Canadians want government to take care of them

[Argus]

Canadians seem to be looking to the government more and more to provide them with whatever it is they feel they should have but don't. And if it costs millions, billions, tens of billions, well, so what? As long as someone else is footing the bill. I think what we're seeing is the fairly predictable result of a progressive tax system where, over the last decades, more and more people have been removed from the tax roles. When you don't have to pay - ever - then naturally you're going to vote for whatever party offers you more free stuff. Why not?

“My rent should be waived!”
“Tuition should be free!”
“You can’t take away CERB!”

It seems that more and more Canadians are expecting income support from the government, and increasingly, the government is delivering with direct payments to Canadians. This was already happening before COVID, but the pandemic appears to have accelerated the trend.

It isn’t surprising that people like getting something for free. In tough and unprecedented times such as these, some degree of emergency support can be necessary. The problem with free, however, is that you usually end up paying for it somehow. But what happens if you can manage to get things for free and always have others pay?

Canadians want government to take care of them

[betsy]

20 minutes ago, Argus said:

Canadians seem to be looking to the government more and more to provide them with whatever it is they feel they should have but don't. And if it costs millions, billions, tens of billions, well, so what?

 

Unfortunately, that seems to be prevalent now.  Socialism has indeed rooted well, and we're getting there. 

[wxman52]

So true and so sad. It drives me crazy to see the amount of money this government is spending on a pandemic that frankly is not nearly as bad as some claim. We should have in the end put 30-50 billion dollar into the nursing homes..hire more people...pay them more..strict protocols..proper supervision and adequate equipment and we would have cut the number of deaths in Canada by 50-80 percent. Instead we shut everything down and then to make matters worse we encouraged people not to work or look for work by giving them pretty generous benefits. So now we added 50 percent to the debt in less than a year..keep in mind that it took about 50 years to amass 700 billion in debt and in one year we added over 350 billion to it. 

 And the worst thing is that nobody seems to care. I barely hear the media or anyone concerned about this. Instead everyone continues to freak out about a virus which has a death rate of 1 percent or less and mainly to people over the age of 70. 

 

 

[WestCanMan]

23 minutes ago, wxman52 said:

We should have in the end put 30-50 billion dollar into the nursing homes..hire more people...pay them more..strict protocols..proper supervision and adequate equipment and 

I won't hold our gov't too accountable to the standard of "shoulda coulda woulda" in every specific instance across the entire country, but there were some basic, common-sense steps to take right at the outset that we didn't take such as blocking travel from people who had been to China and telling people to wear masks.

It's 100% idiotic that people could fly in from Wuhan on March 15th, stroll through a crowded airport, ride transit, swim in an indoor/public pool, eat at a buffet and then a week later Canadians weren't even allowed to walk outside in our own provincial parks. The turnaround from 'doing extremely high-risk things is 100% ok' to 'doing things which have zero risk of spreading infection is forbidden' was extremely sharp and it made no sense whatsoever. It's like "You can ride a raging bull through the maternity ward" on Tuesday and on Sunday "You can't eat a sandwich on the patio". 

Quote

 And the worst thing is that nobody seems to care. I barely hear the media or anyone concerned about this. Instead everyone continues to freak out about a virus which has a death rate of 1 percent or less and mainly to people over the age of 70. 

I was concerned when our gov't started giving massive gobs of money to CBC and then to "select media outlets". A total of $1,400,000,000.00 went to CBC and some Liberal-toady-approved media outlets. Then Rebel Media was banned from recording our glorious leader's precious words.  

This is what we get for not putting a stop to that. 

[WestCanMan]

1 hour ago, Argus said:

Canadians seem to be looking to the government more and more to provide them with whatever it is they feel they should have but don't. And if it costs millions, billions, tens of billions, well, so what? As long as someone else is footing the bill.

Canadians want government to take care of them

They're like little kids who think of their parents as a money tree.

There are two groups of people who benefit from socialism - the people who contribute the absolute least to society and the people who stand to gain the most from government cronyism. 

