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That's sort of the point. You want the savings rate to increase so that there is an increase in the physical capital stock, which increases the amount of goods and services people produce.

Politicians in the USA have been discussing implementing a consumption tax for decades. More like the world of eternal status quo. If the money belongs to the corporation, you can't use it to finance your consumption. The moment you move it from the corporation to you, it's taxed as income. Whether or not the government gets more revenue depends on the tax rates. You can make it revenue neutral. Vary the income tax rate as needed to obtain revenue neutrality. Yes, income taxes + consumption taxes + pigouvian taxes. No, it's political pundits' 'conventional wisdom' that it's suicide. Much like they think it's suicide to get rid of supply management, get rid of the Catholic school system, etc. If no one challenges the status quo, you have no way to test if its political suicide or not. Furthermore, these 'fat cats' have to pay income and consumption taxes if they want to benefit from any money in savings or in corporations. Money only makes your life better when you use it to buy things.

The economic growth rate of developing nations will slow down as their standard of living approaches that of developed nations, as has been observed by places like South Korean and Taiwan. I'm not as optimistic as you. Demographic collapse is expected for most developed countries, too many developed countries have unsustainable levels of debt and have no plan to pay them off, the quality of education is degrading, students are learning 'social justice' and 'discovery math' rather than more useful skills, energy prices are going up in developed countries as they commit eco-suicide, there is a rise of islamism that isn't being countered effectively, etc.

It's interesting that according to leftists it's not okay for Trump to build a wall between Mexico and the USA, but it's okay for the Saudis to build a wall between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Double standard?

Nominal GDP growth is different from real GDP per capita growth. You have to factor population growth and inflation.

There are ways to deal with this, such as convincing the USA to also have a 25% VAT, or charging people for cross-border shopping. Yes, and it is desirable to get the savings rate up to about 33% in order to maximize long run consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule_savings_rate How does a 0% corporate tax rate implies a zero time value of money?

Yes, which is why I don't advocate the elimination of income taxes. They did in most of Europe. Look at Norway. 25% VAT. This nonsense of 'it's conventional wisdom that voters will never accept X, so don't try' is self fulfilling. Economic reasons. It distorts the value of saving and is one of the most costly forms of taxation on economic output. Go read the Harvard link. Sure I do. It's unpopular. It doesn't mean people can't be convinced over time that it is desirable. People used to not accept gay marriage and trans rights, now they do (for the most part).

One thing that has been observed over the past 150 years is that the rate of economic growth in terms of real GDP per capita in developed countries has been roughly constant in the long run (at roughly 2%) per year. This 2% growth per year could be thought of as the rate of technological progress and developed countries could grow faster as they catch up to developing countries. Constant US growth rate at 2% per year: South Korea Transitioning from a developing to a developed country: As a result, many economic models assume a constant long run growth rate and most governments, unions, corporations, etc. make decisions under the assumption that this exponential growth will continue. Since everyone alive today has been born in a society where a constant growth rate of 2% has occurred, most people assume it will continue and many expect their paychecks to rise every year. Over the past decade however, the growth rate has significantly diverged from this long run growth rate of 2% and it doesn't look like it is recovering anytime soon. Not only that it, might be a long run trend. For example, if I take the logarithm of USA real GDP per capita data since 1950, a linear trend fits okay to the data, but a quadratic trend fits much better. And the quadratic trend suggests that economic growth is slowing down at a rate by about 0.4% per century. This isn't a trivial difference, it suggests that the rate of economic growth in developed countries will be about 1.6% over the next century, which means that in 100 years, developed countries will be about 45% poorer compared to if economic growth per capita stayed at 2% per year. This also has significant implications about the sustainability of debt in most developed countries, especially when many governments (such as the Harper and Wynne governments) are making the assumption that growth rates will return to 2% per year to get out of deficit. Are we taking the 2% growth rate for granted? Is there any reason to expect an exponential trend of real GDP per capita to continue forever? What is responsible for this observed long run slow down and should governments do anything about it?

