Text 2361, 112 rader
Skriven 2005-08-09 04:42:38 av Greg Sears (3:633/104)
     Kommentar till en text av Stephen Gibbs
Ärende: F unny
==============
Collage 417              H u m o u r N e t              17 Oct 1999

Last month, I spent a week in Vancouver, Canada. Beautiful place;
I've always enjoyed visiting third-world countries. And then it
occurred to me:

Why haven't we simply annexed Canada?

It would make sense. Both countries would be much better off. The
Americans, for example, would finally learn how to spell "humour"
correctly, which would make it much easier for them to subscribe to
HumourNet.

But what about the benefits to the Canadians? There are so many of
them (benefits, that is, not Canadians); I'll try to hit some of the
highlights ...

Reason Number 1: BETTER SCANDALS

    When was the last time you heard about a really juicy scandal in
    Canada? Hmmm? Thought so. That's because Canadians don't know
    how to do scandals right. "RCMP accused of not cleaning their
    guns on schedule" is hardly a scandal. Americans, OTOH, have
    scandals down to a science. Sometimes, we have so many of them
    occurring simultaneously that we don't even have time to keep
    track of them all.

Reason Number 2:  BETTER CURRENCY

    Canadian money is very attractive, yet not entirely valuable. If
    we annexed Canada, we could collect up all of the Canadian
    currency and give it to the Hasbro Corporation. The next edition
    of Monopoly would have money that looks very convincing. Plus,
    American money just sounds better -- we have "dimes" and
    "nickels," not "loonies" and "twonies." Well, okay, we have
    quite a lot of loonies, but we put them on currency only if they
    have been elected to public office. Which seems to happen rather
    often; see Reason Number 1.

Reason Number 3:  NO GST

    GST, or "Goods and Services Tax," is a nationwide sales tax that
    Canadians must pay in order to sustain the delusion that they
    live in the Greatest Country on Earth(tMS). Thankfully, the
    Canadian authorities realize that tourists generally don't
    suffer from that particular delusion (preferring, instead, to
    suffer from entirely _different_ delusions), and thus are kind
    enough to refund any GST that we paid while visiting the
    Greatest Country on Earth(tMS). There's a minimum amount
    required, but given that the GST tax rate is rather staggering,
    it's really pretty easy to make the minimum amount. (Note that
    GST does not include Provincial Sales Tax, Local Sales Tax,
    Local Income Tax, Travel Tax, Non-Travel Tax, Purchase Tax, Use
    Tax, Abuse Tax, and Greatest Country on Earth(tMS) Tax; those
    mut be paid separately, and are non-refundable.)

Reason Number 4:  BETTER, CHEAPER HEALTH CARE

    So every time I rag on Canada, I get this staple "we have free
    health care" response from the Canadian side. That's nice. Here
    in the U.S., we have doctors who attended medical school. And,
    once we annex Canada, the amount of money that Canadians will
    save by not having to pay GST will _more_ than cover the cost of
    top-notch health insurance here in the U.S. For example: I was
    in Canada for one week. The GST on roughly one-half of my
    purchases was refundable (not all GST is created equal), and
    amounted to about $100Cdn. This is about $200Cdn per week total
    GST, which is roughly $10,000/year. For that amount of money,
    you can buy Blue Cross/Blue Shield's most expensive coverage,
    and still have enough left over to take a pretty nice vacation,
    even after you've converted the currency to American. This is why
    we Merkins vacation more than our Canadian counterparts. Well,
    that and the fact that we need to get the hell out of here every
    once in a while or the scandals will surely drive us over the
    edge.

Reason Number 5:  NO DEFECTIONS

    Canadians LOVE to point to members of the American entertainment
    industry and say things like, "You know that Celine Dion is
    Canadian, don't you?" and "Shania Twain is from Canada." Big
    deal. If Canada were so great, then why do all of these people
    feel the need to defect? If we annexed Canada, it'd all be one
    huge country, so entertainers would no longer have to defect in
    order to find work.

It's simple: The U.S. should annex Canada. We owe it to the
Canadians to do it. And it would be so very easy to pull off: The
Canadian Air Force has already sent its airplane over to the Balkans
as part of the peacekeeping initiative; the entire country is thus
undefended except for a bunch of guys on horseback. All we'd have to
do is make a sufficiently attractive offer to their stockholders --
the Canadian people -- and the deal is as good as signed. Looking at
the arguments presented above, I've no doubt that the Canadian
citizens would jump at the chance.


- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  vince@humournet.com



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