Maybe it's just my jealousy and nastiness, but I'm finding it hard to get worked up.

First, they're assuming that the police are more effective in poorer neighbourhoods at stopping burglaries and car theft than they are in Rosedale. Secondly, Rosedale being the mecca of conspicuous consumption of Ontario and probably Canada, well...

It's not that I'm saying that it's okay for people to rob them. But it's hard for me to feel like their problems are of paramount importance, you know?

Car theft and home invasion and burglary happen all over the place, not just Rosedale. It just seems that when it happens in Rosedale, it gets national attention, and the residents are up in arms demanding that the police stop it Right Now. Maybe that's an attitude that comes with getting everything you want - it comes as a shock when you aren't immune to victimization, just like everyone else isn't, and that not only are you not entitled to more police protection than everyone else, but that the police just really don't have the resources to provide extra protection just for little old you.

[ May 05, 2002: Message edited by: Michelle ]

About 4 a.m. the cats started fussing and woke me up. I went to make some coffee, and for ten minutes or so was too dopey to pay attention to the cats' behaviour -- but then I noticed Phillie dashing for the basement stairs, ears back, eyes wild, and I listened. There were very odd sounds coming from close to our front door, so I looked out -- to see a policewoman and her partner heading up the walk between our houses, playing their flashlights about, one talking on a (loudly crackling phone). I went to the back of the house, turning on all lights as I went, and watched them search both back gardens.

This has happened a couple of times before, so I didn't bother to ask what was going on -- I know what they tell us (very little: stay in the house, lock all the doors, turn on all lights). For an hour I watched them walk up and down the street ... but repeatedly they returned to our place, again and again and again ... *grimacing smiley*

But then the kitties were hungry, and rosy-fingered dawn began to appear, and I got distracted. Maybe I'll phone to ask what was going on, although I can guess, and they never really tell us anyway.

But seriously:

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- Prostitutes using the laneway between Crescent Road and South Drive to service customers. z On Hawthorne Avenue, three cars broken into and two others stolen on the same night in October.

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Perhaps we've found a new ally in the fight for social justice in Ontario? Join our protest against social cutbacks or there'll be more homeless men washing in your pool and more women making ends meet by turning tricks in your back alley?

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It's not a bad idea -- appealing to enlightened self-interest. Unfortunately, this idea seems to have gone the way of progressive taxation in recent decades -- most privileged people prefer just ordinary self-interest, and when faced with homeless men washing and women (girls, boys) turning tricks, just holler for more police, or at best set up "shame the johns" campaigns.

Around ten years ago, the NDP government in Victoria tried to institute some new taxes which were very unpopular, including one on property, and another on cars. (Neither, in the end, was implemented). There was an outcry, seized upon and exploited by one Gordon Gibson, a right-wing opportunist who was trying at that time to become leader of the Liberal Party. (I think he's with some think-tank now). He organized a series of protests in front of the legislature. To give you a flavour of the constituency of these protests, some of the local car dealerships gave their employees a few hours off to swell the ranks.

A group of us decided to try to lampoon these protestors, and hijack the press coverage into the bargain. (In the latter of which, incidentally, we had some success -- the four-column colour photo on the front of the Times-Colonist the next day was of us, not of Gibson et al). We dressed up as "rich" people (in what good clothes we had), stuffed paper into pillowcases on the outside of which we printed big dollar signs in black marker, and went down there with various tongue-in-cheek slogans on little placards around our necks.

To the point of this story: our best placard, which I still have to this way, read "Less Welfare, More Police." More than ever, it seems a fair summation of neo-con priorities.

[ May 12, 2002: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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Around ten years ago, the NDP government in Victoria tried to institute some new taxes which were very unpopular, including one on property, and another on cars.

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RD

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: R. J. Dunnill ]

It turns out that you can fill in ONE FORM and have Victoria pick up your property taxes for you until you say it's all better.

Boy, did that ever burn my ass. Here's all these senior citizens whining about how the homeowner grant cutback on their $500,000 homes they picked up for a song in the 1950s and 1960s will force them out, and THERE WAS ALREADY A PROVISION FOR RELIEF OF PROPERTY TAXES.

