This quote is for all you uneducated left-wing cookoo's. Tax cuts have a huge impact on the economy.

Good article though - I believe that Harper is poised to start implementing creative tax strategies. They may be small, but certainly in the right direction.

Absolutely agree with this quote; business corporate interests and capital, not to mention estates, are getting a free ride. It's time they started paying their share of tax.
Capitalists have been getting all the incentive and paying far less than their share for too long; it's had a terrible impact on the way the economy works for 95% of the population. Unfortunately, Harper is going to make things worse.

Too bad capitalism / maybelle doesn't get it.

'it's' should be 'its' - sorry

Interesting tie in to spice up a topic that makes most peoples eyes glaze over.To me the key point made was" tax shift".Shifting taxation onto pollution and resource use is our ONLY long term hope of true sustainablity.Modern accounting practices may measure a price,but not the TRUE cost.Environmental issues need not to be viewed on a left or right basis.Memo to Capitalism:There is tons of money to be made by going green.

G West:

I finally did my taxes yesterday, and today I don't have time for your crap. You should be kissing me feet for the contributions I have made this year - both charitable and through direct taxes. Like I said, my rates may have gone down, but my taxes have increased every year. So what if my net has increased. We are still paying to much.

Dunngy:

Agreed. I am very sensitive to the environment. Excessive polluters should be taxed, and we should increase the R&D tax credit for environmentally friendly initiatives.

We should certainly explore the use of wind energy and ethanol. I have a good friend in the petroleum industry, who suggests that the production of ethanol is not good for the environment as it requires refining. However, it does lessen our dependence on the Middle East, and could provide more jobs at home.

The only way to achieve sustainability is to provide incentives to corporations for development. Initiating large-scale government controlled spending programs is NOT the answer. Far too many special interests involved.

Capitalism/maybelle
If you're paying more tax this year it's because you're making a more money. That's true even if you are at the highest marginal rate of tax. As a capitalist I'm sure you are taking advantage of every tax avoidance method in the book - things which aren't available, for the most part, to people who work for wages.
Cry me a river - your special interests have had it too good for too long and it's time for a change.

Yes - I am making more money, but I can tell you I am not "rich".

I am taking advantage of everything I can, and have even consulted with a specialist. There are only so many loop-holes!

It is because of those tax cuts that I am making more money, and ALAS, I am paying more taxes! See how wonderful the cycle works!

Thankfully, we have a government that is dedicated to tax reduction. Let's make sure these guys get their mandate. We are paying far too much!

PS - G West - you have to be a little glad that Emerson crossed the floor. Without him, we wouldn't have this Asia Gateway project, or Softwood Lumber.

Like I originally said, he is a liar, but his move will benefit British Columbians immenselely. Unless, you don't call getting $4B in monies returned, elimination of duties and $500M for roads, railways and pipelines a benefit....

Zane Parker and Donna Morton wrote:

...if we want fewer cars on the road, we can implement congestion charges.

Yes, yes. Absolutely. One of the simplest ways to do this would be to offer distinctively-coloured license plates that allow drivers to get a substantial insurance discount if they ONLY drive during off-peak hours except for medical emergencies. That straightforward step would prevent a huge amount of congestion-related pollution while simultaneously saving billions of dollars in road/bridge upgrades.

Another thing we really need to do is to remove local road costs from property taxes and add them to fuel taxes. Under the current system, when people do the responsible thing by working close to where they live despite a slightly smaller paycheque in some cases, they wind-up heavily subsidizing those who choose to work much further away for the sake of a slightly larger paycheque. The person with the smaller paycheque is heavily subsidizing the person with the bigger paycheque.

Salespeople often drive a lot. They are usually the loudest complainers when there is talk of making long-distance drivers pay more for their heavier use of roads and higher insurance risk. But as of several years ago, the average incomes of marketing and sales people surpassed average incomes of doctors and lawyers! These people can well-afford to buy hybrid vehicles to reduce their automobile costs to compensate for higher distance-related costs and congestion charges.

Zane Parker and Donna Morton wrote:

Taxes that we could feel good about

A former electronics industry worker I know took a night school course in accounting then landed a job in the federal tax department collecting GST. He said he made twice as much money collecting GST as he made working in electronics. He said they were looking to hire lots more people to administer the GST system. He suggested that I should follow his lead, take an accounting course, quit electronics and work with him doing GST paperwork.

I replied that I'd rather eat out of garbage cans before I'd consider working as a GST collector. That comment didn't go over very well. Perhaps it was too blunt. But in retrospect, I still feel the same way. Regardless of how much a GST collection job pays, I'm not interested in being the evil Sheriff of Nottingham stealing from the poor with GST so the government can give billions of dollars in subsidies to rich SUV manufacturers, oil companies, and tobacco growers.

On the other hand, if the tax-everything-in-sight GST system moves to a rational tax-shifting approach, people would have every reason to be very to proud to work in such a system.

Government bureaucrats who work in a tax-shifting system that dissuades health-destroying pollution can be viewed as a vitally important part of our health care system. Government bureaucrats who administer tobacco taxes have clearly saved more lives than all the hospitals and oncologists put together. The same concept can apply to other areas of tax-shifting.

