Renegade

Wilber, I think you are missing the point. The justification for allowing income splitting is that the "family" is the fiscal unit and not the individual. If we accept that we should be consistant across the board when income is used as a consideration. That is both for income tax, child support, or any other program. It is true that after 1997 the tax you owe doesn't depend upon the child support you pay. However the chid support you pay does depend upon the income earned. The question is earned by who, the individual or the family? When income is pooled you cannot clearly delineate between the financial responsibilities of one spouse over the other. Just as their income is pooled, their debt obligations are pooled, so in fact yes if you considered family income, the new spouse does assume the support obligations of the other.

No, I certainly don't think it was ok for Brison to leak the information. I should have been more clear to avoid misunderstandings.

Frankly I don't see a difference in what I said and what you described. It makes no difference if the select group I referred to was his good buddy or a small group of traders. Yes I agree. Yes, of course. And how dumb we must be to take government at its word.

The reason Brison's leak is different than signals to the market is the timeing and scope. It is fine to signal to the maket so long as it is completely public and not at a time when trading will be disrupted because some people have quicker access to the information than others. The issue happens when the leak is only to a select group which then can act on information the rest of the market does not have. Companies have learned some time ago that extreme and sudden volatility is a bad thing. That is why most pubilcally traded companies "manage expectations" of analysts. Most "educated" market watchers did not see this happening as suddenly as it did because they took the government at its word. I understand why the government took the action that they did, but I think they could learn a thing or two about managing expectations otherwise their credibility in the financial markets will be shot.

What exactly would be the baisis of the suit? Breaking an election promise? Lying? None of those thing are illegal. Or perhaps, you don't think that parlament has the authority to unilaterally change taxation legislation?

Meaning that Bell Canada, Mom & Pop grocery, Ken Thompson, and you or I would pay the same dollar amount in tax?

August is quite right. They are getting a tax break. Government would tax all labour if it could, however it can't find a way to easily tax labour if no funds are changing hands, thus it escapes tax. Let me give you another example. If I help my neighbour build a fence, and in return he helps me sod my yard, in essence an exchange of value has taken place. What is the difference then if he paid me $500 to help build the fence and then I paid him $500 to help sod the yard? According to tax rules, I should be declaring the $500 and paying tax on it as income, as should he. That would only be fair if that same privlidege was extended to others. I should be allowed to deduct the salary I pay my maid, because her work has value too. If your complaint is that RRSP contribution limits were not high enough, did you save an equivalent after-tax amount outside RRSPs? Disaster no, unfair yes. The question is why should one specific group get prefferential tax treatment, implying higher tax rates for everyone else.

What do you mean by "equally applied" and that the payment must be "made equal in cost to all tax payers". Does that mean that each man, woman , and child pays the same dollar amount? Why or why not? This consideration may already invalidate your criterion that the taxes be "equally applied". If a person generates only sufficient income (or less) to cover exempted items, then they will pay no tax. This essentially violates that taxes are "equally applied". The biggest reason that the government spends little to collect the GST is that it hoists those costs onto retail businesses. In a fairer system, it would actually have to reimburse businesses for acting as its tax collector.

Actually the stay-at-home parent is on par with the working parent when it comes to paying for daycare. Daycare is one of the few kinds of services in which the cost is tax deductable from income earned, so the working parent isn't paying tax on the income used to fund the daycare.

The interesting thing about Canadian Tax law is that the same money is taxed multiple times. It is taxed when the employee recieves it. If the employee purchases labour with the funds. It is taxed again in the hands of the recipient. It continues to get taxed again if that person purchases labour

Sam, your explaination doesn't change the nature of the debate. Even if we accept that spending can be cut by the required amount, there is still a decision to be made on whether the amount saved should be applied to income tax cuts or the GST or potentially some other tax.

Let's not dance in the same circle we have for several pages of posts, ok?

What of it? Tax is withheld from investment income in Canada earned by foreign investors so it is not like they completely avoid taxation. By keeping taxes on investment income low, it encourages foreign investors to keep investment funds in Canada. For foreign workers who spend that income abroad, why should they be taxed on those funds here? The percent of the money they send abroad, consumes foreign infrastructure so the taxes should be directed there. I can equally ask, why is income earned abroad in the hands of Canadian residents taxed in Canada? Canada has done nothing to provide infrastructure enabling earning of that income.

And I say killing or theft is immoral regardless of society's measure.

Does morality exist absent its declaration? Can you observe it? If there was no society would there still be morality? Obviously.

