Gst Cut To 5% On Jan. 1

[Moonlight_Graham]

fucking sweet!

 

One thing i gotta say about the Conservatives, though i disagree with them on many things, is that they keep "most" of their election promies, at least compared to other parties (*cough* liberals*cough*). That anti-trust shit was f'ed up though. Cost me some $$$ in the stock market.

[Crusader]

aren't we taking a step backwards here? how about he keeps the GST the same and pump 1% of it into something else.

[Lauren]

the problem i have with this is that sales taxes are a huge source of income for the government, with which they fund lots of social services, etc. i would rather pay the extra however many percentages and have kids going to things like community center-run programs than have them on the street with an extra 10 dollars in my pocket.

[Crusader]

exactly. i don't think giving me a couple dollars more a year so i can impulse buy something is going to help the nation as a whole

[Ravenous megin-sane]

i only notice the difference at dollar stores.

 

and it would be nice if more of our tax money was going towards social services rather than, i don't know... funding a pointless war.

[Lauren]

antons, come to ottawa and we'll show steve who's boss.

[Dan #2]

great.. this is going to make the liberals or ndp eternally look like assholes, when all social services go bankrupt and who ever rules after the conservative has to raise taxes again..

 

and of course our parents generation will think whoever governs is an asshole for doing that...

Edited November 1, 2007 by Dan #2

[heyrabbit]

For once I actually agree with Moonlight Graham.

 

Crusader + Megan +Lauren: First of all, who is obligated to help the nation as a whole, and for what reasons?

 

Not only does socialism not help us as a whole, but it is our nation's chief destroyer. Altruism is presently the predominant ideal in the philosophy of our government and nation. Altruism, through socialism, is what caused this economic and social disparity, and yet your answer is to be more socialistic and more altruistic. If altruism is your standard of morality, why do you complain when the country is not as healthy as you'd like it to be? If taxes were increased to 100%, we'd be living in a Communist state! Nobody here approves of Communism, except maybe Moonlight Graham. Why, then, do you think it's good to be a little bit Communistic?

[Crusader]

i never said we should increase taxes, just keep them at where they were at. we're losing a large chunk of money from that 1%, that of which we have been spending. hell, that sounds more capitalist than socialist.

 

our brothers in the south are running on a system that our current government wants to emulate.

- they have around 6-10 million people unemployed

- they have a defecit in the trillions and will likely never pay it back

- their crime rate is through the roof, people are murdered on a daily basis

- their dollar has dropped

 

who is obligated to help the nation as a whole? the government is. it's their job, in my opinion and a vast majority of canadians, to manage the people and you can't manage the people if they're sick and or dying.

 

i never understood why people were so opposed to "socialism" either. your country is going to end up in debt either way so why not better trying to keep your citizens healthy?

 

"Altruism, through socialism, is what caused this economic and social disparity."

 

that's bullshit. economic and social disparity are caused by individuals who only want to benefit themselves. i'm not saying that wanting to be rich is necessarily a bad thing, i'd love to be rich, but the fact that someone wants/is going to hoarde money that's meant to be going to something that benefits the people as a whole is not socialism.

 

if you want to blame someone for the "money hungry" health care system, blame the executives and politicians for having such exorbitant salaries. that's one reason NGO's don't actually help anyone as well.

 

communism and socialism aren't the same thing either. if i recall, i can buy and sell most anything i want and i don't have to give up my home for the motherland if they want to build a highway through my neighbourhood.

 

we're already living in a sort of communist state already, aren't we? the postal system, the fire department, police, hospitals, and ambulances are the very things that embody socialism. don't you like having those?

 

maybe the problem isn't that we don't have the money or that we have too much of it, maybe it's the people who are in control of it.

[Hyphnip]

I really don't care about them taking this off of my taxes. I'm with the people that say that they never should've taken anything off the GST and the should've just put the money towards something else.

