Equalization, in a Canadian context, means the Federal government take money from the "high-income" provinces (Alberta) and gives it to the other provinces (most notably the Maritimes and Manitoba) to fund their federally-funded social services. I wrote about it a long time ago.

The other day it occurred to me that Equalization imposes a political cost on Alberta in addition to the obvous economic costs. Because equalization artificially increases the standard of living in have-not provinces, and artificially depresses the standard of living in Alberta, it discourages internal migration from economically depressed areas to Alberta. Why move when the Federal Government will magically make money flow to you, just because you don't live in Alberta?

Why does that matter politically? Alberta's House of Commons representation is alloted by population, of course. Alberta currently has 28 seats. The have-not provinces (Manitoba plus the Maritimes) have 46 seats, some of which would probably shift to Alberta if it became necessary to move here in order to enjoy our stronger economy.

The next tier of have-nots includes Quebec. Since the number of MPs for Quebec is fixed by statute at 75, Quebec determines the ratio of citizens to MPs. So if Quebec's population started dropping because of internal emigration, all the other provinces would gain MPs, not just the province which gains citizens. (But the one which gains citizens would gain more MPs.) Possible gain: some of Saskatchewan's 14 MPs and unknown if the number of MPs increases because Quebec's population declines.

The prize goes to commentor "Jason" at the Belmont Club for this response to UBL's ultimatum: Nuts!

In other news, Osama is apparently alive. Too bad.

Mickey Kaus was talking about the "incumbent rule" which is basically that undecideds tend to break against the incumbent. Lots of nice analysis at the second link.

But something struck me about Mystery Pollster's table, so I sorted the table by the difference between Gallup's final projection and the actual result:

Gallup overpredicts an average of 2.8% for a Democratic incumbent but only 0.4% for a Republican incumbent. So is Bush actually hurt by the "incumbent rule"? Or is the "incumbent rule" only applicable to Democratic incumbents?

Best reason to vote I've heard in a while, for those of us living in a sewn-up state (such as California or Texas) -- your vote helps your guy with the overall popular vote count. Although this doesn't affect the actual election result, it might help prevent the premature aging of thousands of TV reporters' foreheads, since they won't have to add "..but lost the popular vote" for the next four years.

So maybe it's not a very good reason after all.

What I'm drinking lately:

Here's a review and here's some background.

I hate Fall. Nasty rotting smells in the air; shortening of days; the slow, zigzag but finally certain cooling off as the animals flee and land dies. In Finnish, two of the autumn months (October and November) are "Mud-Month" and "Death-Month".

Happy Mud-Month.

I'm fine, how are you?

Let me toss off a couple of quick links. Google's desktop search application finally gives me what I've been asking for for years: the ability to Google my hard drive. What took them so long?

Here's an interesting account by an American woman, a Jew, living in England. I say "interesting" because I don't want to say "depressing". Thankfully, I either don't hang around with the sort of people who would launch into personally directed anti-American tirades, or else they feel inhibited by me.

Here's a sort of a companion article from the Center for the Public Interest: A Genealogy of Anti-Americanism which makes the interesting point:

it [anti-Americanism] widely came to be thought of as a creation of communism that would vanish if ever communism should cease. The collapse of communism has served, on the contrary, to reveal the true depth and strength of anti-Americanism. Uncoupled from communism, which gave it a certain strength but also placed limits on its appeal, anti-Americanism has worked its way more than ever before into the mainstream of European thought.

Anti-Americanism: a foundational political philosophy, or just a tool?

Whatever.

I read Ishmael today. This book apparently came out in 1992, but I've been unaware of it until quite recently.

I guess you could technically call it a novel, but it's more of a polemic dressed up as a novel, starring a gorilla with projective telepathy. Really. It's ably summarized here.

Aside from some race-baiting, I found the book tolerably readable and posessed of a few worthwhile insights. But I'll have to leave that for another entry, because my battery is about to die and the baby is crying (my wife is out on her monthly book club night -- the book in question is Ishmael). More to come, perhaps.