The people who put in the time and effort to learn a trade, or get a profession, or took the risk to start a business, and the people who worked hard to make a decent living for themselves are the ones who stand to lose from socialism. We're the people who truly understand what we're headed towards. 

[Moonlight Graham]

Americans tend to want to push government out of their lives a lot more than Canadians, they value liberty and independence from the state.  Canadians want to be taken care of, they like the nanny state, they don't value independence as much.  Canadians are the 35 y/o dude still living in their parents basement & having them pay their bills, buy their groceries, & do their laundry.  Americans moved out after high school.  Some Americans might have less money, and no healthcare, but they're also on their own two feet.

The fact that the Liberals' approval rating went sky high after CERB is proof enough.  Free money for not working, we love you!

[Michael Hardner]

I think this is generally true, and I think that Canadians are going to have a hard time parting with CERB but... most nations took Covid seriously as a threat as it had the potential to kill more than it did.  Government is indeed there to help us with large disasters like this.

It doesn't mean the OP is false, though.

[Moonlight Graham]

Just now, WestCanMan said:

They're like little kids who think of their parents as a money tree.

Exactly as I said.  We agree.

[WestCanMan]

6 minutes ago, WestCanMan said:

There are two groups of people who benefit from socialism -*snip*-the people who stand to gain the most from government cronyism. 

If I could just expand on my point, a lot of the socialists (& fascists) in the US are behind Biden, and he's the perfect example of cronyism. Wherever Joe Biden was influential as the VPOTUS, his kid raked in gobs of money, in the most unlikely/worrisome ways imaginable. The Dems rubber-stamped all of the Biden family's profiteering as "OK" and the sheeple gobbled it up.

As we speak, Kamala Harris's kids are upgrading their resumes - they're changing the "Expected Wages" line from $/hr to $/minute. 

[Argus]

1 hour ago, WestCanMan said:

If I could just expand on my point, a lot of the socialists (& fascists) in the US are behind Biden, and he's the perfect example of cronyism. Wherever Joe Biden was influential as the VPOTUS, his kid raked in gobs of money, in the most unlikely/worrisome ways imaginable. The Dems rubber-stamped all of the Biden family's profiteering as "OK" and the sheeple gobbled it up.

Can you just shut up about your Trump god in the Canadian topics, please?

[Argus]

I'm not sure what the answer to this is but it's human nature to care about how money is spent when it's your money and to not much care when it's not. I wonder if some kind of flat tax, where everyone pays something, or maybe moving more taxation to a value added tax (GST/HST) would let those 40% of people who pay nothing feel they have some skin in the game.

[WestCanMan]

16 minutes ago, Argus said:

Can you just shut up about your Trump god in the Canadian topics, please?

STOP SAYING TRUMP IN THE CANADIAN TOPICS!

Honestly, there's no better example of cronyism than the one I just gave, and cronyism is the whole reasoning behind the push for socialism by wealthy elites who are just lining up to be the fattest pigs at the trough. 

[Argus]

3 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

STOP SAYING TRUMP IN THE CANADIAN TOPICS!

Honestly, there's no better example of cronyism than the one I just gave,

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/15/17355202/trump-zte-indonesia-lido-city

[Moonlight Graham]

The thing with CERB is if you don't have it, and people are legit out of work, what is the alternative?  Default on the mortgage?  Then all of the banks are screwed, housing prices collapse, i buy a few of cheap houses, wait 10 years, sell them then i'm a baller.

[dialamah]

4 hours ago, Argus said:

I'm not sure what the answer to this is but it's human nature to care about how money is spent when it's your money and to not much care when it's not.  I wonder if some kind of flat tax, where everyone pays something, or maybe moving more taxation to a value added tax (GST/HST) would let those 40% of people who pay nothing feel they have some skin in the game.

Do rich people/corporations who get so many tax breaks they pay nothing 'have no skin' in the game?  Or is it only poor people who's income is so minimal they don't pay income tax have 'no skin in the game'?   It seems to me that it's human nature, when one has almost nothing but sees the way in which the rich use the system to create more wealth for themselves, that they might also decide they may as well use the system to benefit themselves as well.  