[heyrabbit]

The trouble with "helping the nation as a whole" is that there is no such thing as "whole people". There are only individuals. So which individuals are to be helped? If you are asked to help everyone equally,without standard, you are asked to help nobody! What it means is that every single person, regardless of ANYTHING, has the right to someone else's wealth. What's wrong with that?!. Also, what constitutes "help"?

 

How do you reach the conclusion that 6% GST is good, but 5% is bad? Based on what? What is the philosophical justification for that?

 

Socialism is a grossly incorrect, immoral system. It's philosophical premise is altruism. So what's wrong with killing yourself?! That is literally what it means to be an altruist and a socialist. Tell me why would you not want to live in Cuba or China?

 

The words "Communism" and "Socialism" are often interchangeable. Communism is just the manifestation of socialism. It is the implementation of socialism by a totalitarian state. Communism implies totalitarian leadership, socialism does not. Socialism is simply the collective ownership of the means of prodution.

 

 

 

that's bullshit. economic and social disparity are caused by individuals who only want to benefit themselves. i'm not saying that wanting to be rich is necessarily a bad thing, i'd love to be rich, but the fact that someone wants/is going to hoarde money that's meant to be going to something that benefits the people as a whole is not socialism.

So if people only forgot about themselves, and tried to benefit others, the world would be a better place? That is the present code of morality! So why are you complaining about it?

 

The government has control of the economy. It collects wealth for hte purpose of redistributing it. That is nothing other than socialism. If it's not socialism, how did they get a hold of our money?

 

we're already living in a sort of communist state already, aren't we? the postal system, the fire department, police, hospitals, and ambulances are the very things that embody socialism. don't you like having those?

 

No. I don't think that anyone has the right to emergency service, and I don't like paying for it. Nobody has the right to stolen health care, or stolen fire service, etc. I don't approve of paying for the emergency care of every asshole who gets shot because he's a drug dealer, and he's the victim of a drug hit. I don't approve of paying for a doctor's time because someone went to the emergency room with a cold. I don't approve of paying for fire service for someone who burned their house out of pure negligence.

 

 

 

maybe the problem isn't that we don't have the money or that we have too much of it, maybe it's the people who are in control of it.

No. The problem is precisely the fact that they are in control of your money. Stealing someone's money is literally to steal a person's life. You cannot own the product of someone's life, because they require it to live

 

Watch this:

Edited November 2, 2007 by heyrabbit

[Lauren]

i stopped reading after you wrote "How do you reach the conclusion that 6% GST is good, but 5% is bad? Based on what? What is the philosophical justification for that?" because

-not everything is philosophical/has philosophical justification

-it's not the actual percentage that's the issue, it's the decreasing of said percentage.

 

to be honest, i hate reading your socio-political posts because you're so outside the box that it's not even relevant anymore, and then you stubbornly cling to your abstract/dillusional ideologies. if/when you try to rebuke me, i probably won't read it. i don't mean to seem like a bitch, but i already know that it will be bullshit.

[heyrabbit]

i stopped reading after you wrote "How do you reach the conclusion that 6% GST is good, but 5% is bad? Based on what? What is the philosophical justification for that?" because

-not everything is philosophical/has philosophical justification

-it's not the actual percentage that's the issue, it's the decreasing of said percentage.

 

to be honest, i hate reading your socio-political posts because you're so outside the box that it's not even relevant anymore, and then you stubbornly cling to your abstract/dillusional ideologies. if/when you try to rebuke me, i probably won't read it. i don't mean to seem like a bitch, but i already know that it will be bullshit.

