Not a Good Time to Be a Socialist in America

A new poll reveals that only 9% of Americans surveyed are in favour of raising taxes. 77% want spending to be cut. The big question is “where” and there appears little consensus on that front.
Related: In the first part of this Ricochet podcast, there’s an interesting discussion with rookie congressman, Chris Gibson, focusing on what it’s like to be in charge of deciding what cutting must be done.
Translating this to a Canadian perspective, what are your thoughts about the general mood of the public in our country on the subject of Cutting Spending vs. Raising Taxes?

55 Replies to “Not a Good Time to Be a Socialist in America”

  1. Threw that old couch out I see. As per your question. I would guess that a small majority of Canadians currently support spending cuts vs. tax hikes.
    This is corporate tax cuts we’re talking about…right?

  2. The problem with that is that health care is almost 50 percent of provincial spending. Education is a pretty big amount too. “Discretionary spending”is a very small part of the budget. This makes it very difficult to do anything other than a bit of trimming around the edges.
    The only way to make the kind of cuts that are necessary to avoid bankruptcy is to get rid of entire government departments or levels of government. Do we really need, city, municipal and federal levels of government to deliver services? Do we need a federal and provincial and municipal department of health? Do we need federal, provincial, municipal and city police departments? Do we need federal and provincial ministries of the environment?
    The need a complete rethink of the way we govern ourselves in order to make meaningful cuts, but of course that will never happen until we go though civilizational collapse.

  3. What feeds the power of politicians and bureaucrats is money (our money).
    Power is an intoxicant. In other words, our leaders are drunk with power … alcoholics.
    Like all alcoholics they must take it to the very bottom before they realize something must change.
    Too bad we will all have to go down with them before we can have a change.
    Most of what the government is providing (stealing from some to give to others) is not necessary. Although, necessary for them to get re elected.
    Need is the mother of invention. Many would be surprised at how the citizenry who are accepting all the hand outs and molly coddling would rise up and better themselves … and ultimately find some pride in themselves that will help them continue on to live their own lives with dignity.

  4. After all is said and done, the unions have put us in a position that we are going to either default on the pensions that were negotiated or go belly up. The bottom line is we can’t do it. Couple that with inflated government departments and Bob’s Your Uncle. We’re frigging doomed without major “Hack & Slash” policy changes.

  5. Instant cuts: Close the disastrous Federal Dept of Education & the useless Dept of Commerce. Eliminate 95% of Boards & Commissions, chop subsidies of ethanol and sugar to 0%, eliminate 90% of IRS’s bloated staff by going to a flat income tax. Eliminate Obamacare and start over properly with tort reform.
    Instant revenue: Drill our own oil and refine it. Build 150 nuclear power generating plants.
    It’s a start.
    M

  6. If the recent municipal election in Toronto is any indicator (not exactly a conservative stronghold) everybody is fed up with lavish spending and high taxes.
    The Libs are beside themselves with disbelief that it could happen here — on any given evening walking the streets of Toronto you can hear the crescendo of sobbing, and its ebb and rise, echoing from the bars downtown.
    It’s the sound of the entitlement class “crying in its beer”.

  7. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Hack and slash until seventy-five years of creeping socialism has been carefully and wisely pruned.
    First on the chopping block: CBC and all other state funded propaganda spewing machines. Let the free press take care of the propaganda file and let their consumers pass the appropriate judgment.

  8. Yes Erik. That’s stage two. Work toward a country that does not “include Quebec”, at least as it currently functions, and let them know why. But dismantling the Liberal propaganda machine has to come first. Quebeckers need to start hearing things they’ve never before had the privilege of hearing.

  9. The federal Health Ministry employs somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000 persons, mainly ensconsed in 6 high-rise buildings in a compound in Ottawa.
    Question: Given that health care delivery is a provincial responsibility, what are all of these people doing?
    Fire. Most of them all. Now

  10. Won’t work, minuteman. The portion of the federal and provincial budgets which is out of control is health care. Ultimately this can only be addressed by trimming state-paid benefits. It doesn’t how much you cut, you will never limit the public appetite for more health care benefit.
    And no limitation of health care will ever mean anything until governments bring in meaningful controls on overbilling by doctors. Until provincial governments have the brass knuckles to be willing to endure a doctors’ strike, any talk about making meaningful reductions in cost is just more hot air.

  11. Bruce, don’t be silly. Someone has to audit the millions of claims from the medical community flooding in for payment. Otherwise, medical fraud for overbilling which has occasionally been quite high, as it was in Ontario in the 1980s, will become an epidemic.
    And if you think the provincial bureaucracy is eating up most of the resources, think again. WE are eating up most of the resources by going to hospital emergency rooms for a headache, by going to the family doctor for a hangnail. It’s delusional to think you can make meaningful cuts by trimming administration. This always fails. You only make meaningful cuts by restricting access and by eliminating procedures from government insurance. Much better would be to insist on a user fee.

