What a mystery this is.

  • Sir_Osis_of_Liver@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Corporate taxes used to cover over 30% of government revenue, it’s 10% now. The top marginal income tax rate peaked in the 1960s at somewhere around 80% on income exceeding ~3M/year (today’s money). We’ve had 4 decades of tax cuts while the cost of delivering services has increased more or less with the inflation rate. Private equity funds now have favourable tax treatment, and stock buybacks, previously considered illegal stock manipulation is a common practice. And so on and so forth.

    If you want what you had, you have to do what you did.

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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      9 months ago

      I’m inclined to suspect the corporate taxes covering 30 percent down to ten, is more related to an increase in government spending and increasing individual’s taxes, than cutting corporate, because, believe it or not, they tax the living shit out of businesses, much more and it’ll start to cause failures. Often times businesses that would be quite profitable just on the other side of the border, are barely making it despite comparable sales, and taxes go up tomorrow,

      • Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Corporations aren’t your friends, they aren’t going to give you any preferential treatment that they aren’t seeing the better side of.

        Capital flight is also not a thing, it’s a bogeyman set up by conservatives to avoid raising taxes.

        Businesses also won’t leave. Their remarkable treatment in Canada will go down to slightly less remarkable. They moan and groan and set up a whole ad campaign about how this is going to hurt the consumer but that means it’s working. And if you mean “small business” there are so so so many way ways to create exceptions or offer grants to Canadians starting or operating small businesses, where the target is larger oligopolies and conglomerates.

        • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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          9 months ago

          It’s absolutely a thing, most corporations are a couple people running a business, and capital flight is absolutely a fucking thing, Just look at the difference between Saskatchewan and Alberta over 50 years because of different tax/government policies with the same base conditions and people. And then look at Montana for a third perspective of the same base conditions. It is so tiring listening to people buy these asinine takes in complete rejection of reality.

          • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            Funny that you mention complete rejection of reality… Did you even read the article?

          • Untitled4774@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            Once again. Corporations aren’t your friend, no matter the head count. It’s that simple. Don’t simp for people who don’t give a fuck about you or your family. Full stop.

            Second. Again. Capital flight is a boogeyman. Alberta and Sask aren’t comparable. Alberta has cities, amenities and established populations, Sask doesn’t. If you want to take anything flight seriously, how about brain drain in our high paying, sought after career sectors, where we educate our population only for them to leave for better opportunities elsewhere? Doctors aren’t going to stay for the pittance, and software engineers aren’t going to keep staying for the remarkable amount of investment the government is putting to try to establish STEM in Canada because the private sector isn’t competitive with their salaries. Fuck your capital flight, if these are the corporations you’re afraid of leaving I’m more than willing to say goodbye, because the ones who fill the gaps will likely see the case studies and change course.

            I’ll give you a spoiler alert. They’re not going anywhere. Just like they haven’t left Aus, NZ or the other dozen and change 1st world countries with high corporate tax rates than Canada. It’s not happening, you’re afraid of a ghost.

            • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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              9 months ago

              Alberta has all those things because what I said happened THEN, you disingenuous goof. Capital flight is brain drain, they’re one and the same.

              Aus, NZ or the other dozen

              They’ve all been left behind. Fuck, you need to travel.

                • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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                  9 months ago

                  What had held Canada back for 50 years is people like you. You didn’t want to make a go of it, you bought into all that fucking nazi Tommy Douglas and his political descendants ruined this country with. You people need to be reminded you’re useless garbage every now and then. Love, some guy with a numbered corp. There’d be a 250 square mile area with out the last person hanging on providing the business i do if i did fuck off.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        they tax the living shit out of businesses

        Yeah. It’s how we spend on keeping Canadians healthy and happy like every other happy country does. Keep up.

        And TEN IS LESS THAN THIRTY like it was in the Good Old days we seemed to survive before, in those years when we built things like bridges and railways (those are the rotting, unmaintained things we non-helicopter-owning wage-slaves use) like Sweden and Denmark do to this day.

        increase in government spending

        TAX AND SPEND. Keep up. It’s a whole thing.

        quite profitable just on the other side of the border

        Unless you mean on Miquelon or Greenland, you must be talking about the border to that user-pays, fuck-the-plebes, birth-slavery, medical-bankruptcy hell to our south.

        Having lived there, I fervently hope you aren’t holding that nearly-fascist mess as a goal. Alberta is cruel enough for us; let’s not go full American.

          • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            I got the point: like every Calgary commercial realtor I’ve ever met, you’re concerned with taxes you must pay - dramatic swoon - and not really aware how tax money makes things not suck like it does in America as I’ve seen with my own fucking eyes.

            Keep. Up.

          • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            I love when people defend corps when we talk about increasing taxes for them for once instead of cutting them again and wondering why it’s not working.

            The conservative like to talk about the good old days, but when we point out that the taxes were higher, bootlickers come out of the woodwork to explain why taxing the rich more is bad for the economy.

            We’ve been cutting taxes for the rich since the 60s, and everything is getting fucked over. At one point, you gotta get your head out of your ass and see the reality.

            Big corpos and rich people game the system at every corner, and people still defend them.

            You won’t be rich, and they won’t save you when the earth is scorched.

            Tax the fuck out of them, and if they leave, someone will take their place.

      • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        they tax the living shit out of businesses, much more and it’ll start to cause failures.

        Why?

        Taxes are on revenues, not gross profits. That’s why EBIT exists as a performance measure.

