Get involved Prionce George remember the private organization invests their time and effort to maked money and the more money they make for their stake holders the welthier their stake holders become. The wealthy private stake holders can and do charge their customers (YOU & I ) more and more until only the rich can afford water and if we do not put a stop to private ( partenership ) or ownership of our water we won’t be able to buy our own water.

Good on these good people for raising the awareness of this very important issue. Hopefully the CUPE can have ears on the negotiations and help to inform the public of any sell out negotiated by our government.

Everytime we contract out a public service to a private business, we enter into a private public contract.

We pay them, they provide a service.

I think of it as a partnership if we have a long term contract with which they could make money or lose money. In other words, as long as the scope and quality stays the same as agreed to, the fixed money collected by the service delivering “partner” will provide them with a profit or a loss.

In the cases where such partnerships have resulted in the service delivery partner having repetitive losses and seeing no way out, the contract has been breached and a termination agreement has been made and the government concerned has taken the service delivery over again.

In either case, we keep the risk. Interestingly one of the key premises of a P3 agreement is risk transfer – from public to private. But, to transfer that risk costs money. Nobody in their right mind would take over risk for no benefit.

May I suggest this council, in the way it has kicked off its tenure with the Business Committee recommendations, the Core Services Review and the staff cuts at the city, appears to be the perfect example of local government headed toward privatizing services.

A well run, somewhat lean public service, overseen by responsible, fiscal management, and politicians who have the publics interest a heart, is a much better option than a PPP with 20,30,40 year contracts that lock Municipalities into situations that over time may be detrimental to the Municipality as a whole.

The PPP contracts apparently are very complex, and not something the average Citizen or Councillor would be able to understand.

I suspect that one reason for Municipalities to look at these options, is because they have spent all thier money, and are running out of options to get more. People are taxed to the hilt, and they have maxed out thier credit.

This is in part a result of years of mismanagement and building projects that were never needed. The chickens are now coming home to roost.

You can rest assured that the proposal for the Performing Arts Centre, will be some sort of PPP that over time will cost us big dollars.

Have a nice day.

I don’t really have objections to a private company doing such things as snow removal or pothole patching, in most cases a lot of it is contracted out already. What I do have objections to is allowing our services and resources to be put into the hands of foreign multinationals. If they want to privatize services, so be it, but keep it local. If a company can be run more efficient than gov’t services and save me money, great. The argument that wages will go down is probably true. But not down to a unreasonable amount. Let the $30/$40 per hour public works employees go to work for the private contractor and they will soon see that they have been getting grossly overpaid at the taxpayers expense for years. Once wages are brought down to a reasonable level then there will be more money for actual servicing. But as far as resources, such as water, being slid in throught the backdoor to foreign multinationals, that shouldn’t even be on the table.

I believe CUPE is jumping on this whole question now realizing it was caught with its pants down by Harper’s people negotiating privatization of services into this CETA trade agreement with European Union negotiators. CUPE of course is scared witless by the prospects of losing members across the country as local governments take the privatization route because of a lack of funds. But the scope scope of that trade agreement, which the feds are sneaking in the back door, is going to be massive (robocalls was thrown out there to keep the opposition and news hounds off the scent of these CETA backroom negotiations). Locally I think scary Shari will be a one term mayor because people will not tolerate her nethods. Be interesting for the reporters out there to find out what Councilor Koehler thinks about Europe’s privatization of public services, water rights, etc.

2 interesting documentaries for anyone who hasn’t seen them.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/blue-gold-world-water-wars/
http://documentaryheaven.com/flow-for-love-of-water/

Contracting out, privatization, etc. has been happening more often in the past tow to three decades than some people realize.

This one, for instance, happened under the last City Coucnil tenure.
http://www.judyrussellpresents.com/paradigm.swd/press/index.php?prnum=10

Will the Civic Centre operations be far behind? The CN Centre operations? We will likely not know till after the services review, will we?

Snow removal in its entirety rather than just small components? Street maintenance? Water and sewer operations? Gas is already private, why should other services to properties not be privatized?

Police service is already “privatized” in another fashion – to a public corporation which has all the same potential problems associated with it as going private. In fact, a private corporation working under a police commission might be a more cost effective solution.

