More exactly, the most interesting gift was five boxes.

Each one is marked:

Five Seconds
Five Minutes
Five Hours
Five Days
Five Years

The idea is that these are boxes to put all your troubles in.

The Five Second box is the biggest. This is where you put a lot of problems. Someone wasn't nice to you. You got cut off in traffic. There was a loud noise. Most of your problems can go in this box, put away, and be forgotten.

The next is the Five Minute Box. It's pretty big too because it's got to hold all the things that you are putting off: notes to write, calls to answer, bulbs to change, laundry to pick up. All the things that are weighting you down and making you feel guilt because you're putting them off. Most of them only take about five minutes to fix.

The Five Hour box holds some serious problems: missed flights, lost stuff, burnt meals, headaches, complex conversations all go in this box.

And then that's just about it for troubles.

The Five Day box holds things you want to learn, to fix, to accomplish. A work week is five days. But so is a creative week and a holiday week. Learn to draw faces, learn the basics of an instrument, plant a garden... you can learn to weld and build a bicycle from scratch in five days in the right setting.  There are very few things you can't start, or stop, in five days.

In Five Years? You can change just about anything, even the world. Get a degree. Change careers. Write a book. Start a business. Build a body. Train to run marathons. Have a decent sized family. Walk around the world. Change the government. There's little a person can't do or change with five years.

So that's it. Done. A place for everything. All the clutter of all your troubles sorted. Now you can take the biggest box, the five second box, and throw it away. Right now. You don't need any of that stuff. Then get down to the five minute box and start chunking at it. It'll only take... five minutes.  Keep the five hour box handy 'cause that's where you put the regular stuff of life. And find a special place for the little five day and five year box, and keep them open where you can see them. These problems are actually all your opportunities and they will form the shape of things to come in 2016. It's going to be great. 

 
The idea is a system that trades students university education for service to the community.
 
I believe we should fuse together various existing NS programs, policies and strategies and add an innovative approach to form a branded plan for ‘total education’ of Nova Scotian's children. The idea echoes Kennedy's Peace Corps, an institution that still resonates with young people and helps make a better, more connected world 65 years after it was started.
 
The Nova Scotia Youth Corps (NSYC) would provide the region with valuable public works such as national and provincial public park maintenance, forestry (maintenance and fire-fighting), conservation management (erosion control projects), disaster response and recovery operations, public infrastructure improvement projects, organizing public events and festivals, beautification projects, security augmentation, public social programs (for seniors and vulnerable citizens), statistical projects (like an HRM tree inventory) and all kinds of administrative support to provincial and local governments.
 
Youth would "enlist" in the NSYC for 2-4 years, earning 30 days of annual leave and medical benefits during the period. Honorably-discharged NSYC "veterans" would earn college tuition assistance (1 year paid per 1 year served) and some experience could even count toward course credits.
 
To accomplish the potential of this organization we should draw on our greatest growing resource of the next 25 years. The greying pensioned workforce with their health, wealth and knowledge have so much left to contribute to Nova Scotia. We need to find structured systems to allow them the opportunity to help.
 
The NSYC idea is really just an organization and branding (a marketing aspect of the policy) of many and varied programs already in place. It would provide long-term investment in Nova Scotia's communities and help restore a sense of collective duty to the greater good to Nova Scotia that many older citizens who served in their youth contend is necessary for long-term cultural health and survival. The NSYC would help young people explore and discover Nova Scotia in a meaningful way, bringing rural kids to an urban setting and visa versa. Young people who’ve worked to build Nova Scotia and make it a better place will have a greater stake in the community.
 
This helps with:
 
1. Problems with university tuition, affordability and debt
2. Current high youth unemployment and future shortages in the workforce due to looming retirement of large numbers of baby-boomers.
3. Deterioration of civic understanding and involvement at the local and provincial level.
4. General workforce knowledge gap of government-industry capabilities and opportunities.
5. Keeping young people positively engaged. Reducing youth crime and vandalism.
6. Freeing up some of the economic burden of education costs that could then be redirected to retirement, savings, healthcare, etc.
7. Providing a systematic influx of young people with the energy and innovative ideas that are desperately needed within the government to affect change necessary in the 21st century.
8. Providing a catalyst to reinvigorate the sense of service and community at all levels, and have knowledge of government enabling them to capitalize on capabilities and opportunities along government-industry seam.
9. Develop the ‘stake’ and investment young people have in their home communities.
10. Breaking down the urban/rural divide through a sense of One Nova Scotia
11. Getting things done. Undertaking important projects (like beautification) that might not otherwise be prioritized.
 
As a bonus, Nova Scotia could send the best of the best NSYC volunteers on international missions to help in foreign countries during disasters or humanitarian crisis, thereby expanding our awareness and knowledge of the world and creating a new sense of pride in our abilities while also promoting Nova Scotia’s friendly, helpful style on the world stage better than any bureaucratic tourism or marketing program.
 

