CPCFTW

I don't have much else to contribute to another lefty whinefest thread.

How can you determine your wages in different cities? Seems like a subjective exercise that may have been influenced by bias to obtain your expected result. According to this, Calgary has the best salaries among Canada's major cities. Viewit is also not really the greatest measurement of rental costs. Real estate prices are lower in Calgary than in Toronto, that would likely be a good proxy for average rental costs (far better than a viewit search IMO). Average condo prices appear to be around 100k more in Toronto than in Calgary (around 400k vs 300k). Calgary is a far cheaper place to live in than Toronto. Lower personal income taxes and lower sales taxes (5% vs 13%), lower real estate prices, cheaper transit, cheaper gas/energy. Please feel free to show me any of your calculations which disprove this.

That's more times than I've used my home, car, and life insurances combined over the last several decades... and for a lot cheaper too! Plus no deductible!

This, like most of the vitriol coming from the left, is much ado about nothing. $25B over 20 years. Canada has annual revenues of over $250B. The acquisition and service/maintenance of these jets will cost 0.5% of Canada's current revenue per year. Put that in perspective. Lets say that you make 50k/yr, and pay about $15,000/yr in total income/sales taxes. 0.5% of that is $75 per year. How much do people spend on home insurance? Car insurance? Life insurance? The military is essentially "defense insurance". And we pay a hell of a lot less for it than we do for other types of insurance.

A simple, but flawed, argument. Large businesses generally do one of the following with after tax income: 1. Re-invest it in growth/productivity 2. Distribute it to shareholders (ie. RRSPs, pensions, etc.) The more after tax income you leave companies with, the more they are able to do one of the above. Now let's say that you are an evil executive for ConocoPhillips. You have billions of cash to spend on one of the above. You are presented with the following investment options: 1. Invest 5B in exploration/development in Country A. You expect this to generate a pre-tax return of $600M/yr. 2. Invest 5B in exploration/development in Country B. You expect this to generate a pre-tax return of $750M/yr. 3. Pay out 5B in dividends which shareholders can re-invest in the market for an estimated 10% return ($500M/yr). Corporate tax rates in Country A are 0%, Country B are 30%. Your after tax profits will be $600M in country A, and $525M in Country B. A good evil executive would choose to invest in the project in Country A. This will create oil and gas jobs in Country A which will generate employment income tax revenue. These jobs will also reduce the cost of social programs such as EI and Welfare as more people will be employed. More employment also means higher wages, as companies are forced to offer more lucrative compensation to attract labour. The employees will also generate consumption tax revenue, and their investments/consumption will further stimulate the economy. Country B will get nothing despite their 30% corporate tax rate. When Canada is the only country with oil, minerals, and trees, or if companies had limitless resources to invest while shareholders had no profit/return expectations, then maybe your argument would have some merit. Unfortunately for you and the NDP, that is not the case.

Stopped reading here. You are out to lunch if you think the benefits in the private sector are even close to those of the public sector. As someone with family members who make over 100k in both the private and public sector, I can tell you the member in the public sector has far better benefits (and will be retiring with over 2 years of banked vacation days). And since when is it an embarrassment to earn more than 100k? The only reason anyone should be embarrassed is if they didn't earn their salaries. Taxpayers have a right to know where there money is going. Edit: took the time to read the rest of your post and the comparisons to golf and basketball players is laughable. You honestly don't see the difference between people willingly giving their money to buy tickets that pay for athlete salaries vs people having 30-60% (income, sales, property taxes and fees) of their money taken from them to pay for services they may or may not want?

ummm...

I can't last without my 98 libraries for much longer... These librarians really have us by the balls!

This was pointed out? You mean by Madmax's anecdotes? Forgive me for not accepting this as gospel. I would think that some companies might still leave while others might want to stay in an environment with 0% corporate taxes and a low regulatory burden. I don't pretend to speak for all companies.

Yes we can put it to rest because madmax from mapleleafweb says so...

That's the thing about freedom. You can't force a company to give you jobs, but you can make it as attractive as possible for them to do so.

Less jobs would be shipped overseas obviously.

Gee that would be a swell idea if companies weren't aware of the obvious solutions: 1. Ship jobs overseas. 2. Raise prices. It's funny that the left always trumpets making companies pay for externalities when it is the most regressive way to deal with the issue. Who is most impacted by layoffs and higher prices? I'll give you a hint: it isn't the 1%. The best way to deal with these issues is to reduce corporate taxes to 0% and minimize regulations to get every able-bodied person working and paying taxes. Foster competition to ensure that prices are minimized. Then use progressive taxation to subsidize the elimination of negative externalities by paying the costs for the companies. As evidenced by v-here's earlier post, it wille be those earning over 100k who are paying for over 80% of it.