        As a quick example of a made up corp:

        Gross profits 1.1B

        COGS + OpExp 1.0B

        EBIT 100M

        Taxes 10% (30%)

        Revenues 90M (70M)

        Now mom and pop barely alive

        Gross profits 500k

        COGS + OpExp 500k

        EBIT 0

        Taxes 10% (30%)

        Revenues 0 (0)

        • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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          9 months ago

          Hey genius, people don’t continue on with businesses of zero net. Taxes in many provinces are at the point what would be otherwise profitable businesses aren’t worth it, that’s why you see so many abandoned. Taxes aren’t just on revenue, they’re on every aspect.

          • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Hey genius,

            Not a genius, just a bit of experience with small non-profits that share commonality with small businesses.

            people don’t continue on with businesses of zero net.

            They absolutely do. A lot of my friends are professionals that run net zero after they pay themselves.

            Taxes in many provinces are at the point what would be otherwise profitable businesses aren’t worth it, that’s why you see so many abandoned.

            No, they are abandoned because they failed or the owner didn’t want to run them anymore

            Taxes aren’t just on revenue, they’re on every aspect.

            Yeah sure, but that has to do with an increase in COGS, not the increase of tax on the business. There as soany impacts on COGS that you can’t narrow it down to a single thing. Even large corps switch between vetricalizing and not depending on situations beyond more than just tax.

          • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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            9 months ago

            Lets break this down for you. Take beer. a bar doesn’t pay gst, pst or lct when it buys it, only when it sells it, but there’s already an excise and other taxes on it long before it reaches point of final sale. so say 45-55 dollars price a 24 case for the liquor store or bar if in a province with a form of LCB monopoly yet. the bar can’t sell it for less than 70 bucks or it’s paying you to leave with it. 75 now as of the federal increase depending on province, just to not lose money selling beer to leave the premises, and you don’t want to increase it to a point you make money off that, because it’s at least getting people in the door because you’re price matching the liquor store, Then the carbon tax. the bills. the taxes on those, the tax tax tax on tax. if you do manage to make any money after all that, they tax that too. Small business books look like the shit people used try kill the sheriff of Nottingham and prince john for.

            • Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              That’s a long winded explanation for saying taxes are one part of COGS. Do taxes impact COGS? Absolutely. But so do other regulations, market pressureus, trade deals, weather, road repairs, train breakdowns, flu season intensity, water table levels, how much commission the sales guy gets, etc, etc, etc.

    • sbv@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Liberals and Conservatives have helmed provincial and federal governments over the decades that it took for these crises to gestate.

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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      9 months ago

      jesus christ why not just say “But Harper” outright? At least when the conservatives are in charge, they try fix everything the Liberals broke. But they break shit so bad, it’s hard to come back. We’ll be feeling this Trudeau for 50 years, and we still haven’t recovered from his dad.

  • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Holy shit, when fucking Bloomberg says that neoliberalism is the problem, you know it’s bad.

  • zaphod@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    But spending cuts in the 1980s and 1990s, along with a move to put more responsibility for economic and social well-being on the shoulders of individuals, caused low-income Canadians to fall further behind, the report says.

    So neoliberalism. Neoliberalism happened.

    Who could’ve guessed.

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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      9 months ago

      It’s amazing reading some of these statements. Spending increased every year but cuts are the problem holding people back, when taxes have increased dramatically since then too.

      • Strykker@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        Taxes don’t tend to affect you when you make less than the tax cutoff.

        But not having the social services those taxes used to fund suddenly means you don’t get to eat dinner tomorrow, or you can’t go to a family doctor because there aren’t any available.

        People like to complain about taxes, but taxes never made someone destitute.

      • zaphod@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        when taxes have increased dramatically since then too

        No they haven’t:

        https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/have-taxes-changed-all-much-over-past-half-century

        In 1961, families paid 33.5% of their income on taxes, but by 1969 they were paying 39% and in 1974 they paid 43.4% of their income. So, if you compare the 2009 effective family tax rate to 1961, you will find a 25% increase, but you will only report a 7% increase since 1969 and an actual decrease since 1974.

        (Note this analysis is circa 2010, but things haven’t changed substantially since then aside from the post COVID inflation spike that’s still subsiding).

        But enjoy the alternate reality brought to you by your “friends” at the Fraser Institute™️.

  • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    The biggest things that happened are media hubris and corporate consolidation. Secondary things are population increase and offshore investment.

    • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      And a continued government and societal coddling of massive corporations able to purchase naming rights to stadiums on our backs.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Our southern neighbour has a huge lobbying campaign to turn our system in a private health care system.

    It’s not that they are actively working towards this that is the problem … it’s equally problematic that we citizens are more than willing to just wander around like zombies and let it all happen.

    • sbv@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      I think we’re privatizing ourselves quite nicely without their help.

      It’s hard to (directly) blame the US when we insist on underpaying our health care staff on our own. We also reduced the number of spots for training nurses and doctors during the 1990s.

    • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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      9 months ago

      The most effective lobbying campaign has been being exposed to our system. I am so sick of this fucking tim hortons patriotism bs

      • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        You sound successful enough and able to pull yourself up by the bootstraps down south, why not have a go at it and leave us to fester in our socialist hellhole?

        • John_McMurray@lemmy.caOP
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          9 months ago

          That was the plan before I ran across this current opportunity. Maybe in 5 years when I have all the kinks out and don’t have to supervise directly.

          • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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            9 months ago

            Cool cool cool. Do be sure to shut the door in the way out, and not to let it hit you in the tukus as you leave. Ta ta!

  • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I grew up being told about how amazing and great Canada is. I’m grown now, where is this great Canada? As I’ve grown I’ve seen what Canada did to my fellow native blooded people, wages are pathetic, housing is a disaster, food prices are a joke, healthcare is covering less and less, our government only cares about foreign citizens and not their own.

    Where is the greatness of Canada? Cause I sure as fuck can’t see it