In 2016 I'll be listing and discussing some BFI's (Big F$%^king Ideas) to help improve Nova Scotia and concern ourselves with the shape of things to come. I'm planning to post about one a week and collecting 52 ideas. I'll make some appointments and pitch the ones that get the most interest to key players in government and the political parties. That said, I don't think the answer is in government - I think it's in the power of the idea itself.

I'll also be posting a cumulative reading list that vamps simpatico with these ideas. Generally, I'm interested in geopolitics, economics, story, ideas, argument, beauty and self-improvement. I also like the idea of being mechanically minded and technology with user serviceable parts inside.

Nova Scotia could be first in making major economic development, social, ecological and government/bureaucratic breakthroughs. These are ideas for today, 2016 and beyond. Here's a preview of what I'm working on...

1. Tax Credits for Kickstart
2. Equity in Kickstart
3. Nova Scotia Youth Corps
4. Elders in Education - Sharing the welath of Knowledge in NS
5. Tiny Houses and Tiny Communities - No rules under 800 Square Feet
6. Government should start a competing power company.
7. Tax the banks based on net NS deposits
8. Online resources – Wikipedia for Nova Scotia that parents can share with children on: Critical Thinking, looking after the planet, esthetic experience, work/business, how not to be racist, history of Nova Scotia, Warden of the North and its institutions
9. The Pre-amble: A sort of set up for all discussions of politics, policy and the shape of things to come in Nova Scotia. We live in a golden age, we love our friends home and family, we know what a rational argument is, we care about ideas not names, positions or parties, Nova Scotia is among the safest, healthiest, cleanest, happiest, comfortable, stuff-filled and richest countries and the whole history of countries and riches. And a classic reminder that almost all lines are curves.
10. Free broadband wifi access everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
11. Asking tourist to come and help… to work… to improve Nova Scotia and actually make the kind of place people would want to visit. They can bring their trucks and tools too.
12. Letting the rural roads go back to dirt. Offering a genuine backroad experience in a world where it’s really hard to get off the beaten path.
13. Allow and encourage Air b’n’b without regulation, tax or impediment
14. A “Visitors Welcome” system where people can stay on farms to eat and take part in whatever is going on without regulation.
15. A lobster diving season where scuba divers can catch their own with the help of local fishermen.
16. Being allowed to sleep and camp on beaches.
17. Allow squatting on crown land.
18. Allow free anchorage in Bedford basin for any boat/ship any time.
19. Reopen the Shubie canal
20. Allow people to pan and dig for gold in real gold producing areas and keep whatever they find without tax or tariff.
21. Put an end to "Payday Loan" companies that prey on the working poor.
22. Focus on well-being not growth
    The recognition that countries have not grown happier as they have gotten richer has caused many to question the idea of "growth for the sake of growth." In fact, our dogged pursuit of economic growth has undermined our ability to use natural resources sustainably, as well as the resilience and prosperity of communities across the globe. In the words of Paul Hawken, "We have an economy where we steal from the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP."
23. Create a Public Bank with a Local Development Mandate
     Investment and finance are key to any successful jobs strategy. Yet, though credit unions play a vital role in economic development, we are otherwise overly reliant on the big private banks for investment finance. Meanwhile in Germany, a widespread network of publicly owned banks has been crucial to the phenomenal growth of that country since World War II. Known as the 'Sparkassen' and 'Landesbanks', these banks are owned by municipalities, states and the federal government. And in similarly economically successful North Dakota and Alberta, publicly owned banks with a mandate to support local businesses (the Bank of North Dakota and the Alberta Treasury Branch) have supported local job creation since the 1930s. Building on those precedents, we should establish a public Bank with a local development mandate and empower municipalities to establish their own publicly owned banks.
24. Guarantee a Basic Income
    How come some of the most important jobs in our economy don't get a pay cheque? The unpaid work we do raising children, volunteering and caring for elders sustains our families and communities.
    Demanding a Basic Income Guarantee for everyone would ensure this unpaid work gets the value it deserves. Residents would receive a bare-essentials income no matter what kind of work they do. Other work would be paid in addition to this income. A Basic Income Guarantee could be funded through restructuring existing programs and through higher but fairer taxes, especially from the rich.
    A Basic Income Guarantee would also help us improve the quality of paid jobs in the economy. When leaving a bad job no longer carries the threat of financial ruin, employers would have to provide better working conditions to retain staff. For unions, the Basic Income Guarantee would serve as a baseline strike fund so workers can fight for a fair deal.
    Having basic financial security would free people up to build an economy that works for them, rather than being stuck in an economy that disproportionately benefits the rich. People would have greater freedom to create their own jobs in co-ops, social enterprises and voluntary associations, shifting to a more democratic economy in the process.
25. Establish a provincial value-add innovation fund. 
    To provide needed start-up capital for regional manufacturing co-operatives proposing to add value to natural resources. The co-operative model such a fund would incentivize is one that is well positioned to leverage skills available locally and provide viable opportunities for economic development in rural communities struggling with the loss of forestry jobs. We sorely needs a value-add strategy for our natural resources sectors: it's the 21st century yet we ship our resources raw like it's still the 19th century.
26. Invest in mass-transit infrastructure across the province, including improved rail infrastructure between our major population centres and improved linkages to East Coast US. Investing in transit build-out can create between three and eight times the numbers of jobs created by building more highways.
27. Create a new urban-rural economic development initiative or Ministry to better connect existing and emerging jobs in the knowledge economy, and the skills and finance of our urban centres, to our smaller population centres. The opportunities to share ideas and cross-pollinate would spur innovation in rural regions and communities (and vice versa) in partnership with the various Community Futures offices and municipalities.
28. Implement a Youth Guarantee
    Youth unemployment is a major problem in Canada and in NS. Rates of youth unemployment today remain significantly higher than pre-recession levels and youth currently fare much worse in unemployment terms, than those above 25. The need to address youth unemployment is heightened by its high impacts; unemployment at the start of a career correlates with lower career earnings. Research shows that even without personally experiencing unemployment, individuals who graduate during periods of high youth unemployment have smaller starting salaries and lower lifetime earnings than those who graduate in better economic times.
    A youth guarantee is a European policy solution that could help NS tackle this problem. It is an umbrella of programs designed around a very basic idea: within a short period of becoming unemployed—say four or six months—every unemployed young person should be offered (guaranteed) either a subsidized job placement, more education, an apprenticeship or a skills training placement. Several European countries have adopted this approach with good results and the EU has recently committed €6 billion in multi-year funding for a Europe-wide youth guarantee.
    A made-in-NS youth guarantee would open the doors to good jobs for more youth through providing valuable work experience or training.
29. Avoid Groupthink by Looking at the Data
    There are no silver bullets for jump-starting a slow economy, but there are many practical job creation ideas that would work in NS.
    To get to the good stuff, the really powerful, game-changing ideas, we must first shed the shackles of the dogma that has dominated the past forty years. Both conservative and progressive thinkers took the same economics and politics courses in college, scarring them for life. Theories forged from limited hard data—but much ideology—have been given the status of immutable principles not to be transgressed.
    Good jobs will come from eschewing pre-conceived notions that get in the way of taking a hard, sober look at what has been working (and not working) on the ground all over the world. NS will have to learn what effective government really means. Progressives will have to respect what it takes to incentivize private capital to deploy resources.
    My idea for good jobs? Double-down. Use the dogma-busting evidence, unavailable in 1974, but free to all of us in 2014. And do it without a set of ideological blinders.
    And we do, in fact, need to take a closer look at what is happening around the world, and not just in our own minds and backyards. NS is a huge underachiever as a result of the smugness and insularity that an economy based primarily on resource-extraction has allowed. There is hard work to be done in looking up and looking outwards.
30. Leadocracy -  The number one problem in our province today is broken government. Government is on the wrong path and that path is marked by a sign that says BUREAUCRACY. We need more small L leaders and Leadocracy is a plan for identifying them and getting them to work.
31. Prosperity
    250 years ago moral and political philosophers began a revolution by thinking about prosperity. From that thinking grew the democratic age, liberty, and equality – the modern age. The notion was that prosperity is a certain maximized mix of health, wealth and happiness for all. Though happiness has proved to be an elusive and difficult to improve, or even prove, concept, we all agree it exists. We’ve come fantastic distances in creating a world where good health is commonplace. However, most of our effort and success has come by creating new wealth.
     
