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Originally Posted by JJRousseau
Yes a lot of the topics on politics and finance to become repetitive after a while.
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No way!
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OK so now we've agreed on paying down the debt "as quickly as our individual economic philosophies allow". And we agreed up the positive and negative effects of a strong social safety net on the economy, what is left to debate?
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Is Jesus Christ in favour or against a purely capitalist econimc model?
(and yes, I'm kidding)
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Well, I guess we could go around GDP vs CPI one more time but brighter minds than ours have disagreed on macro-economic theory. But let me try this. In year one, Canada produces $100 worth of stuff. In year two, Canada increases production by 3% and so produces $103. Because there are $105 dollars in the economy in year two, that stuff sells for $105. So we say GDP increase by 3% and inflation was 2% (approx) What I am suggesting is that if the gov't required $20 worth of taxes to support the $100 production in year one, it does not follow naturally that that $21 (5% increase) will be required in Year two.
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True. All I was aiming at was that not factoring GDP growth and inflation in gives you really destorted results.
If they manage to maintain services while shrinking their cut of the pie, that is a 'good job' -- not perfect, but good.
The really silly part is, you really can't pay attention to the Federal government's budget in Canada. To really understand what the government is doing, you have to add up the federal, provincial and municipal government spending. With all the down/up loading of services, and money moving around, the budget of any one of them isn't sufficient to come to any real conclusions.
The Federal government is mostly a large accounting organization. They tax the people, then shove money off to the provinces. The inter-provincial movement of funds has a larger impact than the inter-class movement of funds: rich provinces get much less out of the coffers than they put in.
The Maritimes, Territories and the central prairie provinces are the benefitiaries of this largess, from what I know. Quebec is about break-even, and BC is a net contributer.
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It's still my opinion that I am paying too much tax to a government that is too large. So I guess to look at it your way, I believe that the safety net is larger than it needs to be such that the negatives are outweighing the positives.
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Well, there is a bit of math I did the other week.
Canada as a whole spends 43% of their GDP on health care and other government services.
The USA as a whole spends 43.44% of their GDP on health care and other government services.
There aren't many large nations that don't have a pretty large/powerful government structure.
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Now here's a ringer for you. I don't think over-spending on the safety net and infrastructure is our biggest problem. I think the fundamental problem with our system of government is that it's primary function is to get re-elected. It does that by appearing to be active (moving wealth around). Or for even more cynical thinkers, by giving out to more voters than they take from. (ie. if they tax one person $50 and give 10 people $5, how many votes are they ahead???)
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*nod*. So, the government finds someone for whom 50$ isn't that much money, and gives it to 10 people for whom 5$ is alot of money.
This makes the person you take the money away from less hurt (and hence, less upset), and maximizes the amount the people who recieve the money are happy about it.
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I think the fundamental problem with our system of government is that it's primary function is to get re-elected.
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And that is the primary point of our system of government.
It's primary goal is to generate the greatest benefit for the greatest number. With the caviet that it isn't allowed to cause extreme harm, other than extremely rarely.
Systems of government with other goals exist. For example, generate the greatest amount of total power: fascism. Prevent private citizens from exploiting each other: communism.
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OK that's cynical even for me.
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I do come at this from an extremely strange angle to you.
I don't take property as a given. Property, to me, is a societal construct that we use to generate benefit for the society.
You have money in your bank account, you own cars in your driveway, and you own the clothes on your back, because it is a damn good way to run society. We don't have society set up in order to give you ownership of your clothes, car or money.
So, I start with the perspective, there are a bunch of things that people are really really really really cautious about not having. Food, health, shelter, safety.
Those things should be, in effect, rationed. If one person can exert enough power to prevent another from having food, health, shelter or safety, they have the ability to enslave that person.
Everything after that is a bonus. But, the things which people are very risk-adverse about losing should be protected from loss, both for welfare concerns and to encourage risky behaviour.
Canada has enough resources to provide them for every citizen. The next trick is to make society so wealthy that it is nearly impossible to lose them, while at the same time distributing the less-important extra resources in a 'nice' manner.
The government may have pushed the point of social safety net 'too far'. But, the only thing that the government spends large amounts of money on that isn't a direct 'Food, health, shelter, safety' member is education and transportation. Cheap high quality education has serious benefits, and transportation, being an important natural monopoly, is a pretty obvious thing to place in the government sphere.
I suspect you approach the problem from a different angle. To me, the market is a useful tool for generating wealth. Convincing people to solve the difficult 'price' problem (for nearly all goods), in exchange for luxuries, is a good idea. Building a society where the market determines important parts of human welfare is an act of despiration (to me).