Why is it so important that someone who makes $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 a year pay the same percentage of their income to taxes as someone who makes two, three or four times that?  Losing (for example) 10% of $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 makes a much larger difference in someone's standard of living (aka ability to consume), than losing 10% of $150,000.   In a capitalist society, we absolutely require people to be able to buy things - without consumers, businesses fail.  Look at how many went out of business just after 3 months of reduced/lost business.   If that 40% of Canadians that you are so concerned with were to be subject to increased taxes, that would cut into their discretionary income - the income they could otherwise put to use keeping capitalism alive.  Even if it's just Walmart and McDonald's.  Reducing consumer spending in a capitalist system is a recipe for disaster; why else would governments be so willing to provide 'stimulus' packages when the economy slows.  

[WestCanMan]

13 hours ago, Argus said:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/15/17355202/trump-zte-indonesia-lido-city

That's so weak compared to Biden's examples that it's laughable. 

Biden's family got money directly from the most corrupt company in Ukraine plus the Communist bank of China. Joe Biden emphatically stated that he did not know about Hunter's massive profits from those ventures, and now we all know for a fact that Joe was lying because he admitted to it. (when the photo of Joe, Hunter and another member of Burisma's board, Devon Archer, golfing together came out) 

You're talking about a loan of just half a billion that's going to foreign investors to start up a resort. The fact that the resort will merely include Trump-branded buildings is indirect and puny by comparison. 

I'll agree that there's the possibility of impropriety here, but the Dems set the bar for this type of scandal WAYYYY higher. If that $500M went DIRECTLY to one of Trump's companies that would still only be 1/3 of what Hunter's co got. 

Like I said, extremely weak.

[Argus]

14 hours ago, dialamah said:

Do rich people/corporations who get so many tax breaks they pay nothing 'have no skin' in the game? 

I'm opposed to that, as well. I'm against corporate welfare, and I agree with Warren Buffet that it's insane that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than him.

14 hours ago, dialamah said:

Or is it only poor people who's income is so minimal they don't pay income tax have 'no skin in the game'?

How poor is poor? If you earn $50k a year are you poor? What about if you have a family with a non-working wife and three kids?

Well, to start with, the federal and provincial 'personal amount' combined means about $22k of that is not taxed. But if you have a spouse who is a dependent who earns no income you get to claim another $12k. So now you're down to paying tax on $16k. Excluding deductions for things like child care and everything else, that would work out to about $3k in tax, not counting deductions.

Oh, but I forgot, you will also get about $23k from the government for child benefits. And that amount is not declared on your taxes. So you can have a guy who is actually making $73k and paying virtually nothing in tax.

14 hours ago, dialamah said:

It seems to me that it's human nature, when one has almost nothing but sees the way in which the rich use the system to create more wealth for themselves, that they might also decide they may as well use the system to benefit themselves as well.  

Everyone uses whatever system is there to create wealth for themselves.

14 hours ago, dialamah said:

Why is it so important that someone who makes $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000 a year pay the same percentage of their income to taxes as someone who makes two, three or four times that?

Numbers. Very few people earn those high salaries, but millions and millions earn those lower salaries.

Also, it would discourage them from continually voting for parties that offer him lots and lots of free stuff if it wasn't entirely free, if he had skin in the game and saw his taxes going to fund such things. There is an inexorable progression to the fact that if more and more people are getting free stuff from the government while not paying, more and more people will vote for parties which promise more. We were already one of the most indebted countries in the West before Covid. I don't want to be another bad example like Greece.

 

[Argus]

People have already been gaming the system, doing just enough work to qualify for CERB, then scaling back how much they work so they can continue to get the $2k a month.

“Every day I hear from worried business owners that they’re having troubles competing with the CERB to get workers,” said Kelly, whose organization represents small business owners who employ 60 per cent of working Canadians.

“But the EI changes that they’re making, in fact, make it even more worrisome in some respects because they’re lowering the bar to only 120 hours of work to collect a minimum of $400 a week for 26 weeks. That’s just three weeks of work to collect six months of EI!”

