Antikarma

I saw one of these commercials last night and thought to myself, "WTF, did they call an election?"

It didn't take long for the negative campaigns to start and I have to say, I'm disappointed. It seems every year we move more towards American attack ads. I'm one of the people that supported the liberals but was pleasantly surprised by the conservatives when they took office. However to me it seems petty to be attacking simply because you can.

And a superbowl ad??

Toris launch attack ads aimed at Dion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHmudQKgIJs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9S2GeGldtU&NR

*edit* Substantiated with linkies. Just trying to keep conversation going boys and girls, remember we almost lost this forum once due to lack of use

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leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
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whoever you are."

CandleInTheDark

I wouldn't call this a smear campaign. A dumb move, yes, but it's not a mud slinging, "I would be very embarrassed if he became Prime Minister of Canada" style of ad.

That said, this is a very, very stupid move. While Dion should not get a free ride for the inadequacies of the Liberal government on the environment, such things should be a part of the Commons, not TV advertisement.

I do not want the Liberals back in power, and I hope Harper and the government smarten up, because Dion's Canada is not a country I want to live in.

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Leto

Actually, when I saw the add last night, I thought that I had accidentally switched the channel from watching '24' to 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes'. that is how bizarre the ad was.
I'm a Liberal, but I've been getting somewhat disillusioned by their policies and execution of said policies (a lot of the Ontario Provincial gov't baggage is in there). I have some lurking admiraation for harper's execution too, but not all.

JJRousseau

Agree with you, Candle. The sad thing is that as much as we all say we hate negative ads, they are usually effective. When they backfire though... Big gamble. And very disappointing.

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percy

I don't have a problem with these ads. Dion has been slinging mud since his talking head became an opposition leader.

But who picks up on it. Not the media!!!! All of a sudden the importance of national health care has dropped far below that of Global Warming,..and why????

Good for Harper. At least he has the balls to put his face forward. Maybe next he can end this one sided love affair each prime minister has to have with Quebec.

We are all equal, are we not?

Now be a Canadian or fuck off

Sticky

Actually, I don't have a problem with the content of the ads.
What I question is what was the need for them at this point. I wonder why.

I was wondering when people from the same party running for the leadership of that party would learn their lesson. I always wondered why, during a leadership race, the different candidates smear each other so much - aren't they just feeding the opposition with material?

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Sticky The Stickman

Bossnass

I think my first real political memory is from a television commercial. I remember seeing it on TV and my dad being disgusted. I'm pretty sure I saw it again a number of times on the news.

It was an anti-chretien PC ad that said 'Is this the face of leader?", with an implied emphasis on his facial appearance.

I was still pretty young, and not at all interested in politics, but even I recognized the commercial to be excessive. But what was worse, I remember watching Chetien give a dramatic, God thanking, dramatic speech in response, and thinking of how many votes the PCs had generated for the Liberals.

Politically speaking, the Conservatives have 'made good' on campain promises (albiet in some hollow ways), while I think many liberals (MPs and everyday Canadians) are waiting and hoping for the Conservatives to screw up something big. So far, they haven't, although I think these ads are on that 'back-fire' line.

Dion has been making a bunch of noise and doing much politicking, with attention placed on getting attention with marginal substance. The content 'attacking' Dion is sound, but the delivery and the timing seems way off. However, the current Conservatives are in power less on thier merits than on a lack of trust/dissillusionment with the Liberals. A united and strong Liberal party could topple the current governmnet and form the next one. The die-hard Cs and the die-hard Ls are not going to change. The casual voter, the swing voter (such as my Communist wife who voted NDP because she won't vote conservative and distrusted the liberals) would have noticed the momentum that Dion has been gaining. It will be interesting to see how Harper and crew handle having a strong leader of the opposition.

JJRousseau

Because the PC want to get a budget through in the spring - full of tax breaks and right-of-centre financial type stuff. The only way as a minority gov't they can get it passed is if the other parties are afraid of an election.

Unfortunatley (IMHO), the majority of Canadians are usually Liberal, all things being equal. The PC really can't win an election in this country. The Liberals have to lose it. I fear that our memory in too short.

But i think the PC have one goodie left to offer the voters: Income splitting!

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Leto

I agree. The electorate have completely forgotten/forgiven the PC's and the Mulroney years!

I'm with you on this. Bring it on Harper!

JJRousseau

True enough, Leto. I've tried to forget Mulroney... However, it did take the PC a very long time to come back from that era. The Liberals elect one new dude no one has ever heard of to be their leader and - !magic! - they are back in front of the polls.

Time to dust off my "Why aren't we all libertarians" rant...

