Evening Star

I've also got real concerns about how readily the current government has entered into deals like the FIPA with China. I would hope that an NDP government would show more caution here.

If we're agreeing that this story is cheap and trivial, then I'd actually be interested in discussing what an NDP government would do. I like Mulcair, and prefer the NDP to the other two big parties, but I'm a bit ambivalent about their current platform as it is. I really hope that if they win, they don't reopen the Constitution over something as dumb as abolishing the Senate. (It makes sense for a federation to have an upper body with some sort of regional representation and senators do useful work. Either way, it's definitely not worth going through another round of Constitutional negotiations.) I do hope that there could be some way for Quebec to sign on without demanding something like Meech Lake again, though: Couillard has expressed some interest and I wonder if a Quebec PM might facilitate this. That's more of a pipe dream without any real basis in things that Mulcair has been talking about, though, really. If we do have to move towards PR, this is the best proposal that I've seen. I don't want to see a mixed-member sort of system, mainly because I don't think that local representatives and partisan hacks from a party list should have the same status. I think I would probably be happiest with a FPTP system where MPs have greater autonomy, maybe with some opportunity for voter recall? Modest carbon taxes and slightly higher corporate taxes would probably be fine, although as I stated earlier, my preference would be for higher personal income taxes and reasonably low business taxes. I tend to agree with taxing capital gains along with income, actually. I don't see why returns on investment in other people's work should be treated more favourably than money that one actually works for. Reinstating home delivery of mail seems like a good idea to me, considering how helpful it could be to people who are elderly or disabled, and considering that Canada Post has mostly been running profits anyway. I'm not yet sure what I think of a federal day-care programme. It could be helpful but I'm not sure that it should be done at the federal level. I do hope they scrap income-splitting. I would hope that they would scrap many of the other tax credits, TFSAs, and raise the GST back up, but I doubt that they would do these things. A $15/h federal minimum wage does not really seem like a great idea to me. $15/h means very different things in different parts of the country. I can see a reason for the feds to set a basic minimum but whether or not the wage should be that high seems like something that should be decided at a lower level. Where I think they would be a major improvement is in scrapping disastrous legislation such as C-51 and C-24. I also expect that they would have greater regard for academic freedom as pertains to e.g. scientists and librarians in the public sector, and with less of a push towards earmarking federal scholarship/grant money to business-oriented projects. I expect greater support for public broadcasting as well. These issues carry quite a bit of weight with me. I expect a move away from so-called 'tough on crime' legislation, which imo does not achieve its stated purpose.

i) Harper was a Young Liberal. I thought this was common knowledge. ii) I could see this playing poorly with hardcore partisans but I think that it would play fine, even beneficially, with centrist swing voters. iii) If I were inclined to support him, I would have taken more issue with the fact that he allowed the Alliance/PC merger after promising it wouldn't happen.

Really? The NDP in a Quebec riding in 2007 was the highest bidder? Could I see the numbers? I don't see why he would throw this away.

Eight years ago, before they had much of a record. A lot of people, myself included, were happy to see a minority government and the end of corrupt Liberal rule in 2006. A politician and environmentalist would have to be blindly partisan or crazy to not even consider the opportunity to advise the PM on the environment. This is a non-story.

The Conservatives should definitely run with this story: "He's so bad he considered working for US!"

When (a slightly different version of) this story came out three years ago, Mulcair said that he met with the Conservatives, Liberals, and Greens, before deciding to work with the NDP, fwiw.

Was he really broke? Do we have any basis for this other than that he mortgaged his house multiple times (which could mean a number of things)? And, again, if he was so broke and desperate for money, why did he not just e.g. join a law firm instead of taking the far less secure route of running for election under the NDP banner (edit: which surely paid less than $180k)? Or are you saying that being involved in federal politics and government was more important to him than the money? If so, it is believable to me that he was looking for a pragmatic way to promote environmental policies, as he had tried to do provincially in Quebec, with one party or another. (At least according to some reports, he left Charest's cabinet over a matter of environmental principle.) Edit: And, I mean, if Soudas is right, clearly the Conservatives would have had him and were willing to pay $180K for it. If anything, this story sounds like it could sell Mulcair to centrist or even conservative swing voters.

If the position in question really was to join the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, an independent advisory board (that has since been defunded by the CPC-led government), then this story is especially silly.

I'm sure the Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadow News is going to sink him, though.

This story doesn't really seem to add up to much for me. Assuming that everything Soudas says is true (a big assumption), all it shows is that Mulcair considered a few different options and eventually settled on one, which he has remained committed to and successful with since then. This is not corruption. Nor has he publicly advocated for one policy and then contradicted himself. And if he was just greedy for money, why would he have joined the NDP at a time when they had virtually no presence in Quebec and built them up from there? He had plenty of high-ranking civil service, legal, and political experience. I'm sure he could have found an easier and more lucrative gig.

Doesn't almost every developed democracy use a system of progressive marginal rates? It just happened in every one of these countries with no logical basis?

