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Canadian Budget 2017

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McG

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They are increasing alcohol tax!?  That is mean.

 
jmt18325 said:
I think it works out to ~0.01 per ounce.
OK, most have come to accept that you consistently ignore people with experience -- who actually understand -- procurement, warships, fighter aircraft, etc.... but now we're talking alcohol.

Let me assure you, on this topic you are wayyyy  out of your league!
 
Journeyman said:
OK, most have come to accept that you consistently ignore people with experience -- who actually understand -- procurement, warships, fighter aircraft, etc.... but now we're talking alcohol.

Let me assure you, on this topic you are wayyyy  out of your league!

[cheers] [cheers]

 
Let's see now......Trudeau has been repeating the same canned lines in the House of Commons for the past year ad nauseum on how he has taxed the top 1% and lowered the taxes of the Middle Classes........How does raising the taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, carbon products, and all those other new or increased taxes help the Middle Class?  How does doing away with the ability to claim Transportation on Public Transit help the Middle Class?  How does taking monies dedicated to infrastructure (Public Safety on roads, bridges, etc.) and directing it to Child Care really help the Middle Class or any Canadian?  I would say that what has actually happened is that the Middle Class is getting taxed even more than ever before and the Liberal claims of helping the Middle Class are 'Smoke and Mirrors'.  The Middle Class will soon have less in their pockets than before.
 
SeaKingTacco said:
That is not the point! They are increasing tax on alcohol!

Which works out to an expected 55 million, la drop dans la bucket!  Nothing in this budget makes any sense.  it's like a five year old is punishing people who don't like him and rewarding people who do like him.
 
Basically, the budget had no new taxes or spending.  It simply reallocated some money.
 
jmt18325 said:
Basically, the budget had no new taxes or spending.  It simply reallocated some money.

So there IS NO increase in taxes on alcohol and tobacco?

You mean the Liberal's actually lied in their budget when they announced those increases?  The Middle  Class will not be taxed more heavily on daily items such as alcohol, tobacco, Carbon Products, public transit, etc. 

I'll drink to that.

 
We're talking about taxes totalling less than $500M on a $300B budget in a $2T economy.  That's why I said basically no new taxes.  There was, from what I understand, zero new spending.  $1.3B was reallocated from already budgeted funds from last year.  Basically this budget did nothing in terms of either revenue or expenses.
 
The carbon tax is going to cost me another $204 per year for rent, and I'm not even in a PMQ / RHU. 
 
jmt18325 said:
We're talking about taxes totalling less than $500M on a $300B budget in a $2T economy.  That's why I said basically no new taxes.  There was, from what I understand, zero new spending.  $1.3B was reallocated from already budgeted funds from last year.  Basically this budget did nothing in terms of either revenue or expenses.

I would like to know what optometrist you're using, as your rose coloured glasses are even better than the Sunny Ways glasses that some others like wear here in Canada, and to be frank I really need a good pair or corrective lenses to block out the pile of garbage that is being presented on a plate.

Your glasses allow you to see budget increases where none came to exist, and now you're seeing
taxes totalling less than $500M on a $300B budget
...  Goddam, I wish I had these glasses right now, as it would enable me to not see the $5K+tax bill I'm paying this year.  Psst!!! a hot tip.... less than $500M is still greater than $0 (which would mean no new taxes)  But then, I'm not an accountant or economist myself...

So to sum up, you were contradicting people from within the defence community on what they were seeing happening on the basis of no current (or ever?) military experience, and now you're continuing to do more of the same on how the budget works.  I'm wondering, you're not even an economist either, are you?
 
Some people just like to hear themselves...

Or in this case know that others are reading their posts.
 
jollyjacktar said:
So to sum up, you were contradicting people from within the defence community on what they were seeing happening on the basis of no current (or ever?) military experience, and now you're continuing to do more of the same on how the budget works.  I'm wondering, you're not even an economist either, are you?

I said basically:

in the most essential respects; fundamentally.

used to indicate that a statement summarizes the most important aspects, or gives a roughly accurate account, of a more complex situation.

I didn't say literally.  I didn't mean literally.  There were virtually no new taxes.  In other words, basically, there were no new taxes. 
 
jmt18325 said:
I said basically:

in the most essential respects; fundamentally.

used to indicate that a statement summarizes the most important aspects, or gives a roughly accurate account, of a more complex situation.

I didn't say literally.  I didn't mean literally.  There were virtually no new taxes.  In other words, basically, there were no new taxes.

When you're right, you're right.  No new taxes, except almost $500 million in new taxes. 

I've got you pegged now.  You're not military, not a mathematician, not an economist.  I've seen this kind of reasoning and solid fact based talking before, and with your keen interest in Canadian politics etc, you can only be...... Question Period at any of our Legislative Assemblies in Canada including the HoC, in human form.  That can be the only logical explanation why you're as hard to nail down on the wall as a bowl full of Jello.  :stars:
 
jollyjacktar said:
When you're right, you're right.  No new taxes, except almost $500 million in new taxes. 

In the context of a $2T (slightly more) economy, that's basically no new taxes.  that's less than 0.05% of the economy.  That's less than 0.2% of the budget.  Some of you find some very strange things to argue about.
 
But yes - by my quick estimation, there are ~$500M in new taxes, none of which you actually have to pay if you don't take transit, uber, or buy alcohol or cigarettes.
 
