March 28 Provincial Election Votes

[Slava]

Originally Posted by crazy_eoj

According to the USEIA the 'average' person uses 1200 litres of gasoline per year. Most families have more than one person, and one car.

Seems the estimate is pretty much bang on?

OK so thats $100 so where does the other $650 come from? And this is for people making $150. This average is skewed way up as far as I can tell.

[Resolute 14]

Yeah, it is pretty god damned obvious that the average will skew high, so I have no idea what you are arguing Slava. You know how politics and abuse of statistics and averages work.

Ultimately though, the increases are disproportionately heavy toward the middle class, and that is why the outrage exists.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Wildrose and PCs in a dead heat, and the NDP look poised to wipe Prentice out in Edmonton. The Liberals could be the big loser out of all this, as if those percentages hold, they have no strong base of support anywhere.
[/code]

We'd all seen how accurate these polls were back in 2012. I think Prentice made a bad political decision not to hike corporate taxes. Almost everybody got hit and the unions are losing jobs. In politics, optics are very important. And I myself don't see Prentice as an Albertan. He's merely using this job to get to his next job which is in the PM office.

Not to mention he's a very well off individual. He has secured his own campagin funding but businesses don't vote, people do.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Yeah, it is pretty god damned obvious that the average will skew high, so I have no idea what you are arguing Slava. You know how politics and abuse of statistics and averages work.

Ultimately though, the increases are disproportionately heavy toward the middle class, and that is why the outrage exists.

At the end of the day I really don't care. I am so jaded about provincial politics at this point its all meaningless. I plan on not being involved in this provincial campaign all together although I will go vote for someone.

I just don't think that the tax hike even hits $2500 for more than a small amount of the population, never mind that being a true average. It's just irritating to see these things so badly averaged so that partisans can claim outrage. Where is the outrage? Other than people who want people to be outraged no one seems to really care.

The poll is interesting. People are all set to vote Wildrose because they're upset about the budget. Then the split outs for the sections of the budget are that people don't want to pay more taxes and ant corporate taxes increased. Will the Wildrose even do that though? There seems to be a huge discrepancy there between what people want the government to do and what the party they're selecting will actually do.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Raising corporate taxes is a surefire way to ensure even more job losses. You think companies are just willingly taking on more tax without shifting that burden somewhere else? And in a down economy, they aren't counting on revenue increases, meaning cuts elsewhere and we all know what the easiest thing for companies to cut is.

The time to raise corporate taxes was years and years ago. But of course that's pretty much the PC's MO at this point: They should have done a lot of things years and years ago but it's always more important to get elected than to do what's best. And if that poll is even slightly accurate they'll pander some more to stay elected and once again the people will suffer in the long term. A minority government wouldn't suck though.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Party AB Edm Cgy Rest
PC    24  14  25  26
WRP   24  15  21  29
NDP   15  35  11  10
LIB   14  13  16  13
AP     4   3   4   4

Unite the "Left". They got this.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Slava

The poll is interesting. People are all set to vote Wildrose because they're upset about the budget.

Depending on how you count undecideds The WR is only polling at 24-30%, Those almost all used to be PC voters. I would guess that those voters aren't going back to the PC's even if the PC's pull a unicorn out of their butt, they are done with them. The PC's won the last election with the collapse of the Lib vote as well as pulling back in the soft WR voters. If anything you should be commenting on why the centre left voters aren't supporting this budget rather than blaming WR for everthing.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by troutman

Unite the "Left". They got this.

I doubt it, NDP are only players in EDM and Libs are pretty thinly stretched. At this point I don't think it's possible for them get enough seats to form government. Unless you mean full party merger? that isn't likely.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Depending on how you count undecideds The WR is only polling at 24-30%, Those almost all used to be PC voters. I would guess that those voters aren't going back to the PC's even if the PC's pull a unicorn out of their butt, they are done with them. The PC's won the last election with the collapse of the Lib vote as well as pulling back in the soft WR voters. If anything you should be commenting on why the centre left voters aren't supporting this budget rather than blaming WR for everthing.

I'm not blaming the Wildrose, but the big story here is how they're tied with the PCs after being written off. The centre left is a disaster and can't get out of their own way...there is nothing to talk about there.

[Jacks]

They're tied but at a pretty low number, WR hasn't gained much. Big story has to be the bleed of the centre left voters away from the PC's if anything. Did the WR ever drop much below 24%?