 

 

 

Politics is a BRANCH of philosophy. So what's wrong with admitting that you renounce philosophy in the field of politics? It literally means that you don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it! So not only is mostly everyone wrong, but they don't even know the philosophy from which they derive all their wrong and bad ideas. If you refuse to declare the premise of your ideas, your intentions are unknown. Incidentally, that makes it easier for anyone to say whatever the hell they want, without identifying the source of their ideas, because one cannot contradict a philosophy one refuses to identify and subscribe to. This is the state of politics today. The result is a bunch of people saying random, unintelligible things, because they can because nobody appreciates philosophy. "This is MY opinion." " Oh yeah this is MY opinion." Who knows whose opinion is correct because "THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW WHOSE OPINION IS CORRECT." Reality does not exist! And yet your only means of arguing is by applying applying reason to observations of reality. So why bother arguing? You are correct, Lauren.

 

 

I don't care if you don't want to debate, but why would you announce it to me?

 

Also, I don't know what a non-abstract ideology is. I defend certain ideologies because I think they are right. Forgive my being stubborn enough to keep conviction in my ideas. Perhaps I should be open-minded enough to accept any and all ideologies.

Edited November 2, 2007 by heyrabbit

[Moonlight_Graham]

I take it back. I'd rather the GST stay the same, but use a bit of the surplus we have to cut income tax or something else. A GST cut doesn't help the people who need it most, because the gov't doesn't charge GST on essential goods/services like milk, vegatables, prescription drugs, most health care services, education etc. Some of the surplus should also go to our health care system because its still shit & going to get worse as my parents get older.

 

heyrabbit, i'm not a communist. Also, i think you're insane. Are you an anarchist by any chance, because it certainly sounds like it (not to say anarchists are insane, because they aren't & are deeply misunderstood). If so, an individualist anarchist? Collectist anarchist?

 

I believe in a free market system, but having gov't limits & a welfare state w/ social programs. A strict capitalist economy doesn't work. We've seen this in the U.S. when FDR had to institute the 'New Deal' and welfare programs in the 1930's because the gap between the rich & poor was too vast, the workers had no rights & their labour wasn't justly accounted for. While taxes and worker unions can be annoying, I don't want to live in a country with sweatshops.

 

Social programs, philanthropy, altruism aren't immoral. Quite the opposite.

 

Marx may have indeed been onto something, but his theory is flawed. Communism obviously doesn't work because dictarships don't work. I like living in a liberal democracy that has social programs to help those that may be given a bad deal in life. I'm not a Nazi, i'm not a social-Darwinist when it comes to human-beings, dog-eat-dog & the weak deserve to die etc.

 

I like fire departments.

Edited November 2, 2007 by Moonlight_Graham

[X-Rated Truffle Pig]

aren't we taking a step backwards here? how about he keeps the GST the same and pump 1% of it into something else.

i agree.

 

how about more income tax breaks or something else.

 

you know that its only going to last for as long as another party has to raise it back up.

[supercanuk]

Natural selection occurs too slowly to have any sort of relevance in politics, and I certainly never said anything about survival of the fittest. It's true, of course, that the fittest will survive, but evolution is completely amoral. My position is not that the fit take precedence over the unfit, because I have made no such distinction between fit and unfit in the context of evolutionary time. How am I supposed to know what is "fit" in the context of evolution. Economic success in 2007 is not any indication of what will happen during millenniums of evolutionary change. The fittest will survive. That doesn't mean all "fit" people will survive, or that smart people should survive, or whatever you thought I meant. I think we should worry about our lives first before being concerned with altering the course of evolution!

 

You seem to be concerned with the rights of those born in less favorable circumstances. Rights is a matter of morality. Define your code of morality.

 

 

From what you said I gathered that you think I don't think the homeless work hard enough, for example, and that that's why they don't succeed. But before one can "work harder", they first have to work. Work is the production of value required to sustain life. To work is literally to live. Doing a job is not necessarily work, not if one doesn't produce value, not if you're talking about how work pertains to human survival.  Trying to produce does not guarantee that you will produce. And trying harder will not work for everyone - you are right.

