, and Gen Z, born during the latter years of that foolishness, are a small percentage of the population. A workforce like that is limited by age related infirmities from providing the kind of brute production it once did. Chinese economic growth can only continue by working smarter instead of harder. This requites innovation. It is hard to induce innovation in a centrally planned economy where people labor yields fruit to be taken by the government. I think China may be in for some major social upheaval, and if so, it will likely be very bloody.