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Bossnass

I'm a little young to know for sure, but I thought the current Conservatives are closer to the "Reform" ideals (that garnered most of the old PC votes) than the old PC platform. Toned down and less socially backward than the Reform/Alliance, but basically similar.


And it looks like bad news for many; reports say that the budget won't include income splitting. Not a huge issue for me at this point in my life, but I still fully support the idea.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...Story/Business

Yakk

The neat thing is, Income Splitting mainly encourages picking up a trophy husband/wife for people who earn 200k$+.

You get really good ROI on that. Just make sure to sign a good prenup.

It has smaller benefits for other people with less difference in income. It generates a significant disincentive for a non-working spouse to start working part-time and getting back into the workforce.

Yes, it is money for everyone. The interesting part to me is, who benefits the most.

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Leto

yes, but my point is that my wife conciously retired from the workforce (as an IT management consultant) in order to help manage the homework load of our 3 kids, plus avoid the latch-key syndrome. This was around the time the oldest was in grade 6, so there was some strong parental guidance necessary that daycare couldn't provide.

So I wouldn't say that she would be 'disincentived' to re-enter the workforce, it's more like, as a household unit, we would definitely benefit from defining the sole source of income as supporting that unit, versus just the wage earner in the household.

Ace_O_Spades

*sigh*

attack ads make me a saaaaad panda.

plus, there isn't even an election going on... this is smear for the sake of smear... pre-emptive smear.

the content of the ads, while legitimate, is a product of much more than the policy decisions of the liberals. Environmental change is a 30+ year plan. You can't blame the choices of one administration if they were founded on the infrastructure built on the choices of previous ones.

How much has NAFTA hurt the environment? When you're just worried about profit margin to avoid the buyout, you cut corners.... A product of the Mulroney administration.

While we're on the subject as well... how constructive is retroactive criticism of Dion's record really?? How much control over environmental change and damage does the environment minister REALLY have? How much of the impact is in the hands of corporations and businesses?

Anyway, it's just another hollow political move by Harper...

The ad itself was seriously low budget, and yes, it reminded me of some mock-up parody attack ad from air farce

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Feh.

Leto

with respect to the environment, I understand via the media that Canada has a really poor track record. The results are per-capita based and couched in the Kyoto accord objectives.

Does anybody have an idea as to what our ecological footprint contribution is in absolute terms within the global perspective?

I mean is all of our concern about contribution to global warming a bunch of chest pounding over a 2% input? would focus on the Americans or Chinese be more appropriate?

Bossnass

I don't know an exact ecological footprint number, although colder countries have significantly larger footprints because of darker, colder winters.

I did recently look at some CO2 emissions/year figures, which is a significant part of the issue:

US currently putting out in the neighborhood of 6000(10^6) tonnes ,
China at 4500 (although that number is double what it was 15 years ago). India, Russia, Japan are about 1250
Canada, even with "Alberta" spewing away, is about 600.

Wait, I'm confused.

Can you clarify the "can't blame the choices of one administration if they were founded on the infrastructure built on the choices of previous ones."

Almost everything is founded on a liberal government. Except for 9 years of Mulrony and a very brief Joe Clark blip, we have 45ish years of a liberal government founding. If environmental change is a 30 year plan, we can certainly look just as hard at Trudaus' 70's and 80s as we look at Mulrony's 80's.

So you don't blame the liberals for the NAFTA choices of the PCs, but then we can't blame the current Conservatives for almost anything that was started by the last 14 years of liberals?

Also, while I don't agree with the idea of using the adds, I think Paul Martin was ousted in no small part because he was the finance minister of a (publicly known) corrupt government. I think the ads were an appropriate campaign style response to Dion's own campaigning.

I had talked with friends how it was ironic that Dion was suddenly running an election style campaign with an environmental platform, when he was the environment minister, granted for a short time, of an environmentally lacking government.

Ace_O_Spades

Any talk about global warming and how governments from the past should have done more needs to take into account how "laughable" the now "critical" problem was at the time.

Hindsight is 20/20 for everyone, not just Dion. Had previous governments poured billions (which is what it would take) into Canada's environmental initiatives, no doubt the opposition would have been up in arms about a flagrant waste of money based on academic fearmongering.

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Feh.

JJRousseau

Bossnass, yes the new PC are part old PC and part Reform but I liked the founding idea of the reform. Unfortunately, they attracted a lot of people who took them in a different direction. Seems to me that the new PC is more Social Conservative than the old PC which is too bad - but (it seems to me) they have gotten rid of a lot of the "old boys' club" spectre that the Mulroney clan had.