No they didn't just declare it, the ACKNOWLEDGED it. Absent their declarition that the sun and planets exist, do they still exist? Of course they do. If police don't enforce a law, do violations of that law still happen? Of course it does. Rights don't exist because society, the UN, or governments declare they do, those organizations simply acknowledge what its existance. Yes, the UN is a product of and part of human society, so are you, so am I, so is everyone else, so is all of mankind through history. Are you saying that any declaration made by anyone is simply a construct of society and would not exist otherwise? You cannot use the fact that the UN (and many other organizations and philosophers) acknowledge human rights as justification that they only created at the whim of society, because if that is your justification, then every declaration or acknowledgment by any organization would fall into that category. Yes it may be beside the point but it is related. Beautiful people have an advantage. Society could choose to equalize that advantage, but it does not, even though you feel that it perhaps should. In the same way, society has no inherent obligation to equalize opportunities, despite the fact that you feel that it should.

While it is sitting in your investments and pooling in your account, it is doing something useful for society (ie investing in it). By taxing consumption, you are taxing at the time it realizes value to the individual. So consumption taxes don't exempt those with investments, they simply defer when they are applied.

Not only that, he should eliminate exemptions on the GST. When you say "flat tax", I assume you mean a flat income tax at lower rates. I agree.

From the first link I pointed to you: Read the phrase "regardless of legal jurisdiction or other localizing factors". Read thte words "universal and inalienable character". All of these state that all rights by definition are not dictated by the whims of society otherwise they are not rights at all. There is no logical reason why there should be beautiful people and ugly people either, or any logic that says that the regime should work to equalize the level of attractiveness among the population either. Life, chance is unfair. Get used to it.

Given that you do not acknowledge that property rights even exist, I can see why you don't acknowledge that "theft" is "wrong". The difference is that in one statement would imply that some people would proactively act to deny people opportunities. My statement implies that there is no action required on their part. It is simply life that denys people opportunites. Based upon your POV, it would not surprise me if you did not grasp the distinction.

Yes they are wrong. Just as theft is wrong. Your position is that your belief in equalizing of opportunities justifies theft from others inorder to fund it. You try to avoid the fact that theft is wrong regardless, by not acknowledging the theft. You are either misquoting or misunderstanding what I have said. I did not say that some people "have a right to retain access to opportunities that are denied to others", I simply contend that they are not obligated to fund such a program. Unfortunately you have not done so, otherwise I would happily change my positon. If you claim that I have not offered you support for my position, I would say that neither have you provided either proof or sufficient evidence for a position which ultimately deprives people of property which they have freely earned.

You are correct that all your questions amount to the same challenge. You are asking for proof that fundamental rights exist and that they are more than just claims of rights by various parties. The short answer is that no proof exists. These are philosophisical constructs. You are asking for proof that murder is wrong, and proof that slavery is immoral. I can't give you that proof. I can only point to the consensus of philosophical though, some of which is summarized here: Human Rights and Natural Rights If you don't accept the concept of human rights which exist independant of what any particular society grants, then you suscribe to a view of society which is dominated by power, either physical or political. That society will only grant "rights" at its own whim.

I'm not exactly sure who your posted is directed at Jerry, but I at least partially agree with you. Life is unfair and we shouldn't be trying to iron out those inequities between individuals.

Marriage laws are an artificat of they way society was, it doesn't necessarily meet the needs of what society needs today. The rigid definition of what as a family before, is generally viewed as rigid in society today. The revision of marriage laws are just one small step. Personally if it were up to me, I'd throw out marriage laws and let anyone come to mutually consensual terms with anyone else(s) they choose. Because it is set up for life-time planning, very few people give much consideration to the consequences of dissolution of marriage, at the time they are undertaking the marriage. This despite the fact that dissolution of marriage is an increasingly common occurance. A fixed term marriage would force that issue to the forefront. Secondarily, why should individuals be forced only a single model of pair-bonding which is based upon historical arrangement? In my view individual choice on how individuals choose to bond should be accomondated.

This is where we disagree. The slaves always has the right to be free, they didn't need the owners to extend or grant them those rights. They simply needed the owners to respect those rights. You next question will be who gave them those rights? The rights are intrinsic to their being. They are not granted by anyone. I would suggest that Rights Organization's view of rights are more in line with my view than yours. How can rights be violated in China when (according to your interpretation) Chinese society never chose to grant the victims those rights. I have never asserted that one group has a "right" to certain privleges or opportunities not available another group. They possess those priviliges by circumstances or possibly chance. What I object to is that a fundemental right is violated in the process of equalizing those opportunities. No one would have any objection to equalizing opportunities if society did not have to forcibly extort funds from some of its citizens to do so. In my view there is no fundamental right to "equal opportunity", so there is no violation if we don't provide equal opportunity to all individuals.