Not to mention that City of Toronto is being run by a retard. Didn't he wanted to take 100 million bucks out of city budget to invest in something?
Ah, John A. Macdonald, would you cry or laugh your ass off if you saw the state of Canadian politics today...

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quote:

Originally posted by chinamon not true. i say "ugh" but i am a tranny.

quote:

Originally posted by kotsy lol colour me retarded

MarkT: have a look at this study.

http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/backgrounder_100_english.pdf

To summarize: the more you give money to a govt, the worst the management gets.

Worst govts of Canada are Alberta and the Federal govt for being off target in both planned spendings and incomes.

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Originally posted by malek MarkT, the point is, I prefer managing my own money than send it to a govt that will throw it out of the window. The more money you give to a govt, the more they're gonna go overboard.

Agreed 100%! I would rather know where my money was going than give more to the government. I, for one, welcome the GST reduction.

Yohan: I'm surprised no one answered your question lol I'm sure a lot of libs would be screaming bloody murder if the Conservatives failed to come through with promises hahaha

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quote:

Originally posted by malek MarkT: have a look at this study. http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/backgrounder_100_english.pdf To summarize: the more you give money to a govt, the worst the management gets. Worst govts of Canada are Alberta and the Federal govt for being off target in both planned spendings and incomes.

hmmm...I quickly skimmed through the study and that doesn't seem to be the summary at all. In fact it doesn't even have anything to do with how much you give the gov't...so how did you extrapolate that conclusion

The summary is that gov'ts are poor forcasters with regard to both revenues and expenditures...and in times where there are unforseen revenues, they simply spend more instead of sticking to their spending targets.

It also says that as gov't grows, and certain programs grow (like health care), it becomes more difficult to forecast and account for revenues and expenses.

That's very different than suggesting the gov't is either inefficient or becomes more wasteful the more money you give it.

am I wrong or did I miss something?

I'm suggesting that the gov't should spend the 1% GST cut in the right way, rather than hand it back to the very people who think it's a great idea, but in the next breath bitch about the latest transit fare increase, rising tuition costs, rising property taxes and program cuts!

I'm suggesting that those who consume and spend the most on GST taxable items (the wealthy) don't need a fucking tax break...those are EXACTLY the people who do NOT need a tax break, lol.

think about it, folks. How much money did you spend this year on GST taxable items (i.e. not rent/mortgage, not tuition, not most groceries)? How much did you REALLY save with that 1% cut so far? How much will you really save with another 1%? More than what your NOT going to save with the TTC fare hike? a property tax increase? tuition increases? user fees for things the city can no longer afford to pay for.

the GST reduction, IMHO, is not the best things to do right now.

Last edited by MarkT on Oct-19-2007 at 01:00

Its easy to read a few sentences here and there, its much harder to connect the dots and put in context the findings of this study.

The two worst govt (Alberta by a huge margin, Federal in raw numbers) went overboard because both had incredible amounts of money coming in!


While the two best govt for being spot with their budgeting were Quebec and Newfoundland, two cash strapped provinces!

Don't you find this weird??

The richest govt, went way overboard with spendings, while the ones that barely made the year had almost no overspendings...

The more money you send to a govt, the more ways he'll find to waste it.

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The way I see it, sure on our roughly 25k-30k$ or so of annual spendings on gaz, food and clothing, 250$ will stay in my pockets.

If I was in the govt, I would have sent that 1% to the provinces for them to decide what to do with it! Some provinces need it, some others don't!

1% = 5 billions a year in Canada, thats a rough 1.2 Billion for Quebec, which would be well spent on roads/metro/bridges, etc.

But if Harper has no balls for doing such a noble thing, and is in need of political cred (people like a govt who lower taxes), then so be it, I will gladly accept that money and will be happy about it.

infrastructure > tax break > * > program spendings

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Originally posted by drgoodvibe I'm no bleeding heart liberal I just think strictly on fairness. Everyone should pay taxes the same in proportion to their income.

Except that's really not fair at all - it's punishing people for developing more skills and working harder. Only bleeding-heart liberals consider people to be victims of circumstance with no direct control over their income.

Having said that, I'm with you that he shouldn't be focusing so much on the GST. A GST cut forces people to spend their money in order to see any benefit, whereas an income tax cut would reward those with the discipline to save and invest their money. Unfortunately, income tax cuts are even less popular with the liberals, as they're perceived to "benefit the rich" even more than a GST cut (both untrue, it's the middle class that suffers the most under the current tax system). If you actually reason through it logically, it's easy to see why an income tax cut is better for the less affluent than a GST cut, but as a rule, we aren't dealing with a very logical body of voters.

Mark: I'm not bitching about tuition costs or program cuts. The TTC and property taxes are both the city's responsibility, not the Federal government's, and if people had a problem with those, they shouldn't have re-elected Miller. As far as I'm concerned, the TTC is complete shit and should be sold off to a private company.

Also, the more money you "give" a government, the bigger that government is, by definition, which is precisely the inefficiency the study was talking about. A higher budget means more staff to manage the budget, more people to calculate and collect taxes, more outsourced contracts, more people to manage and oversee the contracts, etc. As the headcount grows, so does the inefficiency; this is pretty basic economics, more heads means more specialization and more difficult communication, all of which interrupts the normal flow of business activity.

Add to that the fact the governments have no direct accountability (yeah, to the voters, sure, whatever) and you have staggering inefficiency with larger, big-budget governments.

I don't know what the "right way" is for the government to spend its money, but I definitely know what the wrong way to spend my money is: hand it over to someone who offers precisely zero ROI on it by spending it on products and services that are both poor in quality and don't generate enough revenue to cover their own costs.

The GST isn't "revenue". Harper is not "ditching" it by returning it to the people who did not pay it voluntarily. It's not the government's money, it's OUR money.

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Diginut says it all

Let's also remember there was no such thing as GST before Mulroney introduced it to make up for budget shortfalls, and which happened to be one of the election promises Cretin made to get elected but realized that Canada need that money from GST.

But now that we no longer need the GST as much, I welcome the GST cut.

Another thing the govt should concentrate on is to pay off some of the huge debt Canada has. The amount of money going towards interest payment is pretty damn sucky

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quote:

Originally posted by chinamon not true. i say "ugh" but i am a tranny.

quote:

Originally posted by kotsy lol colour me retarded

quote:

Originally posted by EvilTree Another thing the govt should concentrate on is to pay off some of the huge debt Canada has. The amount of money going towards interest payment is pretty damn sucky

Last I remember reading (a few years ago), over 30% of Canada's tax revenue went straight into debt interest payments.

I understand the nuances of cash flow and debt management, and there's nothing wrong with being in debt per se, but that number is too high. Next time you do your taxes or have them done, think about how over 10% of your income is paying for someone else's debt. If you made $50K last year, you spent $5000 on our national debt.

But that doesn't mean we need to raise taxes to pay it. There are so many other undeserving, inefficient, wasteful programs that the money could be siphoned from. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still several pork-barrel programs operating under the federal government's radar (or perhaps with their blessing, you never know).

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On this matter we differ, paying off the debt a this moment is not the best way to deal with our surpluses.

bah

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