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: DrConway ]

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Here's all these senior citizens whining about how the homeowner grant cutback on their $500,000 homes they picked up for a song in the 1950s and 1960s will force them out

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Sweet friggin' deal if you ask me, since the fall in the value of money means it now takes more work and more time to own your own house or condo than it did back then.

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Sweet friggin' deal if you ask me, since the fall in the value of money means it now takes more work and more time to own your own house or condo than it did back then.

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And, it is not the fault of these seniors that various levels of government are fixated on population growth, even though the main centres of economic activity in this country are woefully overcrowded.

I don't know why you would get the idea that I trash Keynesian policies; I will cheerfully own up to trashing wasteful government spending, though (like the Stalinist-type subsidies to hopelessly inefficient enterprises like the Sydney Steel Co.).

You know WHY the tax system started getting flattened? Because of those same rich people who found a great way to get their taxes lowered without looking like a bunch of selfish ingrates. (After all, just displaying your naked greed for an extra $400k on $500k instead of only an extra $100k on $500k is kind of hard to swallow for a guy who knows that if rich guy number one gets his taxes cut, average joe number two has to get a tax increase somewhere else to pay for it.)

I don't know what was behind the outrage regarding the GST. Prior to the introduction of that hated tax, there was a hidden tax on most goods, which the tax-happy Mulroney government had raised the rate and broadened the base of. Once the GST came into effect, the after-tax price of these goods dropped, although most people seemed to be oblivious to that.

Regarding taxes in Canada versus the U.S., it is interesting to note that in the latter country, the rich pay a highly disproportional percentage of income taxes (I think the top 1% pays around 40% of the total collected). In Canada, the tax burden seems to be aimed squarely at the lower-to-middle bracket, even when NDP governments are involved.

Reagan's reforms stemmed from a widespread desire to do something about the stagflation that was gripping the U.S. economy (a malady that afflicted Canada as well). As far as I remember, the tax cuts were intended to stimulate economic activity, not choke inflation (a tough dose of monetarist money supply crackdown, begun during the Carter Administration, would accomplish that). The tax cuts were not intended to allow the rich to escape paying a disproportionate share of U.S. income tax revenue, and in the end, they did not.

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I don't know what was behind the outrage regarding the GST. Prior to the introduction of that hated tax, there was a hidden tax on most goods, which the tax-happy Mulroney government had raised the rate and broadened the base of. Once the GST came into effect, the after-tax price of these goods dropped, although most people seemed to be oblivious to that.

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Mainly because the after-tax prices of things DIDN'T go down. Books, for example, just shot through the roof, and to add insult to injury, there's that God Damned GST on top of them.

And some food items, which by and large had escaped the MST, had GST slapped on them. The prices of these things certainly didn't go down either. I can definitely tell you that in the early 1990s you paid about a buck for a cup of tea at a restaurant. Now it costs you a buck-fifty or even more.

Wanna try that after-tax price reduction on somebody else who's a little less bright?

Cars. Did their after-tax prices fall? Perhaps initially. But since then their prices have gone up.

And to add more insult to injury, the GST's addition changed the way the inflation rate was calculated and introduced a one-time blip in the calculations, which may have inadvertently increased the chances that Canada would fall into recession, since the Bank of Canada at that time was committed to zero inflation.

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Re: Reagan and supply-sider stuff

The 1986 Tax Reform Act would seem to show you differently, since the US's budget deficits were, at the time, becoming so disproportionately large by any standard used that David Stockman was forced to work with the then-Democratic-controlled House to find ways to stave off almost-certain disaster.

I should also note that Reagan's budgets allowed for acceleration of Social Security tax increases, thus shifting some of the burden of taxation off the rich and onto the workers (since the Social Security tax is levied up to a cutoff that is about double the median income).

I've heard it all because we covered it using the AD-AS model in economics. Here's the problem:

In the AD-AS model, the counteracting effects of the personal income tax cuts vs the corporate tax cuts were analyzed. Corporate tax cuts would increase AS, but PERSONAL tax cuts would increase AD. The net result may or may not produce a reduction in the price level.

In any case, the simple fact is that interest rates were cranked to 22% by late 1981, and the North American economies went sailing down the tubes in 1982 and didn't recover until 1984, just when the back-end-loaded tax cuts under Reagan's tenure fully took effect, as well as the monetary easing under Volcker. This resynchronization of fiscal and monetary policy in an expansionary direction caused the "seven fat years".

