We have terrible reps in parliament. They lie, and cant remember.
Why? Because we elected them.
If a polititian says ANYTHING it almost always has the effect of losing votes. People respond more violently against things, than for them. so a comment that should be completely neutral, will always spur more people to vote agains a man, rather than for him.
Unfortunately, most voters are less educated, and less intilligent than people running for office. So, it becomes a popularity contest, when it should be a job interview.
I think better education for all is a step in the right direction.
OR.... u get one vote for every $1000 or tax paid in the last 5 years. This way, the rich who don't pay taxes will get outvoted by the middle class.
WOW
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Canadian Wheat Board
This is an issue about freedom.
Freedom for an individual farmer to conduct his business as he sees fit.
If some farmers want to sell through a board, then feel free to do so.
But where in hell did you get the right to tell all other farmers where to sell.
Go mind your own business and leave mine alone.
Freedom for an individual farmer to conduct his business as he sees fit.
If some farmers want to sell through a board, then feel free to do so.
But where in hell did you get the right to tell all other farmers where to sell.
Go mind your own business and leave mine alone.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Indian Ways ???
Why does every sign in Canada announcing that you are entering and indian reserve, also have the following, "WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS"
Is there something special about indian pedestrians the we should know about?
Why don't we have our own "WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS" sign at the entrance to every little town?
Please let me know???
Is there something special about indian pedestrians the we should know about?
Why don't we have our own "WATCH FOR PEDESTRIANS" sign at the entrance to every little town?
Please let me know???
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Goodbye Quebec
I understand that on Feb 22, 2000 Bernard Landry said, "Saskatchewan is an administrative division of Canada and Quebec is a nation."
We in Saskatchewan find this particularly insulting because with only 1 person in 1000 in Sask speaking french, we continue to pay for bilingualism and 12 billion a year in equalization payments to Quebec. We do this because we believe in Canada as a nation.
Maybe if Mr. Landry doesn't want to accept that all provinces are equal then Quebec should leave Canada and we can reduce all of our taxes.
We in Saskatchewan find this particularly insulting because with only 1 person in 1000 in Sask speaking french, we continue to pay for bilingualism and 12 billion a year in equalization payments to Quebec. We do this because we believe in Canada as a nation.
Maybe if Mr. Landry doesn't want to accept that all provinces are equal then Quebec should leave Canada and we can reduce all of our taxes.
We need more rich people!!!
Action Saskatchewan #32
To run September 13
Head: A million is enough
Subhead: Saskatchewan trailing in tax capacity
Urban legends garner a life of their own, generally with little basis in fact. A good case in point is the old saw that the rich don’t pay tax.
Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth – high income earners pay disproportionately high levels of tax, fueling public treasuries starved for revenue to expend on infrastructure and social programming. Consequently, those jurisdictions with large numbers of high-income earners are in a far better position to support public programs.
Saskatchewan is not among them.
This finding has emerged as a key element of the Action Saskatchewan blueprint, an economic and social strategy for the province prepared by the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber embarked on the initiative to foster debate and discussion on the future of the province as we approach our 100th birthday.
At its heart, the Chamber’s initiative is about growth – economic growth, growth of the population and personal growth opportunities for the province’s citizens. Critical to Saskatchewan catching up to other provinces is development of a much larger private sector that creates wealth and high-income earners.
As outlined last week, Saskatchewan’s private sector is dangerously small. Only one-in-seven Saskatchewan people actually pay more in taxes than they get back from the public treasury in one form or another. Whether it’s employees of governments at all levels – they receive 100 per cent of their income from government and pay their share in taxes but, on a net basis, receive more from the treasury than they pay in – to those on public pension programs.
The problem is exaggerated when high-income earners – the most mobile people in our society and, under our progressive tax system, who pay the largest share of income taxes – leave for another jurisdiction. Left behind is a smaller group of taxpayers to shoulder the burden. It’s a cascading effect – our system levies the highest tax assessment on those who earn the most and when they leave, the burden they carried is spread over a narrower band of taxpayers. The highest tax category in Saskatchewan begins at $100,000 in taxable income so the easiest way to fatten the treasury is to attract a lot of high-income earners.
And the way to attract high-income earners – the ones who pay the bulk of the taxes – is to lower tax rates. That’s one of the reasons the provincial government has spent the last three years implementing a personal tax reduction plan – to stem the tax version of the brain drain.
