kr!~~_7.JPG "pigdog47"){kind=avatar}
I wasn’t talking to you ross. Why did you go off?
So don't preach….etc etc etc etc
Your story is soooo amazing. So if I may ……
I came from a poor family. Watched my father work 6 days a week for next to nothing. He worked in front of a blast furnace and with an anvil; his hands and chest were scarred till the day he died.
I started working when I was 12. No time off after school and in all the years of public school and high school I only had one week off for a summer vacation in all those years….the rest of the time I worked at whatever I could get.
Neither did I get to keep my money….it went into the family. I left school in grade 12 and worked from day one. I wanted to go into the Min of Natural Resources but it meant going to Sault Ste Marie and there was no money. So I worked at anything from selling in a retail store, to digging home foundations out by hand, to working doors at bars. While doing this I started out my own small business and then another, but still worked to make sure money came in. I ended up selling for an international clothing company through a recommendation of a man I had worked for during my high school years. My territory was the Niagara Penn, around Toronto to Oshawa, to Tobermory to Windsor Ont with over 800 accounts including Eatons and Simpsons. I became the second top salesman in Canada. When the home office in the US sold the company to another company all the salesmen were disbanded and I went to work for one hotel chain and then another where I became the hotel manager for 3 years, but at night I still worked doors in bars. In the process I had a general manager in the US who said I had to lie to the staff, especially the immigrant housecleaning women. I seen how they were being treated and I attempted to covertly put in a union for them. Eventually it was discovered who was behind it and I lost my job. The only job I ever lost and proud of it.
After that I worked at bars most of the time and started another business, which I sold. Then started another business, a clothing store, which ended up with 3 locations, all of which I sold. Then I opened another business and another. When my partner in the first business unexpectedly died ….I closed it up and focused on the second business. The second business opened a door to another business which I still have and have had for many years with over 20 employees.
The one thing I have learned is what my father went through. A hard working man who did his best and in the end when the company got sold he lost his job of 27 years. I seen what it did to him, a man who lived to work and provide and because of those with money but without conscience he was nothing more than a disposable piece of paper from a file when he was no longer……needed. That was when I said I would never work for anyone again and anyone who worked for me would never face what happened to my father. No one! I’ve hired people off welfare rolls and people no one else would employ and gave them a trade and a profession. I have staff who when I first met them lived in dingy apartments and lived in shelters and now they have their own homes and families. No staff has ever been laid off and never will be so that I can make more money. They will do well and I make sure of that.
I will give my opinion anytime I feel like it. And yeah…..I’ve looked out for myself …….and others…… and I’ve done all right, Bud.
"I'm a little confused."
Yes, taxation and social justice can be confusing.
For an answer to your questions, I suggest you contact Brian Mulroney, former Conservative Prime Minister, the architect of the GST and GST tax credits for low income earners.
That government understood that taxing some items only - exempting basic groceries, rent, prescriptions, etc... - would result in more tax being charged to high income earners while distributing some to low income earners to somehow offset the tax payable on taxable items.
Not a perfect system of course but it made sense.
Most economists in Canada (except those working for the Conservative/Reform Party) generally agree that lowering the GST from 7% to 5% was a mistake. If the government had too much money it should have lowered income and/or payroll taxes for everyone but high income earners.. However, politics at the time dictated it was an easy and popular promise to make and keep. 😞
It’s a game….politicians, governments and taxes. The government is given more than enough but spend it wastefully. The sooner people come to that realization the sooner we can stop playing ‘their’ game.
If the governments were businesses they'd be bankrupt in a year.