Yakk, what's wrong with a trophy wife. Especially if she can successfully keep the kids out of trouble. Think of all the money the Canadian social system will save.
:

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Yakk

There is nothing wrong with a trophy wife. I just don't see the reason to generate tax changes that generate an additional bias towards trophy husbands.

Making nearly all "someone taking care of my child" costs tax-deductable might be a better step. Encouraging people to be productive and work sounds like a good plan.

And practically, if you want to be encourage families, you should allow income splitting with your children, not with your spouse.

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Leto

Not a problem. As long as financing of the household unit is addressed.

Ace_O_Spades

http://www.cbc.ca/mercerreport/

Check out his rant for today, February 9th

It hits on the attack ads, hilarity ensues.

"You're not the boss of me!"

"You're fat!"

The Ken Dryden attack ad is pretty hilarious too

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Feh.

vox_rox

Yup, saw this, just about peed my pants. I mean really - a couple of mediochre politicians during a minority government throwing sand at each other. THIS passes for politics? I think not. Mercer put them both in a pretty good light with that bit.

Anyway, I'm not going to wade into this cesspool of politics, I think they're all just jockying for position in a train wreck anyway, and the taxpayer ends up paying for the clean-up.

Although, I did think that Ace made a brilliant point when he talked about how no one mentioned how badly NAFTA turned up the heat on the environment, and that is maybe an angle that should be looked at during the next election campaign.

Peace,

Pierre

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JJRousseau

Oh Yakk. That's so disappointing... raising a young family IS productive.

But that isn't all this is about. It accepts the fact that a family is a unit. Family income should be taxed as a unit. Currently a household where two spouses make $70,000 and $30,000 respectively pay more tax than a household where each makes $50,000. If you respect the family unit, that makes no sense.

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tinfoil

I saw the ads and just about cried. Not another election where none of the leadership candidates can be trusted with anything more than a sno-cone stand.

Ugh.

Though as much as it does pain me to say, Harper hasn't totally fucked up the country. Yet. In fact, I secretly agree with one or more things he has done.

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Mistress Kali

Losing the word "Progressive" in this case is more than semantics. The new Conservatives are more Neo-Cons than PCs! Oh, how I miss the federal PC Party...fiscal conservatism with a social conscience...

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Charlatan

Kali, it looks increasingly like the Liberals are your best bet then Kali. They have been the fiscally conservative, socially liberal party for the past decade and a bit.

The Conservatives are just more neo-con nonsense. That said, despite Harper's own socially conservative bent, he is a politician that can see where the vote lie. As a result his policies and actions have shifted, bit by bit to a more socially liberal slant (small bits by bits).

He is trying hard to be everything to everybody on the right (ie appeal to the PC vote on Ontario and Quebec while also appealing to the Reform base in Alberta and BC). It worked for him in the last election.

My worry is that once he is in a majority situation, he will do what he pleases and damn the consequences.

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JJRousseau

Fiscally conservative????? Maybe Mr Martin. But sure as heck not the rest of those money-grabbing, self-serving cronies.

I think the Neo-Con term is falling to the conspiracy theorists. It meant something once upon a time when certain democrats moved away from the left over what they saw as weak foreign policy. But now it's a just a term for the boogie man. Or Mr Bush... As for Mr Harper's changing policies, I applaud a man who can change his mind and a politician who can bow to the majority view regardless of his own opinion.

Have to agree with you on that one. All three of our main political parties have big philosophical splits in them. Keeping them from fracturing requires a lot of pandering and vote-trading. Unfortunately.

i worry about that with all of them... But I think the right always has a more tenuous grip on power in Canada so they will always have to show a little more restraint than the centralist Liberals.

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tinfoil

Imagine that, an elected official listening to the people beyond election day! It's something else I have to, grudgingly, give him credit for. For as afraid I was of him coming into power, he's not done nearly as bad as I thought he would.

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Bossnass

Thank you JJR. Your post was pretty much exactly what I wanted to say.

"The Conservatives are just more neo-con nonsense." And Charlatan, I thought you were above such statements. I certainly understand why people would be opposed to the Conservatives, but any valid points you have are weakened by that phrasing.

Charlatan

Hmmm... I think this may stem from a different read on what it means to be a neo-Conservative. Here is the definition to which I ascribe.

Perhaps, "nonsense" wasn't the best word to use but I stand by my assertion that the current Conservatives are neo-cons.

My issues stem more from their socially conservative elements than anything else. I think I also react to the massive chip that sits on most big C conservatives shoulders (but what can be expected when they have been living on the fringe since the Mulroney years).

