Our government has made us ALL into thieves.

[Greatest I am]

Our government has made us ALL into thieves.

Taxes on goods and services.

Governments have turned to taxing goods and services (GST), instead of taxing income to extract the funds they need from you and I to pay for their various programs. GST’s are regressive taxes, because as a person’s income decreases, his rate of tax increases.

In such a tax system, the less you earn, the more, as a percentage of your income, you pay into that tax system. For instance, if you earn $10,000 per year and pay a GST of 15%, you will pay $1,500 in tax. If you earn $20,000 per year, and buy the same amount of goods and services, you will pay the same $1,500 in tax, but as a percentage of your income, as compared to the poorer buyer, you will only pay ½ the amount of tax dollars, in terms of percentage of income. The higher your income, the less of a percentage of tax you will pay, as compared to those who earn less than you do.

That is why such goods and services tax are considered to be regressive taxes. They penalize the poor while benefiting the richer, on a sliding scale.

Poverty is the worst form of violence. – Ghandi

Each and every one of us is kicking those below us further into poverty thanks to our regressive GST tax system. The richer you are, the harder you are kicking the poor. Middle and lower income earners are not kicking the poorest as hard but we are getting our kicks in anyway.

The Golden Rule is considered by most to be the best moral rule that we know.

With our regressive GST tax system, we are doing the opposite of the Golden Rule by doing unto the poor what we would not want done to us if we are poor.

Should we all be proud of ourselves for doing violence to our poorer fellow countrymen?

Regards
DL

[Walker]

Subsidizing poverty perpetuates poverty. - Walker

[bobevenson]

"A goods and services tax (GST) is a Canadian value-added tax levied on most goods and services sold for domestic consumption. The tax is levied in order to provide revenue for the federal government. The Goods and Services Tax is paid by consumers, but it is levied and remitted to the government by businesses." -Investopedia
The only proper tax is a single tax on property, property being defined as anything with intrinsic market value. In other words, everything should be taxed, not just currently manufactured products. It doesn't matter who owns the property or what it's being used for, the tax rate remains the same for everything based on its value, with no exceptions or deductions of any kind. All other taxes such as income tax, sales tax, and the thousands of other taxes or government fees should be abolished.

[Greatest I am]

Subsidizing poverty perpetuates poverty. - Walker

Kicking a poor man when he is down is not very neighbourly.

You might consider the Golden Rule.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

"A goods and services tax (GST) is a Canadian value-added tax levied on most goods and services sold for domestic consumption. The tax is levied in order to provide revenue for the federal government. The Goods and Services Tax is paid by consumers, but it is levied and remitted to the government by businesses." -Investopedia
The only proper tax is a single tax on property, property being defined as anything with intrinsic market value. In other words, everything should be taxed, not just currently manufactured products. It doesn't matter who owns the property or what it's being used for, the tax rate remains the same for everything based on its value, with no exceptions or deductions of any kind. All other taxes such as income tax, sales tax, and the thousands of other taxes or government fees should be abolished.

So you do not mind that you pay more GST as a % of your income than your more prosperous neighbor. Right?

How do you thing the ones below you feel about paying more as a % of their income than you?

Regards
DL

[bobevenson]

"A goods and services tax (GST) is a Canadian value-added tax levied on most goods and services sold for domestic consumption. The tax is levied in order to provide revenue for the federal government. The Goods and Services Tax is paid by consumers, but it is levied and remitted to the government by businesses." -Investopedia
The only proper tax is a single tax on property, property being defined as anything with intrinsic market value. In other words, everything should be taxed, not just currently manufactured products. It doesn't matter who owns the property or what it's being used for, the tax rate remains the same for everything based on its value, with no exceptions or deductions of any kind. All other taxes such as income tax, sales tax, and the thousands of other taxes or government fees should be abolished.

So you do not mind that you pay more GST as a % of your income than your more prosperous neighbor. Right?

How do you thing the ones below you feel about paying more as a % of their income than you?

Regards
DL

As an American, I am not familiar with the Canadian GST tax, but I stand by my statement that taxation should not be based on income, which only represents the current production of property, but is not in itself property, it should be based on all existing property since the value of all property is being protected by the government, and is, in fact, the ultimate source of any tax levied by the government. And I might add that the government has not made us all into thieves, it is the government itself that commits thievery by diluting the value of money, a repository of value, by creating monetary inflation, for which it is 100% responsible.

[Walker]

Subsidizing poverty perpetuates poverty. - Walker

Kicking a poor man when he is down is not very neighbourly.

You might consider the Golden Rule.

Regards
DL

A simple statement of causal inevitability is not a kick, and why are you against subsidizing the poor?

Ah, you projected a judgement from a simple statement of fact. Funny how people do that.

Subsidizing anything perpetuates that anything (including poverty) ... is not a statement of advocacy or criticism. It's a simple fact. It's why you see windmills.

[Greatest I am]

"A goods and services tax (GST) is a Canadian value-added tax levied on most goods and services sold for domestic consumption. The tax is levied in order to provide revenue for the federal government. The Goods and Services Tax is paid by consumers, but it is levied and remitted to the government by businesses." -Investopedia
The only proper tax is a single tax on property, property being defined as anything with intrinsic market value. In other words, everything should be taxed, not just currently manufactured products. It doesn't matter who owns the property or what it's being used for, the tax rate remains the same for everything based on its value, with no exceptions or deductions of any kind. All other taxes such as income tax, sales tax, and the thousands of other taxes or government fees should be abolished.

So you do not mind that you pay more GST as a % of your income than your more prosperous neighbor. Right?

