Since I do not live in Ontario anymore, I do not know if the services which have been promised (alluded to in this thread) are ones I would want. If they are indeed going to improve something in the area I lived in by paying those taxes, I may be more inclined to, but the government is likely becoming more aware of how much of a media storm this is becoming in Ontario when many papers are already referring to all these new initiatives as new taxes. From the sounds of it, this is more paying off what was already promised, so unless this was outside of the realm of his electoral promises I’d guess it was outside of the realm of their fiscal projections. From the sounds of this thread, again, it seems that what is being taken and what it’s going to pay is information which is proving more elusive than had been hoped to Ontario residents.
Kind of unfortunate, but it happens a ton – you never know when something is going to cost more (and on the odd good day) less than previously estimated.
Bruce_the_vii Bruce_the_vii:
So you would be American there Green. America spends 36% of GDP on government while in Canada it's 40%. However the purchasing power parity of the Canadian dollar (ppp)is only 0.8 the American dollar. It's like the USA spends 45% of the budget on government on a per capita basis. The American politicians out spend Canada by quite a bit.
Reading this made me a bit uncomfortable. It implies that government expenditures are part of the open economy component, and that our economies are fairly open (when the US has an open-ness of, what, 8%?), buy only goods and that both nations have identical (non-existent in keeping in line with the definition of that theory when placed in ceteris paribus) transfer costs.
Not to mention other complications like inflation effects, deadweight loss, rates of taxes, service structures and such.
I think the better question to answer would be "which country loses more money in administrative overhead?" How much money really matters very little when we have to consider how effectively it is being used. The Native programs in Canada, for example, forced us to recreate entire programs purely for Natives, and that resulted in massive administrative costs.
PPP is really just the "real exchange rate." I don't think it accounts for as much as you implied here.
$1:
But as an urban Torontonian who works in the finance sector and district, I can't say it's too bad. Although I am a suburbanite most weekends.
I think that you have to remember that a large amount of people specifically opposed to this are not going to be from Toronto. When I lived in London, we noticed that union members up in Toronto seemed to get paid a lot more than those of us down here, and for all the promises I and relatives across Ontario were given a lot of the tax revenue seemed to get focused in Toronto, or at least, that’s how it seemed, and as seen in this thread you can see it’s a thought which exists to this day. When that strike occurred, it felt that the wages between those in Toronto and those in other areas were equalizing. Whether they were too equal and the higher prices in Toronto were not reflected by higher wages (PPP!), I do not know, but it seems to me at least that how the provincial government handles Toronto/Muskoka/GTA and how they handled the rest of Ontario seems to be different, and when you have comparable provinces and even cities in-province of decent size it does get on some folk’s nerves.
To be honest, the area seemed to improve during the Harris years, when a few in the area living on welfare were forced to work and ended up making more money than when they were not working at all. Again, whether this was mirrored elsewhere is not something I am going to contend, because I know others on welfare suffered a fair bit if they truly could not support themselves. I do have to say that when I lived in Ontario, the 400 series was considered dangerous because of the crowded driving conditions mad drivers more than the road itself, although I admit to only using the span south of Toronto largely, and rarely was I myself driving.
$1:
Funy how you complain about high tax and fees and yet your perfectly willing to see Canadians pay high taxes for unneeded defence programs .
Last I checked, our armed forces are a Federal level responsibility, meaning our taxes towards them (and not towards the Ontario government, as which is being discussed in this article) is what pays for those new jets. Since Mr_Canada repped that comment, I guess he and you know something about this case which I do not. Could you guys please elaborate on that?
The taxation we are seeing here and the response to it should be considered seperate from the taxation which we experience from the federal government. Sure, people have to pay both and, sure, people complain about both, but they do end up paying for very different things and one of them affects all Canadians, whilst the topic of discussion here only affects the residents of Ontario.
$1:
Another jealous anti-union worker person there Appolo... guess you don't qualify for a unionizsed job eh?
Reaching for a low blow is a poor way to carry on a discussion.
In any case, there are many anti-union or union-disinclined folks out there who are capable of getting into unions. My mother, for example, when I was young, continually tried to get out of joining unions as a university employee, and failed each time since they forced you into it (and forced you to pay dues) if you wanted to work at an upper echelon education facility in Canada.
Keep in mind that when people think unions, they think of people in Toronto or BC. I’ve already mentioned how many people in other areas of Ontario felt that they were paying for Toronto’s unions to get the wages they were, and there is an inherent stickyness of employment and wages when it comes to unions. Unions can, at times, drive down employment by demanding a larger amount of the budget given to some part of a company or public service be devoted to fewer employees.
The main aim of a union should be to make sure that real wages do not decrease, ie, that wages are at least keeping level with inflation. In the case of BC a few years ago, there were unions paying a ton of people to do very little work. Another example would be like the one down in the States, where members of the Postal Service were able to get housing and other luxury items far beyond what they would otherwise afford (and what people in high paying jobs would struggle to) because of the influence of their union. That last bit is fairly recent. Unions have also been seen to breed trade protectionism, bottlenecks in economies, and other negative effects on a larger scale.
I am not going to say if I am for or against unions, since this seems to be building into a semi-debate on its own, I’m just saying that there are many legitimate reasons why people may feel that labours do more harm than good, since there are some positives to them existing as well.
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