Wilber

As opposed to trying to ban the ownership of guns by law abiding people. Guilty until proven innocent. Wait a minute, who cares if the're innocent, ban them anyway.

It's like American so it must be bad. How Canadian. Makes sense to me. The Feds should concentrate on their own responsibilities like foreign affairs and national security instead of always messing around in Provincial jurisdictions. It is the least accountable level of government we have so I don't see it as a bad thing if it meddles less in our everyday lives.

Not really. Read your post again. This was in response to: It was the troops opinions that you were calling specious and doing a disservice to the memory of their dead comrades, not the Globes opinions and not mine. I think my comments are more than justified and I would like to watch you say it to the face of one of those people. Disagreeing with their opinions is one thing, belittling their opinions and their feelings toward their friends who have died is quite another. You may not agree with their logic but surely you must understand and respect it.

Yea you're right - we need to find a "Montreal" solution. Maybe like west Berlin? Wouldn't count the possibility out if it came to that.

Walked into a Chevron station this afternoon and took a hundred bucks out of an RBC machine. The cashier said " machine isn't working", I told her it worked fine for me. She shook her head. Got to Costco and it was cash or cheque.

The example was not to address income splitting. It was to illustrate that taxing based upon family income does not necessarily need to generate a windfall for the government. OK, it may not generate a windfall for government but it sure as hell would take away the incentive for two income families to better themselves. I don't really care what the government considers to be revenue neutral, just what I wind up with in my pocket at the end of the month. Revenue neutral just means the government has switched targets. One reason I am staying retired is the tax system gives me no incentive to work. If I go flipping burgers for minimum wage, I will be taxed at the highest rate on anything I earn. If unemployment was high that might be a good thing because I wouldn't be taking work from someone who really needed it but how does it help the economy when there is labour shortage and a help wanted sign on every door?

The laws of Christianity have undergone constant change over the centuries depending on who was making them and their particular agenda. People will try to bend the law to their own advantage no matter what it is based on. But Canada's constitution does not state that human rights legislation cannot be "contrary to the laws of Christianity". Mullahs have the last word in fundamentalist Islamic Afghanistan. So we write off a country because they don't choose to do things our way. We aren't there to build another little Canada, that would be futile. If they want to be a theocracy thats fine with me, the question is what they do with it.

It's just so easy to write people off with labels.

I think that's a specious argument. The mission and it's continuation must always be judged by the present reality. Holding up dead soldiers as a reason to continue a particular course of action does a disservice to their memory if anything. Not specious if it's your comrades who have died for something you both believe in. I'd like to see you tell one of them he was being specious to his face. Telling them that their opinions are insincere, lack merit and they are doing their dead comrades a disservice by expressing them? To use your own favorite word, despicable. But then you are far more qualified to judge the merits of the mission than they. The Soviets went into Afghanistan to help a government that was under attack by insurgents. Over 9 years, they had a constant presence of roughly 100,000 troops there in addition to the Afghan military. They lost 30,000 soldiers and achieved nothing as a result. The Afghan government was still ousted by the insurgents. If the Soviets had stayed there another 9 years, I doubt that they would have achieved anything different from losing another 30,000 soldiers and failing to succeed. I can hardly see a difference between what they did and what we are doing now. We are just another foreign force supporting another Afghan government, which is under attack by insurgents. With a small military presence of under 50,000 and little financial support, we will achieve nothing different - just thousands of our young people will be killed there. We either have to take it seriously, put a force 200,000 strong and spend some BIG money in building the country, or we should get out and not have our soldiers killed there. So there are only two real choices - do the real thing or get out. Nothing in between makes sense. Currently we are doing what the Soviets did - achieving nothing at a huge cost of lives. I took exception to the idea that some dude sitting safely behind his computer in Canada was telling the people who are doing the fighting and dieing that their opinions are specious. You have a problem with that?

What does your example have to do with income splitting, their income is already split 50/50. There is no advantage to splitting unless there is a substantial disparity in incomes. You are just talking about raising the threshold, it doesn't change the basic fact that if one person is in the top bracket, 100% of their partners income will be taxed at the highest rate. You are just razing that threshold to 100K from 60K, nothing more. While splitting may be an incentive to be part of a couple, taxing their combined income as single could be just as big an incentive not to.