 

 

And so I do completely agree that all men have the capacity to sustain their own lives,to live, given the right circumstances. We're all basically the same in that sense, you are right, because the difference between the smartest man in the world and dumbest is trivial when compared to the difference between the human mind and the brains of any other species. But human survival requires freedom from coercion in order to survive. The only application of freedom in an economic system is a free market.

 

The free market, by definition, is an economic system of private ownership free from government interference. Since taxation is the most obvious and probably the best example of government interference in the economy, because taxation is literally government interference in and of itself, consider what you just told me. To paraphrase: "A free market has to not be a free market in order to be a free market." (?!) A is non A. So long as taxes exist, there is no true free market. The idea of an economy complete separated from the state is the very definition of Laissez-faire Capitalism. I've been very clear that I do not approve of government interference in the economy, in any way shape or form, to any degree, no matter how minor.

Bingo. You are entirely correct in your estimation of how my logic applies to the free market, despite trying to get me to admit it, because you think it's absurd. I admit it.  Coercive monopolies are created by government funded subsidies, by laws both restricting and increasing the freedoms of certain corporations. Those monopolies would not exist otherwise. Subsidization is an act of socialism. It is entirely against every capitalism stands for. Notice the consequence of subsidization -  the corporatoins you love to despise. Despite the fact that subsidization is an act of pure, unfettered socialism, in its rawest form, everyone blames "Capitalism" for the problems of the country, proclaiming that men were "too greedy", that they "wanted too much money". This is why Capitalism is repeatedly and erroneously blamed for the injustices sanctioned by the manifestion of their ideal - socialism. To make matters worse, they immediately offer socialism as a solution to the problem,unaware that it caused it in the first place, declaring that mankind should be more "fair", without offering a definition of morality, a criterion by which to determine what is "fair", which results in more socialism and more problems.

 

 

The common misconceptions people have about Capitalism stems from ignorance of the word, from the assumption that capitalism equates to nothing more than reverence for the rich and disdain for the poor. Capitalism is not synonymous "pro-corporation". When someone is a capitalist, it doesn't automatically mean they love all fortune 500 companies. I don't have admiration for people who make lots of money. I have admiration for those who earn money, whether they're billionaires or whether they earn a single dollar. I also don't hate large corporations for no other reason than they are large, unlike  many of Capitalism's retractors.

 

Most people's definition of capitalism seems to be something like this: "Men who love money and are greedy and like big corporations and like screwing the "little" man and all they care about is money. There's more to life than money" If that is anyone's definition of capitalism, I am not a Capitalist!

 

 

Nobody owns ideas, and I never claimed that anyone does. The right to property is the right to action, not the right to an object. What men own is their means and consequences of producing the object. That's not a guarantee that I will produce any objects, but that the right to property grants me the legal right to own the object provided I earn it. Do you see? Since we live in physical reality, all value has to be exchanged in terms of physical objects. If I write a book that doesn't mean I have the right to think about my book, it means I have a right to its value. This is exactly why property rights are the only implementation of rights whatsoever. That doesn't mean that property rights should be ignored, just because it's hard. That's the whole purpose for having legal system. Not everyone will always receive what they earn, but what is the alternative? Should should we deny everyone's right to their property because we can't be bothered to have a legal system, or should we strive to improve the system as much as possible? It's the job of the law philosophers to work it out. We already have a fairly advanced system. Musicians often receive at least some value. Many authors make great money. Capitalism is an economic model based on the proper morality, the manifestation of morality, it is not morality itself.

 

Define morality. Define your code of ethics.

 

 

"what if my morality is not based in a capitalist ideology?"

 

You have it backwards. Reality is not based on Capitalism. Capitalism is based on reality, because reality exists FIRST. A is A. And there is no such thing as "y

our" morality. You exist in the same reality as me. You are the same kind of animal as me. What is fundamentally good for you is fundamentally good for me.

 

It would be immoral to give to the bum regardless of how he chose to make use of the money. You'd be training him to be morally lazy, giving him no incentive to get off the street.