Edit:
http://www.insightswest.com/news/rec...es-in-alberta/

December 3rd, 2014
...
Across the province, 35% of decided voters (+14 since an Insights West poll conducted in April) would cast a ballot for the governing Progressive Conservatives if an election took place tomorrow. The Wildrose Party is second with 29% (-21), followed by the New Democratic Party (NDP) with 16% (unchanged) and the Liberal Party with 15% (+4). It is important to note that more than a third of Albertans (37%) are currently undecided.

Doesn't look like much of a change since before the budget.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Jacks

They're tied but at a pretty low number, WR hasn't gained much. Big story has to be the bleed of the centre left voters away from the PC's if anything. Did the WR ever drop much below 24%?

I don't know. To be honest all of these polls are useless anyway because the methodology is always questionable and they rarely seem to match up with happens. I don't follow them too closely personally, so I couldn't say whether the Wildrose dropped below. I thought that a month ago though (or whenever we last saw a poll) that it wasn't close and the PCs were crushing everyone.

I think that the Wildrose was the only intelligent opposition party here though because they're actually preparing for the election. The NDP is....well the NDP. The Liberals and Alberta Party are going to bow their brains out and get a combined 15-20% and the Liberals will win a few seats all together and pray to keep official party status.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Raising corporate taxes is a surefire way to ensure even more job losses.

Raising taxes of any kind will reduce consumption and result in job losses too. This is a bad political move is my point. I don't believe a 1% or 0.5% increase in corporate taxes will have any significant impact on employement.

[Jacks]

Ya I just noticed that poll was before the floor crossing, they dropped more after that though that may have been temporary reaction.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Depending on how you count undecideds The WR is only polling at 24-30%, Those almost all used to be PC voters. I would guess that those voters aren't going back to the PC's even if the PC's pull a unicorn out of their butt, they are done with them. The PC's won the last election with the collapse of the Lib vote as well as pulling back in the soft WR voters. If anything you should be commenting on why the centre left voters aren't supporting this budget rather than blaming WR for everthing.

I hope this time people just vote for who they believe in instead of voting one party to shut out the other like last time. NDP should gain much in EDM this time. There are kinks in everyone's armour now. PC doesn't equal low taxes and they couldn't be count on by the unions. That's their shtick last time, both the righties and lefties thought the PC was their friend.

[troutman]

Where are corporations going to flee to where taxes are less?

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by troutman

Where are corporations going to flee to where taxes are less?

Cayman Islands or the Bahamas.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by troutman

Unite the "Left". They got this.

As always, the fact that the NDP and Liberals are further apart than the Liberals and PCs are makes this an impossibility.

Uniting the left" would drive a good chunk of that soft Liberal vote into the Conservative fold.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by darklord700

Raising taxes of any kind will reduce consumption and result in job losses too. This is a bad political move is my point. I don't believe a 1% or 0.5% increase in corporate taxes will have any significant impact on employement.

Significant? I guess that depends how you define it. But people will absolutely lose their jobs, particularly those for publicly traded companies. Shareholders will be shareholders and they won't care about anything except hitting their desired number. Higher taxes, even 0.5 or 1%, eats into that. The difference has to be made up somewhere else or you risk pissing off shareholders. Sucks but it's a lock to happen if there's an increase. It just compounds an already struggling economy. It's not a wise move right now to do it, but then again the PCs have pretty consistently shown they don't make wise moves.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by darklord700

Raising taxes of any kind will reduce consumption and result in job losses too. This is a bad political move is my point. I don't believe a 1% or 0.5% increase in corporate taxes will have any significant impact on employement.

Raising taxes on the wealthy does not reduce consumption as the majority of their income is not redistributed into the economy via purchasing.

It is held or invested.

There is no evidence that a higher tax rate on the wealthiest citizens has a negative economic impact, and there is a wealth of evidence that the exact opposite happens when taxes on these individuals are raised.

It's a 30 year old myth with no foundation in reality.

Lowering taxes to produce growth has been attempted and it has failed, miserably. There's no clearer example of this in North America than in Alberta. 'Conservative' economic policies do not yield fruit.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Slava

OK so thats $100 so where does the other $650 come from? And this is for people making $150. This average is skewed way up as far as I can tell.

The tax increases on real estate transactions was pretty significant. In the mortgage forum, the broker estimated ~$1000 extra on a 500k house, which adds up fast. If the average person moves every 5 years, that'd be $200/year. Plus, if you want to register a new/different mortgage you'll pay part of this fee (especially with the banks moving to collateral mortgages).

Then there's the extra taxes on insurance premiums, higher traffic fines, etc. Plus, 2 income families could end up spending more than $1k in health premiums.