Renegade

Here's the latest from Klein: Klein frustrated over gay marriage It's beyond me how a government feels justified to stick it's nose into something which is so clearly an individual choice. If you ask me, government should NOT define marriage, regardless of the gender of the participants. It is free to define the obligations and privlidges accorded a civil-union of 2 adults. It is a religious or social, or individual interpretation on whether this constitutes marriage.

Even if I couldn't give away my money, with a 100% death tax, wouldn't it make much more economic sense for me to spend it all before I die, and leave nothing for the govenment to tax?

Have a read on this: PRIVATIZATION: EXPERIENCE AND PROSPECTS Some excerpts: It is clear to me that LCBO employee's chief objection to privatization is to protect overpaid jobs, which if they were paid market rates they would earn substantially less. This matters to me because as a consumer I am being charged higher prices to cover these artificially inflated labour costs.

Thank goodness for global warming. We're having our best summer in years I'd have to take a vacation to the Caribbean to get weather this good.

Where women are discrimminated against and barred entry, they have successfully sued to remove these barriers. Several years ago there were cases involving women journalist demanding access to male locker rooms (albiet this was a US case). Female Reporters in Male Locker Rooms Would be be as open to allow male reporters in a women's locker room?

I couldn't give a damn if women want to have their own club. What I object to is a blatant double standard. If we are ok with women having their own exclusive club, why shouldnt we be ok with men having their own club. If a bunch of old white men want to have an exclusive club and wear sheets, burn crosses, and have midnight BBQs, should we care (assuming of course they are not inciting hatred and violence). mirror, if I understand your argument you are ok with women only clubs because there are prestigious golf clubs which don't allow women? Is that right? (BTW, I know of no golf club in canada which has this policy. do you?) This seems to contridict Sparhawk's contention that female only clubs are permissable because they only discriminate against men (who presumably are not a "weak" and "vunerable" group). So if I wanted to start a men-only fitness club, presumably so the men could concentrate on fitness and not be distracted by the ladies, would that be legal? Can I bar someone from my store because I didn't care for his race? No, what I am objecting to is a double-standard enshrined in law. It is ok to discriminate against one group but not another. When we have a barrier which tries to promote one group, by definition it is discrimmination against other groups. If I opened a store and I decided to give visible minorites a discount, would that be permissable and fair? My sense is the the general public would be outraged at this blatant discrimmination.

I'm not following your logic on how having a private system for some services leaves less money in the public system. Please explain.

Please, let's stop pretending we have a choice. Sure we can be stubborn and decide to refuse to follow the US lead. Who will that decision impact? Mostly us, and not for the better.

Can you prove any traceability of EI funds to corporate Canada? I doubt it because the EI surplus goes into general revenues. That statement is about as valid as me claiming that the EI surplus is dispensed to the poorer provinces to pay for equalization.

If you are correct and the charter doesn't protect white men from discrimmination as much as it protects other minorities then it is a deeply flawed document, and it is itself discrimminatory.

So are you saying that in your opinion that clubs that ban men are illegal?

But some do. Some men don't go to a fitness club looking for sex either. Hard to imagine how generalizing against a whole gender and then implementing a policy to discriminate against that gender is in the interest of national value.

Given all the exemptions which would be required I think your proposal would be pretty complex and expensive to enforce. In many ways it is not that different from the current system. I don't really see that it is "fairer" than the current system. How about this instead: The government has to provide for many fixed costs (eg debt interest, defence, admininstation). Let's say that it incurs the minimal amount of fixed cost. It pays for this cost via a fixed tax on every individual in Canada (ie a "head" tax). Any other services it provides on a "pay-per-use" basis, with the ability to opt out if you don't want the service. (eg if I don't want government provided CPP, I opt out and invest my funds elsewhere) Any "social safety net" services (employment insurance, healthcare, welfare, etc) are modeled after insurances, again with the ability to opt out.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> OK I'll buy that. But how can a private enterprise decide it is going to protect rights or other national values by excluding men from a fitness club?

It doesn't explain how if I live in Vancouver with a higher cost of living, I should have the same deduction from income as someone with a lower cost of living in Halifax. OK, so what. Shouldn't they still pay their share of the taxes?

The Canadian Charter of rights prohibts discrimmination on the basis of religion, gender, age, family status, etc, however don't private and public organizatoins discriminate openly every day? Is this legal? Some fitness clubs are "Women Only" and prohibit membership by men. Isn't this discrimmination? Business from buses to movie theatres offer senior and children's discounts. Isn't this a form of discrimmination against those in between those age ranges? Would it be legal to offer such a discount on the basis of race? How is it these forms of discrimmination are permitted when the charter prohibits it?