If that man chooses to die, you are not responsible because you cannot be responsible for every human being on earth. You cannot live for every human being. You cannot live for ONE human being, let alone billions. The best way to help the bum is to live your own life, and that includes respecting your rights as well as his, which includes not sacrificing your values to him. And you certainly should not  "help" him by helping him hit rock bottom. That is no sort of justification. You cannot be - and I cannot be - an indentured servant to 6 billion people. You cannot be expected to continuously buy your life by living the lives of others. It's not only immoral to try to do so, it is impossible!  If you want to help him, enforce moral law, in the same way that parents enforce moral law upon their children.

 

  I have a profound admiration  for man, and if a homeless man makes something of his life, that is great. I do view man that way. But if I am going to treat every bum as a capitalist waiting to be born, I have to to just that; I have to trade with him in the only way that makes sense - value for value.

 

It really is this simple: Immorality exists only insofar as people sanction it.

Interesting reply.

 

Your subjective notion of ethics may be what is true and correct for you, but does not independently exist as some timeless truth which has bearing on all. There is literally no such thing, every single concept humans come up with is just that, human, and flawed, and I take issue with a very hard line approach to a specific or dogmatic definition of ethics in regard to society. No one set of "ethics" will fit for the entire society, everyone will take issue with some aspect of how a society is run and not everyone agrees that the "free market" is free from many points of view. So, you feel that the the complete free market would have zero government interference. I am well versed in the free market economy ideology, and it is just that, an ideology which often has destructive consequences for countries. Look at what the Chicago boys did to Chile with Pinochet

overthrowing Allende? They instituted a free market economy which threw the majority of the population into mass poverty and Pinochet ruled with torture and fear. I am not blaming capitalism for this, to be clear, i am stating that when there is no government interference in the economy to ensure people are able to buy goods to eat, that this is a disgusting consequence of putting no regulations on the economy.

If i understand you correctly you are advocating zero government involvement in the market. If this were to occur then there would be no health regulations, no laws that govern corporate actions such as moving capital from one country to the next, or how that corporation treats individuals vis-a-vis its policies of manufacturing, laws which protect individuals rights under a democracy.

 

You see, if there were zero government interference in the market then the actors in the market could freely act without regard to other laws. So i think either I am misunderstanding your argument, or you need to be pretty specific about your dream free market because human beings include the OBJECTS in REALITY that you have stated. I am aware that we need to be able to trade goods, and i'm well aware of this objective reality (which actually many people in the fields of science, especially artifical intelligence fields would say doesn't actually exist) where we all need to live. But if you want me to define some ethics that have nothing to do with the society i live in, then you need to be specific about how exactly you can take out the unpredictability of human behavior in your own analysis of a world in which I am living for another because I give him money which he has not earned.

Your appear to be assuming that everyone is a rational value producing machine. Nobody is really rational in any true sense of the word, nor can they be, because humans are unpredictable, and because of this there are people in our society we have to take care of. There is a morality here, not ethic, and it is also irrational because it has nothing to do with my existence but the well-being and existence of my fellow species, and to that i ascribe the utmost importance.

 

To work is literally to live. Doing a job is not necessarily work, not if one doesn't produce value, not if you're talking about how work pertains to human survival

 

What do you think is the role of a partner in say, a marriage, where one of them stays at home with a child? Here I feel you are a bit unclear on produce and job, because there is a job that must be done, the rearing of children, that is not producing a physical object. Yet in society, we give that value, not in terms of monetary value but value in and of itself, the well-adjustment of another human being. Can you please clarify how this pertains to the market?

 

But human survival requires freedom from coercion in order to survive. The only application of freedom in an economic system is a free market.

