[Northern Light]

Its important (for me) to say what i think, when someone flippantly talks about increasing my taxes yet again like its a candy bowl..

Sounds like you are saying taxes should be high enough to enable at minimum (to quote) a 1 bedroom Toronto apartment with A/C, ensuite laundry, amenities, plus a modest but decent food budget. Plus free education and healthcare, rule of law (police) and fire. I assume you'd include TTC pass and internet. Is this what you're saying everyone should be entitled to as a bare minimum, because that is what I'm hearing.

Your hearing is poor, and reading and comprehension equally dubious.

I pointed out that the apartment I was specificying had none of those amenities, making clear we were not discussing a luxury space. Just something that is more than a room, ie. a bathroom and a kitchen.

Yes, I do believe people should have healthcare, and food and if you suggest otherwise, I have a suggestion for you that I can't actually post here..........

 

[picard102]

Won't somebody think of the taxes!!!! Heavens to murgatroyd what will happen to society if people have to pay into a system they benefit from every day!!
Why can't I just keep my precious money and live in anarchy? Surely nothing bad will happen to me.

 

[buildup]

Your hearing is poor, and reading and comprehension equally dubious.

I pointed out that the apartment I was specificying had none of those amenities, making clear we were not discussing a luxury space. Just something that is more than a room, ie. a bathroom and a kitchen.

Yes, I do believe people should have healthcare, and food and if you suggest otherwise, I have a suggestion for you that I can't actually post here..........

So we're both challenged. When you said the room had no AC etc, the clear implication was that it ought to, or you wouldn't have mentioned it. If you're simply saying its not a luxury space, who'se arguing? Im not arguing against free education, healthcare, police, fire, infrastructure...I said its ALREADY provided at vast cost by tax-payers. If people want more, they should at least try and find a way to pay for it themselves or rely on family. The first reaction should not be to raise taxes. As they say, eventually you will run out of others people's money to spend. There's a lot of virtue-signalling on this thread, i profoundly doubt anyone wants back that up in taxes..

 

[buildup]

Won't somebody think of the taxes!!!! Heavens to murgatroyd what will happen to society if people have to pay into a system they benefit from every day!!
Why can't I just keep my precious money and live in anarchy? Surely nothing bad will happen to me.

Won't somebody think of the taxes!!!! Heavens to murgatroyd what will happen to society if people have to pay into a system they benefit from every day!!
Why can't I just keep my precious money and live in anarchy? Surely nothing bad will happen to me.

Your irony betrays the heart of the entitlement problem. Canada has one of the best social safety nets on earth (in all of history), but to you its just anarchy. meaning your demands are ultimately limitless.

 

[Northern Light]

So we're both challenged. When you said the room had no AC etc, the clear implication was that it ought to, or you wouldn't have mentioned it. If you're simply saying its not a luxury space, who'se arguing? Im not arguing against free education, healthcare, police, fire, infrastructure...I said its ALREADY provided at vast cost by tax-payers. If people want more, they should at least try and find a way to pay for it themselves or rely on family. The first reaction should not be to raise taxes. As they say, eventually you will run out of others people's money to spend. There's a lot of virtue-signalling on this thread, i profoundly doubt anyone wants back that up in taxes..

The 'other people's money' is at at least partially mine, I suspect its been spent on you to poor effect.

Btw, as someone doing rather well in life........I don't have kids, or siblings, or living parents. I am incredibly grateful to have resources that make that a non-issue, but not everyone has a support network, including many of those who need it most.

 

[Northern Light]

Your irony betrays the heart of the entitlement problem. Canada has one of the best social safety nets on earth (in all of history), but to you its just anarchy. meaning your demands are ultimately limitless.

That's not what he suggested, implied or wrote.

The implication was that your aversion to taxes is unreasonable in its intensity, and offers no sense of enlightened self-interest.

I will add, your characterization of the state of Canada's social safety net is a rather generous one. Certainly it is better than most or all developing nations. But when compared with the nations of northern/western Europe its rather sub-par.

No one is or should be ungrateful for what we have; that's no reason not to aspire to greater.

 

[buildup]

Straw man argument. I'm fine paying taxes, but reminding you they went up very significantly very recently. And we're running a higher deficit despite the windfall.
My 'unreasonably intense aversion' is toward paying even higher taxes on top of all that.
Perhaps some day Picard will become a tax-payer rather than a tax-taker. He's certainly very generous with other people's hard earned money.

 

[Lone Primate]

The debt when Harper took over was $481.5B (debt to GDP of 35.0%). Actually at the end of the 2005/06 fiscal year, which ended about 8 weeks after Harper elected.
The debt when Harper left was $616.0B. (debt to GDP of 31.0%).

So your thesis here is it's fine for Tory governments to run with fiscal scissors provided A) industrial production or B) inflation over a decade serve to mask the irresponsibility. That's terrific, Burl. Why do I get the feeling we'd be hearing the screech of Psycho violins had these same numbers been run up by a Liberal government, though?

When Trudeau took over, the debt was $616.0B, but they changed the accounting rules which caused a $19.6B jump in the debt

Which means what? He made them more honest and stopped pawing sand over his fiscal dirt...? And WHAT "change" to the rules were made? Anyone could make that bald assertion.