The evolution has been long and slow, but the continuing direction and exploration of fine tuning has been happening right in front of us.

Dec 1987 article from the USA
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/975887?uid=3739400&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=55862231403

“but they argue government is there to serve the citizens, not make a profit for shareholders.”

Woa there!!! hold your horses!!

Whoever said that a “profit” needs to be monetary?

There are for profit and not for profit operations.

The City can be viewed as a not for profit. Just because it is a not for profit does not mean it should not run like a business. In other words, since no financial profit is to be made over the long run by a not for profit, all other things being equal, receiving a service from a not for profit should be less expensive than receiving it from a for profit.

However, in real life, that is not always true, and maybe less so now than ever before.

So, I do not like the undertone of the statement. To me it implies that just because government is there to serve the people rather than its shareholders, anything goes.

Well, the citizens happen to be the shareholders or stakeholders, as some may prefer, in government operations. They pay into the service as any investor and they expect some gains/profits as a result of that investment.

In addition, that gain is expected to be maximized to the greatest possible extent.

Any less, and those who run government will need to hear about it.

I think we are overlooking the fact that all Government employees, and politicians work for the taxpayers.

The issue of profit or not for profit should not enter into the picture at all.

We the taxpayers employ these people to supply us with a service, and if they dont live up to certain standards, then in the case of Civil Servants, they should be fired, and in the case of Politicians they should not be re-elected.

The fact is, that through laziness, lack of interest, apathy, time constraints, etc; we have allowed our communitities to be run into the ground, and basically go broke. We, as much as anyone else have a responsbility for this.

The City on the other hand, trys to maintain its budgets, and spending, and now have no options left but to go to the private sectors to get involved in Government. This of course is absolute BS.

When we have local politicians admitting that our infrastructure is basically finished, we then have an admission that the politicians, and civil service have failed. The answer is not going to private investment, because they will screw us worse than the politicians.

The answer is to re-organize the present system, get control of spending, borrowing, and taxes, take on some real responsibility and **grow up**

We didnt get into this mess by accident, it is the accumulation of incompetance over a number of years, and it will take a number of years to bail us out.

First and formost is to stop non-essential spending, hold the line on wages and benefits, and above all, stay the hell away from PPP’s

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm

Please provide some proof that on the average, taxes are higher than they were when you first started paying taxes, Palopu.

If governments would change the way they do their books to the same method of double-entry accrual accounting used by private businesses a meaningful comparison between whether it’s better to provide services ‘publicly’ or ‘privately’ could be made.

Until they do that, governments are continually going to cry that they’re cash poor, and need to contract services out. Or impose austerity measures as an alternative. The reason they are cash poor? In spite of taking nearly half everyone’s annual income in taxes, and still increasing debt every year?

Because in any modern economy with ongoing ‘labour displacement’, the rate that total incomes are distributed lags the rate that the overall costs of production come forward into prices.

When those costs can’t be fully liquidated through prices because there is simply an insufficiency of incomes distributed to do so, business profits fall. Bank loans to business ~ the ‘money’ that enabled costs to be incurred in the first place ~ are amortised from business profit.

When profits fall, more and more businesses are unable to repay their loans as contracted, and the Banks respond, quite naturally, by choking off further loans. They are not going to “throw good money after bad”. We get a recession.

Governments, since the time of the Depression in the 1930’s, respond by “stimulus spending”. The effect of this is to replace the currently unrepayable ‘floating debt’ of the private sector with the permanently unrepayable ‘fixed debt’ of the public one.

Government deficit spending allows the rate of business profit to rise, private business loans to again be more fully amortised, and the Banks to open the credit spigot again. Unfortunately this is only a temporary cure, and not really one at all when resorted to over and over again. As it has been.

There is a permanent cure for it, but until government accounting methods are changed, it cannot be utilised. And we waste our time arguing over whether something should be provided ‘publicly’ or ‘privately’ without realising that ‘financially’ we soon won’t be able to afford either with the accounting the way it is.

socredible, has any government on the planet adopted your proposed system?

“In spite of taking nearly half everyone’s annual income in taxes”

Could you also please explain that half value with an actual live example? No matter how I try, I simply can’t craft any “normal” situation were someone would pay 50% of their income in taxes, even for people that would be well into that “upper middle class” range (except perhaps if they bought a house in the year or 6 trucks).

