Archive for the ‘Social Security Debates’ Category
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Harry Smith Is Coming for Stephen Harper
Monday, March 23rd, 2015
[Harper] “… has one consideration, and that is to let the rich get richer and the poor fend for themselves.” … the ”epidemic” of child poverty in Toronto, government service cutbacks, and tax loopholes used by corporations are some of the most concerning threats facing the country… Today is starting to have that same edge — the same cruelty, the same divisions between those that have, and those that have not, that polarized the 1920s.”
Tags: budget, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax
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Ottawa urged to put child poverty pledge into action
Thursday, March 12th, 2015
It has been more than 25 years since Ottawa’s 1989 vow to end child poverty by 2000. But, lacking a plan or timeline, the percentage of poor children in Canada swelled from 15.8 per cent that year to 19.1 per cent in 2012. Poverty among indigenous children is about 40 per cent… Since 1989, Canada’s economy has more than doubled, while child poverty has grown by 17 per cent
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, poverty, standard of living, tax, youth
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National income floor for troubled times
Monday, March 9th, 2015
Inequality is rising; full-time jobs are being replaced with precarious, part-time work; highly trained young people are being sidelined; globalization is accelerating; outsourcing is increasing; living standards are declining for all but the rich minority; and public attitudes toward the poor and disabled are hardening. This is not the future they envisaged for their children… Their last hope is a guaranteed annual income (also known as a basic income guarantee, negative income tax, national income floor and minimum adequate income).
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, participation, standard of living, youth
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Reforming Retirement (4): Canada needs to ramp up CPP, ASAP
Saturday, March 7th, 2015
Ensuring that everyone has adequate savings and income, and doing so without imposing new burdens on future taxpayers, calls for… an expansion of the Canada Pension Plan – and a more generous but also more targeted Old Age Security program. The CPP is an actuarially sound, exceptionally well-run, defined-benefit pension plan. All workers are covered, and their pensions really are guaranteed… expanding savings through CPP would have another enormous consequence: It would lower the price of the OAS program…
Tags: economy, ideology, pensions, standard of living
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Reforming Retirement (3): More RRSP, not more TFSA, please
Saturday, March 7th, 2015
Instead of increasing TFSA contribution limits, the Harper government should consider upping the maximum contribution limits to the retirement-income shelters that have long served Canadians: RRSPs and company pension plans… TFSA expansion would allow many Canadians, especially wealthier Canadians, to build multi-million dollar, tax-free nest eggs. The TFSA is a tax shelter that mortgages the future. RRSPs and pensions are the exact opposite.
Tags: economy, ideology, pensions, standard of living
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Reforming Retirement (2): Getting Ottawa’s mitts off your RRIF
Saturday, March 7th, 2015
Seniors were ordered to annually withdraw – and face income tax on – a set percentage of their RRIF savings, starting at age 71. What’s more, the federal government decreed that the older you got, the more of your retirement savings would have to be withdrawn, and the more of it would be subject to tax… The policy undermines the financial health and retirement plans of millions of seniors – while doing nothing for Ottawa’s long-term fiscal health. It simply pulls future tax revenues into the present.
Tags: economy, ideology, pensions, standard of living
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Reforming Retirement (1): How the TFSA turned into Godzilla
Saturday, March 7th, 2015
The reports… agree that the relatively new and still tiny TFSA program is growing like compound interest… it won’t be long before it is taking a huge bite out of federal and provincial government revenues…. Starting in less than a decade, the average lower- and middle-income Canadian will, over the course of their retirement, collect less OAS – but a good number of upper-income Canadians, thanks to their TFSA, may get more from OAS, even as they pay less tax on their other income.
Tags: economy, ideology, pensions, standard of living
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Ontario’s really bad pension scheme
Friday, February 13th, 2015
Governments do have a role in supporting our seniors. Poverty among single seniors is extraordinarily high at 20%. Long-term care will be a serious issue in the future for many seniors living longer periods with ill health. The ORPP is an expensive and poorly targeted approach to support seniors. The Government should focus with more precision to help the most vulnerable.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, pensions, poverty, standard of living
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Stop blaming ‘computer glitch’ for welfare woes
Friday, February 6th, 2015
Computers treat people as interchangeable widgets. They don’t take into account that Ontarians who depend on social assistance (446,500 welfare recipients, 448,500 disability support recipients) have unpredictable lives, unstable housing, intermittent earnings and episodic illnesses. They don’t allow for flexibility or discretion… Nor will the new system make allowance for unforeseen circumstances: domestic violence, evictions, sudden changes in earnings, medical emergencies or funerals.
Tags: budget, featured, Health, housing, ideology, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Ignoring the poor impoverishes politics
Friday, January 30th, 2015
… having shrunk the definition of who is poor, and knowing that those who are poor don’t vote much, why would any party spend much time even talking about them, let alone proposing to do anything for or about them? This triumph of marginalizing all talk of the poor represents a significant intellectual (and therefore political) victory for the Conservatives… Failure to think about the poor, let alone talk about them, impoverishes politics – it spins the discourse around what’s in it for me, rather than what’s in it for all of us.
Tags: budget, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
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