Despite the crippling Global recession that Harper had to deal with

Which didn't affect Canada as deeply as the US because Paul Martin generally refused permission to Canadian banks to relax the lending criteria like US banks did, meaning A) far fewer foreclosures and B) no banks requiring bailouts or the defaults that plagued American homeowners and retirees... again, thanks the the fiscal responsibility of NOT Tories...

Trudeau still has worse looking budgetary numbers.

Actually, no, he doesn't. https://canada.constructconnect.com...-years-canadas-quarterly-gdp-growth-beats-u-s

But I still have no idea why you keep bringing this up. The US is the US, and Canada is Canada. We have different needs and responsibilities from them. They have different advantages of scale from us. In some quarters, we do better than them; in others, they do better than us. Seriously, as long as our economy is growing and producing jobs and keeping people under roofs, I honestly do not see the point in a quarter-by-quarter international dick-measuring contest. Why do you?

 

[buildup]

The 'other people's money' is at at least partially mine, I suspect its been spent on you to poor effect.

Btw, as someone doing rather well in life........I don't have kids, or siblings, or living parents. I am incredibly grateful to have resources that make that a non-issue, but not everyone has a support network, including many of those who need it most.

I'm happy you are very comfortable and willing to pay even more. Many people do not have that luxury, and feel they are already paying enough. And they suspect, correctly IMO, no amount will be enough.

 

[Northern Light]

Straw man argument. I'm fine paying taxes, but reminding you they went up very significantly very recently. And we're running a higher deficit despite the windfall.
My 'unreasonably intense aversion' is toward paying even higher taxes on top of all that.
Perhaps some day Picard will become a tax-payer rather than a tax-taker. He's certainly very generous with other people's hard earned money.

I'll remind you as someone whose actually in a high tax bracket, that like most, I pay nowhere near the marginal number.

The effective tax rate is a more useful indicator, and Canada has a fairly low one for high income earners.

It also has a low VAT by international standards and among the very lowest effective corporate tax rates.

 

[Lone Primate]

There is virtually no-one eating mayonnaise sandwiches in Toronto unless they are making many other bad decisions like buying lotto tickets, beer, games, drugs.

Oh, will you listen to yourself? What are you, Archie Bunker on money-stilts? So if I said "rich assholes need to stop wasting money on hookers, trips to Vegas, and sports cars they wrap around light standards when they're f***ed up on blow so they can pay their fair share for OHIP VD treatments, international airports, and 400-series highways with emergency services, none of which people living on $15,000 a year ever get to see, much less use", would that argument impress YOU? Try being a human being for twenty seconds instead of the mouthpiece of a bank account.

 

[buildup]

I'm paying enough tax, and will vote against anyone who wants to raise them even further.
If you're mad as heck i don't want to give you more of my money so be it
But wanting other people's money doesn't make you noble.
I don't care what rich assholes do with their money - your characterization suggests they are stimulating the economy.

 

[buildup]

Primate: your by-line is all about Freedom. Nothing about responsibility or self-reliance.

 

[Admiral Beez]

I'm paying enough tax, and will vote against anyone who wants to raise them even further.

I'm not paying enough tax.

I want a country, province and city where we clamp down on beggars, vagrancy, public intoxication, sleeping in parks, blocking sidewalks, public drug use and overall public nuisance. I want a country, province and city that deals with litter, graffiti, disorder and the overall shabby public realm. I want real beat cops, police not in cars or on bikes, but that actually walk and know a neighbourhood. I want to clamp down hard on illegal parking, bike lane blockers and TTC fare jumpers. I want a province and city that doesn't put half the city's homeless shelters within a 5 km circle around my house.

To get the above we need to eliminate homelessness and address mental illness through providing permanent housing, including supportive permanent housing for the mentally ill and addicted. We also need the federal government to take ownership of permanent housing (not shelters) for immigrants and refugees. You can't make sleeping in parks or on sidewalks illegal if you've got no where for the police to send them. You can't stop begging at the roadside or outside businesses without the immediate court process (like they have in NYC). You can't deal with the shabby public realm without resources to monitor graffiti and litter and demand property owners remove it.

To get to the above, I need to pay more taxes to all three levels of government. I would gladly pay them if I knew, in a truly transactional fashion that I was getting the above. Don't get me wrong, I'm as conservative and hardcore law and order as they come, but depending on low taxes and the private sector to somehow trickle down to resolve our issues isn't going to cut it.

 

[salsa]

I'm not paying enough tax.

I want a country, province and city where we clamp down on beggars, vagrancy, public intoxication, sleeping in parks, blocking sidewalks, public drug use and overall public nuisance. I want a country, province and city that deals with litter, graffiti, disorder and the overall shabby public realm. I want real beat cops, police not in cars or on bikes, but that actually walk and know a neighbourhood. I want to clamp down hard on illegal parking, bike lane blockers and TTC fare jumpers. I want a province and city that doesn't put half the city's homeless shelters within a 5 km circle around my house...

"And by the way, I also voted twice for John Tory and will probably do it again if given the chance, despite his vapid and non-existent efforts to accomplish any of what I just said."