And here’s why. Saskatchewan had 1,430 people in 1999 who earned a taxable income of $250,000. That’s just over one-tenth of one per cent of the population. Alberta, on the other hand, had 10,790 or six times as many, even though their population is only three times Saskatchewan’s. So, they have a much larger percentage of high-income earners. But here’s the kicker.
That one-tenth of one percent of the Saskatchewan population in this income category paid eight percent of all the income tax in Saskatchewan. In Alberta, the $250,000 plus category amounts to three-tenths of one per cent of the total population or twice as many as Saskatchewan on a per capita basis. Yet, they pay 15 per cent of all the income taxes.
By comparison, in the U.S. slightly less than one per cent of the population earns $250,000 (Canadian dollar equivalent) but they pay half nearly the income tax – that’s right one per cent of the population pays almost half the income tax.
Simply put, the rich do pay tax – they pay the most tax. And when you chase rich people away, you weaken not only the economy but the public treasury.
Saskatoon financial planner Fred Smith is a student of tax system dynamics who has written extensively on the subject and says Saskatchewan’s tax base lags far behind the rest of the country.
“If you look at the Canadian statistics, it’s one in five who is a (net tax) contributor. So one in seven in Saskatchewan is not enough. The only reason we have the social programs that we do is because we’re a recipient of equalization.”
But, he asks, what if we got that to one in six?
“That’s only a change of 25,000 people in the whole province - that’s 2.5 per cent. So all we’ve got to do is move 2.5 per cent of the people from the current recipient level to the contributor level. That would be an incredible change in this province,” Smith offers.
Over the years Saskatchewan has seen dozens of high profile business and commercial leaders leave the province, usually destined for Alberta. Ostensibly, they’ve left because tax rates were lower elsewhere – but that may not be the entire story.
We’re also pretty good hammering successful people, or as some put it, we have been captured by the scarcity mindset. At its heart, the scarcity mindset is about jealousy. If someone is doing well, scarcity thinkers believe, that individual getting a bigger piece of the pie which, in turn, must mean I’m getting a smaller one. In short, scarcity thinkers believe a successful neighbor is getting more than their fair share. Success, they believe, is bad because someone else is getting too much.
Those who have done well – the ones on the receiving end of the jealousy – often get fed up and leave. They can be successful elsewhere and don’t have to put up with the negative connotations of being successful.
The result is – we might feel better for putting one of those successful individuals in their place – but then we get to pick up their share of the tax load.
“They’re vilified,” Smith says of the too few successful people in our province. “If you take that tack, you’ve just destroyed all the social programs because it’s only the high income earners who pay for social programs. It’s only five per cent of the population in the private sector who make more than $50,000 that pay for social programs. So people making more than a quarter of a million dollars pay a third of social programs and they’re one-tenth of one per cent of the population. If we were able to double that, we’d have 50 per cent more money for social programs. But unfortunately there are too many envious people who would rather oppress successful people than have better social programs.”
So how is that we have cornered the market on scarcity thinking, on making Saskatchewan a place that vilifies success and financial achievement?
“It’s got great resonance in the public mind. People love to hear that they’re not at fault. So you’ve got to pick a scapegoat. Rich people are great villains because they can take care of themselves and people are jealous. Somebody else is the problem, not me,” Smith adds.
He goes on to say that a province like Saskatchewan, where social programs and public intervention in the economy are well established, it’s doubly important to build a larger private sector.
“What I say to my left-wing friends is: I really feel sorry for you. Here you are in a system where the only way socialism works is because there are enough capitalists around to fund it. So you’ve got to be nice to your worst enemy. And that’s a terrible situation to be in when you’re dependent on your worst enemy. But until you can create jobs and fund social programs, that’s the plight you’re in. We (private sector) create the jobs, we fund the social programs and until you can do it, you’ve got to put up with us.”
Unfortunately, based on the tax data, fewer high taxpayers have chosen to call Saskatchewan home. Whether we like it not, places like Alberta or the United States have the ability to squeeze out more tax money because they have more high-income earners.
In this year’s Alberta budget, for example, the government reported the bottom fifty per cent of taxpayers contributed one percent of the government’s tax revenue. On the other hand, the top 15 per cent of income earners paid 66 per cent of the taxes.
Government revenues flow from profits and incomes. Those jurisdictions with more of each will have fatter public treasuries – it’s quite simple, adds Smith.
“There’s loss of trust, that’s the problem. The people who can create the jobs don’t trust the government and with good reason. They create these jobs and the government comes along and changes the rules. So there’s a definite lack of trust in the government and it’s going to take a long time to get that back.
It will be interesting to see what happens in B.C. because it’s so difficult to change from a culture of entitlement back to a culture of work. It took Ireland 20 years to do it.”