Cycling Commuter:

I think that this is a good idea. However, this will not reduce congestion significantly. We have busy lives, and people pay for convenience. The truth is that 95% of the population does not live on a rapid transit line. Nor is transit inexpensive these days.

Just because you choose to live an urban lifestyle, close to work, doesn't mean everybody else who doesn't should get punished.

Air quality (with exception for the Valley) is pretty good in the GVRD. Our real problems lie outside of Canada - China, India and the developing world. They are driving global warming. It is up to the developed world to take the lead, and the answer does not lie with Kyoto.

We should impose duties and levees on our trading partners that do no comply with more stringent environmental policies. This is a form of taxation, as imported goods would become more expensive.

China would see a decrease in exports, and ultimately increase their standards.

Could one of you clever people out there explain how a 1% cut in the gst helps joe sixpack as opposed to guiseppe ferrari?

Well, jesterdogger.

Assume joe sixpack spends $20K/year. That is $200 in savings. Not much, but a start. It also increases retail activity, which helps the economy and wages.

When you couple this with other initiatives, you start to notice a more significant increase.

Harper is not out to change the world. He is out to implement a number of smaller changes, that add up to a big change. There is something in the proposed budget that will help everybody. From Canada's lowest earners to Canada's highest earners.

A GST cut is the only tax cut that helps the poor - because it is the only tax they actually pay. Assuming they spend $10K per year. That is $100 in savings, plus transit deductions.

In fact, I believe this series of tax cuts will help the poor more than any other. The rich don't ride transit.

Capitalism
Glad that Emerson/Harper have let the Americans rip off one billion Canadian dollars....you must be kidding!

Let's look at things logically. If a family is near the poverty line, the majority of their income is spent on food and children's clothing - both of which are GST-exempt. Evidentally Mr. Harper's GST cut never considered this.

Further, said people receive a quarterly GST refund - how will this be affected? Once again, never mentioned by Mr. Harper.

On the whole, this article is sadly misguided. By taxing the very cornerstones of our economy, we will all be stifled. And please don't come out with the "we need to drastically change our economy" argument - that's easy for an armchair-socialist to say, but for those of us in the real world, we need our jobs.

I for one am a fan of lower income taxes and higher excise taxes, providing a back-door tax on the black market. See, criminals don't pay income tax, but they do buy consumption goods with the avails of their toil; therefore, higher sales tax will at least capture some of the lost tax revenue.

But I digress. GST good, Harper bad, and let's kill the environment together!

Harper is out to change Canada bigtime Maybelle.
He plans a mean spirited neo-liberal revolution nationally a la New Zealand or provincially Gordo, Mike Harris..etc.

We wouldn`t have Softwood Lumber without Emerson? He invented the trees?
This deal was done by the previous Liberal Government.. the neo-cons waited to make our compradors look good..hopefully Canadians are wise enough to see through this scam.
Will the good paying jobs come back? Not bloody likely.
Asia Gateway? Who hasn`t had some kind of Asia Gateway..Bill Bennet..Harcourt..Asia Gateway my arse.

Capitalism wrote:

increase the R&D tax credit for environmentally friendly initiatives.

I've worked in corporate R&D for years. R&D can be part of the solution. But there's no point in designing better ways of doing things if there are no incentives to convince the public to shift over to the better ways of doing things.

Instead of spending billions of dollars damming more valleys and destroying more salmon to generate more electricity, it would be better to invest a fraction of that to use currently available electricity more efficiently.

For example, a substantial amount of electricity is used for air conditioning of buildings. Buildings can be cooled with 90 percent less electricity by simply blowing air through underground pipes. Rooftop photovoltiac panels can power the fans in many cases because peak solar electricity is available exactly when you need it for cooling. Summer heat stored underground can be used to heat the building in winter. See a couple of examples at http://www.solarthermal.com/Gallery/Pages/120_Josephs_ID.pdf (A Victoria company was central to this project) and http://www.greenershelter.com/index.php?pg=2 (scroll-down to view detailed diagram).

Even though investing a billion dollars in energy-conservation technologies makes more Gigawatt Hours of electricity available than spending the same billion dollars generating more electricity, there are all kinds of weird tax disincentives and other disincentives in place. When you invest upfront capital to make a building ten times more energy efficient, your building is now worth more and you'll pay higher property taxes. If you invested exactly the same amount of capital into financing a nuclear power plant or a coal mine, you'd get all kinds of tax breaks. This is completely insane. A rational approach would be to exempt energy-saving building features from property taxes and compensate for this by giving municipalities the money that is currently wasted on subsidies for nuclear power, coal, SUV factories, etc.

Efforts need to be made by CMHC and others to enable building owners to do more to roll energy-saving technologies into the basic mortgage to be amortized over the life of the house at a low interest rate. When a nuclear power plant or hydro dam is built, the amortization period often runs into many decades. If nuclear power plants had to carry liability insurance, they would never pay for themselves in a million years. If hydro cost calculations took into account salmon kills and the health/environmental costs of constantly spraying massive amounts of chemical herbicides under thousands of km of transmission tower right of ways, hydro costs would take a lot longer to amortize too.

klootzak,

i may be wrong, and i must be very fortunate if I do not know the answer to this - but it was my understanding the food and childrens clothing were PST exempt.