 

We cannot be free from coercion, there will be some form of governance, fascist, or otherwise, which will always coerce humans. Even in a state which reduces this to the absolute minimum, say in a state which has been able to exist without a government, there will be forms of coercion placed through personal relationships, again, a irrational human characteristic which you cannot just delete from existence. You cannot only apply this to a free market, because the free market does not exist in some place free from human agency. Human agency creates the free market and so that market is subject to all kinds of irrational human acts which have other effects on other human beings. Therefore we , as human beings, create laws to mitigate the effects of any business coercing another human being. Human survival does require a certain AMOUNT of freedom from coercion, but we cannot get rid of all of it, power relations exist everywhere.

 

The free market, by definition, is an economic system of private ownership free from government interference

 

Private ownership of an object is not free from government interference. In fact, private ownership only exists because we have a form of government which recognizes this for simplicity sake. So if it does not exist outside of what you and me and society recognize it to be as a privately owned object then it is just an object. So what about other forms of interference? Such as when the government bails out an entire sector of the economy like the loans crisis in the summer? Here was government interference which preserved the market and preserved it on behalf of capital. These things all have effects on humans that need to be controlled. The market was never set up free and it cannot run freely because things like corruption, externalities, environmental degradation, and a whole host of other things come along with a free market economy.

 

 

"The common misconceptions people have about Capitalism stems from ignorance of the word, from the assumption that capitalism equates to nothing more than reverence for the rich and disdain for the poor. Capitalism is not synonymous "pro-corporation". When someone is a capitalist, it doesn't automatically mean they love all fortune 500 companies. I don't have admiration for people who make lots of money. I have admiration for those who earn money, whether they're billionaires or whether they earn a single dollar. I also don't hate large corporations for no other reason than they are large, unlike many of Capitalism's retractors. "

 

I am not ignorant of what capitalism is, and I know that it is not disdain for the poor, or that "it" is pro-corporation, you cant attribute human agency to an institution which is a legal fiction. What I am critical of, is it's effects to the environment, both human and geographical, and those effects are due to the actors within the economy, not the economy itself. The economy of capitalism does however, pit one person against another, and because it does this, i feel we need to regulate its morally repugnant effects. If a family is starving, i couldn't give a shit that they can't make enough money to feed their family, what i give a shit about, is that they live in a society that cares enough about them to help them get food to eat. Seriously, if somebody has an alcoholic father and a drug addict mother and those people don't feed there kids, that is repugnant. At the same time, if that society does not care enough about those children to pool together what's extra in what they need for survival to help others survive then i don't want want to live in that society, nor do i think that it is a defensible position. If that's socialistic then that's fine with me, and its obviously where we have differences.

 

"

You have it backwards. Reality is not based on Capitalism. Capitalism is based on reality, because reality exists FIRST. A is A. And there is no such thing as "your" morality. You exist in the same reality as me. You are the same kind of animal as me. What is fundamentally good for you is fundamentally good for me."

 

I think you have misread my statement. I never said that reality was based on Capitalism. Capitalism is a economy which exists in my reality, it's not based on my reality, because my reality is based on only what i've learned from my surroundings. Capitalism is not something which can have human agency, it's an economy, unlike other objects, such as humans, in my reality.

 

"It would be immoral to give to the bum regardless of how he chose to make use of the money. You'd be training him to be morally lazy, giving him no incentive to get off the street.

If that man chooses to die, you are not responsible because you cannot be responsible for every human being on earth. You cannot live for every human being. You cannot live for ONE human being, let alone billions."

 

Morality is totally subjective, to YOU, giving a homeless person is immoral, and here we disagree. I cannot be responsible for every human being that is correct. But, in a country that taxes me, i can help through what i've earned, assist other humans in their times of need. It's not as straight forward as being responsible for every human being, your conflating individual responsibility with collective responsibility, or even collective decision. By virtue of my governmental representative i have agreed to sanction certain laws because I vote. If that law includes taxation for the army then i support it, the army protects me. If there is a law i don't support, i talk to my member of parliament and lobby to change the laws. If the majority disagree with me i live in that reality because i have been lucky enough to live in a country that gives me that option.