    Where does new wealth come from? Where does it go? What is our public wealth and why is it important?
32. Education
     
    Democratic change is a long game. There are no quick fixes. There are no easy ways. There are no big box, one-size-fits-all solutions. We are not alone in experiencing these problems and there is nothing new under the sun. History and the experience of other communities shows clearly the path forward is long and wide.
     
    In the long run there is only one solution to every social and economic problem – education.
33. Talk about beauty - Protecting and enhancing Nova Scotia’s beauty
34. The Math Problem
35. Stop Bottom Dragging Trawlers
36. Transit Oriented Development
37. Tourism, call centres, development, conventions and immigrants are not the answer
38. Insurance for all
39. Small business culture
40. Money Management for the masses
41. Tie Minimum Wage to the Cost of Living
42. A broadcaster for Nova Scotia
43. NS Produce and Distribution Network
44. The Coast (line) is clear
45. No Citizen Left Behind
46. SOS – Save Our Shipwrecks
47. Cities – unamalgamated and human sized
48. Education and Purpose in Life
49. Seeking Prosperity
50. The four things you can do with Money
51. The four places wealth comes from
52. An Optimal Currency Zone - lessons from the European Union
    
53. Anti-covert propaganda legislation - each time a politician makes a statemetn he/she must make clear whether they are stating their own personal beliefs or government or party propaganda which they have been directed to impart in a specific way. This will help bring stifling party politics into check and help voter citizen make better choices about who and how they want to be represented.
    