Not all food at that, only certain groceries. Can anybody clarify?

G West,

You have obviously never had a business activity tied up in the courts. Believe me when I say it is horrible, you are absolutely hand-cuffed. I could only imagine things in the American courts.

They say that we have spent $200M+ on legal costs. It is true that $1B was effectively stolen from us, but consider the alternative.

5-10 more years of this - in the age of the appreciating dollar. Look at Canfor's latest press release, the dollar is severely impacting their operations. Atleast, we can move forward without the duties.

Also, a large amount of the $1B will be spent on North American marketing initiatives.

Not perfect, but consider the alternative. 5 more years of uncertainty, rising legal costs and continued friction.

G West - start thinking with your brain - start thinking like a businessman.

Mr. Cat

Agreed - and thankfully so! There are many in this country which would prefer us follow the Germans, French and Dutch than the Aussies, Yanks and Brits. We have to take a leading position in the world, economically and socially.

What I was referring to was there is no individual earth-shattering movement here. What he is doing is encouraging choice and self-reliance as opposed to the culture of entitlement that currently exists and is holding us back!

Capitalism,

Indeed, "essential" food items are GST exempt, as are childrens clothes. Note that if you go to Tim Hortons and buy 1 donut, it's taxed, but if you buy 6? Not taxed. A family back of "essential" goodness, I suppose.

So, if poor people don't pay much GST in the first place due to these exemptions, a GST-cut is really not helping them at all.

I agree with Klootzak.

The GST is my favorite tax, and I believe it to be the fairest and most progressive.

Here's evidence: I am a T-4 hostage, like most Canadians, and aside from RRSP deductions, cannot avoid income taxes. My buddy is an independent contractor (in his business, one can choose to be so; I teach high school, so this choice is not available to me.). His accountant manages to turn $120,000 in annual income into $35,000 in declared income. And this is done without cheating!

It is simple, really. All the tricks begin with "D":

1) Deduct
2) Defer
3) Divide (His spouse is on the payroll, even though she does very little.)
4) Dividends (His kids are shareholders, and therefore enjoy a stream of income into legal trusts that are used for purchasing bicycles, piano lessons, birthday presents, and even family vacations in Disneyland)

Let's get real. He pays income tax as if he was a T-4 guy earning $35,000, but he pays sales taxes like a guy earning $120,000, which is, of course, his actual income.

Think about it: a T-4 guy earning half as much pays more in overall taxes.

To be fair, I enjoy a few tax breaks that deserve mention: the capital gains on my home are non-taxable, most of my investments are tax sheltered, and I can defer the capital gains on my cottage forever.

But dammit, when I haul my kids off to Disneyland or write a cheque to their violin teacher, I have to use after tax dollars.

In my utopia, the GST would be more like 15%, and income taxes would be slashed to compensate.

And I'm not proposing anything radical. All European countries have GST-like taxes of between 14 - 24 %.

Harper went in the wrong direction, I'm afraid.

To be fair

The air is thick with Conservative talking points in here. The Tories must have all their lapdogs on-line and burning up the Internet with pre-budget spin.

Davey-boy

You have your finger on the problem, but not the solution. Tax policy needs to treat all sources of income equally. It shouldn't give capital gains a 50% holiday, involve dividend tax credits, or permit deferrals and depletion allowances for companies who are busy extracting public resources and selling them overseas. Tax Capital when it's passed from one generation to the next too - otherwise we never get out of the rich get richer spiral. Bring in some real competition; stop making funds available to businesses unless they are doing something productive. The amount of borrowed capital used to purchase existing businesses for tax losses needs to be stopped.

Start taxing more fairly and equitably and the need for consumption taxes might even disappear except as a way to induce certain kinds of behavior (discourage smoking, alcoholism, gas guzzling etc.) Proceeds of gambling should also be taxed, imo - that's one of the few things the Americans have right.

Cycling Commuter wrote:

distinctively-coloured license plates that allow drivers to get a substantial insurance discount if they ONLY drive during off-peak hours

Capitalism responded:

this will not reduce congestion significantly.

Depends on what you mean by significant. There are a lot of retired people, domestic workers etc. who largely use cars for shopping trips. An appropriate incentive can motivate them to do their shopping on weekends and before or after the late afternoon crush during weekdays. Keeping these people off the roads during peak hours would likely reduce congestion by at least 10 percent. That's a fairly significant amount. Do four more similar things, and you'd see a 50 percent drop in total congestion.

In jurisdictions where pay-as-you-drive insurance has been offered as an option, overall traffic has dropped by up to 30 percent. Note that pay-as-you-drive insurance can be combined with congestion charges and other strategies for a total reduction exceeding 30 percent.

We have busy lives, and people pay for convenience.

