RNG

I seriously think we would be way closer to the stone age than where we are now.

How are we going to pay the EI to all the lumber workers, the oil workers, the farmers, the on and on and on that depend on exports to pay their salaries? What a joke.

I'm not sure, I'm more a bottom line kind of guy. Under FairTax, the rich guys end up paying more, I pay in the middle and my kid pays the least, as it should be. How more progressive can you get? Plus, you get to control what you pay. The perfect situation. You know almost all of Europe now has a GST equivalent way over 20%, and 53% of the French government revenues come from this. This is how Europe is drifting. Good stuff.

That's why I love the FairTax. The rich buggers pay their 23% or whatever on their Maseratis, I pay my 23% on my Smart Car, and my kid pays zero on the junker he bought over the back fence. (Except in BC, of course, the tax capital of Canada). Truly a progressive tax.

I,m not sre what you mean. Tax breaks to encourage a certain behavior that the government thinks is beneficial, or thinks will win it votes more often,IMO, like the deduction for kids sports programs gets silly. The big business vs. small business, you can depreciate that at 8% and that at 20% unless the month has a J in it and so on is a vast, unneeded complication. The only downside I see of instituting theses types of systems is the massive EI payments we'd be stuck with because of the gazzillions of accountants, CRA employees and tax lawyers losing their jobs.

As some previous poster implied, our tax law is so complex even the pros don't really understand it. Flat tax or FairTax(mt), and get out of the social engineering business.

An interesting sidebar to this (IMO) is that apparently it is illegal for contracts to be in perpetuity. They must specify an expiry date (?). So several contracts I was involved in while in the natural gas marketing area had the last paragraph being far more eloquent words to the effect that "This contract shall be in force till the last blood relative of Queen Victoria croaks."

Reading that, it sort of a weak sister of libertaianism.

I have heard the phrase, or perhaps war-cry "the third way" from Liberals forever. (Hyperbole, admittedly) But what does it mean?

I am a disenfranchised conservative. They are less bad than the others in my opinion. A really sad situation, IMO.

No foreign wars, no trade treaties, no foreign aid. Like really isolationist.

Again, the only thing I know about the Libertarian Party of Canada, if that's their name, is visiting their website and checking it out. One good thing about it, they make the very first Reformers look like mamby-pamby wimpy moderates. But I visit a US dominated political forum. The members there are more aligned such that the social conservatives are the "no taxes ever" crowd, while the libertarians are small government, do what you need to to lower the debt and stay out of individuals lives as much as possible. The only real negative I have about them is that they are very isolationist in all terms. Of course this is all generalizations, but valid IMO.

I'm not sure. I got to work in Russia in 2002. What an experience. I was in a relatively small city about 500 km due north of Moscow, called Uhkta. And it was great. About 75% of the people were really happy. And that was because with the freeing of the economy, they were much richer this year than last, and last year they were much richer than the year before and so on. Still way less bling than the worst of us have, but overall, it was good for them. The other 255 were destroyed, waiting for the state to resume carrying them.

Interesting. I have often heard and read that all arms races led to war. But the cold war sticks out as an exception.

The difference between a name and a description.

There have been multiple studies of a high speed link between Calgary and Edmonton. And the conclusions have been all over the place, depending on the input assumptions such as usage levels, operating costs and initial railbed upgrading costs. I think it's a case of deciding which result you want and massaging the input parameters to deliver that result.

From my admittedly limited exposure to those receiving it, it doesn't appear to be unappealing to a fairly significant segment of our society. But this is a great point. In the days of my youth, and even as a young adult, it was a shameful thing to be on welfare, and the recipients worked like hell to get off it. That attitude is long lost now.

So, you never heard of Hutus and Tutsis?

Historically, the British colonies did way better at the start of independence than Belgian, French, German or basically any others because Britain at least tried to transition them over a period of time. The others mostly just left one day. Then, their tribalism mostly started to become dominant, their jealousy prevailed, and look at where they are now. Even South Africa is going down the tubes.

Interestingly enough, there is an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun today saying that T.C. Douglas was actually against giving welfare to able bodied people. Their website isn't working right now so I can't give you the link.

the truth hurts.

In Alberta, if you work for the government, you have to join the freaking union. Oh, sorry, they don't call it a union, they call it the freaking "association" or whatever. What a joke.

For over 14 years now, I have owned my homes, all three of them, outright. The only way to fly.

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