The GST is just a tax on people who don't have the means to save.
If you are putting 20% of your income into savings every month, then you are only paying 4% GST, while those who live pay to pay pay 5% GST, and often those who manage to save the 20% are able to recoup the 4% they did spend on GST in capital gains before they actually spend down their savings, It's a terrible tax if you fundamentally believe in progressive taxes.
The Nordic countries have the most robust public services and lowest poverty rates in the developed world. They all have a VAT of 20-25 per cent.
If I could enact any legislation federally, it would be to increase the GST to 10 per cent. Provincially, I’d introduce a 5 per cent PST.
I also second opendoor’s suggested measures to increase the number of health care professionals in this country.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
Last edited by CliffFletcher; 05-31-2024 at 06:59 AM.
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Cops go back to friendly colours, like baby blue uniforms. No more military style intimidating thugs. No more black cars or uniforms. Y’all aren’t cool, that isn’t the point.
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Alright, I've got an idea that will earn me a hasty assassination, but someday future generations will deify me: ban personal car ownership.
Here I was thinking of coming in with a crazy idea like retrofitting all roads and new roads to have wider sidewalks, separated mobility lanes, and proper street widths to induce the correct speed limit. Then you come in and blow it all up!
Cops go back to friendly colours, like baby blue uniforms. No more military style intimidating thugs. No more black cars or uniforms. Y’all aren’t cool, that isn’t the point.
Do they get to keep their Armoured Personnel Carrier?
Alright, I've got an idea that will earn me a hasty assassination, but someday future generations will deify me: ban personal car ownership.
Which I know sounds crazy and absolutely is, but it would be crazy awesome. It involves a major reallocation of resources, but imagine how efficiently a massively expanded transit system would work without traffic.
There's a whole lot more to unpack there and I need a few more napkins to sketch it out, but it will be great. I'm just gonna need a decade of total authoritarianism to implement it.
How would you measure success of this policy? Average commute times? Reduction in number of trips taken? Increase in density?
I question the underlying assumption that transit can ever be faster and cheaper without the Density accompanying the great transit systems in the world. In general transit becomes faster when fitting that number of cars is no longer possible.
In areas where land is cheap like Calgary I don’t see it as an improvement. Perhaps in 50 years when city design has changed to higher density it would work be helpful but that might be a distortion due to the law rather than actually better.
I think traffic density based taxation to ensure people are paying for the real cost of infrastructure would be a much more effective policy then a ban.
How would you measure success of this policy? Average commute times? Reduction in number of trips taken? Increase in density?
I question the underlying assumption that transit can ever be faster and cheaper without the Density accompanying the great transit systems in the world. In general transit becomes faster when fitting that number of cars is no longer possible.
In areas where land is cheap like Calgary I don’t see it as an improvement. Perhaps in 50 years when city design has changed to higher density it would work be helpful but that might be a distortion due to the law rather than actually better.
I think traffic density based taxation to ensure people are paying for the real cost of infrastructure would be a much more effective policy then a ban.
Cars are so all-encompassing to our lives that it would be hard to nail down just a few metrics. But it would be super interesting to do a meta-analysis of all the benefits/harms of personal vehicles and speculate how an alternative system would work.
A few random thoughts:
1. Overall economy would suffer to some degree, but a lot of different economic activities/services would fill the void.
2. It would also lead to different consumption patterns. Good/bad/different? Depends on the eye of the beholder, but I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world if there was an additional impediment to some consumption (and the local economy doesn't benefit nearly as much from physical consumption as it used to).
3. A lot of the benefits of this change would be hard to establish precise causal links, but the physical and mental health benefits would be huge. We here a lot that just 30 minutes of walking a day can do so much to improve one's health...this basically guarantees it for nearly everyone.
4. A slightly healthier populace without any big car accidents (though certainly still some bike/etc accidents) would be some pretty substantial savings.
5. The system could still fail at times, but I think it would be a lot less frequent and severe than our current level of accepted failure (rush hour traffic), let alone unique failures like car vs lrt collision.
6. Mobility challenges - I think would actually improve dramatically if people started navigating the world actively...instead of adding another lane here or there we'd smooth out a whole bunch of curbs. Obviously para transit services would remain/expand.
This would involve a transformative redefinition of prosperity. If the overall GDP decline is comparable to the offset total expenditure on personal transportation then it's almost certainly a win. Physical activity instead of the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) aggravation of navigating the metal box rat race.
I would pay more taxes to pay less on my personal transport to have an often less convenient form of service that is also very often less aggravating.
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The Nordic countries have the most robust public services and lowest poverty rates in the developed world. They all have a VAT of 20-25 per cent.
If I could enact any legislation federally, it would be to increase the GST to 10 per cent. Provincially, I’d introduce a 5 per cent PST.
I also second opendoor’s suggested measures to increase the number of health care professionals in this country.
I recognize I have for a long time seemed to be out on a ledge on the GST thing, but I have and continue to believe the compounding effects of taxing the wealthy later instead of at the time of income create a lot of the inequality we see. Maybe I'm wrong it's just with a generally accepted progressive tax system, that we then later tax people at the same rate, and allow the rich to differ the payment of that tax by saving instead of spending while poor people generally don't have the choice to not spend. It cuts against the way we talk about all other economic incentive we say we need.
I still think increasing the number of health care professionals is too simple of a plank, it's to easy to say "from where". Given the current situation we are in, the two main things I would do is to bolster or at the very least maintain education funding, I would set minimum barriers at inflation levels for funding and tuition, legislate that it cannot become less funded or more expensive than it is now. The other thing I would do is to the extent there is private ownership in our system, I would ban corporate ownership and mandate that all healthcare related practices must be owner/operator operations, Private medical practices should be able to use AHS contracts for procurement, training and other services corporate franchises would typically provide. Then have BDC create very generous business loans to healthcare providers to enable ownership transitions when required, if we want more healthcare, we need to make sure there are not intermediate layers siphoning off profits.
My stance on GST seems to be the one people took notice of, but that's probably one of my weaker opinions because a lot of smart people do tell me I'm wrong. I think the biggest thing on my list would be the 10 year term Senate by sortation. I think the biggest problem with our Senate is it lacks the political legitimacy to act on it's own, there needs to be the sense that it is a fair and open body drawn from the general public, that is co-equal to the house, while still being the counter weight we need that is detached from politics.
Probably followed by pressuring a global minimum corporate tax treaty, globalization has led to our governments competing with each other over corporation, and has give corporations too much power, they need to work together to claw back some of that power.
Cops go back to friendly colours, like baby blue uniforms. No more military style intimidating thugs. No more black cars or uniforms. Y’all aren’t cool, that isn’t the point.
I'm here for that.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
That new one is the one I was thinking of - they were cruising through my residential neighbourhood in that thing a few weeks ago when I was dropping my kids at school. My first thought was the Russians were invading. Why the hell do they need that thing - it's ridiculous.
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