A once-per-year $500 break for off-peak-only auto insurance looks more attractive than a savings of $2 per day even though the total savings is less. A lot of people are not very good at arithmetic. I once did telephone tech support for a government bureaucrat with a university degree who was in charge of a $4 million per year budget. At one point, I suspected their computer problems were attributable to a lack of hard drive space. I asked "How much hard drive space is remaining." They replied "40." I said "40 what? 40 thousand bytes? 40 megabtytes? 40 gigabytes?" They replied "I don't know. I'm not very good at math. I'm not sure how many zeroes there are in a thousand compared to a million." Again, this individual was in charge of a 4 million dollar per year budget.

95% of the population does not live on a rapid transit line.

True enough. We need other options such as plug-in hybrid work vehicles. Roofers can't be expected to carry their ladders on public transit. That would make some great Laurel & Hardy type humour for bystanders, but it wouldn't be quite so funny to those in the midst of the pandemonium.

Instead of trying to force everyone into the same public transit pigeonhole, we need to acknowledge that different people have different needs at different times. Pay-as-you-drive insurance can address this by allowing people to insure several vehicles of different sizes and types without penalty. The appropriate vehicle can then be used for the appropriate purpose. A mini electric car such as the Twike ( http://www.twike.ca ) can be used to drive to the shopping mall or nearby workplace and hybrid SUVs can be used for weekend camping trips - which is mostly what they were designed for to begin with.

Stump

Right On! I forgot about the budget comin` down.

Maybelle

Mr. Kapitalism
There are many in this country who don`t wish to FOLLOW anyone...especially Bush/Blair/Howard.

Your tax cuts will temporarily heat up certain sectors of the economy no doubt... eventually producing a burning barn that you and your privateers can then run back into.

klootzak wrote:

we need our jobs.

Ten billion dollars invested in building energy-efficient homes such as the ones illustrated at http://www.solarthermal.com/Gallery/Pages/120_Josephs_ID.pdf and http://www.greenershelter.com/index.php?pg=2 (scroll-down to see picture) will create a lot more jobs than spending the same ten billion building nuclear reactors, damming fertile valleys and mining coal. The ten billion dollars will be amortized a lot faster, and there will be no ongoing costs for constantly spraying huge amounts of carcinogenic herbicides under hydro transmission lines.

Capitalism wrote:

We should impose duties and levees on our trading partners that do no comply with more stringent environmental policies.

Yes, we definitely need to do that for our sake and for the sake of people in China. Mercury dumped into the environment by Chinese factories and Chinese coal-fueled power plants will get into our food and water eventually, but it hurts Chinese people immediately.

It would be good to provide an exemption for specific Chinese businesses that do a proper job of pollution control since this will be a better motivation for other businesses to catch up compared to a collective punishment approach that doesn't provide a swift and sure escape mechanism for each business. Keeping track of individual businesses is extra work, but evaluation costs can be reduced by sharing the evaluation task with the EU and other countries the way it has been done in the fairly successful dolphin-safe tuna fishing campaign.

We should impose duties and levees on our trading partners that do no comply with more stringent environmental policies.

Could very well be ruled offside by WTO rules. Remember the gasoline additives case.

taxation and economics needs a new paradign to live in. Everything that Mr. Capitalism - and many others - have mentioned still lives in the trickle-down economics world. Cut taxes to the overburdened rich and they will spend spend spend trickling their bounty down to the downtrodden proles. please! boring! been goiing on sice the renaissance.

As for worrying about losing jobs in an environmetally-based economy. yes some jobs will diminish, but many will be created - and not just mc jobs. This is where my great frustration with big corps lies when I hear them moan that they'll lose so much $$$ changing over to more environmetally sound practices. The Government will give them kickbacks - in front or behind our backs - and in the not-so-long run their operating costs will be considerably lower wherein they'll be ahead of the game again anyway... nevermind the job creation and investment market dynamics created by all the R&D and production of new products / materials / services to retrofit existing companies and consumers' lives.

Summing up: our tax system needs to more adequately reflect the direction society is moving. That direction is not trickling down.

Contrary to belief there is no simple formula where low taxes equals higher standard of living.

Anyone can google the tax rate of Mexico for example and then ask yourself why Mexico isn't a rich country with those low taxes. Or look at the low rates of Pakistan, the Phillipines, Taiwan etc.

Low taxes do not create wealth. If they did the 3rd world would be ahead of the 1st world in terms of development and standard of living by now.

If one cares to look at the countries that rank the best on the Human Development Index or those with the best measured standards of living you will very rarely find a low tax jurisdiction. In fact, you will tend to find jurisdictions that tax above the international average.

Not only that Frank, the insane policy of using tax rollbacks to try and stimulate the economy has created, in the US, the most economically unequal country in the advanced world, a country with the largest public debt and the most private indebtedness, the longest working hours and poorest worker benefits in modern American history and an enormous and growing trade deficit. All the while delivering record profits to major corporations.

Yea, that is a good one! The only thing worse than a tax and spend Liberal is a borrow and spend conservative!

