TENS - Taxed Enough Nova Scotians

JLM

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Nov 27, 2008
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IMO What we need is a new political party and 20 years to fine hone it and push a few good people through the ranks. I think the scariest part of this whole scenario is that there are no up and coming politicians who speak a language I/we really need to hear.

Yes, transparency has taken a BIG hit with Harper at the helm and it broke my heart that when we went to vote the last time there wasn't someone better. As Canadian's it is time to put all the current big parties in their place and it will take time to do it. We need something other than the left and the right or simply the middle...or all points in between. Perhaps all those points just don't matter any more now that it means not being able to speak without a party vote in favor.

What you need more than a new political party is some industry! -:)
 

Historic

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Mar 27, 2013
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We should look at the creation and maintenance of social programs as an industry...giggle. I can't disagree with the fact that we need to address jobs and that there are so many people who need/should be working who aren't. I also can't disagree with the fact that most jobs don't pay enough to sustain a person in today's expensive world. I just am not to sure this blind push to create more jobs is where it is at. To me it is more a need to fine hone what we already have...just like fine honing the spending with the taxes we already collect.
 

Historic

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  • National Picture — Economic cycles and recessions notwithstanding, Canada's employment rate increased over the last three decades and a half. In 2011, the percentage of adult Canadians who were holding a job was 61.8%, up from 57.1% in 1976, an increase of 4.7 percentage points.
  • Gender — In 2011, the employment rate for men was 65.9% compared to 57.9% for women.
  • Age — In 2011, the employment rate was 11.3% for individuals aged 65 years and over and 81.0% for individuals aged 25 to 44.
  • Lone Parents, Recent Immigrants, Aboriginal People, and People with Disabilities — In 2006, the employment rate ranged from 62.2% for lone parents to 51.3% for people with disabilities. The employment rate of people with disabilities increased by almost 5 percentage points, from 46.4% in 2001 to 51.3% in 2006.
  • Permanent and Temporary Employment — In 2011, 45.2% of working-age Canadians had permanent jobs, while 7.1% were in temporary employment.
  • Part-time and Full-time Employment — In 2011, 11.8% of working-age Canadians worked part-time, whereas 50.0% worked full-time.
  • Women with Children — The employment rate for women with children under six years old was 66.8% in 2011, more than double the rate in 1976 (31.4%).
  • Regions — In 2011, the employment rate varied from 52.5% in Newfoundland and Labrador to 69.7% in Alberta.
  • International Picture — In 2011, Canada's employment rate was the second highest among G7 countries.
  • Employment Rate of Total Population — The percentage of the total Canadian population who held a job (an alternative measure of how many individuals are working) increased from 41.6% in 1976 to 50.2% in 2011.
Work - Employment Rate / Indicators of Well-being in Canada




Here are some statistics off the government web site that explain most of the basic employment stats over the last 40 years. Currently we average about a 61% employment rate and what has/does it cost us? Billions in tax dollars used for corporate welfare and trillions of dollars in executive wages, bonuses and foreign profits.


Out of 1.7 trillion dollars worth of GDP in 2012 only roughly 8 billion was spent on social programs and roughly 203 billion was spent on corporate welfare by all levels of government. The total of 211 billion falls way shy of 1 % of the total GDP.


Regardless of the foolishness in spending the lions share of the measly less than 1% on corporate spending, the fact the we do not demand a share of the GDP for social funding that is a reasonable percentage is just as foolish. It took 40 years of overall growth in supply/demand and a 95% growth in population to facilitate a 5% increase in employment. Job growth as an answer just doesn't work.


However, without that job growth GDP has skyrocketed...this says to me that it would be no problem to demand a larger share of the GDP to use to relieve some of the stress on both the job market and in the long run our environment...always at the end of the day the main concern is how to stop being so wasteful and destructive. And almost always involves increasing social spending...
 

Historic

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Mar 27, 2013
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Canada GDP.







TREND MOV AVG MEAN MAX MIN

This chart shows the growth in GDP for most of the years considered in the previous post for employment numbers. To me I notice that simply maintaining an average of approx. 50-60% employment works. Be it that our population is small or large. There is no reason to think that it would take large government spending to achieve this percentage. Through the 2 previous recessions 80s/90s the government did not increase spending on corporate welfare as it did this time and we survived them quite nicely. All the while maintaining that 50-60% in employment. Even in the face of a population explosion and a huge demand of jobs as a result.