54. Stop spending on things like tourism promotion, In the digital social age it's wasted money, and is only spent to appease powerful supporters not do anything for actual customers.
    
    

New Nova Scotia proposal suggests film industry type labour-based refundable corporate tax credit system for a wide variety of start-up, creative, cultural and social businesses.

Crowdfunding has quickly moved from trendy buzzword to a mainstream fundraising model. In less than ten years, Kickstarter has attracted more than ten million contributors pledging over $2 billion, funding more than 100,000 individual projects. Rival fundraising platform Indiegogo can boast of a campaign that single-handedly generated $12 million in pledges. Numbers like these make crowdfunding an attractive option for first-time entrepreneurs and established businesses alike.

But even with tools like this available to creators; business starters and job creators in Nova Scotia are still at a deep disadvantage. Our communities have been drained of capital. Networking opportunities to connect with people who have knowledge, experiences, connections, assets and capital are rare because there is simply very few of those people and things within a thousand miles of Nova Scotia. Worse, supply lines, scenes, mentors, talent and all the things that inspire business success are almost as rare as debt and equity financing. Almost. Nova Scotia, like all rural regions has been nearly sucked dry of our natural resource created wealth. Our productivity, a measure of how well capital is employed in an economy, is less than 75% of the Canadian average, which in turn is only 75% of US productivity. 

We are at a deep geopolitical and productivity disadvantage. Even as the US exchange rate tips the scales heavily in favour of Canadian business, it does not make up for the more than 40% productivity disadvantage and the geopolitical disadvantages. When US money does come to Canada it's coming to Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal and we have no currency advantage over those competitors.

But there is a way! A proven strategy that is egalitarian, accessible, easy to administrate, accountable and effective. It can improve capital investment and start-ups by an order of magnitude within one year and  double that within ten. It's a strategy created right here in Nova Scotia, proven to work in creative industries and copied Federally, by other provinces and states, and countries the world over. We are experts at administrating it.

Labour-based Refundable Corporate Tax Credits. 

Applying the Tax Credit strategy, the unlikely Nova Scotia-made economic development success story of the last 20 years, that created and grew the film and TV industry in Nova Scotia can be used to attract and grow Kickstarter-based business start-ups in, and to, Nova Scotia. If we act quickly we can become the Kickstarter capital of Canada within two years. The goal in the first year would simply be to 'punch our weight' in the Canadian start-up market place. To do that we'd have to increase our business ten fold. An attainable, measurable goal.

The idea is simply this: Successful Kickstarter campaigns, meaning projects that have successfully raised their financing, produced their product, whatever it is, and reported their business results as an incorporated Nova Scotia company with intellectual property rights owned majority by Nova Scotians (defined as people who pay taxes in Nova Scotia), are eligible to receive a labour-based tax credit up to 50% of their Nova Scotia labour expenditure or 25% of their total Kickstarter financing, whichever is less.

The Tax Credit system has many favourable features and advantages over poor performing and ill-defined  economic development strategies.

• Attracts capital to Nova Scotia
• Creates new, interesting jobs, skills, knowledge and culture
• Crosses over among many traditional and emerging industries
• Outlet for Nova Scotian talent and ideas
• Attracts youth and talent across the widest range of disciplines and opportunities
• Broadly flexible and adaptable to challenging and changing business environment
• Available to anyone who successfully executes a new business start-up
• Leverages start up efforts, capital raising, presales and development of the widest range of start-up businesses
• Encourages reporting Kickstarter income (which CRA classifies as income)
• Encourages incorporating and reporting small businesses early on
• Encourages engaging Nova Scotia labour and expenditure
• Gives NS creators an even playing field with Canada and the world
• Draws attention to NS projects
• Encourages people with great Kickstarter campaigns to move to Nova Scotia
• Kickstarter provides a simple audit trail for accountability - only proven successful projects qualify.
• Helps replace lost film, TV and creative industry infrastructure
• Helps track and inspire start-up and creative activity in Nova Scotia
• Helps cutback bureaucracy and old timey, 'pick-a-winner'-style crony capitalist economic development strategies that discourage deserving potentially successful project that don't fit narrow government ideas.
• Able to direct enterprise to rural regions and encourage rural/urban partnership
• Creates a substantial incentive to create.

Kickstarter by the numbers https://www.kickstarter.com/year/2014/data?ref=yir2014