Cycling Commuter,

Let's go and spend 10 billion dollars on green homes, great idea. Then, let's spend 10 billion more on a perpetual rainbow, and we can all play bongo drums and dreadlock each other's hair.

Taxes as behavioural tools are great - but if you start over-taxing "viciousness" (ie smokes, booze, gas etc.) then there will inevitably be unanticpated results - remember the cigarrette smuggling back east in the early 90s?

As dismal as it may be, we're all trying to save a dollar; therefore a government's job is to create a tax system which will balance our own individual (and inherent) greediness with utilitarian motives. Although our tax system could use some level of revamping, it's not as bad as you characterize it - and throwing 10 billion into a veritable kibbutz is no answer.

And we all need our jobs. I don't know about you, but it's not my ideals that put food on my table, it's cash money.

And Frank, I agree with you 100%. Working stiffs in the USA are much worse off than their equivalents in Canada. Problem is most of them neither work no vote.

Ahh, Frank, I am not sure where you are looking and I am not sure about Pakistan but the marginal tax rates for salaried workers in the Philippines runs at 30% or more, largely because the government is not capable of collection income taxes from large segments of society. That is 30% of a salary most Canadians (99%) would find absurd to begin with.

I find the tax system in Canada quite fair. I pay tons because of my income but the average family with say a $50,000 combined income pays at reasonable rates, especially when social benefits are factored in.

hey WM, haven't seen you for awhile.

Yes, when you look at an individual country in isolation you get a better picture. I was going by a comparison of tax rates around the world which shows the range for each country. Stats like 0%-20% don't tell you who's paying the 0 and who's paying the 20.

I'd sooner spend $10b on green housing over $2b on the Olympics. At least the houses will last longer than two weeks.

Davey-boy and Klootzak make good points. Taxing consumption via the GST is probably the best way for governments to collect revenue - provided there are exemptions (food, kids clothing) and the GST kickback for low income families. The income tax could be fair - but it's virtually impossible to impose a tax regime progressive enough - and Governments cannot resist the temptation to give exemptions to the middle-class and the rich, e.g., the RRSP deductions, all the deductions a clever accountant can get the self employed, the dividend scam, etc. If Capitalism thinks the Harper government is really going to help the poor, he's mistaken. The tiny savings they'll get from the GST cut and the transit allowance will be soon outweighed by all sorts of user fees, health care privatization, tuition rises, etc. & etc. The only significant thing poor families will get is the New Baby Bonus (masquerading as a daycare program) which goes not just to the poor but to every family. But I'm happy that the Baby Bonus is coming back - I just wish it wasn't replacing what is really needed, by the poor especially, is a real daycare program, as Quebec has. But will our province institute that? Ha!

DNA
The problem with the tax system is that it doesn't treat all sources of income equally. Remove all the special deals and a normally progressive tax regime would work just fine. The problem is that the power structures in society tend to want a system of tax that permits them to retain their power. The people who actually form the polis have to take back the power of their franchise and use it in more effective and transformative ways. For Value added taxes like the GST finding ways to stimulate appropriate social responses is far too difficult and subject to manipulation, imo. Income taxes avoid that by being progressive - thereby imposing tax costs where they more properly belong, and tying them to income and not expenditure. With VAT or consumption taxes, there is no mechanism available to ensure that the wealthy will necessarily pay their share since they control their own consumption and can, as a result, avoid anything but the tax on minimal consumption.

When our local hospital was all but shut down a couple of years ago, there was all sorts of grassroots activism aimed at having our services restored. The Interior Health Authority sent representatives to a couple of community meetings, where they appeared to listen and nodded sagely before doing...nothing. Was anyone truly surprised to hear the IHA folks mouthing platitudes about the ongoing commitment to excellent health care? What would make a difference?

What about a good old-fashioned tax revolt? A group of water users here has declined to water taxes for about nine years now. There is no service that comes with that water tax anyways. The users group is fully responsible for testing, etc. Would you be able to get the entire community to withold hospital taxes? Not bloody likely. Unlike the inspiring anti-government/anti-corporation activities of the citizens, say, of Bolivia, or Argentina, a tax revolt is unlikely to happen here in the mountains of BC because too many people perceive themselves as having too much to lose, and the perception is that the losses outweigh the gains. In a place like Buenos Aires where the people have already had everything taken from them, the eyes are on the prize.

I keep hearing about the various strategies of shareholder activism. I keep wondering about the possibility of tax activism....suggestions?

Dunno if it would work here, but the activism in France seems to have had some positive effect. Of course, the French have a much more time-honoured tradition of public protest and 'social revolution' than we have. How did the marchers do in the US today, by the way?

march news from Chicago

I'll have to see if the reports are revised but I
heard from a Labor Express producer (local worker news
radio show) that the Chicago Fire Dept reported the
size of the march as 600,000! and that organizers said
that there were 700,000!, nearly three-quarters of a
million! or the largest march ever in Chicago's
history. This march was nine times larger than the
original in 1886.

more march news

Associated Press is reporting 75,000 in Denver, 400,000 in LA, 400,000 in Chicago, 50,000 in San Jose, 15,000 in Houston, and 30,000 throughout Florida. ( http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060502/D8HBB8BO3.html )

some good international photos here re: march

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2006mayday2006

Gotta love the "Day Without A Gringo" take.

