[martin14]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

YOU and ME gave Canada a surplus by having less to spend on ourselves
The Liberal's "surplus" cost me personally an additional $5500/yr in taxes.

Somehow, they always miss that small point.

[hurley_108]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

andyt andyt:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Hell, anyone can do that when they don't pay their bills. The Liberals didn't give us a surplus, YOU and ME gave Canada a surplus by having less to spend on ourselves because of increased taxes at the municipal level to make up for the shortfall in federal transfer payments! My property taxes on my home almost doubled to help pay for the Liberals "surplus". OTOH I wish the property taxes on my production centre/warehouse only doubled.
The Liberal's "surplus" cost me personally an additional $5500/yr in taxes.

Well that's kinda the point - you have to pay more taxes to eliminate the deficit. Or have less govt spending.

What we got was both. Less spending AND increased taxes!
And when you say "increase taxes", what you really mean is, "home and business owners got to take up the slack."
If I had have been working at Toyota and renting an apartment, I would not have felt that trickle down taxation to the extent I did.
So, I guess the lesson here is, when the federal Lieberals are in power and want to generate a budget surplus, sell your house and/or business ASAP.

So what do you think the Conservatives are going to have to do to dig themselves out of the hole they've made? Whether there was a better way to axe the deficit than the one the Liberals used aside, by the end of the Liberal's 13 year stint, Canada was in a surplus position. Harper immediately set to slashing that to a mere break-even point with the GST cuts. Then he launches a massive round of stimulus with negligible impact on long-term emloyment (unless you count the ballooning public sector), big plans for prison and defence spending, and corporate tax cuts. The end result of which are deficits many times larger than the surplusses the Liberals ran.

How are we going to fix this? How are we going to return to balanced budgets? We've heard SFA from Harper and Flaherty on this. Do you have any ideas?

[andyt]

martin14 martin14:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

YOU and ME gave Canada a surplus by having less to spend on ourselves
The Liberal's "surplus" cost me personally an additional $5500/yr in taxes.

Somehow, they always miss that small point.

We didn't give the Liberals a surplus, we gave the country one. How would you two smarty pants create a surplus without people having less to spend? Trickle down economics? Yeah, that really worked.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

andyt andyt:

Well exactly - you want to stop the deficit you have to tax more and or spend less - probably some of each makes the most sense.

You're mistaken about somebody living in an apartment not feeling the pain. The landlord's taxes rise and he passes that right on to his tenants. And if you don't want business owners taxed, that means we all have to pay more taxes instead. The money the liberals stopped transferring is still our money, it all comes from us. If they'd kept transfers the same, then they would have not been able to cut taxes. And the provinces and municipalities would have kept right on spending because they were getting "free money." In the end there's only once source of govt money - the tax payer, and if we want to balance the books we have to either spend less or pay more. But we're so used to pushing the deficit down the road for our kids to pay, we squawk when we're asked to do either.

I only squawk when I think the rich aren't paying enough, which means the rest of us have to pay too much. Let those with the most pay the most.

I agree wholeheartedly with your last comment. However, as far as rent increases go. Landlords are permitted to raise rents 2.9%/yr in Ontario(might be more by now, not sure)The only time they could raise it higher than 2.9% was if they did some major work to the building, OR if a unit was vacated they could charge what the market would bear for that unit. Increased property taxes wasn't a legit reason to raise the rent higher than 2.9%. These rules do differ by province however so it may be different out your end of the country.
This part makes no sense though

$1:

If they'd kept transfers the same, then they would have not been able to cut taxes.

But they didn't cut taxes. The 40cents/litre gas tax was still there, LONG after it paid off what it was intended to pay off. Hell, they didn't even lower the GST rate, which they had promised to scrap entirely. Although I think I remember seeing a marginal drop in my total taxes owing one year.
But here's the final thing. If you're going to raise taxes, then raise 'em. Don't be a little bitch about it by forcing municipalities to do the dirty work on a select group while pretending you're doing me a favour.

[andyt]

hurley_108 hurley_108:

So what do you think the Conservatives are going to have to do to dig themselves out of the hole they've made? Whether there was a better way to axe the deficit than the one the Liberals used aside, by the end of the Liberal's 13 year stint, Canada was in a surplus position. Harper immediately set to slashing that to a mere break-even point with the GST cuts. Then he launches a massive round of stimulus with negligible impact on long-term emloyment (unless you count the ballooning public sector), big plans for prison and defence spending, and corporate tax cuts. The end result of which are deficits many times larger than the surplusses the Liberals ran.

How are we going to fix this? How are we going to return to balanced budgets? We've heard SFA from Harper and Flaherty on this. Do you have any ideas?