I never claimed it was. Keep pretending otherwise if you want. To be fair, it does make the calculation of the social welfare optimizing tax system far more complicated, especially when the set of progressive tax systems is infinitely dimensional. Though as justified by the links I provided earlier, the optimal level of taxation can be very well approximated by a flat tax + guaranteed income. Eliminate tax on capital gains and corporate taxes. Only have a 25% VAT, a flat income tax, and some pigouvian taxes on things with negative externalities. Maybe property taxes as well for municipal purposes. Problem solved.

A CO2 emission tax makes more sense than cap and trade.

A constant function is simpler than a linear function. A linear function is simpler than a quadratic function. A quadratic function is simpler than as sinusoidal function. etc. Not my fault if you don't understand this. Yeah, I guess all that empirical evidence must be wrong, so we should probably switch to communism, since apparently the impact of graduated taxes on leisure and work is nonsense. It's not like it's possible to estimate labour supply elasticity that is nonzero or anything. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272714002527

I don't like it because it doesn't make sense. Saying system A should be preferred to system because system A can do X isn't a good argument when system B can also do X. You say the current system is overly complicated and could use simplification I agree. Where is the disagreement? Do you think it would make sense to have the best possible tax system that maximizes the well-being of society? If so, how do you determine that? Perhaps you would benefit from understand the basics of welfare economics, like the fact that people value their leisure time and taxes reduce the incentive to work and this results in a more progressive tax system having a large negative impact on economic output per dollar of tax collected. Also, I will point out that this is essentially circular reasoning. The definition of progressive taxes doesn't justify progressive taxes.

We can be a member of NORAD without being a member of NATO. Guess what. the cold war ended decades ago. Get over it. Using what happened during the cold war to justify being in NATO today makes no sense.

Clear as mud. So you are saying sovereignty is what international law says it is? In that case I don't see how it supports your idea of needing a large military. How to enforce laws? Have you heard of police? We don't need to if there are 0 nations that have a best interest in not respecting our sovereignty. I'm not even sure how a military would stop say the USA from disrespecting our sovereignty if they wanted to. What stops the USA from disrespecting Canadian sovereignty is self-interest. Indeed. Islamic terrorism is a major threat, made worse by stupid political decisions by Harper, Obama, Bush, Cameron, etc. If you want to prevent domestic terrorism in Canada, I think money would be better spent on CSIS than on the military. Really? People like Osama Bin Laden were goat herders? I think doing a cost benefit analysis to see if it's worth the money and effort should be done to see if the preparations are worth while. A flying spaghetti monster could spring into existence tomorrow in Toronto and rain giant meat balls over the city killing thousands, but the probability of that is so low that it isn't worth preparing for. If that's an attempt to appeal to my patriotism, it won't work because I do not have any. Decisions made in hindsight are different than decisions made in foresight. If the government made the best decision given the available information at the time, I see now reason to hold that against them. While a military is helpful, you don't need a military to deal with major earth quakes. If you are worried about Earth Quakes, then fund people to specialize in Earthquake relief. Then put money in CSIS or the police force instead of the military. This is Canada. Yep. I don't understand how relative to coast line is a sensible metric. The fact that we have so much coast line and only have land borders with 1 country is one of the reasons why we have less need for a military than say India. I know it doesn't. I hope it stays that way. I can have a 'crusade' against both. Also, perhaps it is better to spend 1% less on military and put that money towards health care. No, there is plenty of blame to go around. Polarizing the situation by siding 100% with the Western Ukrainians while ignoring the issues and right to self-determination of the Crimeans and the Eastern Ukrainians did not help. I'm not a big fan of the UN either. Maybe we should leave them as well. Fortunately this isn't my position. Here is an example: it's called the Canadian-USA free trade agreement. ^ don't blame me if you are vague. I don't even advocate abolishing the military. I'm just open to the idea. And if it meant I had a few hundred more dollars per year to spend on stuff, maybe I would be for it. Cool, sounds like a potentially beneficial situation for Canada. There would be significant economic benefits from merging with the USA. Also having freedom of speech would be nice.

You can get that with a flat tax + guaranteed income system. So again I ask: Give me one reason why there should be a tiered tax system as opposed to a simple flat tax + guaranteed income.