Jeez! May not have been a good idea to impersonate Rumsfeld!!

Very impressive stuff.

There was an *official ban* on carrying flags other than American flags.
And...there was a sea of American flags, which REALLY pissed off the few Anglo
racist hecklers that showed up and some of the leftists. Interestingly, the RCP
and PL both handed out small cloth Red Flags, which were dispalyed in *the
thousands* by people. I grabbed one also. First time in my political life I
could carry a Red Flag and not feel it was ultra-left to do so. Lot's of
American flags and Red flags carried together. I couldn't stop grinning. I
noticed the Central Americans in particular were partial to the Red Flag since
they marched with them, I can only suppose, in May Day events in their
countries.
Thw whole event was truly inspiring.

David Walters
San Francisco

The people's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts blood dyed its every fold.

Then raise the scarlet standard high. (chorus)
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow's vaults its hymns are sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.

It waved above our infant might,
When all ahead seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow,
We must not change its colour now.

It well recalls the triumphs past,
It gives the hope of peace at last;
The banner bright, the symbol plain,
Of human right and human gain.

It suits today the weak and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place
To cringe before the rich man's frown,
And haul the sacred emblem down.

With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall;
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.

Boy, as I follow this thread, I see CAPITALISM's posts a lot, usually headlining the worst gibberish I'd seen since university. Let's just take the top four (space concerns):

"It is because of those tax cuts that I am making more money, and ALAS, I am paying more taxes! See how wonderful the cycle works!"

Only in a booming economy. If you'd studied economics, you'd know that the effects would be almost the exact opposite in a shrinking economy. When world demand for raw materials goes down, you'll be back to paying more taxes and earning less - no matter which party is in power. Only wholesale overhaul of the tax system to tax evils like pollution and reward goods like income from work that creates real value will overcome the distortions the current tax (and capital investment) system puts into the Canadian economy.

"PS - G West - you have to be a little glad that Emerson crossed the floor. Without him, we wouldn't have this Asia Gateway project, or Softwood Lumber. Like I originally said, he is a liar, but his move will benefit British Columbians immenselely. Unless, you don't call getting $4B in monies returned, elimination of duties and $500M for roads, railways and pipelines a benefit...."

What a two-faced Capitalist! Taxes are bad, except when used for the project he agrees with. Never mind that most of the Gateway project is dedicated to inefficient uses of transportation systems (except for the Fraser connector to the ferries). Don't forget, building the road itself is not a public good; only the uses to which it is put. And cars aren't a public good, they're a net drain on the economic system, as so many other authors have pointed out.

"We should impose duties and levees (sic) on our trading partners that do no comply with more stringent environmental policies. This is a form of taxation, as imported goods would become more expensive."

Two-faced Capitalist is at it again. Now that we in the western world have polluted our way into prosperity, anybody who wants to do the same should be taxed to death. Do you actually listen to yourself sometimes, or are you working too hard raising the drawbridge? You remind me of my former neighbours in West Vancouver... (mmmppphhh...........GUFFFAAAWWWWW!!!)
"Assume joe sixpack spends $20K/year. That is $200 in savings. Not much, but a start. It also increases retail activity, which helps the economy and wages."

Obviously not an economics major. Having more disposable income causes the price of goods available to be bid up. That happens automatically, even our society, in case you've been too busy counting your riches. And the price of necessities is bid up relatively more, because demand is relatively inelastic, whereas for luxury goods, the prices is not bid up by as much, because demand is relatively elastic. That means the GST cut lets Joseph Champagne, who makes $200,000 a year as a stockbroker, buy proportionally much more than Joe Six-pack, way more than the difference in their incomes. Depending on whose studies you believe, that $200 tax cut may only have the purchasing power of $120-160 by the end of that year, whereas Joseph Champagne's $2000 tax cut might be worth $1800-$1900. Funny how the Fraser Institute doesn't talk about this, even though my economics prof did.

And there's more idiocy, but it's all in the same vein, and everyone else seems to have picked up on how stupid and selfish his arguments are. His moral structure is bankrupt, and it wouldn't be so bad if he were the only one, but enough other people believe the same bumph, and it's dragging our whole world down the same road to bankruptcy.

zalm:

i agree with modest taxation for the fair social programs, infrastructure upgrades and environmental sustainability.

what i don't agree with is bloated and unnecessary social programs. if this daycare thing was initiated, we would never be able to get rid of it. the special interest groups would be all over it. we are in a time on declining enrollment in schools, the echo-boom has passed.

some taxes are necessary. however, irresponsible social spending is not.

i fail to see how this makes me a two-faced capitalist. remember, the best social policy is a good economy.

So, Capitalism, could you give me some examples of what you would describe as good, responsible SOCIAL spending?

"if this daycare thing was initiated, we would never be able to get rid of it."

Imagine being saddled with the burden of quality daycare for all, forever.

The horror. The horror.

