cgarrett

depends on what you call "successful", kliege!? ha! if you mean an unstoppable team of the richest individuals on earth attempting to subvert democracy of the masses and create feudal corporate hegemony... then yes! success! the democratic political system has been reduced to a point where enough money will win elections. do you agree? and if you agree then is that best for democracy? or is democracy the problem? maybe democracy should be gotten rid of?

actually this site has a very interesting article called 'what harper said'. i'm sure he's trying to make sure people forget about such things... what harper said

this plan of harpers is as old as conservatism! if the conservatives were left to ride on their economic policies then only the richest 10% would ever vote for them! they need the votes of those people who have strong religious or personal convictions regarding liberal ideas surrounding abortion, gay rights etc. etc! harper has no plans to personally implement any of those ideas(as stated)! he could probably care less about such issues... but he must portray a front to get the vote of these individuals who are willing to sacrifice their economic power for these ideals!

well dennis, i'm glad you talked about "they" because it implies that you do not know "their" condition. i do, and i am amongst them daily. i also find it hilarious that someone would accuse left leaning as complaining about taxes when conservatives like harper can't stop talking about taxes! no conservative government EVER has not dropped the taxes paid by big business substantially irrespective of "corporate loans and handouts". the liberals here in bc are a great example. having skewered the ndp regarding this they are now the biggest handout political machine in canada. bc rail sold to cn rail usa (a huge political contributor) for pennies on the dollar, forgiving of fines to fish farms (political contributor), the hand over of bc hydro to accenture (off shore) and pharmacare to maximux usa etc... etc... and "corporate loans and handouts" are not always a bad thing! when we as a nation want to be self sufficient we need to partner or drive industry in certain sectors. just not the sectors that are already healthy, wealthy and contributing to your political party! and to canadians not the foreign rich!

indeed!

well august... if you must know. i am an civil engineering consultant. and no, i do not have deep enough pockets to go offshore. and would i? if some elite few can and do then so follow i... but i would be the first to blow the whistle to the t4'd slaves out there about how its done. no, i'm not going down with the stupid...

it is hard to believe for most people... but they don't have good corporate accountants. talk to one if you don't believe me. the big guys, of course, can afford to go offshore. this is when things get really interesting. ones canadian corporation is owned by an offshore entity whose shareholders are protected from view and thus avoid tax on any gains.

i tell it because its the neoconservatives worst nightmare. someone who is in the know and isn't afraid to out the lie. the lie being: - everybody is paying too much tax. (well, i'm hardly paying any! and i only average about $100,000 a year. just think how little the big guys are paying). the key here is to be incorporated and everybody who is not taxed at source and is making over $60,000 is incorporated. no funny business going on... my tax accountant is highly respected. so how about some financial numbers from other memebers here? fact is if you're taxed at source and a conservative then you are simply stupid. if you aren't taxed at source and a conservative then you are greedy, selfish and don't care about some of the really wonderful things that we have in this country (universal health care a nice example). but... you're not stupid. you are looking out for #1, aren't you?

harper has finally warned canadians that he will further drop taxes for corporations. as i had posted previously, as an incorporated individual i am paying less tax than ever this year (effective tax rate of 8%). pretty disgusting considering that the poorest of canadians are paying an effective tax rate of 17%. harper hasn't mentioned tax cuts for all canadians... just the wealthiest.

just got my corporate/personal taxes completed and forcast for the next year. my taxes have dropped in half! putting my 'effective' tax rate at 5.5%! hurray for the neo-conservative liberals both federal and provincial! as reported recently, all you poor T4'd income people are paying more tax here in b.c.! too bad! vote in the conservatives federally and drop my taxes even more! of course, here in b.c. the economy is experiencing almost negative growth so i might have to move to another country! :-) please not that this post is completely sarcastic but the facts are true.

i have a simple question to ponder... and its not that simple. why is the idea of private ownership of resources or land, or capital acceptable... but the idea of ownership of work is not acceptable (to those who believe that unions are not acceptable)? something is for certain, everyone wants a share of this nations wealth. if they have to work for it then they will do that. but they will not work like slaves under slave conditions. and they will certainly not take a bullet for a country that is not giving them opportunity.

tooliscrowned, i can only suggest that you pick up a book by chomsky and read it. it will change you forever. be warned, he is not one to make statements without detailed justification or proof. not like lite reading like say 'tax me, i'm canadian'.

