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Wow. I agree with everything you said here. (Except the value judgement). As BF and you have identified, people can't handle the truth. They want govt services and low taxes. What most middle class people don't realize is how much govt spending benefits them. They want to rave on about the welfare bums, when the middle class is the biggest beneficiary of govt spending. Even more so under Harper who targets his little tax exemptions specifically to toward them. And has been shown, the gravy train isn't nearly as big as people think. Sure there are stupid little programs that are just a waste of money, but they also don't cost the treasury that much.

So people have to decide - do we devolve toward the US, or evolve toward the Scandinavian system? Who seems to be enjoying a better life for the middle class? Or to recycle the quote from the Does a rising tide sink all boats thread: '

Holy shit - you mean you're not a rabid CPC'r at all costs after all?

People not being able to handle the truth is the greatest danger to democracy. Didn't Jesus say something about that? People will follow someone who makes outrageous promises - right over a cliff, or towards totalitarianism, whether that be left or right.

I'm sure we disagree on specifics. I want a tax base to fund social programs that promote social cohesion and economic mobility, you want less taxes and people to take responsibility for themselves. I bet a reasonable compromise of those two ideals could be found that works. One that doesn't involve pols treating the govt treasury like their own little slush fund to bribe the electors with (who paid into that slush fund in the first place) But the only way that will happen is if people hold govt more accountable for their tax monies. Look at the corruption scandal in Quebec that's just erupting. My ideal for a pol would be Tommy Douglas - don't know who would stand out on the right, since Bob Stanfield was probably too left for you.

The latest posts show how the Right (and all Parties are there to some extent now) has managed to reduce life to money. It is all about taxes and people and human needs are forgotten.

Forgotten is that Canada, which used to be famously a caring society, has now the second highest poverty rate in the industrialized world.

Forgotten is the World Class Healthcare system that has been gutted in the name of lower taxes and corporate giveaways.

Forgotten is the relative equality that is the heart of democracy as this country rapidly tries to overtake the USA in the inequality of incomes, wealth, opportunity.

Forgotten is the shift of the burden of taxation from the corporate and wealthy to the Middle Classes and the poor.

I could do a dozen more but the picture would not benefit from more.

Apathy is not the answer. Anger is. Bring back government for people not for money.

I agree with you. But balanced against that has to be some of the excesses of earlier years where we spent like drunken sailors on all sorts of social programs. I think wealth re-distribution is a good thing, creates a healthier society. But that re-distribution needs to be done by people who turn every penny over six times before they spend it, who understand how to get value for the dollar, and who aren't driven by their own egos to act like royalty on the government dime and use government money to bribe the people who gave them that money in the first place. And as you say, aren't selling out to the rich.

But for the government it really does reduce all down to money - that's how governments show they care, and what they care about. And those governments are elected by us - so it shows our own priorities as we try to hang onto our own little slice of heaven and fuck everybody else.

I think, andy, that even the "Left" in Canada has been seduced by the incessant propaganda that has been going on since the late 1970s. In the USA, at that time, six think tanks were set up by wealthy families to develop and spread neocon ideas and reelect Republicans. They succeeded beyond their hopes, getting Reagan and the dominance of neocon ideology ever since.

Canada has followed suit. We have the C.D. Howe Institute and the Fraser Institute for much the same purposes and the same ideology has dominated since 1980.

The Nobel Prize winning economist, Amartya Sen, in a study several years ago, showed that there is no growth difference between high taxed economies and low taxed.

What he did not go on to show was that the high taxed economies have lower poverty, better Healthcare and Social programmes.

Further, some of those high taxed" economies in Europe have, since then, achieved higher growth rates than Canada and the USA.

Most of us have bought into the "con" of the "Conservative" tax mantras. They are economic nonsense. The Harper government is the worst exponent of the ideology that has yet appeared in the West. Worse than any US administration.

Again, I fully agree with you. I'm often told on this forum to move to Sweden or Norway since I bring them up as exemplars of how to manage an economy.

But take Norway. They didn't go on an orgy of spending with all their oil wealth. They invested it offshore (so it wouldn't cause inflation) and didn't just bribe the electorate with it. And the electorate seems to be smart enough to appreciate it and keep them in power. I've argued for higher taxes plenty on this forum, especially for the rich. But, the government collecting those taxes still needs to be prudent with them. Think about what they're spending and the effects it will have, if any. It's also a good way to get buy in from people who are more anti-tax if you show you're spending taxes in an effective way.

We know we were spending like drunken sailors in past decades because we ran up huge deficits in good years and in bad and had higher taxes to boot. We should pay as we go unless we really hit a bad patch, and then we should pay off the debt when times are good again. (if ever). We shouldn't create artificial deficits by cutting taxes to the bone, but we also shouldn't just always defer costs to next year, next year.

If you click on the additional information link embedded, you will get a spreadsheet of effective tax rates in the USA for 1979-2005. There is an overall reduction.

That is not to consider the shift in who bears the burden.

I would suggest that the reduction is the reason for the deficits and the deteriorating public services. I have never bought into the spending except for military spending in the USA. It is part of the myth and the Right's justification far saying that we cannot afford social programmes.

I think that the same applies to Canada.

To a lesser degree yes, but we seem determined to walk down the same dead end as the US these days.

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