If enrollment in schools is dropping, wouldn't that mean the programe would get cheaper over time?

Taxes are so sexy Harper today raised the income tax on the lowest tax bracket. While at the same time reducing corporate tax.

Surplus this year is expected to be 8 billion, guess that's why it was necessary to raise taxes just on the lowest income group.

But Frank, it'll stimulate the economy.

--he says with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Of course it will, trickle down taxes and trickle up profits is good for everyone.. well the poor not so much.

Off-topic, but seeing as yesterday was May Day, and the March was on and all...a little levity. We all need to lighten up a bit, folks.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47978

I suggest a removal of income tax to be replaced with a consumption of 23%.
This is the bottom line of where we have to be in order to continue to function.
Use your imagination. This would enrich us all.

klootzak wrote:

let's spend 10 billion more on a perpetual rainbow, and we can all play bongo drums and dreadlock each other's hair.

What is this supposed to mean? Can you cut the gibberish and talk about specific effects of specific policies? When you throw-around gibberish, that just makes it sound like you're on the pipe.

I'm NOT suggesting that we spend an ADDITIONAL 10 billion dollars on energy-efficient homes. I'm suggesting that we invest 10 billion dollars on energy efficient homes INSTEAD of wasting 40 billion dollars on nuclear power plants, damming fertile valleys and so on. As I pointed out earlier, some people are not very good at math, but geez, can't you see that 10 billion is a lot LESS than 40 billion?

In addition to much lower upfront capital costs, underground heat storage pipes last at least 50 years without maintenance. That's three times the lifespan of nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors require constant maintenance and fueling. Uranium will run out in 36 years, sooner if consumption increases. A solar-geothermal system refuels itself every summer. The sun isn't going to run out of fuel in 36 years.

Future generations will be stuck with the cost of storing nuclear waste for billions of years. On the other hand, the main cost of retrofitting geothermal storage of summer heat is the cost of drilling holes in the ground to accommodate air pipes or water pipes. When the pipes degrade after 50 years, they can be easily repaired or replaced without the expense of drilling new holes. When an old house is demolished to be replaced by a new house, existing underground heat storage pipes can be used by the new house. Isn't that a much better legacy to leave for future generations instead of leaving a legacy of nuclear waste, flooded valleys, mercury from coal-burning power plants, food shortages due to flooded farmland, skyrocketing health costs related to more pollution, and a mountain of debt to pay for all this?

A former Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. worker is one of the leading proponents of saving tens of billions of dollars by using seasonally-stored solar energy instead of nuclear energy to address growing demand. See http://kanata-forum.ca/seasonal_storage.htm He goes over the math in detail. His seasonal heat storage approach continues to use some grid electricity. I prefer the related but slightly different approach at http://www.solarthermal.com/Gallery/Pages/120_Josephs_ID.pdf and http://www.greenershelter.com/index.php?pg=2 This approach works fine without any grid electricity. Underground heat storage guarantees a literally rock-solid heat source that remains available during extra-harsh winters that can disrupt hydro transmission lines exactly when heat is needed most. Severe frost brought-down hydro lines all over Quebec a few years ago. Some people froze to death. Quebecers with underground heat storage stayed nice and warm.

Here's an example of a solar installation in B.C. with a 5-year payback period: http://www.cansia.ca/downloads/bulletins/NB032s.pdf Have you ever heard of a nuclear power station or hydro dam that paid for itself in 5 years? And this is despite being exempted from liability insurance, cost of salmon destruction, loss of farmland, health cost of carcinogenic herbicides beneath transmission lines etc.

klootzak wrote:

throwing 10 billion into a veritable kibbutz is no answer.

What's that supposed to mean? With removal of stupid tax disincentives, energy-efficient technologies can be cost-effectively applied to independently-owned detached homes, co-op apartment buildings, commercial buildings, industrial buildings and government buildings. Why do you think energy-efficiency is only relevant to a kibbutz/co-op lifestyle?

klootzak wrote:

it's not my ideals that put food on my table, it's cash money.

If we flood more of our farmland and contaminate the rest with herbicides, mercury, acid rain and nuclear waste, there won't be any food available to put on your table at any price. What little uncontaminated food remains will be hoarded by extravagantly-paid individuals who are enriching themselves by destroying our food sources. They won't share any food scraps with lower-level stooges who are doing the dirty work for them.

klootzak wrote:

we all need our jobs.

Yes, exactly. When salmon and cod are destroyed by dams, mercury, acid rain, overfishing etc., many direct and indirect jobs are lost. I once worked for an electronics company that built equipment for the fishing industry. When the fisheries collapsed, there were a lot of layoffs at our electronics company as well as at boat-building companies and many other spinoff industries.

As I pointed out earlier, building energy-efficient housing creates a lot more jobs than building nuclear power plants, hydro dams or coal mines. Energy efficiency jobs are community-based and long-term. Energy megaproject jobs are mostly centralized and short-term. The local nature of energy efficiency jobs means that existing roads can be used to get workers to their job sites. In many cases, energy-efficiency workers can walk a few blocks from their homes to their job sites. They get to keep the $10,000 per year of their earnings that would otherwise be spent on automobile costs. Even with today's house prices, $10,000 per year goes a long way toward paying off a mortgage instead of further enriching Alberta oil companies and Ontario auto manufacturers.

