Haiku Horoscopes

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’m going crazy! My husband and I are living up at a lake for the first summer after buying a beautiful new cabin. I thought it was going to be heaven, but it’s been hell for me.

I’m not retired, but I’m able to work at my office job remotely for the summer. The problem is, I’m already lonely and bored while my husband is out fishing. My man goes off in the boat with his buddies in the early morning, often for the whole day and the early evening, too. Now he says he’s “in fisherman’s heaven” with his retired buddies who go explore the many great angling lakes around us.

If it goes on all summer and into early fall, and I’ll be out of my mind by then. Most of the other guys’ wives stay back in the city now. They learned early on it’s a drag to be a fisherman’s “widow.”

I called my boss this morning after my husband left to go fishing. My manager says they’re really busy right now, and could use me there ASAP. Yay! I can come back to the office as soon as I want, but I feel guilty about leaving my husband alone. What should I do?

‘Amor mundi’, love of the world, is a basic tenet of Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of life and closely related to her idea of republican (i.e., democratic) politics. Currently, Western democracies have strayed far from the ideals stressed in this view.

Our leaders seem more preoccupied with self preservation and personal aggrandizement than public service, sometimes leaning heavily toward authoritarianism. Our supposed political priorities seem wildly out of whack with the public interest or good. “Contemptus mundi,” scorn for the world, appears to be winning. Democracies would benefit from an Arendtian rebirth of principles.

Key to Arendt’s ideas are the complex concepts of plurality, natality and action based on responsibility — the very premises upon which democracy is built. In their simplest forms, plurality means acknowledging that human reality rests on living respectfully with others. Natality implies that the uniqueness each new birth brings into the world offers hope for original beginnings and societal renewal. Action means political participation based on shared responsibility for making the world better.

By the world, Arendt envisaged the relationships formed by the interactions between people. The love she imagined is not self-serving, manipulative, abusive or exclusionary. Absent are the racial and gender discrimination, religious divisiveness, coercion and control that presently dot our political landscapes.

About $2,100. That’s how much Premier Wab Kinew’s bracket creep tax hike could cost your family by 2030, depending on how much you make.

Bracket creep is an income tax hike that happens when the government stops indexing tax brackets to inflation. That means that after getting a cost-of-living raise, taxpayers can be bumped into a new tax bracket and have their tax bill increased even though they can’t afford to buy more.

Think about it this way: A raise that only covers higher grocery prices isn’t a real raise. You’re not richer. Your cart costs the same. But the bigger number on your paycheque bumps you into a higher bracket. That means higher taxes on a paycheque that buys the exact same number of groceries as last year.

That’s why most provincial governments and the federal government adjust income tax brackets with inflation.