One idea that has been floating around – a mechanism to repatriate some of those high-income earners who moved away – is to cap provincial personal income tax levies at a million dollars. Once you’ve paid a million dollars in provincial income tax, you’re done. To reach that threshold, you’d have to earn a taxable income of roughly $10 million over your lifetime. For those who have left the province, it would cost us nothing because they’re not paying taxes here anyway. But, if they moved home to Saskatchewan – where they’d be free of provincial income tax – we’d get the benefit of their investment, money management and they’d employ people here (who WOULD pay taxes) instead of elsewhere.
Even though the province would be better off, imagine the uproar if the wealthiest among us were tax exempt.
Our thinking is scarcity-based.
Chart:
Jurisdiction People earning more Percentage of Percentage of
than $250,000 annually the population total taxes paid
Saskatchewan 1,430 .14 % 7 %
Alberta 10,840 .3 % 17.8 %
U.S. 2,570,000 .92 % 41.4 %
To run September 13
Head: A million is enough
Subhead: Saskatchewan trailing in tax capacity
Urban legends garner a life of their own, generally with little basis in fact. A good case in point is the old saw that the rich don’t pay tax.
Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth – high income earners pay disproportionately high levels of tax, fueling public treasuries starved for revenue to expend on infrastructure and social programming. Consequently, those jurisdictions with large numbers of high-income earners are in a far better position to support public programs.
Saskatchewan is not among them.
This finding has emerged as a key element of the Action Saskatchewan blueprint, an economic and social strategy for the province prepared by the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber embarked on the initiative to foster debate and discussion on the future of the province as we approach our 100th birthday.
At its heart, the Chamber’s initiative is about growth – economic growth, growth of the population and personal growth opportunities for the province’s citizens. Critical to Saskatchewan catching up to other provinces is development of a much larger private sector that creates wealth and high-income earners.
As outlined last week, Saskatchewan’s private sector is dangerously small. Only one-in-seven Saskatchewan people actually pay more in taxes than they get back from the public treasury in one form or another. Whether it’s employees of governments at all levels – they receive 100 per cent of their income from government and pay their share in taxes but, on a net basis, receive more from the treasury than they pay in – to those on public pension programs.
The problem is exaggerated when high-income earners – the most mobile people in our society and, under our progressive tax system, who pay the largest share of income taxes – leave for another jurisdiction. Left behind is a smaller group of taxpayers to shoulder the burden. It’s a cascading effect – our system levies the highest tax assessment on those who earn the most and when they leave, the burden they carried is spread over a narrower band of taxpayers. The highest tax category in Saskatchewan begins at $100,000 in taxable income so the easiest way to fatten the treasury is to attract a lot of high-income earners.
And the way to attract high-income earners – the ones who pay the bulk of the taxes – is to lower tax rates. That’s one of the reasons the provincial government has spent the last three years implementing a personal tax reduction plan – to stem the tax version of the brain drain.
And here’s why. Saskatchewan had 1,430 people in 1999 who earned a taxable income of $250,000. That’s just over one-tenth of one per cent of the population. Alberta, on the other hand, had 10,790 or six times as many, even though their population is only three times Saskatchewan’s. So, they have a much larger percentage of high-income earners. But here’s the kicker.
That one-tenth of one percent of the Saskatchewan population in this income category paid eight percent of all the income tax in Saskatchewan. In Alberta, the $250,000 plus category amounts to three-tenths of one per cent of the total population or twice as many as Saskatchewan on a per capita basis. Yet, they pay 15 per cent of all the income taxes.
By comparison, in the U.S. slightly less than one per cent of the population earns $250,000 (Canadian dollar equivalent) but they pay half nearly the income tax – that’s right one per cent of the population pays almost half the income tax.
Simply put, the rich do pay tax – they pay the most tax. And when you chase rich people away, you weaken not only the economy but the public treasury.
Saskatoon financial planner Fred Smith is a student of tax system dynamics who has written extensively on the subject and says Saskatchewan’s tax base lags far behind the rest of the country.
“If you look at the Canadian statistics, it’s one in five who is a (net tax) contributor. So one in seven in Saskatchewan is not enough. The only reason we have the social programs that we do is because we’re a recipient of equalization.”
But, he asks, what if we got that to one in six?
“That’s only a change of 25,000 people in the whole province - that’s 2.5 per cent. So all we’ve got to do is move 2.5 per cent of the people from the current recipient level to the contributor level. That would be an incredible change in this province,” Smith offers.
