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2018 Ontario Provincial Election Discussion
- Thread starter MetroMan
- Start date
Admiral Beez
Superstar
As a train fan, that gets my vote!
On a more serious note, I'd like to see all employers forced to offer some sort of shared pension/retirement planning program for their full time employees. My company offers no retirement (or LTD coverage for that matter), so I have to pay these 100% myself. LTD is $145 a month a lone, while I try to invest 10% of my net salary into the stock market (so far so good).
Northern Light
Superstar
I don't get employee retirement benefits either.
But I have to say, I don't see those as the future.
The car companies illustrate the problem, where a benefit is even partially workforce paid, as pensions usually are, you are dependent on a stable or growing workforce to sustain the model; in addition, of course to the company being financially healthy decades into the future.
I would prefer see the following:
Raise the retirement age to 67 or 68 as most developed countries are doing.
But reinvest the savings as follows:
Raise CPP from 33% income replacement (its still 25 but has begun to increase) to 40% income replacement.
Raise OAS for every recipient by $150 per month; and for single-seniors (one-income household) add a $250 supplement.
Increase GIS to match the pension increase, plus a bit, adding around $150 per month for the typical recipient.
Overall, the object would be 60% income replacement for those that are part of a couple; 70% income replacement for those who are single.
This compares with roughly 48% income replacement today, when CPP improvements are rolled out.
It would be fully paid for by raising the retirement age.
In practice this would raise the entry-level retirement benefit from around $1,450 (excluding GIS) to around $2,000; and $2,250 (per month) if you're single. GIS would top that up further by around $300 per month if you had no other retirement income; and more if you had only partial CPP.
If any surplus remains, raise the death benefit which is silly low at $2,500 which barely covers cremation w/no service, to something more reasonable in the $5,000 range.
SunriseChampion
Senior Member
That's assuming the Greens are "left". (No one here has yet defined this ambiguous mumbo jumbo after me having asked several times....be so kind).
SunriseChampion
Senior Member
This is either complete bullshit or the best.
If it's on internal combustion engine vehicles only then I'm all for it.
If it's for all vehicles over $90k then it's bunk and I'm all not for it....because, why cars? Why not boats? Jewellery? Private schooling? Helicopters? Jet leases? Shoes? Clothing? Furniture?
What's it supposed to be? Some sort of sneaky tax beach head for additional taxes on everything wealthy people or is it to disincentivise fuel consumption as most cars above a certain price are fairly thirsty? If it's the former then they've lost me. I'm a working class punk (not actually a punk punk...though I do enjoy the music and sometimes I might look like it during the summer months) but I don't begrudge the bougies their toys. I don't like their ability to--fairly or not--not pay taxes, but they should be able to buy all the nice things they want.
On the other hand, a carbon tax should have been implemented back when I was in primary school (1990s) and should now be layered on thick from many angles to make up for lost time.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I’m not a fan of carbon taxes. The worst thing Canadians can do for the environment is reproduce. Tax IVF and anyone who breeds.
SunriseChampion
Senior Member
Hey man, sure....you're the family guy, I've been single and celibate for 7 years: I'm in no danger of reproducing anything except some epic weekends of my youth.
I dare say the worst thing humans can do for the environment is be willfully ignorant of their impact on it.
Jasmine18
Senior Member
I am not against a carbon tax...
I am against a tax that seems to be just another source of govt revenue for a govt that is known for irresponsible spending.
Meaning any carbon tax should be revenue neutral.
I am against a tax that seems to be just another source of govt revenue for a govt that is known for irresponsible spending.
Meaning any carbon tax should be revenue neutral.
steveintoronto
Superstar
"Neutral" relative to what?
BurlOak
Senior Member
Interesting that a Tesla will get a luxery tax and a rebate at the same time.
steveintoronto
Superstar
Fred Lambert
- Mar. 10th 2018 6:39 am ET
https://electrek.co/2018/03/10/tesla-loses-ontario-electric-car-incentive/
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Without government welfare the Tesla business model collapses. That’s Musk’s revenue stream, not car sales, but subsidies. Once the cost of extracting, producing and disposing of the lithium batteries is accounted for I’d have to think Teslas and their ilk do not warrant an environmental subsidy.