As we shift away from dirty, overpriced, centralized energy megaprojects toward clean, efficient, reliable and cost-effective local energy sources, some coal miners could be looking for new jobs. Older miners can apply their skills to work in copper, zinc and nickel mines. These metals are very useful in clean energy technologies. Younger miners and the next generation of workers can develop the skills and technologies necessary to fully recycle these metals from demolished houses and worn-out cars.

A few years ago, I talked to a woman whose husband was a former logger. When the logging industry tanked, he decided to make a career shift. He went back to school and studied to become a nurse. His wife said he was a big, macho guy, but he also had a very gentle, nurturing side to him. If a logger can become a nurse and get a much more stable job doing what he enjoys, then other resource workers can change to more stable and rewarding careers too.

We're facing a severe shortage of nurses. Many petite nurses wind up with back injuries as a result of struggling to move increasingly obese patients. It's a good thing to have a couple of 6 foot 4 ex-loggers in their ranks. When overdosed druggies are resuscitated in the VGH emergency ward, the first thing some of them do is to start groping at female nurses' breasts. Druggies would be a lot more inclined to behave themselves if they were resuscitated by ex-loggers. It would be a good idea to change the job title "nurse" to something more gender-neutral as in Quebec if we hope to attract more male resource industry workers to this very important line of work.

klootzak wrote:

we all need our jobs.

Oil drilling skills can be re-directed to drilling holes for geothermal heat systems.

Here's a link to a B.C. company that has done a lot of geothermal drilling work - including a condo project on West Hastings in Vancouver: http://www.geotechdrilling.com/project_synopsis.html

Hungarian farmers use dry petroleum wells to extract ground heat for their greenhouses. See http://geoheat.oit.edu/pdf/tp30.pdf

klootzak wrote:

if you start over-taxing "viciousness" (ie smokes, booze, gas etc.) then there will inevitably be unanticpated results - remember the cigarrette smuggling back east in the early 90s?

Cigarette smuggling was dealt with by modifying packaging to make it easier to detect illicit product and slightly lowering taxes in the area where it was a problem. This illustrates a major advantage of tax-shifting vs regulation. With tax-shifting, it's easy to fine-tune tax rates to achieve optimum results. It also helps if you can work together with neighboring jurisdictions to harmonize tax rates.

Gasoline smuggling will never be a major problem. Huge fuel tankers are not easily concealed. Any gas tax increases should always be more than offset by reduction of other taxes such as elimination of GST on hybrids, reduction of income taxes at the low end, reduced property taxes from the low-end to the middle and an increase in the minimum wage. High wage earners can afford hybrids, but low-wage earners need to receive income tax breaks and increased wages to compensate until there are a lot of low-cost second hand hybrids on the market.

Fuel costs are four times higher in Europe than in the U.S., but the Euro is on the way up while the U.S. dollar is plummeting. Cheap gasoline isn't helping the U.S. economy, it's destroying the U.S. economy.

Hi Frank, with the good weather I have been insanely busy.

Imagine the luck of any finance minister to inheret the fiscal situation the Liberals created!

Yes and no and you know that, Frank. By reinstating the tax credit for working people (virtually all tax filers) at $500 for this year and $1000 for next, the 0.5% will be more than made up..

More interesting is the Conservative's election promise to slash $24bn in spending. They are now "looking" for a billion and I doubt they will find that. They will not rock one single boat or should I say vote.

Excellent posts, CC. Go, man, go!

Good for you, still getting time to walk your kids home from school?

I know, I haven't kept up on what exactly was in the kitty but I know it was high. Hopefully the minority will prevent Harper from putting us back in 40 billion a year deficits a la Mulroney.

He raised one tax and helped out with another. My point is why? Is the income from the lowest tax bracket so important to the country he needed to claw back some of it? Why not just let the lowest income earners have a tax break that isn't compromised by an increase somewhere else?

I still make time but in the good weather, we ride our bikes. Actually, in the this weather, I find it easier to ride a bike downtown to my sites than any other mode of transportation. It is fun, too.

I have a long memory, too but I think that will be well behaved for a while. Note the $22bn they said they would cut are now absent.

Me thinks the economy is a bit overheated these days. I am seeing my project financing and insurance rates jumping so much that I am reluctant to bid on jobs more than a few months in the future. I think that we'll start to slow down a bit so we can be sure you keep all the people working in the long term.........

But then again, I could be wrong?

Mine rides her bike to school too. I walk. 8:30am is the nicest time of the day :-)

Somehow I think if they had a majority that shoe would have dropped. I find it ironic that the Cons have constantly talked about the Liberals being in bed with Quebec and now the separatists and Cons are doing the tango.

I notice a lot of properties I look at are staying on the market longer and even reducing their price. Perhaps it is cooling. Of course that's just real estate. Since all my income is from exports I can't guage anything about the Cdn economy from my own situation.