I agree with Spar on Capital Tax. The first behaviour that would encourage is for people to hide capital. Money would move offshore in a hurry. How do you account for differences in cost of living in different areas? Why are there some low maximiums on each of the expenses? If I'm a bank president, surely my living costs (housing, clothes, entertaining, etc) are higher in order to maintain the image of a bank president. Maybe a maximium which is a % of revenue may make more sense? Even assuming you taxed capital, why provide an exemption for housing? Doesn't that subsidize homeowners at the cost of others. How does $50K account for regional variations in house prices? so regardless of the size of the corporation they would get up to a fixed deduction.? Small business owners would be dancing in the streets as they would pay little tax. Large corporations would be best off to split into multiple small corporations each of whom earned less than $500K So your saying if I buy 10 doughnuts at 1$ each, I would pay 10cents in taxes, but if I bought a packet of 10 doughnuts I would pay $2.50 in taxes? Hard to see how this would be workable. I certainly like the idea of putting corporations and individuals on more equal footing. I was never a big fan of tiered rates, and the rates you have proposed seem a bit steep to me.

The people who hated Harris weren't the ones who voted for him to begin with. Bring back Mike to lead the federal Conservatives and maybe they'll have a chance.

I would echo Sparhawk's point on this. Giving access to people of a faith to voluntarily gather in a public place should offend no one. However, when religious tradition invades a public school either by activity (morning prayer), or by environment (eg religious posters and items displayed), it becomes exclusionary to those who don't practice the faith. I agree with you. I think one overlooked part of education is ethics and morality. These are not religious issues even though they overlap with religious beliefs. Our children would be better equiped if more time was spent instilling the proper values. Interestingly if you look at most religions and even non-religious people you will see a lot of commonality in core values. If you believe in the separation of church and state, you would agree that the government and the public schools system (as an extension of the government) should not impose a religious practice on anyone. Prayer in schools does exactly that. Even if you make if voluntary, childern will feel akward in opting out if their freinds don't. I think 5 min of reflection in silence in a school in which individuals can use to pray, contemplate morality, or daydream if they so wish, is sufficiently inoffensive.

The EI system is a rip-off to the vast majority of contributors. The only beneficiary is the government who year after year sits on a big fat EI surplus. EI Surplus Fiasco The notition that EI as currently structured is really insurance is somewhat laughable. Do you know any insurance company which gets to keep $7 Billion of $19 Billion it collects (1998 Numbers) and this after paying for other benefits not directly related to loss of employment income (such as training related activities maternity, parental and adoption benefits). If EI is insurance why is it that it is mandatory and there is no opting out. I'll tell you why, because, so many of us who see it as a rip-off would opt out. How many insurance schemes would force you to pay back benefits despite having paid the premiums and legimately being qualified for the benefits, just because you are deemed to earn too much? Line 235 - Social benefits repayment

A major inequity in the income tax system is that corporations are taxed on profit and individuals are taxed on revenue. It makes no sense to me why there should be this disparity. If individuals were taxed on "profit" they could deduct all their expenses (eg mortgage interest, food, clothing, cars, etc) from their income and only pay on what was not spent. Conversely if corporations were taxed on revenue, they would lose the ability to avoid paying taxes by hiding profits.

I've you've gotten the impression that I think the majority of users are abusing the system, I have misconveyed my message. I do not. I think the vast majority are honest, legimate users of the system. My point was the system as currently structured does not penalize excessive use (abuse?) and IMO unfairly allocates the costs. I DO agree witih you that we do need such a system as a social safety net, and I for one would happily and voluntarily pay into such a system if I felt I was getting fair value.

For me any tax should be reflective of the value a government adds to the item being taxed. While sales tax is easy to collect and compute, I don't see a direct relation to the value government adds. It would be easy to accept a gasoline sales tax if the proceeds of that tax were used to build and maintain the roads. It is easy in this case to see the correlation between the tax and the service provided. I don't see that relationship with a pure sale's tax, but I could be convinced otherwise.

Our unemployment rate has dropped, but my contribution rate hasn't changed, has yours? I have no idea how many people are ripping off EI. How can you be ripping of the system if you follow the rules which are laid down? The rules have been tightned on EI to the point where fewer and fewer working people are eligible. IMO, EI doesnt provde fair value, and if given a choice I would withdraw from it. Corporate executives who perpetrate fraud should be jailed and be forced to renumerate, but that's not really the issue we're discussing here.. I woudl be happy to discuss that in a different thread. I'm not dumping on poor people. There are plenty of self-reliant, hard-working poor people I know who I have nothing but admiration for. There is no shortage of companies taking free handouts (eg Bombardier) and they are freeloaders a much as individuals who do so.

What I'm saying is that in a fair system what we now consider welfare would be funded in one of two ways: 1. As a charity. In this case the donations are voluntary and are not really part of the tax system. 2. As insurance. We would all pay into the system based upon our required level of coverage and our risk of using the system. (Similar to disability insurance). We would collect from the system when some unforseen event caused our income to drop, however we should expect that our future premiums into the system would increase. As to your second example, yes a trucking company's use of roads should be taxed to pay for the roads. Now, I don't mean that we shoudl have a different tax for different industries, I would favour a "pay-per-use" model where a trucking company paid for each use of the road (or each km used) Personally I'm not convinced that any tax on income is fair. Sure a flat tax on income is "fairer" based upon my definition, but as I stated above a "pay-for-use" system of taxation is preferred. The biggest reason I can see that a government taxes income is that it is easy to capture, and they can do without the choice of the people being taxed.