For anyone looking to add a little more depth to the discussion, the government has the budget available to see here: http://www.budget.gc.ca/2017/home-accueil-en.html

… or just take a pundit’s view that the budget was nonsense:
Andrew Coyne on federal budget 2017: No money, no ideas, but a wealth of bafflegab and buzzwords from the Liberals
Andrew Coyne
National Post
22 Mar 2017

The good news is they’ve run out of money.

The nonsense in this nonsense-filled budget might have cost us all a lot more if the Liberals had more faith in the fundamental piece of nonsense underpinning the rest: that deficits stimulate growth. But as the economy has once again failed to play its part in the old fiscal conjuring trick — can it be just a year ago that the Liberals were claiming the multiplier on government spending could reach as high as “between three and four”? — the Grits now find themselves having to finance their ambitions by reallocating existing spending, rather than simply tacking more on top. Give thanks for small favours.

Mind you, they’re still talking the same old game. “There is a general consensus,” the budget declares, falsely, “that fiscal policy is the right tool to grow our economy for the long-term.” But while the budget also repeats the usual ritual claims that “the plan is working,” the reality is that growth is coming in well below the levels forecast even last November, let alone way back in March of 2016.

Meanwhile, the fiscal situation continues to deteriorate: deficits over the next four years, forecast in last year’s budget to total $84-billion, are now headed for $101 billion, on the strength of spending that is now roughly $20 billion per year over the track laid out in the last Harper budget. The $10-billion deficits originally promised, of course, are but a distant memory; the balanced budget is nowhere in sight or even promised; even the steadily declining debt-to-GDP ratio, last and loosest of the Liberal benchmarks, is gone — it rose last year, is projected to rise again this, and may well rise again the next.

But of course it isn’t just that they’ve run out of money: they’ve run out of ideas. Or at least, good ideas. The Liberals had a good idea in the last budget: the rationalization of several different child benefit programs into a single, income-tested Canada Child Benefit, albeit at a cost of $4 billion-plus. And they had a bad one: the notion that Canada’s middle class is falling behind, a claim that is increasingly the object of ridicule. The middle class isn’t falling behind — median incomes have been rising steadily for the last 20-odd years — and if it were the Grits have no sensible plan for remedying it.

What they have are a lot of meaningless buzzwords. I have read a good many tedious, empty budgets in my time. I cannot recall ever reading one quite as mind-bendingly empty as this one. Innovation, strategic, whole-of-government, world-class, value chain, smart cities, centres of excellence: the budget burbles happily on for page after page in this vein; one has the strong sense its authors have no more idea of what any of it means than they do “middle class.” Much is promised, but put off until the future: I lost track of the number of plans that “will be proposed” or policies that “will be developed” at some later date.

But as to the here and now: almost none of the promised reform of tax expenditures — credits and deductions favouring this interest or that, to the detriment of general economic efficiency — materialized in the budget. Indeed, the government is adding new ones — for example, extending accelerated capital cost allowance to “a broader range of geothermal projects.” Perhaps they are holding off on this, until they have a clearer sense of what kind of tax cuts the Trump administration has in mind. Or perhaps the very public burial given to the notion of taxing employer health benefits was a sign of things to come.

If there is a theme to the budget, it is of course “innovation.” As with “infrastructure,” last year’s favourite buzzword, the Liberals tend to attach this to virtually everything that catches their eye, including Liberal campaign slogans (“Innovation is, simply put, the understanding that better is always possible.”) But as the budget drones on, it becomes apparent that to this government it means the very latest in advanced, state-of-the-art 1930s-style state planning.

As the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy has lately reminded us, the federal government alone already has 147 different programs with interchangeable names intended to foster innovation. To these will be added, inter alia, an Innovation and Skills Plan, an Impact Canada Fund, a Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative, a Canadian Business Growth Fund and a Strategic Innovation Fund, though in fairness the last is intended to replace several existing funds. Indeed, the budget promises a review — sorry, a “whole of government review” — of current innovation programs. Perhaps they could throw in the new ones to save time.

Talking of sucking and blowing at the same time, I’d be more exercised about the proposal to throw public money at six industries the government is so sure will prove to be winners that it cannot be left to people investing their own money — “Canada can be a world leader in digital innovation,” was one of the things Finance Minister Bill Morneau professed to “know” in his budget speech, a page after confessing “we never could have imagined” the impact of mobile computing — if they were not also proposing to support virtually every other industry.

Some of the subsidy is disguised as procurement: rather than buy the best product at the lowest price for the taxpayer, government will serve as “first customer.” And there’s a truly bizarre proposal to seed what are called, inevitably, “Superclusters” — clusters is no longer enough — on the theory that if we can observe the spontaneous evolution of clusters, in places like Silicon Valley, in retrospect, we can surely envision them in advance, and create them by policy.

Oh, and there’s a chapter devoted to gender-based analysis. The point of this would seem to be that some programs benefit women more than men, and others benefit men more than women. Another data nugget turned up by the same analysis — that men pay 66 per cent of the taxes — seemed to attract rather less attention.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-no-money-no-ideas-but-a-wealth-of-bafflegab-and-buzzwords-in-the-liberal-budget

 
 
jmt18325 said:
But yes - by my quick estimation, there are ~$500M in new taxes, none of which you actually have to pay if you don't take transit, uber, or buy alcohol or cigarettes.

Ah!  So now we do have new taxes, and the only way to avoid them is to be dead or not leave the comfort of your own home and live the life of a sequestered Nun.
 
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