The government of Ontario recently confirmed its intention to send each taxpayer a $200 refund cheque early next year. It’s probably safe to assume, with this comment, that the editorial board of the Globe and Mail aren’t looking forward to spending that on alcohol at their respective corner stores:

…a true fiscally conservative government would at least ensure that it eliminated its budget deficit before handing out billions of dollars in electoral bribes.

According to some back-of-the-napkin fiscal responsibility from the Frasier Institute Blog, Ontario’s debt will rise by $21 billion this year to $429 billion. The rebate scheme will cost $3 billion. Like the kids say: that math’s not math-ing.

Speaking of leadership, here’s former US Navy admiral William McRaven in the Wall Street Journal reflecting on civility and the week ahead:

Being a person of good character matters. Doing what is right matters because when a leader exhibits honor, integrity and decency, it instills those qualities in the culture of the institution and in the next generation of leaders.

To quote a former president: Don’t boo. Vote.

Here’s a passage that I enjoyed from Anil Gomes’s review of Daniel Dennett’s memoir, I’ve Been Thinking (2023), in the London Review of Books:

Dennett’s stories have a dialogical function: they’re a way to get you to see the truth, but not by means of argument. This also explains the variety of intuition pumps one finds in his writings. Some philosophers offer multiple arguments for a view, as if stacking them up somehow made for a more convincing case. But if you have just one good argument, nothing more is necessary; and if your arguments are bad, it doesn’t matter if they are one or many. Stories, by contrast, can strike different people at different times in different ways.