Oh and if you want to cut through all of the complexities of brackets, rates, credits, deductions and all of that stuff, here is a very simple way to figure out the percentage of your income that you pay in Federal and Provincial income taxes each year:

Take line 435 from your federal return and divide it by line 150. That’s the rate you pay. If you wanted to take the analysis further, then add in your property taxes and the amount you pay in GST/HST and divide that by line 150. That ought to cover about 95% of the taxes you pay.

I don’t tend to think of EI or CPP as “taxes” per se, so that’s why I haven’t included them. If you want to include them, then you also need to factor in that you could and/or will get actual cash back from those systems at some point in time, unlike conventional income taxes. In that sense one is basically an insurance policy while the other is an investment fund.

“socredible, has any government on the planet adopted your proposed system?”

Yes … The Republic of Dhabutu did …..

No, NMG. No government has changed their method of book keeping to what I’ve suggested. I don’t expect any will either. Not even after the present set-up collapses beyond saving. Which it inevitably will.

I don’t believe any current government would even be interested in examining such a change, though a few people who’ve been in government have also talked about it. Corky Evans, for one. He was perceptive enough to notice that the public never sees an accounting of the government’s Assets. Only its Liabilities.

I don’t have a whole lot of use for the Fraser Institute, nor its left-wing alter ego, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. But the Fraser institute did Canadians a service when they computed “Tax Freedom Day”. The day each year, I believe it usually comes sometime around mid-year, in June or July, when the statistical average Canadian has paid ALL the government tax exactions, in all their various forms.

And the rest of your annual income is yours. Available to provide you with all the things that government doesn’t provide you with. Those things that have now caused that same average Canadian to go into hock personally to the tune of $ 1.53 for every $ 1.00 left him, now “…just to live”, as the head of the Certified General Accountants Association recently told a Committee of Parliament.

A nation of profligate spenders? Sure, there’s no doubt some people are. But what happens when the advice to spend less and save more is followed, not personally, but collectively? Who is wringing their hands and raising the spectre of imminent recession, widespread business failure, and rising unemployment whenever Consumer spending falls?

Surely we’ve spent enough time repeatedly trying the same things that just don’t work? But will we deign to examine anything else? No, apparently not. Pity.

I think the approximation of around 50% comes from adding ALL taxes

Federal, provincial, municipal

income, property, sales (possibly hidden taxes)

Try a $60,000 average income
approximate taxes paid
– $11,200 federal + provincial income tax
– $3,000 property tax
– $600 municipal user fees
– $3,000 set aside for saving (not taxable)
– $10,000 for mortgage/rent (not taxable)
– $3,900 GST/PST on remaining $32,000 disposable income

Total tax is approx $18,700 which is about 31%.

Did I forget something that would throw this approximation out the window? I know there are parts of the disposable income which gets taxed more (gasoline, for instance) but I think that the cost of groceries is more than gasoline and does not get taxed .. at least not directly.

So, I would love to see the basis of calculation of the tax freedom day. It might be quite accurate, but my quick review shows me I am missing something in my calculation if it is accurate.

Socred, they were talking about idea’s like yours on Bloomberg the other day. A think tank in London talking about quantitative easing in Britain for the middle class, rather than for the bankers….

In effect, that’s what has to happen, Eagle. Or there won’t be any ‘middle class’ left. Just a multitude very poor and a relatively few very rich, and what will always come out of that will eventually be a violent re-distribution.

But because it’s an attempted re-distribution of something that’s still an insufficiency ~ ‘money’ itself, in its relationship with ‘price values’ of goods and services expressed in money ~ it will only result in a far different kind of new ‘middle class’ than any thinking person would ever care to have. And the few who now control finance will be in absolute control of it.

It’s my understanding they use ALL taxes in computing ‘Tax Freedom Day’, Gus. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think things like CPP and EI are included.

Regardless, what we do pay in taxes does seem to approximate half a year’s gross income for the statistical average Canadian. Interesting, in that in spite of what we do pay, government debt levels continually rise. So do personal debt levels.