I also stand by the fact that the Liberals (adscam aside for the moment) have exhibited strong fiscal conservatism in their larger policy. Martin and Chretien got rid of deficit spending and reduced the debt at a time when nearly all other western nations were doing the exact opposite.

I am not saying they were perfect. Far from it. But in terms of the mix that the PC government's represented, yes, they were firmly treading that ground.

The biggest problem with the Liberals was political complacency. They got lazy and they grew corrupt in the face of no real competition, no real political pressure. Reform/Alliance was in a shambles, the NDP was floating into obscurity unsure of what their purpose was and the Bloc was limited by the borders of Quebec.

The Liberals managed to hold onto power by stealing the best ideas of the NDP and Reform/Alliance while living in the centre with no real threat to loss of power.

It wasn't until the sizable voting block of the PCs was added to the sizable (by all Western) voting block of Reform/Alliance that any threat began to shape up.

To me it was a classic error of complacency, mixed with the perfect storm of elements: Growing alternatives in the new Conservatives, a massive scandal and party that no longer had a distinct vision.

I am willing to concede that Harper has made some interesting moves politically but I also think that one man can't do it all. There is still a strong element of Reform at the core of the Conservatives. It is just a matter of time before that element either rises up to get what they want or they splinter off to get it elsewhere.

The fact of the matter is Canada, on the whole, is a socially liberal place and no one party is going to change that and stay in power.

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- Old Man Luedecke

JJRousseau

Good points Charlatan. But being a small "L" libertarian, I liked the reform ideals. What we think of today when we think of the Reform Party and what they began as are totally different. They were grass-roots, govern from the masses, small government. Unfortunately, they became a platform for the wacky Conservative Christian movement in Canada. Conservative Christians are lovely people. Just keep the wacky ones out of office...

As for the neo-cons, I'll accept your wikipedia definition but I don't think it describes Mr Harper at all. He does not believe in deficit spending (or social welfare for that matter) and I don't think he is the foreign policy hawk that we make him out to be. I think he is towing the line with big brother next door , for sure, but that may be more out of need than desire.

I'd say he is old-school conservative. Not PC. Not reform. Not wacky Christian Right. Thoughtful Christian Right. We haven't seen that in Canada in many decades.

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Mistress Kali

Interesting points, gentlemen. Charlatan, your definition of neo-con is the definition I utilize when critiquing the Conservative Party. I have voted Liberal federally since the death of the PCs. Voted Liberal and then showered to remove the filth of what I had done. Given the current political spectrum, the grits really are the only federal party I can support. I concur, that they are largely fiscally conservative and there is a strong wing of the party which reflects my take on social justice. Myself, I have problems with the federal perspective of the Liberals ( I adhere to a looser concept of the fderation) and this will always be a sticking point for me. Harper is a very utilitarian man who will do what gets him in power (something he shares with the Liberals) and has few principles in common with the PC party. His only principles are closer to the Neo-Con ethos and those horrify me.
When he was a discontented whiner who left the Reform party, the ideals he espoused were alarming and those were not stated just to make the Americans happy

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JJRousseau

So we agree that in a perfect world Paul Martin would lead the old PC party. Lobbying would be outlawed. Gov't spending would be 2/3s of what it is now, lower taxes, economic prosperity and what I did in my bedroom would be nobody's business but my own. Well, and my wife's...

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Yakk

Raising your family is not your entire life, because raising a family does not require anywhere close to an entire lifetime's worth of work.

And this isn't about raising a family -- this is marriage -- raising a family requires children, being in a marriage doesn't. If you allowed income splitting with your children, that would be different than allowing income splitting with your spouse.

And no, the family is not a unit -- the family is a collection of individuals, the adults of which have chosen to merge their their finances, and the children of which are guardianed by the parents. Being in a family should provide shot cuts to many useful financial "tricks" and agreements that society deems useful.

...

Let's take a look at who this change benefits, and who it doesn't.

Two 50,000$ income people gain nothing from this.

One 100,000$ income single parent gains nothing from this.

A small gain is generated for a 30,000$ income and 70,000$ income family.

The largest gains, in terms of tax avoided, are given for 200,000$ income plus 0$ income style families. Going from 150,000$ and 50,000$ to 200,000$ and 0$ is now equivilent, except now the 0$ person leaves the work force and is statistically unlikely to return.

Any decrease in taxes by one group results in increased liability for everyone else. Currently, people who choose the stay-at-home spouse route gain the benefits of the stay-at-home parent's work tax free. Ie, suppose it would cost 30,000$ per year to get equivilent care to a stay-at-home parent. The stay-at-home parent will have to earn 40,000$ per year, pre-taxes, to pay for the 30,000$ per year for the equivilent to staying at home.

...