august, please spare us from the communist name calling that is always the fall back of right wing thought. how is the pie not fixed in size? does canada have limitless wealth? i think not. and i am a nationalist and i have not promoted the idea of one pie for everyone in the world. although i have to admit that the idea of co2 heating the atmosphere is a sour piece of cake that a few nations are force feeding many. did bill gates actually make 50 billion dollars of wealth by himself? with his own hands? i'm afraid not! he employs thousands of people. he must not pay those people the actual value of their work in order to make that kinda money. sure there are instances where someone has a good idea, and that very idea is what makes wealth but those make up such a small part of our economy. the real barons are making money from our natural resources, feeding people, using our labor etc... lets leave microsofts complete disregard for regulation which is required for capitalism to work properly for another post. august, i'm going to challenge you here to write posts that have few exclamations of unfounded propaganda mush. actually, isn't it the rich stealing from the poor? or the rich stealing from a rich country? isn't the whole idea of a democratic nation that we all own and decide on our fate and the fate of the wealth collectively? thus, most of my posts are aimed at those who promote the right wing agenda but are not in the top 5 percent of the wealthy. because there is absolutely not reason to take such a position if you are not wealthy. bill gates and many others would be fine with say... a billion dollars instead of 50. or much much less. maybe a good idea is there should be a cap on total wealth. thus once that wealth was achieved (enough to retire in great luxury) then you are out of the game and someone else has more opportunity to profit. but there is no end to greed, is there? bill gates sr. is a promoter of responsible wealth project (www.responsiblewealth.org) a group of business leaders concerned about the huge economic inequality of the population of the united states. and so they should be. more and more i see postings proposing that a society without decent wages promotes wealth when in reality there is no economy without the masses having money to spend! the is one of the great lies of right wing thought... that all people will have more. or are you not misguided about this. do you know that most people will have less and a very few will have much more?

what is important about this information is an old argument that few people versed in the right wing agenda like to engage in. we need entrepreneurs in our capitalist economy... but to what extent must we reward them? at what point does the allowance of private ownership of resources and/or the ownership of capital created by the work of a nations labor (in a system where labor is not fully rewarded for the value of their work) create a system where a nation is no longer a nation but a group of feudal kingdoms where democracy does not exist? what the right wing agenda seems to promote is slavery. a single person only has two hands and 24 hours in a day. it is impossible to build the kind of wealth we see in the world today without two things: - the ability to privately own or control natural resources. resources within the bounds of national borders run by democracies - the ability to employ people and not reimburse them for what the value of their work truly is so again, we need these smart entrepreneurs to make things happen... but history shows us many examples of how cruel those who control vast resources can become. democracy is the only peaceful tool that we have to avoid complete slavery by a few.

remarks like this show the ignorance of those following the right wing agenda! in fact, the right wing agenda has little to do with capitalism and everything to do with the avoidance of democracy! globalization strictly is the implementation of trade rules that penalize a country if they democratically decide that say they want to protect a national industry, or that some product is unsafe for their consumption. its corporate feudalism. corporations that are controlled by a few. as i mentioned in another post. america is closer to communist china than say a socialist european country. what socialism has in common with china is national health care, transportation and education. it can be argued that a democratic system where there are two choices chosen by some elite class is not much different from one in which there is only one choice. the united states has rich monopolies (take oil as a huge example) just like chinas state run monopolies. as soon as one starts to talk about idealologies then everything breaks down because the world is far to complex for such sound bites.

i'd like to add here that we live in an economic reality where 99% of industry is mature and established and owned. the whole idea of encouraging entrepreneurship is hugely overrated and entirely motivated by right wing feudalism to cut their tax cost. most of our economy is bricks and mortar business that hasn't changed or had competition for decades. the last several decades has also seen the percentage of our nations wealth concentrating in the top 5% of the richest of canadians.

congratulations! canada is now in sixth place in industrialized nations for worst wealth distribution! see for more great news: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/income.html america is leading the world in this matter with the top 13,000 families having the holdings of the bottom 20 million people! more conservative policies to cut the taxes for the wealthiest of canadians should guarentee we get closer to our goal of a completely fuedalistic society!

again... so why is it that say a foreign owned oil company extracting canadian wealth should not have to pay canadians a good wage? a cut of the nations wealth? while the corporation is paying no taxes? are the only people who argue against unions simply all business owners? they must be... because canadians who do not want to share in the wealth of canada who work for a living are simply stupid.

