[Winnipegger]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Winnipegger Winnipegger:

Legalize marijuana and tax it.

Go fuck your hat.

In 2006 I came up with this plan. I had included everything I could think of, and the budget just barely balanced. That was freezing corporate income tax; it was 21%. Then a couple Paul Martin supporters told me he wanted to not only abolish corporate capital tax and corporate surtax, but reduce corporate income tax to 19%. I wanted Paul Martin supporters to support my plan. But how could I balance the budget with corporate income tax that low? Then in 2012 the Liberal party passed a resolution to legalize marijuana and tax it. Actually it said legalize and regulate, but as a finance guy I'm interested in the tax revenue. Marc Emery is the guy the CBC calls the Prince of Pot. I looked up his website. He estimated tax revenue. It was in billions of dollars, but it was enough to reduce corporate income tax by 2% and keep the budget balanced. So that was the last piece of the puzzle.

I've never smoked marijuana; in fact I've never touched it. I know people who do, but I ask them not to smoke where I would breathe their second hand smoke, and I will not touch it. Most respect my decision, only one individual toked up right in front of me. I left the building.

[JaredMilne]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Delwin Delwin:

The sold the GM shares for $2.1 Billion so really still a 200 million deficit.

Liberal math.

Governments sell off things all the time. Property, assets, equipment. Do we not include that too?

They also sucked on the EI teat to balance the books, too.

You know, just the way that the Tories used to give the Liberals grief for.

Oh yeah, and if I recall correctly they deliberately underspent on things like veterans, even when the money was approved by Parliament, creating the illusion that they were living up to their commitments where they said they were while making sure we didn't go back into debt?

That kind of creative accounting is the sort of thing that would get you or I fired from our jobs at best, thrown in jail at worst.

[Lemmy]

Winnipegger Winnipegger:

In 2006 I came up with this plan. I had included everything I could think of, and the budget just barely balanced. That was freezing corporate income tax; it was 21%. Then a couple Paul Martin supporters told me he wanted to not only abolish corporate capital tax and corporate surtax, but reduce corporate income tax to 19%. I wanted Paul Martin supporters to support my plan. But how could I balance the budget with corporate income tax that low? Then in 2012 the Liberal party passed a resolution to legalize marijuana and tax it. Actually it said legalize and regulate, but as a finance guy I'm interested in the tax revenue. Marc Emery is the guy the CBC calls the Prince of Pot. I looked up his website. He estimated tax revenue. It was in billions of dollars, but it was enough to reduce corporate income tax by 2% and keep the budget balanced. So that was the last piece of the puzzle.

I've never smoked marijuana; in fact I've never touched it. I know people who do, but I ask them not to smoke where I would breathe their second hand smoke, and I will not touch it. Most respect my decision, only one individual toked up right in front of me. I left the building.

1. Pot plants should be regulated exactly like tomato plants: free to grow and harvest, seeds sold at the hardware store, right beside the tomato seeds; $0.99 per packet. That gives the government its pot tax: 13% = $0.13 HST per packet sold...a little less in Alberta.

2. Implementing a tax that raises as much money as you estimate, whose incidence falls on a segment of the population as small, demographically, as "potheads" would be fundamentally unjust.

3. I use a vapourizer and I use it discretely. I don't pollute anyone's air quality.

[andyt]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Oh yeah, and if I recall correctly they deliberately underspent on things like veterans, even when the money was approved by Parliament, creating the illusion that they were living up to their commitments where they said they were while making sure we didn't go back into debt?

Immigration and Refugee board underspent by 100M including 25M for resettling refugees. Guess that's where that new commitment to spend 100M on refugees now comes from.

[Winnipegger]

Lemmy Lemmy:

I use a vapourizer and I use it discretely.

Oh. You realize politicians will only legalize it if they can regulate it. The Liberal plan is to treat it like alcohol or tobacco.

[Thanos]

Which is impossible because anyone who`s growing their own for basically nothing isn`t going to buy it in something set up like a liquor store for something $5 a joint or x-amount of dollars for an ounce. That`s where the legalization argument completely falls apart because current users aren`t going to change how they do things right now, which for most of them apparently works quite smoothly and effectively.

[andyt]

Funny, CO and WA seem to be doing a booming legal business in their pot stores, with the main problem for CO at startup was lack of supply. And if growing your own is so common now, what's with the argument that organized crime is getting rich off supplying the dope right now.

Just as with beer/wine, people should be able to grow their own for their own consumption, but not be able to sell it. Don't really see liquor stores going out of business in selling beer right now because of home brewing either.

[Thanos]

The big grow-up guys are pretty much organized crime. Someone growing their own in the basement isn't. I don't want to have another round of this nonsense with you but I'll say again that you seem blissfully unaware of how much organized crime diversifies their businesses. The same guys at the top of a major grow-op are associating with even bigger gangsters who run heroin, coke, ecstasy, and every other drug they can sell. They also do loansharking, gambling, gun running, human trafficking, prostitution, protection rackets,and any other illegal and profitable thing they can control. You seem to believe that they all do one thing and one thing only and leave everything else to others, which is a crock as any cop or prosecutor in the world will tell you.

[andyt]

Your argument was that legalization falls apart because people grow their own. Tell that to CO or WA.

[Thanos]

I've associated socially with enough users over the last thirty years to know with absolute certainty that they aren't going to spend money at a store when they're already growing their own for essentially nothing. If you want to go over this again with your usual pedantic Fisking you can go bother someone else. I've said what I needed to say and if you don't like it then too bad for you.

[andyt]

Maybe learn to read if you're going to spout off. Let em grow their own, I'm all for it. It won't make "legalization fall apart." You're just pissed because I can give you a concrete example of how it hasn't to counter your addled ravings.

[Thanos]

Guess we all have our sore spots that set us off on a tear. Yours is obviously when someone differs from you on all-things-marijuana. Clearly saying anything like one's anecdotal experiences from several decades worth of hanging out with users that have always grown their own product. I bow down to your overwhelming evidence, oh grand vizier of the highest of high times.

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

And they don't include the breakdown of budgetary surpluses by department, so we don't know which departments short changed their responsibilities by underspending. Like we saw with DND in past years.

Creative accounting.

Yep, it's quite the magic trick, considering he ran a $15 billion deficit last year.

http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/canada-deficit/

This 'surplus' is a likely a smoke and mirrors one, not a genuine surplus created by prudent financial policies.

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

I've associated socially with enough users over the last thirty years to know with absolute certainty that they aren't going to spend money at a store when they're already growing their own for essentially nothing. If you want to go over this again with your usual pedantic Fisking you can go bother someone else. I've said what I needed to say and if you don't like it then too bad for you.

In an ideal world. we could legalize MJ and prostitution and treat them like booze or alcohol, but I doubt either one would work as well as proponents think they would.

I have no doubt the government would make some decent tax revenues, but it's not the revenue or organized crime slaying panacea some people might think it is.

[Lemmy]

Winnipegger Winnipegger:

You realize politicians will only legalize it if they can regulate it. The Liberal plan is to treat it like alcohol or tobacco.

And you realize that such a program will only generate revenue if the excise tax is no higher than to just offset the pain-in-the-ass of growing the plants, which for home growers has a cost of near $0. The most expensive input to the production of a couple of pot plants for personal consumption is the $10 - $15/year for potting soil and Miracle Gro.

The government scheme must also undercut the biker gangs' prices. Otherwise, your/the Liberals' scheme is also moot. And we haven't even discussed quality of the product. If the government weed is shit, no one will buy it no matter the price.

I said "Potting soil"...