Instead of tax cuts to help the middle class, what they should really do is:
Reduce privatization.
So much of our country is owned privately for the sake of profit.
This is why everything is so expensive, it’s because we let rent seekers own our infrastructure.
I want my government to start making money without further relying on middle class income.
Yea but that’s the Liberal party you’re talking about. If you want that, you should vote NDP.
Yeah, private ownership concentration is a huge problem leading to monopolies, lack of innovation, and worsening treatment of both customers and employees in general. As I understand it, all funds have increasingly gone to parasitic shareholders more than ever since CEO pay has shifted more and more to pay in company stock.
I’d love more publicly-run utility and transportation networks as you said, but in other less critical areas we could probably benefit from a more competitive system of small-to-medium-sized cooperatives that could (ideally, in a perfect world) replace corporations entirely. I would love to see support for worker groups with solid business plans to receive government grants (or at least forgiving loans) to help them buy their private sector workplaces for conversion to a democratic business model where employee-owners don’t get treated like serfs and businesses have to win over customers to survive, rather than trapping them and getting complacent.
*edited to add that last bit in italics
Do you think that’s something they could easily do? It’s a nice idea, but it’s much more complicated to do anything about that
What if the government just started running crown corporations again? They could price things a lot lower and take business away from the private entities. It’ll take some initial investment, but that’s money well spent I think.
Maybe start with insurance and undercut that entire industry. Then use the profit to fund the establishment of other crown corps. Since they don’t have to appease shareholders, all of the profit can go towards this.
I am very happy with the crown Corp car insurance we have in Manitoba.
Well we have been feeding them every growing amounts of money, billions going to consultants, and it seems like everything has gotten significantly worse. Housing is dramatically more expensive, far wait times for doctors with shortages in family doctors, food is way more expensive, and our Canadian monopolies are actively abusing their power. Its enough to lose faith in their ability to manage anything.
I assume by “them” you mean the government?
The government doesn’t manage housing or food. That’s all the work of the free market baby! If there was a government run food store, for example, it would be able to operate at cost since it doesn’t necessarily need to turn a profit. Heck, it could even run at a loss if we as a society agreed it has value beyond dollars. In other words, we could offset the loss with tax dollars if we agreed it was of benefit to society.
I agree that monopolies are a problem though and that the government needs to actually start enforcing some anti trust. But taking an active role with crown corporations will also help reduce monopoly power, so its a tool to use along with enforcement.
As for health care, that’s a provincial concern but I also agree. Where I come from, the people around me keep voting in the very party who for over 40 years has proven to be incapable of managing health care. And yet there are functional public health care systems out there. So it’s not a matter of a government being incapable of managing health care. Rather, we have strong evidence that a conservative government is incapable of managing health care.
Of course there are lots of examples of governments managing things poorly, but there are also countless examples of private companies managing things poorly. The difference I think is that with the government you at least have some say. I don’t think the government should run everything, but certain key industries (mostly infrastructure type things) I think would be better off in public hands.
The government doesn’t manage housing
Well you cant grow the population 1.4 million in one year and expect the already failing infrastructure to sustain them.
I’d also say per capita GDP has been falling in Canada since 2015, and thus food prices are higher. Caroline Rogers said we have a productivity emergency, hence lower salaries. We even do things like buying mortgage bonds to inflate real estate, the Feds are buying half of all mortgage bonds issued.
Here’s a good video on the mismanagement with a lot more statistics:
So? We can do hard things.
I don’t think we can, actually.
I could be convinced, but you’d need to give me details, and I suspect you’d convince yourself first if you looked into it.
deleting because I replied to the wrong comment!
Sweet now let’s raise it on foreign billionaires who try to defraud our EV rebates
Let’s also do domestic billionaires (yea we have some).
Why have an EV rebate at all. Im sure the poor are overjoyed to gift their landlord a rebate for their new EV sports car. Meanwhile we are the only country in the G7 without high speed rail, while many of our highways were built in the 1960s.
Tbf high speed rail is now in the works, although moving at a pretty glacial pace.
I’m kind of hoping they will. The government does not have too much money right now. I see no reason not to add a few percent to the top or second-to-top tax bracket.
I think that increasing the basic personal exemption would have helped a lot more lower income Canadians
Yes, but functionally no one voted NDP this year, and that was their pitch, IIRC.
Wasn’t it also the CPC plan?
The CPC had a plan?
VERB the NOUN
My bad, it was to lower the rate on the lowest bracket. https://www.conservative.ca/poilievre-to-cut-income-tax-by-15-for-the-average-canadian/
I don’t know what Carney has planned, but a middle class tax cut could be this.
Edit: It is, but going from 15% to 14% instead of Poilievre’s proposed 12.5% https://globalnews.ca/news/11180306/liberals-budget-middle-class-tax-cut/
It may yet be part of things: a promised cut to middle class taxes should infer inclusion of the poorer.
One would hope so, but I won’t hold my breath.
why do they say it’s for “middle class” if it’s for poor people?
Make it an official tax bracket too, instead just a refund everyone qualifies for. I don’t know why TF it’s set up that way.
So what are they defining as “middle class” for this round? gotta love the journalism of CTV that seemed OK leaving this as “will lower tax for some Canadians”… some precise reporting there
It is time for a radical change in how we progress as a society. Money sure ain’t working. “Let’s keep turning these money knobs and see what happens” should not be the ultimate answer for forward progress towards something resembling a utopia, which should be the goal. I have no answers but it seems that fiddling around with economy and hoping for the best is nothing more than just killing time.
Absolutely. Money is a signifier that only has meaning when integrated in material exchanges. Radical, bold restructurations are needed in order to ameliorate our country’s socioeconomic reality.
How about giving us income splitting so that I don’t pay more in taxes than a two income family that makes more than I do?
This is to placate people who think voting gives you instant gratification. This isn’t for people who pay attention.
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I don’t know if I count as middle class. But I remember the first year I didn’t get all my taxes back on rebate. I was SO HAPPY to be making enough money to pay taxes.
Still feeling that way even though I am getting broker over time as the rent goes up and my wage doesn’t.
It would be more worthwhile to do price controls on those loblaws assholes.
Middle class is a made up term meant to separate the working class. It doesn’t mean anything. The definition of middle class is vibes alone because it’s a term that means nothing used by pandering politicians.
I agree that systemic solutions should be the focus but unfortunately the Liberals are incapable of challenging the system.
lol that’s why I don’t know if I count as middle class. because class is about yer relationship to capital. “middle class” is meaningless.
libs won’t do squat. I’m just shit talking and planting seeds
🌱🌱🌹🌱🍉🌱🌱
Disappointing to see adoption of CPC/PP platform cluelessness policy priority. Canada needs to spend on industrial policy to fight US, and prepare for hardships. His first BS of offering US empire more weapons purchases for more force multiplier warmongering was embarassing enough. Head in the sand “negotiations” is not going to go well.
Priority needs to be to destroy US economy, to save Canada’s. If plan is to do nothing, we can do without an auto industry too, but waiting until the crisis evolves is just negligent.
The Liberals don’t care about debt, that is for some future party to worry about, during a debt crisis.
The NDP want a lot of social programs with high taxes, the Cons want low taxes and fewer programs, the Liberals offer a lot of social spending and low taxes by shamelessly abusing government debt.
The debt can be abused because its backed by our ability to liquidate our public pension to pay creditors, as outlined in the last budget Freeland released.
Step one: tax the rich.
Tax. The. Rich.
Tax them until we eliminate working poverty. Tax them until we can move away from destroying the environment. Tax them until we eliminate billionaires entirely.