Over the years Saskatchewan has seen dozens of high profile business and commercial leaders leave the province, usually destined for Alberta. Ostensibly, they’ve left because tax rates were lower elsewhere – but that may not be the entire story.
We’re also pretty good hammering successful people, or as some put it, we have been captured by the scarcity mindset. At its heart, the scarcity mindset is about jealousy. If someone is doing well, scarcity thinkers believe, that individual getting a bigger piece of the pie which, in turn, must mean I’m getting a smaller one. In short, scarcity thinkers believe a successful neighbor is getting more than their fair share. Success, they believe, is bad because someone else is getting too much.
Those who have done well – the ones on the receiving end of the jealousy – often get fed up and leave. They can be successful elsewhere and don’t have to put up with the negative connotations of being successful.
The result is – we might feel better for putting one of those successful individuals in their place – but then we get to pick up their share of the tax load.
“They’re vilified,” Smith says of the too few successful people in our province. “If you take that tack, you’ve just destroyed all the social programs because it’s only the high income earners who pay for social programs. It’s only five per cent of the population in the private sector who make more than $50,000 that pay for social programs. So people making more than a quarter of a million dollars pay a third of social programs and they’re one-tenth of one per cent of the population. If we were able to double that, we’d have 50 per cent more money for social programs. But unfortunately there are too many envious people who would rather oppress successful people than have better social programs.”
So how is that we have cornered the market on scarcity thinking, on making Saskatchewan a place that vilifies success and financial achievement?
“It’s got great resonance in the public mind. People love to hear that they’re not at fault. So you’ve got to pick a scapegoat. Rich people are great villains because they can take care of themselves and people are jealous. Somebody else is the problem, not me,” Smith adds.
He goes on to say that a province like Saskatchewan, where social programs and public intervention in the economy are well established, it’s doubly important to build a larger private sector.
“What I say to my left-wing friends is: I really feel sorry for you. Here you are in a system where the only way socialism works is because there are enough capitalists around to fund it. So you’ve got to be nice to your worst enemy. And that’s a terrible situation to be in when you’re dependent on your worst enemy. But until you can create jobs and fund social programs, that’s the plight you’re in. We (private sector) create the jobs, we fund the social programs and until you can do it, you’ve got to put up with us.”
Unfortunately, based on the tax data, fewer high taxpayers have chosen to call Saskatchewan home. Whether we like it not, places like Alberta or the United States have the ability to squeeze out more tax money because they have more high-income earners.
In this year’s Alberta budget, for example, the government reported the bottom fifty per cent of taxpayers contributed one percent of the government’s tax revenue. On the other hand, the top 15 per cent of income earners paid 66 per cent of the taxes.
Government revenues flow from profits and incomes. Those jurisdictions with more of each will have fatter public treasuries – it’s quite simple, adds Smith.
“There’s loss of trust, that’s the problem. The people who can create the jobs don’t trust the government and with good reason. They create these jobs and the government comes along and changes the rules. So there’s a definite lack of trust in the government and it’s going to take a long time to get that back.
It will be interesting to see what happens in B.C. because it’s so difficult to change from a culture of entitlement back to a culture of work. It took Ireland 20 years to do it.”
One idea that has been floating around – a mechanism to repatriate some of those high-income earners who moved away – is to cap provincial personal income tax levies at a million dollars. Once you’ve paid a million dollars in provincial income tax, you’re done. To reach that threshold, you’d have to earn a taxable income of roughly $10 million over your lifetime. For those who have left the province, it would cost us nothing because they’re not paying taxes here anyway. But, if they moved home to Saskatchewan – where they’d be free of provincial income tax – we’d get the benefit of their investment, money management and they’d employ people here (who WOULD pay taxes) instead of elsewhere.
Even though the province would be better off, imagine the uproar if the wealthiest among us were tax exempt.
Our thinking is scarcity-based.
Chart:
Jurisdiction People earning more Percentage of Percentage of
than $250,000 annually the population total taxes paid
Saskatchewan 1,430 .14 % 7 %
Alberta 10,840 .3 % 17.8 %
U.S. 2,570,000 .92 % 41.4 %
New Legislation
For Immediate Release
Regina
SASK CABINET PASSES "CITIZENS WITH NO ABILITIES ACT"
On Friday, Cabinet approved the Citizens With No Abilities Act, sweeping new legislation that provides benefits and protection for more than half a million talentless Saskatchewan residents.
