@noel.semple7 Law Prof: Day in the Life
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Category: Semple Saturdays
Sales Tax Cuts are Tax Cuts for the Rich
Can we afford it?
@noel.semple7 Every sales tax cut is a tax cut for the rich. Can we afford it?
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The NDP wants to eliminate sales tax on all groceries sold in Canada. So right now, groceries that are considered “basic,” like this litre of milk I just bought, are tax free. But other things you buy at a grocery store like this kombucha are taxed at 13%, just like almost all the other goods and services sold in Canada. Now, we’d all rather pay less tax, but the problem with this proposal is that it’s a tax cut for the rich.
Rich people spend a lot more money on stuff like this than other people do. And if you cut the HST you’re putting money back into their pockets. We’ve got a lot of people who are struggling in Canada. We’ve also got a lot of people who are doing fine and can afford to pay their fair share of taxes. And the government does a lot of things that are crucial to help people who need help, whether that’s the publicly funded health and education systems or social assistance or OSAP or 100 other things.
To give credit where credit is due, the NDP is the reason why a lot of those crucial social programs exist.
So they should understand the importance of taxation revenue to keep them funded. And right now we’re falling short. The federal government has an annual budget deficit of $65 billion. In Ontario, the deficit is about $14 billion a year. So before you cut taxes and drive the deficit up further, you’d better make sure that the benefit of the tax cut is going to people who really need it.
Making it cheaper for affluent Canadians to buy stuff like this just doesn’t seem to pass the test. Now the NDP marketing points out that non-rich people buy prepared foods that they pay HST on it as well. But rich people spend more on every category of item than poor people do. And if you want to help people who really need it, then you can’t do it with sales tax cuts.
You’ve got to do it with income tax cuts that are targeted at low and middle brackets or by increasing benefits, because it’s only that type of tax and benefit which can actually be targeted based on people’s income.
My new book The State of Happiness is being published in November and it’ll be available free as an e-book. And it’s all about how government can actually make lives better. And there’s a chapter in it about sales tax and the way New Zealand designed their sales tax to apply to everything.
And that has a lot of economic virtues. The goal of helping people who need help can be accomplished in much more intelligent ways than across the board sales tax cuts like what the NDP is offering right now.
Walking to America
A Day Trip
@noel.semple7 Walking to America
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I’m doing something this morning that’s gonna get me in trouble with some of my family members, maybe at Thanksgiving. I’m going to cross the border and spend some money in the United States. I haven’t been to the states since before Trump was re-elected.
And in one way it seems like a kind of a weird thing and maybe an unpatriotic thing to do. After all, we’ve got this trade war on and we’ve got a president who has threatened our sovereignty, said he wants to make Canada the 51st state. Buying Canadian and avoiding American stuff seems like an obvious way to support our country.
So why cross the border and why support an American business now? Well, number one, this idea of a boycott has always been a very clumsy inexact way to send a political message. So I’m going to Detroit, where over 90% of the voters voted against Trump in the last presidential election.
So if we say we’re gonna avoid American stuff and avoid these businesses, like who are we really punishing? Are we punishing the guy who’s actually the problem or we punishing all these innocent people who don’t want anything to do with him and are just caught up in the crossfire?
No.2, if you take a long view, I think this trade war is just a bump in the road. The Canadian-American relationship remains the longest and most productive peaceful relationship between neighbours pretty much anywhere in the world. The border remains the longest unmilitarized border anywhere in the world.
And we’re not entirely innocent either. There are a couple of legitimate American grievances about things that Canadians have done. For example, I think for many years until pretty recently, Canada was not quite carrying its weight when it came to military spending and to contributing to the mutual defence of our continent from aggressors and terrorists, and the Americans were maybe carrying us a little bit more than they should have been.
That’s been basically fixed in recent years. But, you know, in any breakdown or tension, it’s odd to find that all of the fault is on one side.
No.3, I get to cross on the Gordie Howe bridge, which just opened a few weeks ago. I’m an architecture and infrastructure nerd and I think this is really beautiful and incredibly cool.
And yeah, Trump’s being a dick about it, but this thing will be here decades after Trump is just a bad memory, hopefully cementing a happy and productive relationship between our two nations.
No.4, I can walk across this bridge. They actually built it so it has this beautiful wide separated path for cyclists and pedestrians, which we never had in the Windsor/Detroit area before.
And I think this is great forethought. And there’s a beautiful natural trails on both sides of the border here
going around the lakes and the rivers and this now connects them and I think it’s really cool.
I’m not gonna lie, it does feel weird and a little bit anxious to go back to the States after such a long time away, especially if you listen to too much of this vicious animosity that you get from Trump and from his sycophants.
But most of what every politician says is just for public consumption and that’s even more true with this guy. The people who are just dissing Canada to suck up to him are even less worth paying attention to.
Homeward Bound! Had a great fried chicken sandwich. One piece of advice I’d give to anyone walking across the Gordie Howe bridge is to bring American cash. They often don’t accept credit cards and very seldom accept Canadian dollars over there.
The first place I tried to go to lunch, I could not eat for that reason. Also figure out what you’re gonna do when you get to the other side. There’s really kind of nothing there.
I was fortunate to find a rental e-scooter I could use but, you might need a cab or something.
Not super easy to walk to any place you might wanna eat, once you get over.
But great time. Nice to see that it’s still there, and we’ve still got an undefended border we can traverse in new and cool ways and, happy to be home. No place like home.
Concertgoers confused…
Goodbye Dolly
and (soon) goodbye Trump and (hopefully) Trumpism.
@noel.semple7 Ford’s New Pay-to-Walk Bail System: Public Safety is not a Game
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This combination of stories in today’s Toronto Star really kind of struck me. So we’ve got two trade war stories, including this latest Trumpian stupidity about trying to rename Lake Ontario. But then we have this tribute to Dolly Parton who died yesterday and has millions of Canadian fans, and really stands to me a lot of what’s best in the American spirit.
And it makes me hopeful because what we’re dealing with is a crazy guy who does not understand his country’s interest. And protectionism and tariffs, until Trump was never the policy of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. And the views of the average American about Canadians and Canada have not changed.
So I’m an optimist and I’m hopeful that this is gonna blow over, that Trumpism and protectionism and tariffs will end with Trump’s presidency, and we’ll get back to the productive, happy, friendly relationship that we’ve always had with our southern neighbour.