From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Re: Death of America
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc,alt.conspiracy
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: The Bates Motel
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 23:44:14 GMT

cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok) writes:
>
>anyone who thinks there is no way they can be taxed much worse than they
>are now, you are wrong. ontario has 15% sales tax. the marginal income
>tax rate is over 50%. and people just don't give a damn (oh they do,
>but they don't do anything about it). canada has a debt problem even
>worse than the US's, and they don't have to spend a huge chunk of
>their budget on the military. the price of gasoline is over 50% 
>built-in tax. people don't even pay attention to it any more.

Just to add a few more things ... Ontario's provincial tax rate is
7.5%, but there is an additional 7.5% federal VAT called the Goods
And Services Tax (GST).  It replaces a previously hidden wholesale
tax.  People now see it, and complain.  This taking advantage of
people's inability to count has been spurred on by the Canadian
Left, and it seems to be working in many quarters ...

Without any means of verification, most Americans would have to take
at face values claims that the GST (our federal Value Added Tax) was
put in to pay for wild health care spending rather than a rewrite of
the existing tax structure.  (The math doesn't work out anyways, as we
spend 3/4ths of the GDP fraction that the Americans do.)  I could tell
them it was due to a bad maple syrup harvest, for all they'd know. )-;

Another thing that I have to warn Charles about is that Canadian
income tax rates include provincial taxes (only Quebec collects its
own provincial tax like U.S. states do) and I've always seen those
rates compared against the American federal rate ... add on state
taxes in many states and it starts to hit or exceed Canadian rates.

>you think america's manufacturing base has eroded? in the past few
>years, canada has seen its productivity go down and its labor costs
>go up, compared even to the US. *not* compared to japan or the world
>average. i heard an estimate that ontario has lost over 20% of its
>manufacturing jobs just in the past two years. that's ok, they're
>going to a "service economy". right.  sound familiar?

On the other hand, a wealthy nation ought to be able to compete in
terms of infrastructure ... educated populace, facilities, lack of
public liabilities (with universal health insurance, not even our
welfare bums get so sick as to ring up multi-million dollar tabs at
our hospitals -- they get fixed up early, so they can either work or
get cut off).  Our cultural and historical low productivity and risk
aversion (if you've had any contact with conventional Canadian
business --- I'm not talking about Northern Telecom or any of our
stars here --- you know what I mean) is being addresses as we're being
forced into the realities of a global economy ... or check out of it.
The educated populace and investment in facilities is being noticed as
the country restructures (after all you've written, please don't turn
around and say you're against free trade!), with upgrades at Amdahl
and IBM Research in Toronto, DuPont in Kingston, etc. -- real jobs in
white collar, intellectual capital areas that have long suffered up
north.  If you go along with the general domestic complaining, you
are arguing for more chicken-cutting jobs for our university grads.

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare
> gld@cunixd.cc.columbia.EDU 		Support NAFTA
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,alt.politics.libertarian