I think that's a specious argument. The mission and it's continuation must always be judged by the present reality. Holding up dead soldiers as a reason to continue a particular course of action does a disservice to their memory if anything. Not specious if it's your comrades who have died for something you both believe in. I'd like to see you tell one of them he was being specious to his face. Telling them that their opinions are insincere, lack merit and they are doing their dead comrades a disservice by expressing them? To use your own favorite word, despicable. But then you are far more qualified to judge the merits of the mission than they.

If you had a flat tax, to be trully flat it would have to be levied across all income without exemptions or deductions. Personally I'd be ok with a flat tax. I think it would be fairer and simpler. Me to.

But they keep having referendums and so far a majority don't want to separate. What about them? Are they not "Quebec" as well?

Of course if we had a flat tax, it wouldn't matter.

Its only a windfall if the tax rates and tiers levels stay the same. The government can adjust those so that it is revenue neutral. Whenever I hear the term "revenue neutral" I want to run for the hills. Unless you get rid of graduated income tax they will not stay the same. If one member of the family has an income that puts them in the highest rate by only one dollar, their partners entire income will be taxed at the highest rate. How could it be any other way if you tax the whole family as one income and use graduated rates according to taxable income? It would be a big disincentive to living with someone.

RW, you hit a key point. If the family is the basic unit which is used to measure income, then everyone should basically be required to file a "family" tax return instead of individual tax return. Tax rates should be then tiered based upon family income not individual income. I'm not sure why you feel that this is a political non-starter. The current splitting proposal discriminates against single-adult, single-earner families. To be truly fair and consider family income, a family made up of one adult and zero or more kids, shoudl be given the same personal deductions and tier levels as 2 adult families. The current proposal shifts the tax burden to the single-adult families. I would be a windfall for government. It would put more of the family's income into the highest tax bracket forcing them pay even more tax than before.

And what does that mean? What are the "laws of Islam" and according to who? The laws of Christianity have undergone constant change over the centuries depending on who was making them and their particular agenda. People will try to bend the law to their own advantage no matter what it is based on.

I don't know that being leaderless is much of a disadvantage when it comes to polls. Their opposition has no firm target so the Liberals can be all things to all people until they make a decision and have to put a leader up to scrutiny.

I think Geoffrey is right. The President and Cabinet are the Government in the US just as the Prime Minister and Cabinet are the Government here. Legislators in the US have more freedom than MP's in the positions they take and what they chose to support but they aren't technically the Government. What ever he may have to say is no more government policy than the aforementioned Heddy's position on cross burning in Prince George.

Not so, they are both flat taxes. With at flat income tax, the more you earn the more you pay but the rate is the same. With a GST, the more you spend the more you pay but the rate is the same.

"Rich" is a relative term but certainly those with the biggest discrepancy in incomes will benefit the most.

Hong Kong is about to initiate a GST. Statistics Canada doesn't really confirm your assertion that there is a mass of people leaving Canada over taxes. A GST is a flat tax, the rate is the same for everyone.

Do you see Canadians going to civil-war to defend one bureaucracy over an other??? I doubt the people of the US foresaw nearly a million casualties before they embarked on their civil war. My guess is that in Canada's case, any violence would start within the seceding province between those in favour of secession and those against, particularly if there is not an overwhelming majority in favour. A civil war within a province could have the effect of sucking in some of its neighbours.

That is exceedingly vague. What "service" exactly is essential?If you are talking about a government taking over a service, be more precise. What service do you want the government to provide? By the way, what do you think of my proposal in post #6 which still stands: Get rid of insurance companies altogether. The only mandatory insurance is third party liability to pay for damage a driver does to someone else. I would call that essential. Unfortunately the government just paying out settlements with no financial consequences would remove whatever incentive higher or lower rates may contribute to a person using good driving habits. What taxes would you raise? You can't expect those who don't own cars or drive to pay for the liability of those who do, so you would have to do it by increasing vehicle related taxes like licensing fees or fuel taxes. Sounds a lot like public insurance to me.

That is one problem with public insurers, they can assign blame wherever they want and the insured has no recourse because there is on one to act for them, unless they hire a lawyer to fight their own insurance company. A win win for them is to assign blame 50/50 so they can raise both drivers rates.