I understand that "family good" instincts say "we should shovel money at people who behave like families!", and that arguing against things framed in that way makes you seem like a bad person. But changes to the tax system should be more than just sound bites -- they should be aimed at making taxation more efficient and less likely to discourage production.

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JJRousseau

Sorry Yakk. We are so far apart, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

We could debate it more, but I would stray in to the "why the hell does the person who makes $200,000 pay more tax in the first place?" And it's all down hill from there.

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Yakk

I am all for splitting taxes with your kids -- I just find splitting taxes with your spouse to be a poorly aimed tax break, if your aim is to encourage families.

Splitting taxes with your kids is simple -- you allocate some of your income to raising your kids, and it gets taxed as if your child earned it instead of you.

This actually encourages families.

Because the stable, healthy society that taxes pay for earns the 200,000$ person 200,000$ per year, while that same society only earns the person earning 30,000$ 30,000$ per year.

Without enforced property rights, law and order, transportation infrastructure, trademarks, basic research into technology -- someone earning 200,000$ per year would be fighting for his or her life, or spending almost all of their resources on personal defence. The size of the middle/upper class would be puny (as it was for most of human history), so the odds are they would be earning close to zero money. And the purchasing power of the money they would be earning would be next to nothing, in terms of goods.

If anything, the most sensible tax base for a society is the assets the society protects. Modern economies place one of the most sacred acts of a state is the protection of private property, and enforce it quite strongly. The bias in the net worth of citizens is much higher than the bias in the tax load -- the top 1% of asset owners own a larger percent of assets than the top 1% of tax payers share of tax revenue.

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tinfoil

It is so shockingly simple sounding. Indeed, I wouldn't be quite so hesitant to have more than 1 child if that were the case.

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Leto

I have a following!!!!

JJRousseau

To me, a family is a family whether you have children or not. To me a family is a singular thing. To me, more married people should think that way...

Ow! Good shot. You got me right in my little libertarian heart. It is an interesting point which I'll have to consider. My quick and dirty reply would be that without what I would consider to be excess govt spending in areas championed by the left wing my govt could protect individual rights at a flat tax rate.

But I can see your argument of the assets being clustered higher up the income pole. I find the 1% fact difficult to believe given that the top 10% of income in Canada generates 50% of personal income tax. But you might be including corporate assets at which point, I have no idea.

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Yakk

http://policyalternatives.ca/documen...ags_riches.pdf

sure, left wing folks, but they at least got their data from stats can.

Top 10% wealthiest own 53% of wealth in Canada.
Top 20% wealthiest own 70.4% of wealth in Canada.
Top 50% wealthiest own 94.4% of wealth in Canada.

Poorest 10% have more debt than wealth.
From 1970 to 1999 the inflation-adjusted wealth of the top 10% increased 122%.

As of 1999: The top 10% of family units have, on average, 1 million dollars in assets. The poorest 10% have, on average -10,000$ in assets.

Breakdown of assets by 10% groups:
53%
17.4%
11.2%
7.7%
5.1%
3.3%
1.8%
0.7%
0.2%
-0.4%

The top 2.5% of Canadian households account for 29% of the wealth.

Note that in the USA, 1% of households own 38% of the wealth (1998).

...

Highest median wealth is Ontario, highest Average wealth is Alberta. Ontario, Sask, Alb. and BC stand out from the rest of the country as the "wealthy" provinces. Quebec, Manitoba and PEI are middling. And Nfld, NS, NB are poor.

...

So Canadian wealth distribution is not nearly as skewed as American. I can't get decent information on the top 1% of Canadians wealth, nor do I have more recent numbers than 1999.

Sure, you should think you are a unit. But that doesn't mean you should get a tax break for it compared to single people.

I can see the government's interest in encouraging the middle class to have children.

First, a flat tax has nothing to do with the rate. You can have a flat tax regardless of the rate you want to tax the economy.

Second, Social stability is very valueable. That is one of the reasons behind the safety net.

Wealth redistribution is another advantage. The best predictor of expected lifespan, among both the poor and the rich, is the size of the local wealth gradient. Places with flatter wealth gradients have rich people that live longer.

Wealthy people could do this individually, but there is the free rider problem -- when your buddie decides he wants the benefits of social stability without paying for it. Hence government taxation.

Corperations don't "really" own things -- the things owned are owned by people via shares in the Corperation.

This value is measured by the value of the corperation. People who own shares own a fraction of the value of the corperation. So you don't have to directly examine corperate assets -- you just have to examine personal assets, and the corperate assets get automagically counted.

You can use corperate assets to double-check that someone isn't being fancy with paperwork and hiding assets.

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