  12. As long as it’s not “Mike the knife” Harris type cuts: “We don’t need water inspectors anymore, just trust the market to regulate our clean water”. Harris was thoroughly confused, he didn’t understand the difference between de-regulating the marketplace to allow commerce to flow, and de-regulating health and safety measures to allow people to die!
    The Harris government also had hair-brained ideas such as gathering up all the smelt in the toxic Hamilton bay to process it and feed it to welfare recipients (excellent idea if you want them to die of mercury poisoning), and finger-printing everyone on welfare to start a police file on them.
    But those were the heady days of capitalism — immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union — when everyone believed that the only explanation for poverty was either laziness or criminality. Tell that to people who went through the Great Depression, Mr. Harris!
    Ironically, that brand of “capitalism” is not unlike the “State capitalism” practiced by communist countries such as China.

  13. Freeze transfer payments; get rid of Official Bilingualism and Official Multiculturalism and all their concomitant bureaucracies; make English the working language of the Federal government (all positions are English essential anyway); hire solely on the basis of merit so that we can get rid of all the diversity bureaucrats infesting every HR department in the federal government; get rid of the HRC; end all subsidies to corporations and NGOs; recognize property rights to reduce strangling regulation; privatize CBC; extricate from provincial responsibilities completely such as health care; etc.

  14. Ricardo is a member of CUPE or the teacher Unions.
    Thast BS of dragging out Walkerton as Harris fault when the system worked well when Liberal cronies such as the drunks who ran the Walkerton Water Supply were not involved.
    Defunding the CBC, the political subsidies and the portion of Department of Justice involved with the stupid Gun registry would be a start then a foray into Environment Canada involved in the climate change scam…..
    Ending funding for the myriad of “victims studies” in Universities…..

  15. Cut, slash and burn the CBC, CRTC, Senate, grants to special interest groups, Arts, Indian bands, Sports,

  16. Toronto voted for Ford over Smitherman; responsible budgets vs the welfare state. BUT, we cannot ignore that the people most favourable to tax increases are those who are affected least by such increases.
    These include: the enormous public service – from the bureaucracy, the academics, health services, municipal bureaucracy and workers. It’s massive. And most of their comfortable lifestyle is protected FROM taxes.
    That is, their benefits, pensions, vacations; the payments for their ‘car allowance’, their phones, their computers, their restaurant meals, even their travel…all of these comforts are ‘benefits’ – and untaxed.
    The private sector – who voted for Ford – have no such massive amenities. They pay taxes on everything they use – and their wage increases, their benefits, their pensions – if they even exist – are miniscule in comparison to those in the public service.
    And of course, this group strongly supports higher taxes on the private corporations. After all, they and their unions live off these private corporations.
    The other group who are in support of higher taxes are of course, those who live off the taxpayer: the welfare, the social services and so on.
    So – if you have a society with a predominance of people supported by government funding, i.e., the taxpayer – with their lifestyles heavily immune to taxation – then, heck – they’ll be in support of higher taxes. It brings them more income! And their unions have one goal only: increase income and benefits.
    Quebec? Its population is heavily dependent on govt financing – everything from ‘the arts’, ‘the films’ to the milk industry and of course, that massive bureaucracy.

  17. ALL of what johndoe 124 said and increase aour military personel and r&d our own equipment and build it right here , and start buying some friken nukes !!! or building them .
    stop all foriegn aid and leave it to individuals to donate there money.
    Stop all immigration from countries that do not perfectly align with out standars ,and law’s and culture.
    Send out a warning to the world that any and or all illigal immigrant’s caught working in or living in canada will be deported at the home countries cost.
    Any one who is found to be undeniably in or associated with terrorist organizations in canada will be stripped of citizenship (that goes for any immigrant who breaks our laws repeatedly) and deported if any resistence is percieved they can and will be met with equal or more resistence incluting military action on themselves and or there home country!!

