Archive for the ‘Governance Policy Context’ Category
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The Gridlock Where Debts Meet Politics
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
November 5, 2011
On the most basic level, affluent countries are facing sharply increasing claims on their resources even as those resources are growing less quickly than they once were… the debate is about much more than just partisan advantage or the next election. It is a philosophical debate… the “no-growth trap.” In the short term, this trap takes the form of resistance to emergency measures… Longer term, the trap is created by resistance to the higher taxes and reduced benefits necessary to return countries to financial stability.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Tory crime bill is too tough on the provinces
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Nov. 02, 2011
Ottawa’s crime agenda could cost the provinces billions of dollars over the next few years, and… Quebec and Ontario say they will refuse to pay. The tough-on-crime omnibus bill now before Parliament is hardly a sterling example of co-operative federalism. It is heavy-handed federal policy-making, which (along with some previous crime bills) will cost the provinces dearly… How should Quebec and Ontario pay for extra prison costs – by cutting education, health care, daycare? By raising taxes?
Tags: budget, corrections, ideology
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The flow of political donations in Ontario
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
Oct 5, 2011
The province allows donors to give up to $9,300 to a party each year, well above the federal limit of $1,100 for individual donations… Of the more than $14-million that Ontario’s three main parties have collected in pre-campaign donations of at least $100 this year alone, nearly $9-million came from corporations and unions.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation
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The limits of good vs. evil
Friday, September 30th, 2011
Sep 30, 2011
Fighting the politics of evil with politics certainly beats fighting it with drones, targeted assassination, and ground troops, but Wolfe’s advice may be a council of perfection, correct in theory but impossible to apply in practice… Wolfe argues as if the only obstacle that prevents us from successfully confronting political evil is our own moral self-righteousness. He has done a thorough job chastening our pride, but our pride is not the only problem. Stopping people who will stop at nothing takes force. The problem remains if and when to use it.
Tags: crime prevention, globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
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In Ontario, everyone’s a taxman
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
Sep. 14, 2011
Dalton McGuinty has indeed presided over an era where the provincial own-source revenue to GDP ratio has reached its greatest height, but he has been able to do so by building on the work of his predecessors. Ontario’s politicians have all been part of a provincial political culture that has expanded the role of government and supported it with ever-greater tax revenues. They have all been “taxmen.”
Tags: budget, economy, tax
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Leave the HST alone
Saturday, September 10th, 2011
Sep 8, 2011
The “tax man” had the guts to reform the sales tax in 2009 by replacing the antiquated, distorting and unfair provincial retail sales tax with the far-better HST. As part of the 2009 tax reform package, he dropped corporate and some personal tax rates and eliminated the distortions arising from differential tax rates on manufacturing, resource and other profits. Other smart tax policies during his tenure include eliminating business capital taxes and harmonizing Ontario’s corporate income tax with the federal system, a major move towards simplification, resulting in low administrative and compliance costs.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, tax
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U.S. tax debate approaches battle over billionaires
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
Aug 30, 2011
The congressional “supercommittee’ is beginning its efforts to reduce the deficit and one of the key points of dispute will be the Republicans’ insistence that a bigger tax on billionaires is bad. Republicans are against taxes on anyone at the moment, mainly due to fear of the tea party’s continued clout. But while it’s easy to justify opposition to tax hikes on the lower and middle classes, it gets trickier when the people affected have lots of money to spare.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Prepare for post-election pain, no matter who wins Ontario vote
Sunday, August 21st, 2011
Aug 20 2011
… a complete rethink of government services is being carried out by a little-known fiscal commission… Its mandate, embedded in the last budget, is to seek out government waste and identify services for privatization… The chair of the Commission on Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, Don Drummond… points out that health takes up nearly half of all program spending in Ontario. He believes up to 25 per cent of it is wasteful… Yet even the most enlightened cuts require a political consensus and Drummond, the man behind the plan, believes the public is not yet prepared.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
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Is less really more when it comes to government?
Sunday, August 7th, 2011
Aug 05 2011
“When you look at Canada and the U.S., it isn’t that government is getting smaller, but it’s doing different things… Instead of redistributing income from the wealthy to the poorer groups, it does the reverse… The social contract is being rewritten: it’s a contract between government and corporate barons”… “Our blind spot is because we are drunk on individual freedom, which is the teenage stage of maturity… The next stage is when you learn to work with others for the common good. That is what people on the eastern side of the planet have learned, but we haven’t.”
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, rights, standard of living, tax
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I’m starting to think that the Left might actually be right
Monday, July 25th, 2011
22 Jul 2011
…one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up. The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, participation, standard of living
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