A good environmental subsidy is getting me out of my car entirely. I live in downtown east, and work near Hurontario and QEW. When I take public transit the cost each way, not including Toronto Bikeshare membership to get to Union Station, is $6.50 for GoTrain to Port Credit Stn, plus $0.80 for Mississauga Transit bus up Hurontario, for a daily total of $14.60 a day, x 250 working days per year = $3,650. Meanwhile my 2000 Honda is long paid for and is reliable, needing perhaps $1,000 for annual maintenance, $1,400 for insurance, and $30 a week for gas, with free parking in my driveway and covered parking at office. Total annual car cost perhaps $4,000 / 365 days * 250 working days = $2,740.
That’s where a subsidy makes sense, get me out of my car by making it more attractive to take transit. My wife has the family car, so I would sell my car, and not buy another, neither lithium or petroleum powered. Now that’s environmental thinking.
But I run the risk of an Mtown’esque thread jacking and inside baseball tangency, so I’ll say no more on this topic beyond conveying my support for greater transit subsidies or tax credits, and instead pull the tiller hard back on topic. The NDP plan is attractive to me, mostly because it helps those in need, reduces poverty and helps lower income moms return or enter the workforce, while mostly leaving me alone, as my income and purchases aren’t high enough to qualify for either the benefits or the higher levies to pay for those benefits. It’s the old tax the rich, help the poor, leave the middle alone strategy.
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John_Dee
Active Member
I keep hearing this, but I'm not exactly seeing it. If the current situation is indeed a mirror image of the Trump/Clinton Battle For the White House, it's a twisted, funhouse mirror image. Nothing is quite so cut and dried. (God knows that election certainly wasn't.) Hillary Clinton's team tried to sell Clinton's 'inevitability' as the reigning story of that campaign, which, it seems to me, is what Ford's supporters are trying to do with these comparisons...and I would warn them not to be so certain of this election's outcome themselves.
The Democrats had some excuse for their arrogance and presumption: Trump was such a buffoon he was practically a cartoon character, and he was a Goddamn game show host besides, fundamentally unserious, obviously in it for Ego and nothing else, etc. But Clinton was pretty widely loathed herself...just as Ford is. And for good reason. As I've said earlier in this forum, there is still such a thing as a "lesser evil" position, and I think an anti-Ford vote would definitely qualify for that category. He's a mean, rotten, none-too-bright son-of-a-bitch who slithered into his current position after a sleazy palace coup against the former party leader (in which we still don't know what role he personally played) and who got less votes than his chief rival in said election. How confidence building. He has a checkered criminal background, in which he (and his pig of a brother) had all sorts of scummy figures lurking about. He demonstrably turned the city of Toronto into an international laughing stock and shitshow when he was "Co-Mayor," and we still don't know how much responsibility he had for the uglier episodes that took place during that period, especially the more violent, criminal incidents in which people were actually, you know, attacked in their homes, beaten up and/or killed. So far in this campaign, every time he's opened his greasy, fat mouth he's cemented his position as an ignorant know-nothing who just spouts lies and self-aggrandizing bullshit. And he's committed himself as against a rise in the minimum wage. What a Man of the People!
Trump is an irresponsible demagogue, but give him his due: He did manage to turn himself into a brand name, which took a fair bit of cunning. Ford's attempts to do so have been crashing failures. He's a small-time grifter compared to Trump, a hick, and - even worse from a media standpoint - is as dull as dirt, apart from his political extremism. That he's clawed his way to the top in the provincial PC party has more to do with the current party "leadership's" cravenness and incompetence than anything else, IMO. So let's not count our chickens.
steveintoronto
Superstar
It's getting closer all the time:
BILL CURRY Globe and Mail
PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED APRIL 17, 2018 UPDATED 6 HOURS AGO
BILL CURRY Globe and Mail
PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED APRIL 17, 2018 UPDATED 6 HOURS AGO
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/pol...ight-of-how-political-parties-use-voter-data/
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
Wynne’s latest release about fair pay for government contracts is yet another example of well meaning policy that expands government for the purpose of expanding government. So basically we will pay more for an expansion of government beaurocracy so that political insiders can get positions setting Kafka-esque rules that will increase the costs of all future government contracts the government enters into?