Woops: I almost forgot to call bullshit on some of what you said here.
You're wrong bud. With some spending cuts we could balance the budget by 2013/2014 (by some, we're talking $15 billion, which is not small by any means--think no more military). See independant analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Furthermore, Ed Clark was talking about raising taxes on the wealthy. Don't take him out of context. And by 'taking out of context', I mean 'lying'.
We're a top ranking nation on the Global Peace Index who has seen its annual military spending skyrocket ever since Jean Cretien backed by Paul Martin dragged Canada into an American ideological war against the Middle East, for its wealth and influence. We could stand to stabilize our military debt and scale it back down to 1990s levels especially now that our military presence in Afghanistan is coming to a close.
Ed Clark was quoted by leading new publications as stating the CEO's of the CCCE agreed that it would be acceptable to "raise my taxes", but no context was given in relation to what taxes he was speaking of. But then just last week, Terence Corcoran wrote an article suggesting that another unnamed CEO had stated that Clark
was speaking of the GST when he stated "raise my taxes." I find that more than a little odd a wording for speaking of the GST, don't you?
Net effect of GST + GST rebates on low income people is basically zero, or positive. The answer to your argument that "GST is regressive" (true) is not "No GST!" but "give money to poor people". That's exactly what we do, and it works well.
GST is not 'inefficient'. In the economic sense, it is much more efficient than income, payroll, or capital taxes--that is, it costs less in economic activity per dollar raised than any of these taxes. GST is no more complicated to collect (and indeed simpler) than payroll tax deductions. Just about every company that collects and remits GST also does payroll, and payroll is much more complicated. Frankly, I don't believe that GST costs more to administer than these other policies, if you have any evidence to the contrary please provide it. Same goes with the figure for 20% of cost of GST rebates are used in distributing the rebates. Sounds like a Fraser Institute talking point. How does that compare to other tax administration schemes?
So all we have to do is increase taxes (GST) and then we can all join hands and sing kum-by-yah? Lol! I may be the only true centrist on here. I am so tired of giving half of my income to anyone in Ottawa, my Province or municipality to maintain their bloated self-serving beauocracy. $100 taxes for $50 services. And you are happy with that? Every penny I scrimp and save will be reduced by your new GST %. Money has no value unless you can spend it. Every service I require will be increased by this same amount. I expect the next federal budget will cut spending, not raise any current tax. So unless these CEOs are running for office, everything they say is just another opinion poll.
I really question whether income tax cuts that are financed by consumption tax increases are sustainable. In the early 1990s most European nations increased consumption taxes (particularly taxes on energy consumption) to finance both corporate and personal income tax rates. But the consumption tax revenues rarely met budget expectations (largely because the regressive nature of the taxes had a negative impact on consumption). To balance budgets, the Eurpean governments had to increase other taxes. Take Sweden and Denmark, for example. Government service agencies do not pay income taxes but do pay consumption taxes (or grants in lieu of those taxes). So when Sweden and Denmark hiked energy taxes to finance corporate and personal income tax cuts, there was a Swedish and Danish tax burden shifts frm the private sector to the public sector. To cover the resulting increase in the cost to deliver social services and health care, Swedish and Danish payroll taxes and mandatory health care premiums were increased---at three times the rate of the energy tax increases.
When there was no more room to increase payroll taxes and health care premiums, those government introduced new "supplemental" personal income taxes. Today, while corporate income tax rates are still below 1990 levels in those countries (but still higher than current Canadian corporate income tax rates), personal income tax rates, paroll tax rates and health care premiums are all higher than they were in 1990. In other words, after the economies incurred the full impact of the original attempt to finance both personal and corporate income tax cuts with consumption tax increases, only the corporate income tax cuts survived and the personal income tax cuts were reversed. Today, a Dane who earns more than CAD $51,000 remits 63% of his/her gross income in the form of income taxes, payroll taxes and mandatory health care premiums. In 2006, the McKinsey Group found that 19% to 12% of Swedes deemed to be "employed" were at home on full time "sick leave". Sick leave ate up over 16% of total Swedish government spending in that year. Experts posit that the massive number of Swedes on sick leave reflected the inability of Swedes to generate positive financial or emotional returns from continuing to work.
Do you want to the same fate happen to Canadians, or worse?
So contrary to what many here might think - prorogation or no prorogation - the Harper administration may be the closet thing to a true democratic leadership that this country will have seen in a long time from its aim of minimizing the government's interventionist role in citizen's everyday lives and in the markets; to redistributing wealth to as many Canadian individuals and industries as possible. I'm not blindly supporting them, far from it; just countering the angry, rabid mob mentality that they're implicitly no good and cannot be reasoned with to work in the public's best interest.
