Quote:
Originally Posted by Antithesis
I have to disagree with the list of needs that you've provided. I can see a car being a need, but I think there are ways to get around it. A computer is definitely not a need as far as I'm concerned, and extra money to play sports in order to keep kids active certainly is not. There's all sorts of things you can do to stay active that don't require you to spend any money. It all boils down to people's definition of 'need', and how they are willing to acquire those needs.
With the exemptions to things that are truly needs (such as food items and the like), I really fail to see how a consumption tax would be more punitive to the poor than the rich. Of course, I'm far from an expert in such matters.
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Let me put it this way, if you are already spending 100% of the money you have to that the consumption tax will effect 100% of your disposable income. If you are putting 15%? into savings, and only require 30% of your net income for "essentials", the the consumption tax only effects 78% of your disposable income. That remaining 22% of disposable income can be saved, or invested (earning more money) or spent elsewhere avoiding taxation in Alberta.
And I couldn't disagree with you more.
Service jobs are required in our society, and your basically saying those people don't deserve a decent standard of living, and their kids don't deserve a chance to be part of a team or go on a school trip, or have the tools needed for learning. Do you realize that schools don't even hand out paper homework assignments anymore, everything is web based. Computers and team activities, and ability to get around are absolute essentials to raising healthy productive members of society. Anyone providing a useful service deserves compensation that can pay for all of these things, and people in Calgary are not getting that. So to tax those people more in anyway is wrong.
If we need more tax it needs to have no impact on a growing segment of Alberta that could be classified as the working poor.