@msj - You are ignoring what I wrote. I never said a tiered tax system is 'not very complicated', but it is more complicated than a flat tax. Preference should be given to the simpler tax system unless there is a good reason not to. So I repeat myself: Give me one reason why there should be a tiered tax system as opposed to a simple flat tax + guaranteed income.

True, but a flat tax has other benefits as well. Also, I think that Occam's Razor should apply here. Preference should be given to the simpler tax code unless there is a good reason to complicate it. Give me one reason why there should be a tiered tax system as opposed to a simple flat tax + guaranteed income.

By the fact that similar values are shared, so the public opinion of one developed liberal democracy is more likely to be in favour of the actions of another developed liberal democracy in the event of a conflict with a non-liberal democracy. Like for example, suppose North and South Korea go to war (well technically the war never ended, but whatever). Even without a formal alliance, the public opinion of Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, Singapore, etc. is likely to be in favour of South Korea because South Korea is a developed liberal democracy. 1. Could you clearly define sovereignty to me because it means different things to different people. Do you just mean enforcement of a country's territorial boundaries? 2. Different nations face different levels of external threat. A country located in the middle east has a much greater need for a military than Canada. Realistically what threats to sovereignty does Canada face? From the USA, basically zero. We are allied and maybe there are some minor disputes such as over the Beaufort sea, although I think the USA's position makes more sense. There is also a dispute over the North West Passage being 'international waters'. Although I think the USA could be convinced that it's in their best interest to have Canada have control over the North West passage. From Denmark? There is a tiny dispute over Han's Island, which can easily be solved by diplomacy, and then there is a dispute over territorial boundaries in the Arctic Ocean, which are primarily artificial and created by the present government due to nationalism. The North Pole is Danish territory, and dispute over Arctic territory can easily be resolved peacefully by just studying the Arctic Sea floor. From Russia? The overlap of claims of the Arctic Ocean is very small and again primarily a result of nationalism and political interference from the Canadian and Russian governments. Most of the territorial claim overlap is Danish territory anyway. Russia is a relatively rational actor and the territorial result could eventually be resolved peacefully. Also, unless we wish to get nuclear weapons, we are unlikely to ever have the military strength to challenge Russia alone. 3. Realistically, our military is primarily aid to foreign nations because we simply don't face many external threats. Don't get me wrong, aid to other countries can be justified on its own merits, and we should help the Kurds and help South Korea in the event of a conflict. But just be realistic, our military isn't primarily about 'defence'. It's offense. 4. I don't advocate the position of zero military, even though realistically we are one of the few nations on Earth that could get away with it. I just don't see the point in spending as much as 2% GDP on military and I don't see why we should be in a military alliance with Turkey when they fight our Kurdish allies and when they are run by an Islamist government which is somewhat sympathetic to ISIS. 5. To be honest, their are far bigger issues than just total military expenditure. Such as having proper diplomacy and sensible foreign policy. Just look at the past 2 years, the west polarized the situation in Ukraine which has lead to a completely unnecessary civil war, and it blindly supported the 'rebels' in Syria in order to fight a proxy war against Russia; now we have ISIS. Also, I think we should ask if the way we distribute military funding makes the most sense. Maybe we should focus on trying to figure out how to make autonomous machine learning robots for military purposes and how to mass produce them, to get ahead of the competition. We have a small population but plenty of natural resources. Who are these 'others'? Name one 'other' that would do this. The USA and Denmark would never get enough public support and it would likely not be in their best interest.

Saudi Arabia has higher CO2 emissions per capita than Canada. Yet so many people find it more acceptable to purchase Saudi oil, which is used to fund wahabbism, than Canadian oil.

Men have 3.5 times as many suicides per capita as women. LGBTQIA+ people have much higher suicide rates than the vast majority of the population. This strongly suggests to me that gender roles are the primary cause of the majority of suicides in Canada and elsewhere.

I do.

I used other because I wanted to have options that were inclusive of the opinions of different members. If you want male, female and intersex, I think the second option best reflects this. Should I change the poll options to just be 2, 3, more than 3, less than 2?

So why didn't you pick the second option in the poll?

Neither. More like an act of depression and mental illness.