  18. ricardo, you are completely wrong, Harris did not eliminate water inspectors. The Walkerton tragedy was fully caused by the two brothers in charge of their town water. For 20 years they fudged figures, ignored proper purifying procedures and finally caused the deaths and sickness of hundreds. Walkerton today, as do a lot of towns, do not employ provincial testers as they are incompetent, they use a private testing company.
    Harris’ policies made Ontario boom again and he had the courage to challenge the Teacher’s Union. McGuinty, a true socialist coward, has turned Ontario into a financial disaster.
    The Great Depression was 100% caused by the policies of Hebert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt. Their interference in a recovering economy against the advice of a 1,000 real economists who begged Roosevelt to let the market heal itself led to this horrendous disaster. Roosevelt’s stupid policies took the unemployment figure of 9.6%, which was declining as jobs returned to 25% where it stayed until WW2. He started protectionist trade policies, which were then taken up by the rest of the countries as tariff walls and the depression was on.
    Roosevelt’s own finance secretary said after 6 years of stimulus spending, sound familiar to Obama, that it did not work.

  19. Take the public service unions on first. Most Canadians would be astounded at the beneficial gap in pay comparable public sector employees enjoy.

  20. Tax cuts would win with Canadians, BY FAR!
    For a start:
    * abolish outright HALF the boards / commissions / tribunals; make the rest pay only a $1000 per year honorarium to members (= basically, make it volunteer work)
    * give EVERY aboriginal in Canada a ONE TIME final payment of $250K, and then TOTALLY ABOLISH the Dept of Indian/Aboriginal Affairs Dept (or whatever the hell it’s now called)
    * abolish ALL transfer payments from ‘have’ to ‘have not’ provinces
    * vastly downsize the RCMP to basically a federal detective agency like the FBI; make all provinces set up and maintian for their own police forces
    * if it’s a provincial responsibility, SHUT DOWN ALL FEDERAL ACTIVITY in that field of endeavour
    OK, that’s my opening bid … over to you folks who are greater minds than I.
    Dave

  21. what are your thoughts about the general mood of the public in our country on the subject of Cutting Spending vs. Raising Taxes?
    The general mood of the public reflects their general ignorance of Canada’s financial state, and even their own household financial state.
    They don’t understand there is any need to cut spending.
    Many probably think they are overtaxed, but if you picked a specific individual reason to raise taxes, for instance they are still a great many Canadians who would say “Yeah, tax me more to save the “fill in any idiotic environmental cause” they would be OK with that until their tax bill actually was due to be paid.
    Most Canadians cannot see a link between cause and effect until after the effect is punching them in the face.

  22. Cost cutting has got to take a huge priority over tax increases. Tax increases are a deterent to job creation. Low taxes lead to growing the economy which in turn creates jobs and braodens the tax base – economics 101!
    Brad wall proved that with a significant rejigging of tax rates which saw an unprecedented number of folks go completely off of the Provincial tax roll. That also saw everyone who pays provincial tax now paying less.
    What has that meant for the Provincial revenue in terms of income tax? The province collects much more in taxes now than it did before the tax cuts.
    Pretty basis but much too simple for certain folks to grasp. There is plenty of fat to be cut from government and many of the services it provides.

  23. Jon doe 123, paul in Calgary and Dave – excellent ideas – and your ideas would work. We could transform this nation and make it into the country that it has the potential to be; with citizens worthy of the country.

  24. Gut the Snivel Service, it’s an over bloated red tape nightmare. Cut CBC, SOW, CHRC, multicultural grants, arts funding except for inner city programs that help the poor. Get rid of Stats Canada and Down size Health Canada it’s an over bloated waste. Cut MPs and Senators’ salaries in half and cancel their pension plan if I have to work for twenty or forty years so should snivel servants. End the taxpayer’s subsidy to political parties during elections. End official bilingual policies. Audit the snivel service and those who were hired for their skin pigment and sexuallity are tested to see if they are qualified for the job.

  25. In Austro-Libertarian literature, I see very frequent references to the 1920-21 depression. By all accounts it was as severe as the Great Depression but it was over in ONE year: President Harding (I believe) cut government expenses by HALF.
    While it’s fun to make long lists of things to be ABOLISHED I really don’t believe it’s politically possible today to reduce government in any meaningful way. Most people who say they’d like government to cut expenses really mean they’d like to see the other guy’s benefits reduced.

  26. The changes that have to be accomplished to correct the creeping nanny-state socialism that has embedded itself in Canada and to a lesser degree in the USA are almost overwhelming. The States has somewhat of a better chance at it, since their Constitution, if followed properly, limits the powers of the government. Canada has no such limiting document. I’d say we’re pretty much SOL.