 

This is just a subjective discussion, again, with no absolute truth or ethic, or morality because when it comes down to it i disagree that giving humans money they have not earned is not immoral.

 

EDIT: I just thought i'd mention the obvious issue we haven't really addressed that a government, or at least our government, has full control over the economy. The economy is allowed to exist in the form it does because of the government, and therefore, it exists because the people of the country allow it to exist by not voting for parties that wish to abolish or severely curtail the economy. The economy is subordinate to the government, and in my opinion, that is the way it should be.

Edited November 7, 2007 by supercanuk

[Sparq]

What the hell? I came in here expecting to read about GST cuts. I don't even want to know where this one derailed.

[CanadianMaple09]

I'm not gonna defend the Liberals' accountability, but while they were in power they did erase the huge debt inherited from the previous Conservative administration, and then turn that into a massive surpluss. I don't think you keep surplusses going by cutting your income! And I definitely don't want Canada to end up like the US, owing everything it owns and more to China! I agree with all previous posts about social services. They are far more important than the 1% you save on each purchase.

[ToadMan]

I split out all of the off topic discussion (that I had a part in also)

 

You can find it at http://www.nearfantastica.com/bored/index....mp;#entry324425

[Moonlight_Graham]

I'm not gonna defend the Liberals' accountability, but while they were in power they did erase the huge debt inherited from the previous Conservative administration, and then turn that into a massive surpluss. I don't think you keep surplusses going by cutting your income! And I definitely don't want Canada to end up like the US, owing everything it owns and more to China! I agree with all previous posts about social services. They are far more important than the 1% you save on each purchase.

I think you mean the Liberal's eliminating the deficit, not the national debt. Canada's national debt currently stands at around $700 billion, and that's not going to change too much any time soon.

 

If the Liberals eliminated the debt i would suck Paul Martin's cock. And i'm not gay & he's an old ugly man so thats saying something.

[Matt]

The Conservatives aren't the only ones responsible for that debt. The debt is Pierre Trudeau's legacy. Not all socialists are fiscally irresponsible either. I am not an NDP supporter as well. But a GST cut saves you a dollar here a dollar there if you spend enough. It will help Alberta who has no PST though. However, cutting the Income Tax will save people more. A cut of a percent will save people more every year, when the Liberals were kicked out it was what they were doing slowly. When the Tories first lowered the GST, they raised the income tax, which costs people in the long run. It's a false sense of tax relief to lower the GST because it saves people so little. However, when many of us are working and making enough money, the income tax cut will be beneficial.

[ToadMan]

A cynic could even say that cutting the GST is a way to protect the rich, as they buy more.

[Moonlight_Graham]

A cynic could even say that cutting the GST is a way to protect the rich, as they buy more.

...Or a way to benefit children, as sales tax is about the only tax they pay until they get a job.

 

Really, any broad tax-cut, including income tax, can be seen as a benefit to the rich if u choose to look at it that way. In my eyes, the Conservatives wanted to cut taxes somewhere, and since the GST is one of the more despised taxes among Canadians (and one the Cons were responsible for no less), the Conservative Party probably thought it would be the tax-cut that would benefit them politically the most.

 

Matt said:

 

"A cut of a percent will save people more every year, when the Liberals were kicked out it was what they were doing slowly."

 

Slowly is right. The Liberals have been working on cutting the GST since 1993. A Liberal promise is worth about as much as a jar of toe-nail clippings.

[daniel_v]

Slowly is right. The Liberals have been working on cutting the GST since 1993. A Liberal promise is worth about as much as a jar of toe-nail clippings.

Uh, I may have misread Matt's post but I thought he was saying the Liberals were working on reducing income tax before they were kicked out. Not the GST

[decomposinglight]

You're responding to this 5 months after all of the hubub? o.O