Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Stewie991]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I dunno man, if we just keep giving public funds to private companies, I have a feeling I'm gonna get a big payday one day. I can feel it. It'll make all the waiting in Dynalife labs for weeks of my life and 3 years to see a specialist really worth it.

Stop your whining!!

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Stewie991

Stop your whining!!

Free speech, dude.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I dunno man, if we just keep giving public funds to private companies, I have a feeling I'm gonna get a big payday one day. I can feel it. It'll make all the waiting in Dynalife labs for weeks of my life and 3 years to see a specialist really worth it.

It'll trickle down eventually! Still..... waiting. Nope.. not yet..... Hmm. Maybe tomorrow

[photon]

Pavlov's voters.

"Socialism!"

*salivates and votes*

"Communism!"

*salivates and votes*

[Monahammer]

Yes, socialism. The Devil! Why should we want our society to be like those of the people who self report as the happiest and most satisfied with life on earth?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/21/top-...e%20top%20spot.

The majority of the countries on this list would self describe as socialist.

#### it's just remarkable that some people still don't understand the difference between socialism and communism. It's totally stupid. It's like not understanding how red and orange are different colors.

[Muta]

It's a very successful misinformation campaign by the right, that's why, and has been since the Cold War. They strategically demonized the word 'socialism' to associate it with communism. It works really well on the impatient, the intolerant, and the ignorant.

[CliffFletcher]

The countries with high standards of living and more socialist societies than Canada have not achieved this by taxing corporations at a higher rate than we do. Northern Europe has lower corporate tax rates than North America.

They fund their robust public services with higher income taxes at all income levels than we impose, and with much higher sales tax.

So the barrier to Alberta and Canada becoming more socialist isn’t that we cater too much to corporate interests. It’s that the general public is unwilling to be taxed at the rates of their counterparts in Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.

[Ozy_Flame]

Shot:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1669071593140813832


Chaser:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1669362321796534273



Bonus: WTF did someone post to get reprimanded from Facebook? You've got to be quite the Q-Tip to get to that badge of honour.

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Shot:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1669071593140813832


Chaser:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1669362321796534273



Bonus: WTF did someone post to get reprimanded from Facebook? You've got to be quite the Q-Tip to get to that badge of honour.

It actually gives a lot of insight into smith's circle of trust.

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The countries with high standards of living and more socialist societies than Canada have not achieved this by taxing corporations at a higher rate than we do. Northern Europe has lower corporate tax rates than North America.

They fund their robust public services with higher income taxes at all income levels than we impose, and with much higher sales tax.

So the barrier to Alberta and Canada becoming more socialist isn’t that we cater too much to corporate interests. It’s that the general public is unwilling to be taxed at the rates of their counterparts in Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.

These countries have very high progressive tax rates. I think that would pass a referendum. The problem is the parties know where their bread is buttered.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Muta

It's a very successful misinformation campaign by the right, that's why, and has been since the Cold War. They strategically demonized the word 'socialism' to associate it with communism. It works really well on the impatient, the intolerant, and the ignorant.

Wait, so we aren't trying to seize the means of production, take over the government, ban privatization and redistribute all the wealth back to the people?

Klaus Schwab has hoodwinked you, hasn't he.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The countries with high standards of living and more socialist societies than Canada have not achieved this by taxing corporations at a higher rate than we do. Northern Europe has lower corporate tax rates than North America.

They fund their robust public services with higher income taxes at all income levels than we impose, and with much higher sales tax.

So the barrier to Alberta and Canada becoming more socialist isn’t that we cater too much to corporate interests. It’s that the general public is unwilling to be taxed at the rates of their counterparts in Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.

Only if you rely on semantics and take the absolute narrowest view of what constitutes corporate taxes, because you're excluding extremely high payroll taxes that businesses pay in those countries. And because payroll taxes are taken as a % of employee costs rather than profits (the former are generally much higher), they represent a significantly higher burden on businesses at a given rate.

So just to put some numbers to that, Canada's Mandatory Employee Related Costs are about 10% (CPP, EI, Worker's Compensation, etc.). So on a business that spends about 30% of its revenue on labour (which is about average), they're giving up 3% of their revenue to the government for payroll taxes. Let's say that business also has a 10% profit margin, then that means they're giving up probably 3% more of their revenue at the average corporate tax rate in Canada. So all in, about 6% of revenue ends up with various levels of government.