People often forget the effect of leverage when buying a home. It's not fair to compare renting to owning when you aren't borrowing and investing. You can get 3:1 leverage in a margin account. Let's look at the real dichotomy to someone with 50k: Invest 50k in a margin account = 150k diversified portfolio, 100k debt at 4 - 4.5% interest. Invest 50k downpayment on 250k home, 200k mortgage debt at 3 - 3.5% interest. There's no question which option diversifies your risk more. The difference in interest rates on the debt is somewhat mitigated by the tax deductibility of margin interest. Stock markets have historically had a significantly better return than housing: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xk6AskETuDE/TqQyaPCYy3I/AAAAAAAABL4/s-KeiYWc4mY/s1600/Housing%2Bvs%2BStock%2BMarket%2BGrowth.jpg http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/wp-content/uploads/stockmarketsgoup2.jpg When you take into account the costs of buying/selling real estate vs financial assets, IMO home ownership is pretty overrated. The freedom to move pretty much on a whim while renting is also a huge advantage.

1.045 ^ 16yrs = 2.02. Less than 4.5% annual nominal growth is not evidence of a bubble.

Anything but corporate taxes.

I still don't see how it is a tax break for the acquiring company (which is what we were discussing). It is just reinvesting profits into growth rather than distributing the earnings to owners. Owners won't accept buying up useless assets/businesses just to avoid paying corporate taxes. Presumably the acquired company will continue to operate as a going concern (meaning its employees will continue to pay taxes) or will offer some other synergistic benefits which will increase taxable income in the future.

Sure the costs might be cheaper.. The problem is that it is free and everyone can go to the doctor for every cough, fever, headache, lump, or bump they have. That's the key problem with making a service free. If goverments made massages free then the cost of a single massage to the taxpayer might be lower, but the total cost of all massages will skyrocket because me and every other tom, dick, and harry will be getting massages every night. If doctors want to balance the budget then reduce the costs of their services or limit the amount of free service the public can get. It's not fair to compare a doctor's income which is essentially taken from taxpayers based on the demand for a free service, to the income of a worker who actually has to bill the end user for his service (ie. Anyone in the private sector).

Buying assets and acquiring companies? Come on Michael you can do better than that. If they acquire a company then the owners of the acquired company have to pay taxes on their capital gains and the acquiring company has to pay taxes on future profits. Assets? Most businesses require assets to operate. Income and gains on financial assets are taxed.

It's a pretty simple concept that people disagree with. Also, a home, vehicle, and many insurances are luxuries. Clothing should be a minor expense, you don't need new clothes every week or month. You can make 15k and pay for food, rent, utilities, and a bus pass. I don't think it's greedy to want to keep the money you earn instead of giving it to overpaid doctors, nurses, policemen, teachers, politicians, and bureaucrats (many of whom who hide their total compensation behind defined benefit pension plans).

How about Doctors for Lower Medical Services Prices? I guess it doesn't have the same ring.

The irony of this is that doctors are price fixers who bill the taxpayer. Health care is also our largest govt expenditure. If these doctors want to balance the budget so badly they could just bill the taxpayer for less. What's next? Teachers for fair taxation? Policeman for fair taxation? Ttc token collectors for fair taxation?

Thanks doctors!! Here's another idea... how about you start billing taxpayers less?

Any studies breaking down youth unemployment by university degree? It's tough for graduates out there, but I would wager that a lot of the unemployed graduates are in arts. That's the problem when your education system overemphasizes the arts and soft skills. We encourage children to easily borrow tens of thousands of dollars for a degree when they have no idea what type of career they want to have (or the odds of obtaining it) when they graduate.

This argument stemmed from you saying "most" is a quantitative adjective/adverb and me saying that a rate is also a quantitative measurement. If someone asks you "what was the most unemployment in Canada?" The natural response would be to offer the unemployment rate, not the number of unemployed canadians. A percentage being a quantitative measurement is a fact. It is not cybercoma's "definition". You can't disagree with a fact. The earth is round and a percentage is a quantitative measurement whether you agree or not. In the context of Topaz's post deriding Harper, it makes absolutely no sense to interpret it as the number of unemployed Canadians. That would be like me saying Clinton was a horrible leader because there were more unemployed Americans while he was president than during the Great Depression. Unemployment rates are used for comparibility of different populations and through time. Cybercoma has me blocked and he is even arguing on my side. That is when you know it is time to admit you were wrong.