Quote:
Originally Posted by #-3
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.
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Once again, the difficulty we're having seems to arise from different understandings of what a consumption/sales tax would involve. I would expect that a sales tax would involve very little increased burden on the poor (especially when combined with some sort of tax credit that could be applied, but again, I am not an accountant). The basic staples that are actually categorized as needs - food, housing, utilities - would not be taxed in this manner, I would assume.
While I am not an accountant, what I am is a teacher, and what you are saying about the work kids do is patently false. There is no teacher that I have ever worked with that would refuse to give a student a paper copy of an assignment in order to complete their work. Further to that, even if a computer were required in order to complete work, schools are outfitted with all sorts of technology that students can use. They could arrive at school early, stay late or work over lunch hour. I don't want to turn this into some sort of 'teacher thread' but again, I have never encountered a teacher - let alone an entire school - that would not support a child in such an endeavor. Students can learn all of the things you've discussed without needing their own personal laptop or iPad or iPhone or iWhatever.
It's been pointed out (I think by Slava, even) that a pure consumption tax would actually reduce the burden on the poor in terms of taxes. I don't know if that's the way to go - I don't think we want our sales taxes in Alberta to get that out of line with the rest of our neighbors. I think a combination of removing the flat provincial income tax, slightly increasing corporate taxes and a small sales tax is probably the way to go here. I'm sure my opinion is different from many here but I appreciate the dialogue. Again, I expect it should be relatively easy to ensure that those less fortunate actually pay less in terms of taxes with the implementation of a sales tax in addition to some other changes.
And for the record, I do not think it would be easy to find a person more understanding and appreciative of people who find gainful employment of any type. As a union member, I personally place significant value on the working person no matter what color their collar may be.