Kelly says his part-time job at the Boston Pizza franchise “would have qualified me now to get $10,000 in benefits by refusing to work.”

Or, imagine someone working for $15 an hour for 120 hours who would make $1,800. What incentive will they have to continue working if they can collect $10,000 over the next six months? Very little, says Kelly.

https://nationalpost.com/news/local-news/corbella-new-ei-program-a-disaster-for-canada-and-our-youth/wcm/b83db027-9fa1-409c-87fb-b605ef2d543a/

[cannuck]

On 8/20/2020 at 12:48 PM, WestCanMan said:

I was concerned when our gov't started giving massive gobs of money to CBC and then to "select media outlets". A total of $1,400,000,000.00 went to CBC and some Liberal-toady-approved media outlets. Then Rebel Media was banned from recording our glorious leader's precious words.  

This is what we get for not putting a stop to that. 

I put the blame for this squarely on Harper.  He had adequate time and a mandate wherein he should have dismantled the communist broadcasting corp.  Now, since MH is about to loose his cool, I de-capitalized the name.   After all: it IS a state owned broadcast organization that spews endless BS on behalf of ONLY one brand of political ideology.  The phrase is appropriately descriptive.

Edited September 16, 2020 by cannuck

[QuebecOverCanada]

I'd like to know why it is a bad thing?

[taxme]

On 8/20/2020 at 11:08 AM, wxman52 said:

So true and so sad. It drives me crazy to see the amount of money this government is spending on a pandemic that frankly is not nearly as bad as some claim. We should have in the end put 30-50 billion dollar into the nursing homes..hire more people...pay them more..strict protocols..proper supervision and adequate equipment and we would have cut the number of deaths in Canada by 50-80 percent. Instead we shut everything down and then to make matters worse we encouraged people not to work or look for work by giving them pretty generous benefits. So now we added 50 percent to the debt in less than a year..keep in mind that it took about 50 years to amass 700 billion in debt and in one year we added over 350 billion to it. 

 And the worst thing is that nobody seems to care. I barely hear the media or anyone concerned about this. Instead everyone continues to freak out about a virus which has a death rate of 1 percent or less and mainly to people over the age of 70. 

 

 

What is going on in Canada has nothing to do with this Convid 19 hoax. It has more to do with with control and and trying to make people fear their own shadow. Our dear comrade politicians are taking advantage of this hoax by now trying to act like dictators. They keep lying to us every day that this Convid 19 farce is still alive and well and it appears as though it will get worse as the next few months go by. And with the help of the leftist lieberal lying media it will no doubt work because of the many fools out there who will be convinced that they must do as they are told by their politicians and the media and so called health experts or they are all going to die. This is a prime example of where and how most people want to have more government control in their lives. 

What makes so many people such followers anyway? Why do they let their dear leaders and the media frighten them to death so much that they are now in total fear of dying from this seasonal virus? Some fools will even wear a face diaper mask while driving in their vehicles with the windows up. Now that is a state of fear and panic that was created by their political leaders and the media. This is fear mongering being created by our dear comrade leaders and the lying media. 

That homely looking so called federal health expert communist Teresa Tam has even said that we all should stop kissing and wear a mask while having sex. Is this woman mental? Does anyone now want to believe anything she says anymore? Wake up you dumb fools out there this is a battle going on for your freedoms which those I already mentioned are trying to take away from us all. I have not heard one poltician today say anything negative about this Convid 19 virus. The only one is Maxine Bernier of the PPC Party of Canada. the rest appear to be willing to go along with this scamdemic game. 

Now the land border crossings are shut down until November. Just in time for the election. Interesting. If Trump wins the border gates will open up once again. If forgetful socialist Biden wins those borders may stay closed for a lot longer. So, are you starting to feel like a prisoner in your own country now because I certainly do. You should be concerned because you are now a prisoner in your own country. Big government is the problem. The more government we have the more nonsense we will get. I do not want the government to take care of me. I want to take control of the government because my freedoms depend on that. Just saying.