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Mostrando postagens de janeiro, 2010

Understanding Government Spending

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In a conversation with Mirian, Thiago and Stella yesterday, we raised some questions about how the Canadian government spends money and how it gets in debt. This morning I have been trying to understand some of the secrets of government debt, how they invest in social programs and how they get the money for it. Well, I find out that this subject is not very simple to understand. Let's be patient. First things first, it is important to understand the difference between debt and deficit. Deficit is the difference, each fiscal year, between what was earned and what was spent. Debt, however, is whatever money any level of government owes internally or externally. To make it easier to understand, think of a household: a family with a yearly income of $80,000 dollars might spend, yearly, much less than that in food, health, taxes, clothing, etc. When this happens, they have a surplus (as opposed to a deficit). However, this family might have a mortgage of $240,000 dollars which they are

Brazil Part I - Teaching Theatre

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November comes, my IT contract ends and it's time to go to Brazil for a break from the weather, which is getting cold every day. That is what make me decide to spend 50 days in Brazil, after almost 7 years living in Montreal. Yeah, I had been back in this time, but always for short periods, for vacation basically. This time, I wanted to go have a taste again of what it is to live there. Could I go back eventually, to live there again? I was researching the answer for a question that people often ask me. Will I ever go back to live there? I signed up to volunteer in a orphanage, teaching theatre to the kids. That would give me work to fill my days in São Paulo. Moverover, I was preparing my application for a master's program in performing arts, and I wanted my project to have something to do with my home country. Nothing better than hands-on experience to inspire me to write a good application. Indeed I was right about getting inspiration: there are so many problems to write abo