To be fair, the opposition pushed him into stimulus spending. Harper wanted to go with "if we were going to have a recession we would have had it by now." I wanted stimulus spending too, so I can't complain about that. But how it was spent, and how to recover it, are a different matter. Giving tax breaks to corporation isn't the way to go about it.

[andyt]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

This part makes no sense though

$1:

If they'd kept transfers the same, then they would have not been able to cut taxes.

But they didn't cut taxes. The 40cents/litre gas tax was still there, LONG after it paid off what it was intended to pay off. Hell, they didn't even lower the GST rate, which they had promised to scrap entirely. Although I think I remember seeing a marginal drop in my total taxes owing one year.
But here's the final thing. If you're going to raise taxes, then raise 'em. Don't be a little bitch about it by forcing municipalities to do the dirty work on a select group while pretending you're doing me a favour.

Hurray for the gas tax, a sin tax I agree with. I would like to see it spent on transit tho.

So you'd rather pay money to the feds than your municipality? If they raised your prop tax 5k, then that means they got 5k less from the feds. I think it's good to pass on some of the pain to lower levels of govt - that way they won't keep spending like drunken sailors because it's "free" money, ie money that they don't pay a political cost for. If the municipality really needed your 5k, then presumably you got 5k worth of extra service. If you feel you didn't bitch to your local council instead of the feds. In effect you're saying that people in some other part of the country should be subsidizing your municipal costs.

[bootlegga]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Just curious about how the anti-spending crowd here would feel if it was the coalition government in power and spent even more than the Conservatives.

I have no doubt in my mind it would be, "job well done" and "Liberals save Canada" partisan, mindless drivel.

The point is that the Coalition is NOT in power, so your observation really is moot. However, were they in power, it is quite possible that they might have had similar deficits. The key difference is where/how that money would have been spent. My guess is that it probably would have had a lot less corporate welfare to GM/Chrysler and the big banks for one thing and more funding for programs that affect common people, not just the wealthy and business owners.

Whether or not you like those priorities depends on your political views of course.

My point (and possibly some others here too) is that the Conservatives are supposed to be well - conservative. They are supposed to cut spending, lower taxes and shrink government - yet in the 5 years Harper has been in office, he's only met one of those objectives - cutting the GST. He has vastly increased spending and the number of people working for the federal government.

One of the few conservative things he has done is cut taxes for the wealthy (consumption taxes like the GST) instead of income taxes, which benefit the middle class more. His current promise of lowering corporate taxes is another typical conservative platform, and if we weren't in a deficit situation, I wouldn't have that much problem with it. However, his $6 billion annual gift to corporations comes at a time when we're adding $50+ billion annually to our debt, which in my opinion is totally wrong.

Harper promised he would be different, and yet when push has come to shove, he's done everything the Liberals did - accept floor crossers, appoint senators unilaterlally, go back on campaign promises, increase spending and the scope of government, you name it. In fact, I'd argue he's more liberal than the Liberals actually are.

My problem is that despite his promises of accountability and being different, his actions have shown that he's no different than any of the other career politicians in Ottawa.

[martin14]

bootlegga bootlegga:

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Just curious about how the anti-spending crowd here would feel if it was the coalition government in power and spent even more than the Conservatives.

I have no doubt in my mind it would be, "job well done" and "Liberals save Canada" partisan, mindless drivel.

The point is that the Coalition is NOT in power, so your observation really is moot. However, were they in power, it is quite possible that they might have had similar deficits. The key difference is where/how that money would have been spent. My guess is that it probably would have had a lot less corporate welfare to GM/Chrysler and the big banks for one thing and more funding for programs that affect common people, not just the wealthy and business owners.

Only in your dreams.

Corporate welfare would have been scheduled worldwide, not possible
to change anything about that.

[bootlegga]

martin14 martin14:

bootlegga bootlegga:

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Just curious about how the anti-spending crowd here would feel if it was the coalition government in power and spent even more than the Conservatives.

I have no doubt in my mind it would be, "job well done" and "Liberals save Canada" partisan, mindless drivel.

The point is that the Coalition is NOT in power, so your observation really is moot. However, were they in power, it is quite possible that they might have had similar deficits. The key difference is where/how that money would have been spent. My guess is that it probably would have had a lot less corporate welfare to GM/Chrysler and the big banks for one thing and more funding for programs that affect common people, not just the wealthy and business owners.

Only in your dreams.

Corporate welfare would have been scheduled worldwide, not possible
to change anything about that.

I think you're the one that's dreaming...the NDP would never have $100 billion in welfare to multi-national corporations. The Liberals, yeah sure, but the NDP, never. That's not to say there wouldn't have been ANY corporate welfare (as noted by the above bolded statement), just a lot less than Harper gave out.

Keep those blinders on Martin - I'm sure it's real safe when you ride as much as you do!