Now compare that to that same business operating in Sweden. Their corporate tax rate is about 20%, so they're only giving up 2% of their revenue in taxes. That's lower than Canada, for sure. But their payroll tax (which funds much broader things than Canada's, including their healthcare system) is 31%. So with labour costs that are 30% of revenue, that means another 9.3% of their revenue is going to the government for a total of 12.3%, more than double Canada's corporate tax burden.

And other countries are similar. Germany's medical system is almost entirely funded through payroll taxes that are above and beyond what we pay in Canada (they pay a little over 20% vs. our 10%).

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

These countries have very high progressive tax rates. I think that would pass a referendum. The problem is the parties know where their bread is buttered.

They have higher income tax rates at every income level. And again, much higher VATs.

So here’s the referendum question.

“Do you support an increase of 3 per cent to your income tax, and an increase of the GST to 12 per cent, if it means those in the top 10 per cent of income* see their taxes increase by 6 per cent?”

* $120k or higher

I don’t think that has a hope in hell of passing. In Canada you can’t get people who earn 120k to even admit that they are affluent.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Only if you rely on semantics and take the absolute narrowest view of what constitutes corporate taxes...

I guess that’s something to bring up with the OECD, which is where I get my stats from.

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CTS_CIT

But if you have a more credible source, I’m always looking for good sources of data.

As for the other side of my analysis, do think the Canadian voting public would be amenable to paying northern European income and sales taxes?

[Torture]

I have...questions... 300 other pages!?!?

https://twitter.com/user/status/1669378551110602753

[Fuzz]

Cool cool.


She seems to have a habit of lashing out publicly(this time at "big social media" or whatever axe was left on the grinder) long before she has all the facts, or even understands what facts are. Worthy attributes of a leader.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Cool cool.


She seems to have a habit of lashing out publicly(this time at "big social media" or whatever axe was left on the grinder) long before she has all the facts, or even understands what facts are lie a lot. Worthy attributes of a leader.

Edited for the sake of brevity.

[All In Good Time]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Cool cool.


She seems to have a habit of lashing out publicly(this time at "big social media" or whatever axe was left on the grinder) long before she has all the facts, or even understands what facts are. Worthy attributes of a leader.

Trumps blueprint.......sadly it works

[woob]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Cool cool.

She seems to have a habit of lashing out publicly(this time at "big social media" or whatever axe was left on the grinder) long before she has all the facts, or even understands what facts are. Worthy attributes of a leader.

It's all about the performance. Love how she cc'd Elon Musk on that too.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I guess that’s something to bring up with the OECD, which is where I get my stats from.

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CTS_CIT

But if you have a more credible source, I’m always looking for good sources of data.

Well no, they have a bunch of categories there and you're just looking at one of them. That particular data is strictly taxes on corporate Net Income, which as I said is very narrowly focused. If we had a 0% corporate tax rate but a 100% payroll tax to fund social services, would that make us an attractive place to do business? No, not at all because the average business would be paying about 30% of their revenue into taxes.

I'm not aware of anywhere that explicitly breaks down all employer costs (though I'm sure that exists), but the OECD's Social Security Contributions would be an OK proxy of non-tax revenue that funds social services. It includes employee contributions, so it's not strictly focused on employer costs, but if you sort in descending order, you can see Canada is way, way down the list because we fund things largely through taxes. Whereas a country like Germany largely funds its healthcare system through payroll taxes and mandatory employee contributions, while Sweden funds a lot of its welfare state through payroll taxes. Those don't show up under tax revenue per se, but they're effectively the same thing.

https://data.oecd.org/tax/social-sec...ndicator-chart

Here's the actual chart for 2021:

https://data.oecd.org/chart/77n4

As for the other side of my analysis, do think the Canadian voting public would be amenable to paying northern European income and sales taxes?

No, not a chance. Though I do think an introduction of a modest healthcare payroll tax might be a decent way to get more funding into the healthcare system. Canada increased the total CPP contribution rates by about 5 percentage points in the '90s and early '00s with little negative effect, so over a period of time we could probably do a similar thing with a payroll tax. If we phased in a 5% mandatory healthcare contribution (say 2% employee and 3% employer) over a period of time, that would add about $30B in funding a year in today's dollars while still keeping payroll taxes well below most European countries.