Alberta budget news

[Plett25]

Originally Posted by Azure

Nothing.

You keep spending the money in savings. And in the meantime people will keep claiming you can't cut spending even though Alberta spends a frack of a lot more than anyone else.

Wrong.

[Sylvanfan]

Well as a former Brithish Columbian, I will say that we pay a lot less in taxes in Alberta. We are absolutely spoiled here too with what we do get. Fact is that the other provinces right beside us would be taking in far less revenue if they had our tax structure. Yet in this province people expect to pay these low taxes and have resouces make up the revenue difference, plus add to a heritage savings fund.

Isn't a provincial sales tax said to be one of the better ways to make those who can pay more than those who can't? I don't want to deal with increased taxes...but if it does happen, I'm not going to be leaving Alberta because every other province will still have higher taxes and give me much less.

[Maccalus]

Originally Posted by Plett25

Wrong.

This famous graphic does not take into account the fact that alberta is "debt free". When you eliminate debt servicing costs and compare 2011 budgets to 2011 census populations Alberta spends the second most on "program spending". We spend quite a bit more per capita more then the comparable large provinces.

The Newfies are still the king of spending, but they have a massive oil glut that they can get brent oil prices for combined with nobody living there.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

Isn't a provincial sales tax said to be one of the better ways to make those who can pay more than those who can't?

No.

[Flacker]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

Well as a former Brithish Columbian, I will say that we pay a lot less in taxes in Alberta. We are absolutely spoiled here too with what we do get. Fact is that the other provinces right beside us would be taking in far less revenue if they had our tax structure. Yet in this province people expect to pay these low taxes and have resouces make up the revenue difference, plus add to a heritage savings fund.

Isn't a provincial sales tax said to be one of the better ways to make those who can pay more than those who can't? I don't want to deal with increased taxes...but if it does happen, I'm not going to be leaving Alberta because every other province will still have higher taxes and give me much less.

Shut it Hippie!!

[North East Goon]

I am curious as to how the city of Edmonton is absolutely convinced they are getting $100 million from the province for there new stadium?

[NuclearPizzaMan]

Originally Posted by Maccalus

This famous graphic does not take into account the fact that alberta is "debt free". When you eliminate debt servicing costs and compare 2011 budgets to 2011 census populations Alberta spends the second most on "program spending". We spend quite a bit more per capita more then the comparable large provinces.

The Newfies are still the king of spending, but they have a massive oil glut that they can get brent oil prices for combined with nobody living there.

Don't just say it. Cite it.


Implementing a better progressive income tax would be better than any sales tax (I say without numbers, anyone have numbers on this?).

[GP_Matt]

^^^
Isn't that what Katz paid $430000 to guarantee?

[Tinordi]

Boom provinces have higher costs of labour, bottom line all else being equal. Leads to higher per capita spending /basic economics

[crazy_eoj]

Alberta's public employees salaries have increased 199% in the past decade, to now be, on average, 35% higher than other provinces when they were almost equal just 10 years ago. Our provincial population grew 24% in that period, but the number of public employees increased over 40%.

The entire average wage in Alberta increased about 50% in the same period.

Nice gig, if you can get it.

[darklord700]

Cut public sector workers in half and make them work twice as fast. No need to increase taxes at all.

[yads]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Boom provinces have higher costs of labour, bottom line all else being equal. Leads to higher per capita spending /basic economics

It's already been pointed out that per capita spending has gone up more than private sector wages in the years 2000-2010. In addition public sector wages in Alberta are now higher than private sector wages, not to mention way better retirement benefits.

I'm not buying the excuse that we have higher labour costs. I'm sure we do have higher labour costs than other provinces, but not the level the public sector is now being compensated.

[Maccalus]

Originally Posted by NuclearPizzaMan

Don't just say it. Cite it.


Implementing a better progressive income tax would be better than any sales tax (I say without numbers, anyone have numbers on this?).

I didn't pull the numbers out of an article. I pulled them straight from the 2011 provincial budgets. I will give you an example of what I did for the calculations and let you confirm the numbers on your own.

I took the provincial populations numbers from here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

and looked through the 2011-2012 budgets for their general overlay table that detailed their total expeditures and total debt servicing numbers. For example look at table C.4 on page C.8 of the quebec budget listed below:

http://www.budget.finances.gouv.qc.c...BudgetPlan.pdf

I subtracted the total debt servicing costs from each provinces total expeditures to equate what the governments are spending on services, programs and general running of the government and was left with the following chart.



I know this is a simplistic view of everything and only looks at one issue. It also has no bearing on if we can afford to pay for it or not. It is just a comparison of spending.

[Azure]

To me it is pretty simple. Either raise taxes or cut spending.

Since most Albertans don't want to pay more taxes, spending should be cut and resource revenue should be put in something like the Heritage Fund to benefit Albertans down the road.

And there is always spending to cut. No its not easy. Nobody said it was. But at the end of the day if you can't afford it, you can't afford it.

[Sylvanfan]

Originally Posted by darklord700

No.

Care to elaborate? Or are you just going to drive by with this?

A sales tax on things like clothing, electronics, automobiles, gasoline, eating out basically gives the consumer some freedom to decide how much they want to put into paying this tax. Whereas increasing income taxes for all people doesn't.

I'm happy to have you explain the most efficient means of increasing taxes and minimize how it impacts those in lower income brackets trying to scrape by.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Azure

To me it is pretty simple. Either raise taxes or cut spending.

Since most Albertans don't want to pay more taxes, spending should be cutand resource revenue should be put in something like the Heritage Fund to benefit Albertans down the road.

And there is always spending to cut. No its not easy. Nobody said it was. But at the end of the day if you can't afford it, you can't afford it.

If the majority would prefer no tax increases, as you claim, does it remain a majority if no new taxes is also coupled with substantial cuts to programs?

No one wants to pay taxes, but I have a feeling that more taxes are a lot more palatable when you compare it against cutting the services that people want.

[woob]

Re-instate health care premiums, put in a 4-5% sales tax, and create a more progressive income tax structure. On the government side, cut the fat in staffing, claw back some of the salary hikes which have been noted in earlier posts, and look at spending reform.

I feel like we're the people who win the lotto and then spend recklessly and wonder what happened to all our money. And this happens every few years but we don't learn any lessons. Instead of sending cheques to every Albertan, invest in new major infrastructure projects or put it in the heritage fund.

Note: This opinion is based on my limited knowledge of the issues at hand and the fact that I don't mind paying more taxes in attempt to flatten the roller-coaster budgets we have.

[Jacks]

It would be nice if we could have had this conversation at election time. The opposition parties were saying that the revenue projections the PC's were using were pure fantasy.

9 months ago when everything was super rosy, deficit was small and disappearing in a year, debt was out of the question and everyone was gonna get a pony.

[Tinordi]

Carbon tax would be the best. Would provide Alberta cover for the storm of crap that is coming down on it from the oil sands, and would actually help to extract value from the costs of pollution.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by Jacks

It would be nice if we could have had this conversation at election time. The opposition parties were saying that the revenue projections the PC's were using were pure fantasy.

Clearly the Wild Rose had some form of advance knowledge and projected that the WCS and Edmonton par differentials would be horrificly horrific come December 2012. Oh wait, nope, no they didn't.
Being optimistic on projections is one thing, but having gas at a buck fifty all summer and liquids differentials slaughtered in a matter of months isn't something anyone saw coming.