OK, a $10K GAI with 25% federal sales tax and a flat income tax rate of 17% definitely does not sound like a society I would want to live in. I estimated a $25k GAI assuming that you were not making adjustments for people with children, disabilities, etc. If you are, then I could see how you could get away with a base-level GAI between $12K and $15K or so. However, any version of your scheme ends up with marginal tax rates being totally flat, with variation in effective rates only. Relative to a system of progressive marginal rates, this does seem to me like it would hinder upward mobility at lower income levels. It seems clear enough to me that it would also shift more of the tax burden to lower income levels. I'm pretty sure that this is why we ended up with progressive marginal rates in the first place. If you were going to come up with a method of plotting marginal rates on an increasing curve, I might be able to get on board with that.

You'll have to ask Canada_First. He's the one who has seen what happened before when the leftists took over in Rhodesia and South Africa and doesn't want to see it happen again.

He's worried that we want to bring about the end of white rule. And it's true: he has discovered the hidden agenda. The gig is up!

Right, so you would always keep (1-x) of each dollar you make [x=flat tax rate]. My mistake. And again, I think I come back to the position that I'd have to know your numbers. The only way it seems to me like it could generate sufficient revenue and not immiserate people who are out of work would require at least a 50% marginal rate, probably closer to 65%, which seems politically unviable.

If I'm understanding you, your concern is that apartheid is about to end in Canada?

dp

I think those graphs help to clarify my issue with this system: the slope of the curve in the first graph (of effective tax rate) is steepest at the lowest income levels and approaches 0 as you get to extremely high income levels. A $5000 difference in income makes a huge difference in your effective tax rate between $25 000 and $50 000, and a significant difference between $50K and $100K, but makes very little difference above $250 000. In order to pay for the GAI, it seems that the 'flat rate' would have to be set at such a high level that it would significantly slow the upward mobility of anyone who is in the lowest group of income earners just above the 'zero point'. Very high earners would probably also end up keeping significantly less than half of what they make in a year, which tends to make them unhappy.

On this graph, the x-axis represents someone's pre-GAI income in 10s of 1000s of $. The y-axis income represents their income after both the GAI and the tax (again in 10s of 1000s of $). If you can draw a square from the origin of the graph to any point on a curve, that is the income at which someone neither gains nor loses anything in Euler's system. https://graphsketch.com/?eqn1_color=1&eqn1_eqn=0.5x+%2B+25&eqn2_color=2&eqn2_eqn=.22x+%2B+25&eqn3_color=3&eqn3_eqn=.8x+%2B+25&eqn4_color=4&eqn4_eqn=25&eqn5_color=5&eqn5_eqn=x%2B25&eqn6_color=6&eqn6_eqn=&x_min=0&x_max=300&y_min=0&y_max=200&x_tick=10&y_tick=10&x_label_freq=2&y_label_freq=2&do_grid=0&do_grid=1&bold_labeled_lines=0&bold_labeled_lines=1&line_width=4&image_w=850&image_h=525

I plotted curves for Euler's tax regime, assuming that the guaranteed minimum income is $25K (which seems reasonable to me): https://graphsketch.com/?eqn1_color=1&eqn1_eqn=0.5+-+25%2Fx&eqn2_color=2&eqn2_eqn=0.78+-+25%2Fx&eqn3_color=3&eqn3_eqn=0.2+-+25%2Fx&eqn4_color=4&eqn4_eqn=1+-+25%2Fx&eqn5_color=5&eqn5_eqn=-25%2Fx&eqn6_color=6&eqn6_eqn=&x_min=-10&x_max=1000&y_min=-2&y_max=1&x_tick=25&y_tick=0.1&x_label_freq=2&y_label_freq=1&do_grid=0&do_grid=1&bold_labeled_lines=0&bold_labeled_lines=1&line_width=4&image_w=850&image_h=525 On the vertical (y) axis, you have the effective tax rate, with every tick representing 10%. On the horizontal axis, you have pre-GAI income in thousands of dollars. Orange curve: 'flat tax rate' = 100% Red curve: 'flat rate' = 78% (about what we would need if someone who makes $32K - the current median - were to neither gain nor lose in this system) Blue curve: 'flat rate' = 50% Green curve: 'flat rate' = 20% Purple curve: 'flat rate' = 0%

I guess you could simplify that equation to x[1] = 0 when c = xy where x[1] is the effective tax rate, I think. I think the formula for x[1] is x[1] = x - c/y (Edited because I figured out the formula for x[1] in the shower just now.)

dp

So far, it feels more like a math assignment than a tax policy, though, but I'm having some fun with it. I miss algebra.

The main difference is that he's getting rid of marginal rates and tax brackets. People's effective tax rates are basically points on a curve with an asymptote at x where x is his 'flat tax rate'. The effective tax rate reaches 0 at y = c + y(1-x) where c is the GAI and y is one's total income prior to receiving the demogrant, I think. [Edited for variable names]