Maintaining a 50-60% employment rate brings us a huge GDP.

Our jobs market has only one problem IMO, and that has more to do with not wanting to accept that it doesn't take every single person working to get by. If we really accepted that, and also really accepted that our GDP is huge, we could likely come to some kind of resolution over social programs and also realize that they don't cause a deficit....how could they when the GDP is over a trillion? It is a responsibility of ours to maintain a reasonable workforce and to maintain those who don't work. We all can't work, we work enough as it is, and we did this without corporate welfare for years and progressed quite nicely. I'd say we have one of the best balances we have ever had between work force and production.

What are we complaining about? I should mention that to me corporate welfare simply means money spent bailing out industry. Government funding to further jobs in markets such as research and development especially in agriculture and science is not corporate welfare. That is money well spent. Social programs to me are not welfare, to me they are the foundation that allows our productivity to maintain value because wages like prices reflect quite seriously supply and demand.

A figure for percentage of wages is around 41-47% of the GDP. This is not unreasonable by itself but when you start to add up the remaining expenses such as social spending to care for all of the people who don't work and you take into consideration that non workers make up the largest part of our society, the percentage of that GDP that is set aside for them is almost non existent. It is easy to see how we are failing our society. We can't all work and paying someone to not work is just as important as paying those who do.

It would be unreasonable to consider to try and replace a wage dollar for dollar...that could not happen, but, surely there is room within that massive GDP to pay enough to make it work. Thankfully the bulk of people who don't work are seniors, singles and children. 3 demographics that require less money on average than parents. Less than 3% of the GDP is not enough. How about 10%. How about 47% of the GDP for wages, 10% of the GDP for social spending...and the remainder left can represent the massive pay structures and bonuses and foreign profit...if we could settle on a percentage than we could effectively start looking for ways to capture it from the GDP.

Social funding does not need to be industrialized the way we have been doing over the last while with privatization of groups that handle things like worker's compensation. If social spending was an accepted mode of conduct, we could see how much cheaper it would be to simply cut a cheque at the federal level and be done with it.

On a side note....how will we ever meet our environmental goals...how will ever stop selling our resources up to 100 years before we actually harvest them...how will we ever stop filling land fills to the point of needing to ship our garbage elsewhere...there is only one way. That is to realize that we over produce because we all need jobs. We need to realize that we have enough jobs, that perpetual growth above a 50-60% expectation is wrong and unlikely, and we need to redo our budget and taxation structure to allow for this 50-60% to exist and realize how important it is to maintain it. We maintain it best by taking care of the rest of the people who don't work.
 

Historic

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Mar 27, 2013
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Statistics….

31 % of GDP is collected in tax.

OECD iLibrary: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

This is how we spend it.

That's our brief summary of federal spending for 2010–11.

  • Canada Health Transfer (10 cents)
  • Canada Revenue Agency (3 cents)
  • Canada Social Transfer (4 cents)
  • Children's benefits (5 cents)
  • Crown corporations (4 cents)
  • Defence (8 cents)
  • Employment Insurance benefits (7 cents)
  • Other major transfers to other levels of government (6 cents)
  • Other operations (12 cents)
  • Other transfer payments (14 cents)
  • Public debt charges (11 cents)
  • Public Safety (3 cents)
  • Support to elderly (13 cents)
Your Tax Dollar: 2010-2011 Fiscal Year

In effect we have wages equalling roughly 47-49% of GDP and taxes that equal 31% of GDP. That means on the whole we direct roughly 70-80% of GDP into keeping our economy and standard of living intact.

I think we need a new categorie…not a new subcategorie. One that would produce a column for social care that captures 10% of our GDP. So there would be 47-49% in wages, 28% in taxes and 10% in Social care.

If we remove the 3% of the money collected in the tax column that represents the funding already set aside for social spending (not including health care and so on…simply the cheques we issue to those who need and corporate welfare which was 211 billion last year).

Then increase corporate taxes from 26-27% to 34% giving us a 7% increase.

Take the 3 from the tax column that already exists, then take the 7% generated in the new corporate tax rate and add them together and we get the 10% of GDP we want for Social care.

We only increased the overall percentage of GDP capture from 80% to 87% and that is reasonable. That leaves the current 28% that is used to fund infrastructure intact, and still gives us a corporate tax rate that is lower than just a few years ago when it was 49%.


So, some NS people IMO are taxed enough but not all of us.