It is to be footnoted that in Reagan's time, several economists worried that fiscal and monetary policies were so badly out of kilter that the US economy could (as they saw it) be headed for certain disaster. Recall, once again, that as Volcker was cranking the screws on the US economy, Reagan was getting serious tax cuts pushed through on the personal-taxes side.

A more detailed analysis of the composition of the Reagan tax cuts in an AD-AS model would reveal that the personal INCOME tax cuts would increase AD, but the SOCIAL SECURITY tax increases would dampen AD, especially since the SS tax is concentrated at the bottom end, where the tendency to consume any additional dollars or not consume any retracted dollars is particularly sensitive to income.

It is thus not surprising that the net effect of Reagan's tax cuts would be anti-inflationary, since they acted to crimp AD by redistributing income from spenders to savers.

[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: DrConway ]

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Wanna try that after-tax price reduction on somebody else who's a little less bright?

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A well-meaning but economics-challenged anti-GST bookstore told me around 1990 that the GST would cause the price of books to soar, and as an example she held up the spread between Australian and New Zealand book prices, saying that at one point before N.Z. introduced a GST the prices had been roughly equal, but that there was now a huge spread between them. It never occurred to her that the N.Z. dollar had fallen sharply relative to the Australian one (last I heard it was $US .38 to $US .52).

My point regarding Mr. Reagan's policies is that in the long run, the move away from a high-tax, heavily-regulated economy was a roaring success, although the full effects weren't seen until the 1990s.

RD

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: R. J. Dunnill ]

In any case, you won't get me to say the GST or the MST are a good thing - although the MST, ironically enough, *is* somewhat better because it was built-in to the price of the final good, so that what you paid was what you paid and you didn't get constantly friggin' blindsided by the sudden jump at the till. It STILL pisses me off even today when the till takes 2 seconds to ring in the final price so by the time I've whipped out my wallet an additional 60 cents or a buck has magically gone onto the price.

The MST is also "better" because its tax base was narrower, so it was less of a regressive tax than the GST is. I still find this incredible rigmarole of giving out GST refunds and then collecting it back again to be incredibly stupidly insane and, frankly, dumb.

Re Reagan and how he walked on water.

Considering that under Bush Sr and Clinton there were tax increases on rich people, with the marginal rates going back up to 39.6% from 28% I find your gushing over Reagan to be a little bit specious.

I get that crap ALL the time from you Reagan-wannabes. "Reagan's policies REALLY took effect in the 1990s!" Give. me. a. break.

By this token, then, this 10 year gap between policy and effect, according to you, meant that the high marginal tax rates enacted on the rich in the 1950s caused the long economic expansion of the 1960s.

OH BUT WAIT!

The supply-siders cleverly sidestep this and say that the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts didn't take 10 years to take effect, but instead INSTANTLY caused the boom of the 1960s because the cuts, although Keynesian in motivation, were somehow secretly "supply-side" tax cuts!

*GASP!*

It gets even worse for YOU, buddy boy.

This 10 year gap that you propose means that the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts of the 1960s caused the stagflation of the 1970s!

*DOUBLE GASP!*

You know, nothing bugs the hell out of me so much as this playing fast-and-loose with the economic data as well as selective interpretation of historical events that are so common among the supply-siders.

Save this bilge for the dittoheads, OK?

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: DrConway ]

The GST is designed to target the middle class, not the poor, like virtually all Canadian tax policy from across the political spectrum. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the GST exempt the basic necessities of life?

If sales taxes are so regressive, why was one of the first acts of the supposedly progressive B.C. NDP to raise the provincial sales tax rate?

My point regarding Mr. Reagan was that the general direction he set, not necessarily every iota of individual policy, was very successful. BTW I should have pointed out that the U.S. economy performed well during most of the Eighties, once the battle with inflation (started under the Carter Administration) had been won.

Mr. Reagan's general direction was continued by both the Bush Sr. and Clinton Administrations.

BTW why does it enrage you so that an ordinary working person who has had a chance to live under both systems might prefer the U.S. one?