So if we were to pay 100% of our gross earnings to the government, and they were to then in turn to provide us with 100% of all goods and services we currently consume, they’d still be incurring debt.

Only it could never be paid, for if they have 100% of our incomes, where’s the money going to come from to pay it?

And there are still those who insist the current method of accounting is an accurate REFLECTION of physical facts?

“Regardless, what we do pay in taxes does seem to approximate half a year’s gross income for the statistical average Canadian”

Until I see a detailed breakdown of this “statistical average Canadian”, I’m not buying it. Using gus’ example, that person making 60K would have to pay another 11K in taxes to get to that 50% level. That’s over 80K in purchases if that were all GST/HST!!!

Honestly, I have about as much faith in what the Fraser Institute says on taxation levels, as I do in regards to what the BCTF says on the state of education in BC. The numbers they put forth simply make no sense no matter how I try and crunch them.

Okay so here you go, courtesy of the Fraser Institute:

“The Personal Tax Freedom Day calculator, like Tax Freedom Day, includes all taxes from all levels of government that Canadians pay. This includes: income & sales taxes; liquor, tobacco, amusement & other excise taxes; automobile, fuel, & motor vehicle licence taxes; CPP/QPP and EI contributions, medical & hospital taxes; property taxes; import duties; profit taxes; and natural resource levies”

Some observations:

– I rarely drink and don’t smoke so this indicator is useless for me
– I don’t know what an “amusement tax” is
– I don’t consider CPP and EI “taxes”. Like I said earlier, they are more akin to investments and insurance, respectfully
– Medical and hospital taxes? Are these not insurance premiums? Ever wonder what they would be if you lived in the US? Here’s a hint, they would be WAY more, but at least you could say that your taxes were low (even though in many cases they aren’t any lower than what you pay here)
– Import duties?
– Profit taxes? Huh? How exactly is this different from income tax?
– Natural resource levies? Double huh? I’m not sure if I’ve ever paid this in my life . . .

So even if I include the things on their list that ARE applicable to me, I’m still so far under 50% it isn’t even funny. Maybe next we need to examine how they define an average person or family. It sure as heck wouldn’t look like me or most anyone I know, LOL.

Some of those things, like natural resource royalties, for instance,would be included in the prices we pay for things made from those resources.

EI takes $ 1.40 from the employer for every $ 1.00 they take from the employee. That all has to be recovered in prices. Similarly the $ 1.00 for $1.00 employee/employer split for CPP.

Even if both were considered ‘investments’ they are both costs that have to come out of prices. Prices that have to be met with net incomes that in their totality are not only now less than prices in their totality, but each time any of the money taken is ‘invested’ ANOTHER set of costs has just been created.

In any case, whether you go with the Fraser Institute’s figures or not, the average ‘statistical Canadian is still
$ 1.53 in hock personally for every $ 1.00 of disposable income left him. And that ratio has risen steadily over time for years, and is rising more rapidly now.

The Fraser Institute would be justified in including CPP, EI, and MSP premiums as taxes because we have no choice in whether we will pay them. BC Medical Plan wasn’t compulsory when it was first brought in. If you didn’t want to be covered by it, you could have a private medical plan, or pay your own doctor’s bills.

“The Fraser Institute would be justified in including CPP, EI, and MSP premiums as taxes because we have no choice in whether we will pay them”

By that logic let’s include food, rent/mortgage payments, clothing and school supplies as taxes as well. Heck, we may as well take it all the way and say that utilities, deodorant and prescriptions drugs are taxes as well. Sound crazy? So is the logic of the Fraser Institute.

The fact of the matter is that the Fraser Institute publishes this information so that they can use their 50% figure and make the case through logical extension that taxes are too high. People hear the number, don’t think about what they are being told and whamo, they are convinced that they pay 50% of their income in taxes, that they are being “taxed to death” and that government tax policy is completely out of control.

Like many things, when you dig into the details you see that the whole thing is extremely misleading at best and downright manipulative at its worst. It’s contrived data used to influence the opinions of the general public and further the agenda of the Fraser Institute. I see no possible way that an objective person looking at their data and their methodology in arriving at their figures could conclude anything different.

