The role of government varies. I didn't know this chart was so readily available. Also I don't always believe what I read and I've always read Canadian taxes are about 40%, not 33%.

[ 25 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

The role of government varies. I didn't know this chart was so readily available. Also I don't always believe what I read and I've always read Canadian taxes are about 40%, not 33%.

[ 25 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Bruce, you do realize that's federal tax revenue from all sources as a percentage of GDP and not anything else, like personal or corporate income tax rates and the like? This overall rate for Canada hasn't changed a lot in several years apparently.

It looks to me that if the feds were to increase overall tax revs to just the OECD average or another 3 percent, they'd have another $35.34 billion for vital program spending. A good number of those OECD countries don't enjoy Canada's massive fossil fuels and massive total energy exports to raise tax revenue from. hint-hint? Not our stoogeocrats. It would never dawn on them in a million years. Not even if there were environmental concerns about global warming. It would never dawn on them in spite of the fact that Canada's known conventional reserves of crude oil and natural gas will run out in about a dozen years or so at the current frenzied pace of being siphoned off to the U.S., that other country without any plan to conserve or reduce consumption of every other country's natural resources they import for use in the world's largest and most wasteful energy-dependent economy in the world.

Not even if Paris based OECD recommended a sovereign oil wealth fund in 2008

[ 25 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
(sponsorship, gun registry, etc, etc). Its getting tougher to get elected on a platform of expanding social services these days.

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That's been the role for our two old line parties since the 80s-90's, to do a really lousy job of everything they touch so as to pave the way for neoliberal deregulation-privatization schemes which will cost taxpayers even more than if the feds financed infrastructure and vital social programs. As an example, municipal plebiscites for hospital privatizations have rejected the idea in cities from Germany to Canada.

Their neoliberal policies have not only not worked in dozens of countries where tried, they can't even slide in the backdoor without running roughshod over popular opinion. It's no wonder to me why neither of Canada's two old line parties won 24% of the eligible vote in 2006.

[ 25 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
Prove social services improve society, allow public opinion to turn around, and then expand them.

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It's already proven to work in Nordic and European countries more economically competitive than Canada. And it's not just me suggesting Ottawa and Calgary should smarten up with the fossil fuel exports - OECD economists are suggesting the same thing.

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
I think an approach the left should take is "better government then bigger government". Prove social services improve society, allow public opinion to turn around, and then expand them.

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OECD Fact Book 2008

If the OECD data can be trusted, and if the feds were to raise overall tax revs to just the EU-15 average in 2006, then Ottawa would have nearly $75.4 billion dollars more every year to fund vital program spending - dilapidated infrastructure - a modernizing green economy - R&D - fix our post-secondary education system etc.

Instead they give that money to profitable oil and gas companies and mostly foreign owned and controlled ones, banksters, and rich people in general. It's self imposed impotence for the sake of a broken ideology. Canada could be a great country if it wasn't for our two old line parties and their policy of powerlessness in Ottawa.

[ 26 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

At 40% in Canada taxes are significant but people with good jobs also have Group Insurance premiums, which is very similar to the nanny state charge. They essential live in a Scandanavian tax bracket.

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by Fidel:
[QB]So the OECD data is faulty, and Canada really is a socialist hellhole afterall!

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Canada may not be as socialist as Scandanavia but with taxes at 40% of GDP it certainly has government involvement. Grouches will say the rich control everything and just discount democracy.

40% is a lot of power and, after all, it is about money - even around here.

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Instead they don't take that money away from profitable oil and gas companies and mostly foreign owned and controlled ones, banksters, and rich people in general.

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Another way of saying the same thing.

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: abnormal ]

Or even, "We could have a Petroleum Fund like Socialist Norway's worth several times more than CPP investment fund and the crooked Alberta Heritage Fund combined, but we in the two old line parties are just stoogeocrats, mere hirelings of the oil and gas companies and big banks"

Equivalently, "We're more crooked than Russian oligarchs, and Putin whose oil stabilization fund, and created in just 2004, is worth $144 billion - more than CPP and Alberta's Heritage Fund combined"

Or more succinctly, "It's time to get the rich off welfare and create a real country!

[ 27 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by abnormal:

Another way of saying the same thing.

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