  27. 1. Cut size (reduce number of departments, cut employees) of federal government to 50% (yes, half of current size) over next 2 years.
    *include these actions:
    —- a. Cut number of ministries & agencies to 50% of current
    —- b. Cut number of employees to 50% of current (or less)
    —- c. Privatize health care.
    —- d. Privatize employment insurance.
    —- e. Eliminate all government grants & subsidies.
    2. Ban public sector unions at all levels of government immediately.
    3. Outlaw “closed shop” union environments for private sector employers immediately.
    4. In five year’s time, cut size of federal government by 40% (so that federal gov’t size becomes 30% of current size)
    include actions #1.a & #1.b above
    *include these actions:
    —- a. Cut number of ministries & agencies to 30% of current
    —- b. Cut number of employees to 30% of current (or less)
    —- c. Eliminate transfer payments to provinces
    5. Eliminate personal income taxes. Adjust sales tax up or down to match changes in revenue needs per above points.

  28. A serious look at the benefits to both the country from which an immigrant comes, and the country which is enticing the emmigration.
    Canada and the United States are basically taking the capital spent on teaching and/or training the preferred candidates, our immigration laws describe, from the nations who provided these skills.
    By all means look for and develop the means to provide refuge, there will always be a need, but do not reduce the wealth of other countries by reducing their trained population.
    Welfare is not a sustainable benefit to anyone but political parties at the Federal and Provincial levels of government.
    It is at the municipal level where care is provided. The municipality should work within broad national gudelines, modified to recognize Provincial realities and expectations.
    The regulations developed at the Provincial level will define the level of support required through education, training and labour mobility.
    Maybe Canada and the United States needs a constitutional basis to accomplish thischange.
    WAIT A MINUTE! both countries already have such Constitutions. Cheers;

  29. By all means look for and develop the means to provide refuge, there will always be a need, but do not reduce the wealth of other countries by reducing their trained population.
    Apart from the fact that we give $millions in foreign aid to these countries that we receive immigrants from, it’s also a fact that these immigrants send $billions back home to their relatives.
    Since the number of net job losses our nation has been experiencing for the past few years exceeds the number of immigrants our government is accepting, I think it’s time to halt immigration altogether until the economy starts to grow.
    JMO

  30. I do no know. Sounds like radical ideas. The problem is, that you all make good sense. Even to think of such radical ideas would get you in trouble with the unions who run Canada.
    A lot of bases were covered by the cuts mentioned along with foreign/national policies ….. How would you all like to join the Clown Party of Canada?

  31. I don’t think Canadians are anal like the Yanks. A tax increase to pay for health care would not be a big deal in comparison to the alternative disaster south of the border.
    Take a trip down a federal highway in California sometime if you want to see what cutting taxes too much does. Perhaps you should improve yourselves and get better jobs instead of whining about the CBC.

  32. I suspect that almost everyone posting here has above average income and education.
    Socialism, and the resulting financial mismanagement and entitlements, has destroyed California’s economy, the tax cuts came later when they ran out of money to pay the entitlements.
    Privatize the CBC.

  33. But Marshall, why should even $0.01 of my tax dollars go towards a “news” organization that supports your political views but disrespects mine?
    Why do I suspect that if a year from now the Harper government said, “We’re going to drop all funding for CBC TV and instead use the money to support Sun TV” that your tune would change faster than you can say the word “hypocrite”?!

  34. Most people who say they’d like government to cut expenses really mean they’d like to see the other guy’s benefits reduced
    End quote:———-
    Please don’t include me and others in your mythical benefit scam, I’ve never gotten a penny from government on any level. Speak for yourself please you do not speak for me. I don’t get benefits, you are in Canada and not Englandstan
    where benefits have destroyed that nation.
    CBC isn’t a benefit program it’s an arm of the Liberal Party.

  35. govornemnt should govorn not have t.v. channels and control radio stations , nor should they have a thought police they are there for the protection and advancement of it’s society it’s sole purpose is to serve it’s people.
    NO BODY HAS A RIGHT TO FREE HEALTH CARE !!!!

  36. if the CBC is nutted utterly i will die a happy man…
    it’s all i ask.
    it would only be the start for you turks of course and you’re right…but what a glorious beginning !

  37. ok ok ok…i’ll let the CBC slide for a while(one or two days)….only if every single gay or lesbian or anything even remotely sexual program were chopped instanter….

  38. There is a choice: Cut the CBC in favour of the F35. At least the F35 will have value to the security of the country.

  39. uh syncrodox?
    lay off that shit…you sound like a dummy to me when you pile on on a fiction…
    you go pour yourself another ‘angerdream’ pal…and if you don’t like that then just carry on piling on pal…i’ll be here to micro- interpret YOUR act and mebbe YOU won’t enjoy being the butt of cheap jackshit humour..
    your call you faggot pipe smoking wuss..
    just kidding meathead..jus’ kidding..
    so…you wanna date?

  40. heterosexual is one word you delectable piece of ignorant crumpet..
    but have a nice day anyway….
    …any chance we could meet some day?…after you’ve wiped your nose thoroughly of course..

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