I agree with your criticism of the Fraser Institute per se, NMG. They do have their own agenda, or at least one that’s been set out for them to find data to verify by those who finance them.

A similar criticism could be leveled against their left-wing opposite, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Who’d probably be able to produce figures that indicate taxes, especially all taxes on businesses, are too low.

They do conveniently forget to mention that any business that can’t charge the cost of its taxation into prices, and recover what’s been paid from the consuming public, won’t long be in business, however.

But the simple fact of the matter is taxes ARE too high for what we are getting from government. For reasons I previously outlined.

If they are not, then why the great reluctance to change the bookkeeping to show us the growth in national Assets that should accompany the ever growing government Liabilities we record as a National (and/or Provincial) Debt?

The only logical reason would be that the National Debt is being used as a ‘distributing agent’ to inject necessary new credit into the economy, because with ongoing ‘labour displacement’ the economy would not otherwise be financially self-liquidating as ongoing production continually comes onto the markets for
consumption. And without piling up ‘public debt’, which absorbs ever increasing amounts of tax dollars to service, ‘private debt’ couldn’t be repaid from production that otherwise couldn’t all be sold.

BTW, you could grow your own food, make your own clothes, even your own deodorant, and provide your own utilities. You wouldn’t live at a very high standard of living, but you could live. But taxes are levied in ‘money’. And you can’t ‘make’
that, you can only ‘get’ it from someone else whose got some.

Why not just avoid taxes altogether? I mean if one REALLY wanted to, they could just set up shop in a makeshift shelter beside the Willow River, gnawing on local plants and whacking rabbits and grouse with a big stick, all the while contemplating their awesome tax free existence :)

I don’t think they’d have time to do much contemplating, NMG. Or maybe they would. Most people wouldn’t choose to live that way, because there are too many advantages through “unearned increments” to being “in association”, i.e. in society.

And to better utilise them we have government to ‘make the rules’, and enforce them, and interpret them, when there’s doubt as to whether or not they are fair and just.

This has a cost, a real cost, because someone has to do the work. And so we have taxes. Originally those doing other more productive work gave up a portion of their production to meet the cost of keeping those engaged in this essentially non-productive, but nonetheless necessary, work.

We expanded the advantages of government to include providing personal security beyond the scope of the rules we originally agreed to be subject to as a group, or community, or nation, by further providing for defense against external threats to our society and its rules.

No sane person would contest that taxes for such purposes are sensible and necessary. But they’ve evolved a little beyond that, and simply funding other things we’ve deemed best to do through government.

Probably one of the first known abuses of taxation took place in ancient Egypt, when taxation was shifted from being levied in giving up a portion of one’s actual ‘production’ to meet the common good, to being a charge levied in ‘money’ to embellish those in control of government as absolute rulers over the people they were supposed to be serving.

It’s recounted in the Bible, in the story of Joseph and the little corn racket he pulled on the Egyptian peasantry.

Where farmers were taxed a portion of their bumper crops for five years, most of which was put into storage. Quite sensibly, it seemed, to meet the needs of the predicted five years of famine that would follow. This type of taxation was of no particular disadvantage to the farmers at the time, since they were all producing way more food than could all be consumed anyways.

But what WAS of great disadvantage to them was when they were subsequently charged, in ‘money’, to BUY back what had been set aside to meet their needs in the following five years of famine. And they had to ‘get’ the ‘money’, which they couldn’t grow or make. In those days, only the government made that.

By the end of those five years, all the freehold farm lands of Egypt were in possession of Pharoah, and under control of his erstwhile ‘Prime Minister’, Joseph.

And things haven’t changed a whole lot since.

“No sane person would contest that taxes for such purposes are sensible and necessary”

I agree, the Fraser Institute is full of insane people, LOL :)

The people behind the Fraser Institute pursue the same agenda that the people behind the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives hope to implement by different means.

The latter posits that “the poor are poor because the rich are rich”.

And the former tries to prove they’re correct.

Neither one will admit that ‘poverty’, in a country like Canada, which can and does produce far more than it can consume, is not caused by any physical condition. Only a financial one.

Their insanity is believing that what should be an accurate numerical reflection of physical reality is just that ~ an accurate numerical REFLECTION. In the face of ever mounting evidence that it is not.