RD

[ May 16, 2002: Message edited by: R. J. Dunnill ]

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The cost of paper is only a small part of the final cost of a book. But that's not the issue here; my point was that the GST did not cause a long-term rise in the cost of books. The cost of books in Canada is similar to those of the U.S., once the low dollar is taken into consideration, and the U.S. has no national sales tax.

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The point I'm tryign to make is that the argument that pre-tax prices post-GST would be lowered is a specious and transitory one.

Inflation would erode any of the short-term gains to be made.

As it indeed has.

The GST may exempt most food items but it seems to be applied very haphazardly, with the GST being more correctly levied in large department stores that can code out for the "necessities" whereas the smaller corner stores simply slap it on everything, I've found.

The GST is also not exempted on basic services that even poor people must use, such as Hydro and the telephone.

It's not even exempt on postage stamps, for chrissake.

And finally, GST is levied on gasoline.

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Mr. Reagan's general direction was continued by both the Bush Sr. and Clinton Administrations.

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This is a laugh. Every supply-sider I have ever talked to virtually flies into a rage when I mention the Bush tax increase and froths about how Bush Sr somehow killed the magic elixir of the supply-sider nirvana.

As I remember it, the GST replaced an existing federal tax on gasoline, and the price did not rise at that time. Anyways, any effect the GST did have on gasoline prices over the old tax would be trivial in comparison to myriad other taxes placed on the controversial fuel (like the B.C. transit levy).

BTW most European countries have value-added taxes, and I thought this forum generally preferred the European system of taxation? Why the fierce opposition to the GST (especially when it replaced a 13.5% hidden tax)?

I think the B.C. sales tax rate was raised from 5% to 6% by the Bennett government in 1981, and then from 6% to 7% by the NDP about 1992. Van der Zalm's promise during the 1986 to lower the price of a dozen beer by about a dollar was never implemented (in fact he unapologetically raised the tax on draft beer shortly after coming to power).

Clinton: There was no loud pressure for him to repeal wholesale the changes brought in during the Reagan years. In fact, he and the mainstream Democrats are not all that different from their Republican opponents (the Democrats count much of the filthy rich amongst their supporters), which helped give Ralph Nader's candidacy momentum in the 2000 election. It's pretty frustrating to be an advocate for social justice in the U.S. these days.

On-topic: I don't know what to say, except that wealthy areas are much better at channelling their grievances effectively. Witness how successfully the affluent neighborhoods in Vancouver have fought proposed light rail transit lines.

And as well, Canada's overall inflation rate actually rose in 1991 because of the way indirect taxes get factored into the CPI, and since the GST's tax base was wider than the MST's, overall CPI rose by more than it would have.

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I think the B.C. sales tax rate was raised from 5% to 6% by the Bennett government in 1981, and then from 6% to 7% by the NDP about 1992. Van der Zalm's promise during the 1986 to lower the price of a dozen beer by about a dollar was never implemented (in fact he unapologetically raised the tax on draft beer shortly after coming to power).

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And as *I* recall, it was LOWERED from 7% to 6% for a while during the 1980s.

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BTW most European countries have value-added taxes, and I thought this forum generally preferred the European system of taxation? Why the fierce opposition to the GST (especially when it replaced a 13.5% hidden tax)?

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How bigotted, how undemocratic.
How unequal.

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You prefer higher marginal taxes for rich people?

How bigotted, how undemocratic.
How unequal.

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If you have it to share, do so. Or did you miss that day in kindergarten?

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Just because we prefer high marginal tax rates on rich people does not mean we also prefer ridiculous value-added regressive taxes.

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On-topic: How far away is Rosedale from the poorer sections of Toronto? If Rosedale is only a few blocks away from a high-crime slum area, that is likely contributing to their problem.

RD

[ June 09, 2002: Message edited by: R. J. Dunnill ]

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How far away is Rosedale from the poorer sections of Toronto? If Rosedale is only a few blocks away from a high-crime slum area, that is likely contributing to their problem.

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Unless Toronto has changed greatly since I lived there -- as I grant is possible -- it isn't very close to such areas. The panicky article Michelle linked to may be a classic example of "instancing," or an indicator of a new entrepreneurial spirit on the part of the less fortunate. Perhaps they've taken a cue or two from the neo-lib-con-whatever ideologues over in Queen's Park, an easy subway ride away.