The act, signed into law by Premier Roy Romanow shortly after its passage, is being hailed as a major victory for the thousands of Saskatchewan citizens who lack any real skills or uses. It will be administered and enforced by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
"Roughly 50 percent of Saskatchewan residents-- through no fault of their own do not possess the talent necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said Romanow, a longtime SNA supporter.
"Their lives are futile hamster-wheel existences of unrewarding, dead-end busywork: Xeroxing documents written by others, fulfilling mail-in rebates for Black & Decker toaster ovens, and processing bureaucratic forms that nobody will ever see. Sadly, for these thousands of non-abled Saskatchewonians, the dream of working hard and moving up through the ranks is simply not a reality."
Under the Citizens With No Abilities Act, more than 250,000 important-sounding "middle man" positions will be created in the white-collar sector for non-abled persons, providing them with an illusory sense of purpose and ability. Mandatory, non-performance-based raises and promotions will also be offered to create a sense of upward mobility for even the most unremarkable, utterly replaceable employees.
The legislation also provides corporations with incentives to hire non-abled workers who "self identify" on employment applications, including tax breaks for those who hire one non-germane worker for every two talented hirees (modeled largely after the great past successes of the Northern Hiring Practises in resource lease agreements).
Finally, the Citizens With No Abilities Act also contains tough new measures to prevent discrimination against the non-abled by banning prospective employers from asking such discrimatory job-interview questions as, "What can you bring to this organization?" and/or "Do you have any special skills that would make you an asset to this company?"
"As a non-abled person, I frequently find myself unable to keep up with co-workers who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as an unessential filing clerk at a Regina wholesaler last month because of her lack of notable skills. "This new law should really help people like me."
With the passage of the Citizens With No Abilities Act, Gertz and thousands of other untalented, inessential citizens can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Romanow: "It is our duty, both as lawmakers and as human beings, to provide each and every citizen, regardless of his or her lack of value to society, some sort of space to take up in this great province."
Romanow noted "The Federal government is keeping a close eye on the Saskatchewan application of this modern and progressive legislation."
(Note: Saskatchewan Party argues that this is redundant legislation, in that The Civil Service Reform Act covered most of these issues already.)
Regina
SASK CABINET PASSES "CITIZENS WITH NO ABILITIES ACT"
On Friday, Cabinet approved the Citizens With No Abilities Act, sweeping new legislation that provides benefits and protection for more than half a million talentless Saskatchewan residents.
The act, signed into law by Premier Roy Romanow shortly after its passage, is being hailed as a major victory for the thousands of Saskatchewan citizens who lack any real skills or uses. It will be administered and enforced by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
"Roughly 50 percent of Saskatchewan residents-- through no fault of their own do not possess the talent necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said Romanow, a longtime SNA supporter.
"Their lives are futile hamster-wheel existences of unrewarding, dead-end busywork: Xeroxing documents written by others, fulfilling mail-in rebates for Black & Decker toaster ovens, and processing bureaucratic forms that nobody will ever see. Sadly, for these thousands of non-abled Saskatchewonians, the dream of working hard and moving up through the ranks is simply not a reality."
Under the Citizens With No Abilities Act, more than 250,000 important-sounding "middle man" positions will be created in the white-collar sector for non-abled persons, providing them with an illusory sense of purpose and ability. Mandatory, non-performance-based raises and promotions will also be offered to create a sense of upward mobility for even the most unremarkable, utterly replaceable employees.
The legislation also provides corporations with incentives to hire non-abled workers who "self identify" on employment applications, including tax breaks for those who hire one non-germane worker for every two talented hirees (modeled largely after the great past successes of the Northern Hiring Practises in resource lease agreements).
Finally, the Citizens With No Abilities Act also contains tough new measures to prevent discrimination against the non-abled by banning prospective employers from asking such discrimatory job-interview questions as, "What can you bring to this organization?" and/or "Do you have any special skills that would make you an asset to this company?"
"As a non-abled person, I frequently find myself unable to keep up with co-workers who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as an unessential filing clerk at a Regina wholesaler last month because of her lack of notable skills. "This new law should really help people like me."
With the passage of the Citizens With No Abilities Act, Gertz and thousands of other untalented, inessential citizens can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Romanow: "It is our duty, both as lawmakers and as human beings, to provide each and every citizen, regardless of his or her lack of value to society, some sort of space to take up in this great province."
Romanow noted "The Federal government is keeping a close eye on the Saskatchewan application of this modern and progressive legislation."
(Note: Saskatchewan Party argues that this is redundant legislation, in that The Civil Service Reform Act covered most of these issues already.)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)