-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.14/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.14/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 14 </A> ----- The Laissez Faire City Times April 5, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 14 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ----- Taxes on Mars by Peter Topolewski Ontario is Canada� richest province. Average income of Ontarians in 1998 was $27,309 (all currency amounts are quoted in Canadian dollars). Converted to American dollars, that comes in just below Mississippi, the poorest state in all the United States. The reason for the disparity is obvious to those who care to look: Canada is the land of regurgitated wealth. All except the extremely poor (and their numbers are growing) toss about half of their income into the belly of the governing system to have small bits of it spit back at the entire populace in a rather even smear of inadequate and inefficient services. In such an arrangement one is, for taxable reasons, considered wealthy if one earns 60,000 or more dollars a year. In Canada not only is it difficult to become wealthy (even by these paltry standards), there is no incentive to do so. Financial success is punished like no other. In the vicious relationship between government supply and public demand � and which came first remains a mystery � lies the reason Canada is successfully making a move for the most oppressive tax system in the world. The public�s child-like dependence on the government, and the government infrastructure designed to satisfy that dependence, has helped create and justify Canada�s tax regime. Among the results: �Using a $60,000 threshold to classify citizens as "wealthy" and therefore tax them the hardest. �Provincial sales taxes averaging about 7 percent, plus a 7 percent federal sales tax on nearly all good and services. Any wonder Canada is officially a country of bargain hunters? �A 7 percent luxury tax on any vehicle over $30,000. Soon enough those hoping to avoid this can look forward to cruising the streets in Yugo�s. �Alcohol, tobacco, and gasoline taxes average one half of the purchase prices. Twelve beers cost about $18 and a gallon of gasoline about $1.80. �Government lottery companies that collect millions of dollars a month from poor schmucks in exchange for the faintest hope of rescuing them from their ruts. For many, a winning lottery ticket is the only way they�ll get their heads above water; spending their extra cash on the tickets conveniently keeps them where they are. �According to recent studies, two thirds of Canadian homeowners are below the poverty level. �The ratio of consumer debt and mortgages to after-tax income is 101 percent. �The average Canadian has a net worth of $400. Such is the price of the glorious, Soviet way of life in Canada. An unusual phenomenon has contributed to the cost. It could go by many names � stupidity, ignorance, apathy, laziness, who knows what else? � but the fact remains that Canadians bitch about taxes out of one side of their mouth, and demand more government handouts from the other. In British Columbia (BC) polls indicated that the public�s pre-budget fervor called for more government spending. These cries reached their peak during a week when the media was in a frenzy over expectations of the government�s sixth consecutive budget deficit. The public attitude in light of this expectation demonstrated several levels of stupidity. First, according to the same polls most British Columbians didn�t even know the provincial budgets had been in deficit, as the new one was expected to be. Citizens have surrendered all sense and responsibility. Second, while feeling screwed by government taxes and staring public debt in the face, everybody suffers from the equivalent of a brain melt. They make no connection between these two suffocating problems and their own demand for more government services and government pampering (that is, jobs). At night you can almost here them murmuring in their sleep: the government grows money on trees. Third, people look to the government as the Almighty Provider � completely detached and lording above the people, and wholly capable of providing for our needs with something resembling efficiency. Well, the story of the government�s business genius is in the numbers. And while politicians and bureaucrats alike claim they work in the interest of preserving the socialist way of life, their results prove only one of two things, and neither has a thing to do with preserving the current state of affairs. Either, �The government hopes to strain the system so they can collect and control 100 percent of the people�s money, or �The government is completely incompetent. So who�s stupider, the government or the people who count on it to baby them? You be the judge. The Grim Case of British Columbia British Columbia�s 1998-1999 fiscal year ended on March 31st. Last year Finance Minister Joy McPhail projected a deficit of $95 million. It came in at $544 million. That�s some fine bookwork. The two budgets previous were, in the heat of an election, promised to be budget surpluses. Lies. On March 30th the finance minister announced her budget strategy for the only shrinking economy in Canada � a $890 million deficit. This is "a different way of budgeting" she says, thinly disguising an acknowledgement that her government�s previous budgets were nothing but shams. This one is too. If she ran the numbers, as the provincial auditor general has repeatedly asked this government to, the real deficit emerges: $1.5 billion. This is the government�s sixth consecutive budget deficit and the third for the current premier Glen Clark, the man who said, "balancing a budget is the easiest thing in the world to do." His finance minister has �fessed up that the government will not likely balance the budget during its mandate, due to run out in 2001. Under Clark, provincial debt will reach $35 billion by this time next year. In his stewardship it has ballooned by $6 billion, and total government spending (not just its bogus budget spending) is due to fatten the debt another $3 billion this year. To people who actually complain about this tragedy the government refrains, "no business operates without being allowed to run deficits." Apparently no one noticed that government is not a business. Or more importantly that government has no right being in business. For in BC the government has its paws in railroads, electricity, ferries, buildings, casinos, lotteries, liquor sales, and construction to name a few. The current government has again and again demonstrated the nature of its adeptness at managing these companies. Since 1991, when the New Democrat government took power, the BC Ferries Corporation has seen its debt increase from $15 million to, as of April 1, $1.35 billion. Even before the latest budget added $450 million to the company�s debt ceiling, it owed more than it owned. Congratulations to the government eggheads. That�s called insolvency. Not surprisingly, this type of mismanagement, easily found at most of the government�s companies, is continually omitted from the government�s budget. Their lies, however, won�t win them any accounting awards. Not to leave the peons completely in the dark, the government announced the thinking behind the $890 million deficit that it did own up to in this year�s budget. That deficit, Finance Minister MacPhail says, reflects the choice her government has made to try to improve its financial position by growing the economy. And thus she has laid bare the key to this insanity. Injecting borrowed money that taxpayers are on the line for creates a closed system. Somehow these people believe that these loans will slush around in the citizens� hands and miraculously multiply by a high enough power to pay off the existing debt, plus the newly borrowed money, plus the accumulating interest on it. Maybe with those loans they plan on planting some of those money-growing trees. With cynicism reaching all time highs, one has a difficult time being surprised by the stunts in this circus. But amazingly, some performers have tricks that can still leave some of us breathless. Union leaders and doctors � both among the fattest government trough-feeders � wanted the government to spend more money in its last budget. They can make no connection between their exorbitant government salaries, unconscionable taxes, and crippling debt, leaving me at least to believe their brains have been surgically removed. Finally, the kicker, and this from the government that has not balanced a single budget, but has assiduously doubled British Columbia�s debt. After presenting the public with the steaming heap she called a budget, and after admitting she won�t likely balance a budget during her government�s mandate, the finance minister called for a public debate over how to spend upcoming surpluses. A message to NASA and the US federal government: forget trying to be the first people to Mars. Most Canadians are already living there. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 14, April 5, 1999 ----- Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved Disclaimer The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its founding trust. 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