well, don't bet the farm on the conservatives getting rid of the gst either. it is a regressive tax tool... a right wing favorite. it equates to a flat tax which the right wing would also like to implement on income.

again, i don't know about others but... i don't trust anybody whos not willing to talk about ones policies to EVERYBODY. what are these used car salesman hiding under the hood! apologies to reputable car salesman everywhere (if you exist at all).

sorry... but there is little that makes sense in your post. "Not fair at all that they (union workers) should be earning twice as much as the non union worker..." actually, look at the statistics. the disparity is about 12%. not 100%. "The most successful countries in the future will have low taxation, low wages and high education" well, then i say resist as long as possible! ha! and how are these people getting educations with no money? no matter, if i'm going to have to be poor then i prefer to be uneducated... "In essence, corporations manufacturing offshore utilizing lower labor costs have become the biggest cheerleaders for organized labour in our country." what? are you sure about this? stuff is not cheap in the united states or japan. and it never will be where people have loads of cash. the fact is that the price of goods is not directly tied to the cost of making a good in mature markets. will the price of goods drop somewhat as our standard of living drops? sure it will, but not because producers are saving money on labor... because they will be desperate to sell product to people who have no money to spend.

ok, so why are the united states and japan good investment centers? with similar tax structures and regulations? because they have industry...

' rich mobility' is a huge simplification shouted around by pundits for globalization/free trade and treating the wealthy like royalty (people who haven't made their money using the resources of a nation but were somehow entitled to it). for example, canadian are mobile, but their wealth is not. the tax hit for taking ones wealth out of the country is extreme. read some books about it. there are a select few countries that we have international agreements with (sweden i think for example) where canadians can move their wealth tax free but these are few and far between and they are not tax havens. canadians can take up residence anywhere in the but their money making wealth remains in canada, being taxed before they can collect it from a corporate standpoint. they can collect personal income in another country but if they are not being taxed fairly in that country then are taxed by canada. why do think there is so much interest in off shore countries that do not have international agreements allowing transparency in ownership! a story comes to mind about one of the seagrams family who wanted to take $900 million out of canada. of course, he was told that there would be a $400 million tax hit. he was told this a few times. but, he had friends who were liberal ministers and eventually he got to do it. some poor tax payer in ontario was still suing the government over this last i heard. of course, you and i wouldn't have so much pull. so many of the earlier posts seem to imply that we need to accept slave wages! are all of the people posting here business owners? and like all short sighted business do they realize that if your market is canadian and you starve your market then you will have no business anyways? it truly doesn't make any sense. the fact is that we are not barely an industrialized country. we have no industry. and globalization means that we will have no chance to create that industry. canada is a resource economy. with most of the rights to those resources owned by foreign entities. and the flow of wealth out of a country is always bad for its citizens. always! always! always! how many times does one have to say this. its like any business, one wants more wealth flowing in then flowing out. now so much of conservative policy seems to say that we drop taxes for all wealthy and corporations and more will come here. well, how is that? if i was wealthy then i wouldn't come to canada if i could chose a tax haven instead. but it is convenient for the countries wealthy and the foreign corporations who are shoveling money out of the country. as i've said, some of these policies would be valuable if there wasn't these payoffs included. for example, have a tax rate that is lower for foreign wealthy and corporations for a period after arrival say. fact is, the wealthy don't need a tax break as shown by the distribution wealth statistics. in this country, the middle class needs the tax break! and we need more people in the middle class!

oh and i'm glad you mentioned the book 1984! remember the perpetual war?! the unseen foreign terror? now think 'the cold war', 'the war on drugs', 'the war on terror'. now thats mind control! as was pointed out recently, the number of americans killed by terrorism forever is less than the number of americans who die from work related accidents in one year! ha!

well willy, most socialized capitalistic democracies have lots in common with say, communist china. national health care, publicly funded mass transit, education etc... what does the united states have in common with communist china? lots! a non functioning democracy is no better than a non functioning communist state. it can be argued that a democracy with two choices (both selected for you) is not much better than a democracy with one candidate (which is communism). the two party system sucks (but thats the way canada is going) and a non functioning capitalism is no better than a state run system. where there is no regulation to promote competition and monopolies that have concentrated wealth in a capitalist society its not much different from the monopolies of state run economies (just think about the 'competition' in the oil industry in north america for example). thats why i am concerned that in all 'news' media there is rarely any discussion of the 'quality' of our capitalism or democracies and how they can be improved. and in whos best interest is it to stifle such dialog? the common voter? no... the status quo.