$1 US=$0.981 CAD
This is pretty great.
If you've been paying attention to the world currency news lately (and why wouldn't you be?)you know that Canada has been celebrating it's unprecedented gain over the US dollar. As of some point last week when I checked (technical term: S.P.L.W.W.I.C.), it was at a disturbing $1 US=$.94 CAD, which is about the opposite of what it was last year. The mere fact of the US dollar being worth more than 90 cents Candian was tough enough for us expatriots, who have become comfortable with our parent's money being worth more in this country, thereby making us between 15% and 5% richer. However, Canadian trade being the complete fucking pointless mess that it is (technical term: C.F.P.M.), this feeling of added wealth was combated by the fact that goods in Canada (books, macaronia and cheese, clothes, soda pop, gold, silver, frozen concentrated orange juice, et cetera) often cost between 20% and 50% more than their US cost; plus an added 7% to 12% sales tax. If we can do simple math (yeah, right, this is an arts blog), that means that under last year's exchange rate, we Damn Yankee Expatriots (DYEPs) were actually paying 12%-57% more for these goods. To this, we would give a heartfelt and postmodernist "bull-shiiiiiiiiiit!".
Therefore, the benefit of the Canadian loonie gaining on the American buck should have been that Canadian companies would lower their prices to something other than the 1970s exchange rate (for proof of this, look on the back cover of any book that you have with you. Go on, look! See? $24.95 US, or $98.35 CAD). Did they? Nope nope. With this new gain on the dollar, Canadian's are still paying 27%-62% more than Americans are, and, as of last week, DYEPs were paying 33%-68% more. Is this fair? Nope. Is it logical? No. Does this post have a point other than ranting? I dunno, you're the one who's actually read this far (unless you were just skimming over the page and landed on this sentence, in which case, no cheating, go back to the top). I suppose that what I'm trying to point out is that our recently lost gain over the loonie wasn't much of a gain anyway, it was more of a slight discount. It's like in Florida when everyone goes crazy about the back to school tax-free week and buys billions of dollars worth of clothes (trust me, I worked Target that week, I've been on the front lines of that mess). Sure, you're saving money, but Florida tax is only 6.5%. If something was discounted 6.5%, no one would call that a steal, let alone line up before the store opens and pack three shopping carts to the brim with petite uniforms, khakis, and jumpers--it's all in the way that you look at it. The same goes for this Canadian gain over the dollar. Sure it's a bit of a boost to save 6% in the States (though one should remeber that, in Vancouver, Canadians do their shopping in Washington, where sales tax is about 8%, so it's only a 4% gain), but it doesn't do anything to help the Canadian dollars that are being spent in stores by the average-joe Canadian or DYEP.
Oh wait, I forgot that this was supposed to be good news. Well, it is. If the buck is coming back up, then the difference in Canadian prices might start to seem a little mnore resonable (meaning that they'll be back to their previous aforementioned unreasonability (unreasonness? Disreason?)) than they are now, as we can go back to bragging about how much richer and cooler we are than Canada, even though when you look at it we're not, and we don't have their health care and social support, blah blah blah, they still pay a ridiculous amount of taxes, so there.
And speaking of taxes: Oregon is voting to levy a tax on cigarettes that will go to benefit education. So we don't want people, especially kids, to smoke, but are more than happy to let them smoke so long as they give money to education in doing so, Hypocritical? Maybe just a little bit.
Random self-bragging: here are my current grades for the semester:
Shakespeare: A
Metaphor: B+
Grammar: A
Postmodernism: B+
Woolf: B+
Not a lot to brag about, unless you consider that two of those B+s are in 400+ level classes, one of which (Postmodernism) is a tough cookie to crack. Egg to crack. Yip yip yip yip yip uh huuuh uh huuh uh huuh.
No comments:
Post a Comment