How do you thing the ones below you feel about paying more as a % of their income than you?

Regards
DL

As an American, I am not familiar with the Canadian GST tax, but I stand by my statement that taxation should not be based on income, which only represents the current production of property, but is not in itself property, it should be based on all existing property since the value of all property is being protected by the government, and is, in fact, the ultimate source of any tax levied by the government. And I might add that the government has not made us all into thieves, it is the government itself that commits thievery by diluting the value of money, a repository of value, by creating monetary inflation, for which it is 100% responsible.

You have a point but I would amend what and how you are taxed.

Instead of just looking at income, I would look at the net worth off all citizens and tax all citizens at the same rate.

The only exceptions would be those below the poverty line and those would be subsidized to put them over that threshold so as we could say that we have no poor.

I think that that would be the fairest tax.

Regards
DL

[FlashDangerpants]

value of all property is being protected by the government, and is, in fact, the ultimate source of any tax levied by the government..

The value of all commercial property is based on their income value tough. Factories are valuable because of the income that accrues from them, so are shops. If you rent out an apartment its value is entirely a function of the income it brings.

Economists rate the fair value of things like houses and cars by estimating the cost of renting or leasing them versus that of owning them. This is how they work out whether an asset class that is gaining rapidly in value is subject to bubble pricing or simply responding to scarcity. That's another way of saying that incomes determine values even in non commercial property, in case you had difficulty following.

[bobevenson]

Instead of just looking at income, I would look at the net worth off all citizens and tax all citizens at the same rate.
Regards
DL

I am saying the only thing that should be taxed is property. Since income and net worth only represent property, there is no basis for taxing either.

[Greatest I am]

Instead of just looking at income, I would look at the net worth off all citizens and tax all citizens at the same rate.
Regards
DL

I am saying the only thing that should be taxed is property. Since income and net worth only represent property, there is no basis for taxing either.

Income is a part of net worth. So would be fleets of cars or a jet plane.

Regards
DL

[bobevenson]

Instead of just looking at income, I would look at the net worth off all citizens and tax all citizens at the same rate.
Regards
DL

I am saying the only thing that should be taxed is property. Since income and net worth only represent property, there is no basis for taxing either.

Income is a part of net worth. So would be fleets of cars or a jet plane.

Regards
DL

Net worth covering fleets of cars, jet airplanes and yachts should be taxable because they have intrinsic market value, unlike income, bank accounts, stock certificates and the like, which are documents that only represent property and have no intrinsic value of their own besides paper and ink.

[Greta]

Oh, those dastardly gummints! We would be in terrible trouble If not for our fine private enterprise institutions and honourable multinationals operating with such admirable honestly, decency and public-spiritedness.

[bobevenson]

Oh, those dastardly gummints! We would be in terrible trouble If not for our fine private enterprise institutions and honourable multinationals operating with such admirable honestly, decency and public-spiritedness.

Greta, do you have a specific point to make, or do you just want to leave it at wanting the government to run your life?

[Greta]

Oh, those dastardly gummints! We would be in terrible trouble If not for our fine private enterprise institutions and honourable multinationals operating with such admirable honestly, decency and public-spiritedness.

Greta, do you have a specific point to make, or do you just want to leave it at wanting the government to run your life?

Bob, that's the point. I don't let the government run my life any more than I allow other massive entities with overwhelming power run my life, eg. multinational companies, the weather. Instead I, and numerous others, aim to fly under the radar, living relaxed and gentle lives in the freedom still available to us.

Yes, freedoms are reducing, as it always has and must when populations get large enough that would be anarchic without complex control systems. Do you think it's an accident that China is a command economy? Do you think it's a property particular to Chinese genetics? No, it's because they have been living in crowded conditions for a long time, being the world's first civilisation. Look at China and you see aspects of our future already manifest.

Look at the "land of the free" (after the settlers killed and displaced the far more free indigenous Americans). Centuries ago Europe was crowded and weighed down by historical conflicts and the US represented a fresh new start. People actually had enough space and resources to be free (as long as they were adult heterosexual males). The US could laugh across the ocean at their overcrowded neurotic European counterparts as they prospered.

Today, the US has become "crowded" in the sense that there is not enough to go around. Just 3% of Americans own and control 97% of all privately held US land, so the remaining US population scrabbles for the rest. Ironic that "government" continues to be exclusively blamed - as though they were the red coats - when multinational companies pull all the strings. Rest assured, oppression is a joint exercise and, increasingly, it's multinational companies with vested interests leading the way.

Today the US has its own historical divisions with slavery and the civil war weighing it down. So, along much of the rest of the world, having already suffered through similar phases of development, Americans are finding their freedoms diminishing. As almost all other crowded societies, individual citizens increasingly become mere resources for The System.

What can be done about it? I would not recommend civil war, unless you think Iraq looks like a great place to live. The consensus there is that life was much better for the vast majority under Saddam than post-invasion.

Revolution? If the will of the revolutionaries is as intractable as that of the Palestinians, then that would be a war without end.

It's a wicked problem. Bottom line is that blaming the government for all ills is a superficial response that fails to consider the role of key players, ie. large companies. The world is in transition. Private companies are taking power from governments. Once capitalists ran everything. Their abuses resulted in the people joining together to form government. The government was supposed to be the people's representative, giving the little people some say against the economic aristocracy, a way of addressing societal power imbalances, reducing waste, and exploiting economies of scale to advantage for the citizenry.

Today, the economic aristocrats have wrested power back for themselves. It took some time, but now they are almost there.