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Originally Posted by crazy_eoj
Well of course I agree whole-heartedly that we should have followed Mintz' recommendations and gotten rid of income taxes and reduce our corporate taxes to the lowest in North America. However, this would mean we would have to make billions in spending reductions.
However, I also agree with his suggestions that we need to drastically lower public sector salaries and public programs and find more efficiencies in service delivery.
I also agree with the Wildrose party in saying that any attempt to introduce a VAT or PST would be to INCREASE taxes overall and they have no intention of cutting spending to meet Mintz' recommendations.
Do you really believe the PC's would institute a revenue neutral sales tax? Or do you openly support an increase in taxation to further increase spending?
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I have no insight into what the PC's will do, so let's keep that clear. After attending Saturday though, my impression isn't that this was a rigged event, it's that they have no idea what to do here either. I'm not talking about the short term, but about the long term where many agree that regardless of our propensity to spend we have to consider alternative funding aside from resource revenue.
I'm not prepared to say, that if I were king, I would increase taxes and spending. I wouldn't. I would actually cut areas that I think the province ought not to be involved in either partially or entirely. I would have no qualms in that actually, but I would also switch to a much greater reliance on a VAT and hope to eliminate income tax entirely.
I think that the province could put away about $3.5B indexed to inflation and invest that money. There is no reason we couldn't basically run a sovereign fund with that, and by law keep politicians away. Eventually we could use a portion of that money to fund the operating budget (not capital) thereby keeping expenses down for everyone and having a sustainable and effective perpetuity for the province and our children's children.
I can't say that's a "Liberal" or "Wildrose" plan or anything else. Its just what I would do if I had the power to do it.