Tax Freedom!?%$
Is that an oxymoron?

Several people have wondered why I do not start to work till this time of year.

I refuse to do any work that would cause me to pay income tax since Jan 1st 2010. My one and only resolution I am keeping.

pay for their arrogance complete criminals with retirement benifits iam sooooooooo lost !!!! my children should be ashamed at myself,,,, i did not protect them from evil !!!!!!!! ahhhhhhh

People should continue to protest taxes in general, and HST in particular. A large portion of tax dollars is wasted, pure and simple. This has to stop.

Complaining about taxes is not enough. We have to take some action. If the Liberals continue to ignore our concern over the HST, and continue to tell us that its too bad we dont like the tax because they are going to implement it anyway, then we have to take some action.

First and foremost we need to see them actually take this HST protest serious, and recind this tax NOW not wait for the petition to move through the various processes. Following the process could see them dragging this out until Sept 2011. This is not good enough.

If they do not take action immediatley then we should start to give serious consideration to recall in November of this year. Following the process gives them control of the agenda. Going to recall gives us control of the agenda.

Everyone who signed the petition, and all those who didnt sign, need to make a commitment to vote for a recall when and if one is started in your riding. The threat of recall of 8 MLA's can force the Government out of office. Im sure that they would recind this tax rather than lose their majority.

The time has come for action to take precedence over words. Start thinking **RECALL IN THE FALL**

Stopping this tax will go a long way to convincing other levels of Government that the days of excessive taxation and spending are over. City Hall should take notice, because they will be the next on the list.

Can't figure that one out, I'm paying taxes each and every day, most times paying tax on tax.

Check out where you stack up as a Canadian against other countries. We whine because we can not because we should.

Cougs78,I am not sure if I understood your post correctly,and if I have misinterpreted what you were trying to say I am sorry.I find when people say quit your whining or complaining,that people who are doing the whining are just exercising the rights that our fathers ,grandfathers fought for.So when people try comparing us to other countries and say quit complaining it could be worse,I agree it could be worse.But if you ask people to stop complaining then sometimes the only thing people have left is to resort to violence.This is why you have rioting or civil wars,etc. in other countries,because it is a last resort.So I chose to accept the whining rather than the alternative.

Yes jakeadoo, I agree that we have rights because we all fight for them daily. What I do see more and more is a sence of entitlement and a lack of effort on some people to take responsibility for their own lives. They chose to complain rather than make their own life better. It is always the governments fault or their neighbors fault, never their own. Oops ,I guess I'm whining now!

Palopu's right. If we don't make a concerted effort to stop the HST, those in government will just keep coming back for more, and more, and more...

They do NOT treat OUR tax money as if it were their own. Not when it comes to spending it. They treat us like we're cash cows that can always be further milked for more.

Many ways in which they waste are blatantly obvious. We do not need to pay a million bucks a year to the guy who heads BC Ferries. Any more than we needed to pay seven million for him to have the smokestacks on the boats painted with some silly looking logo. One that God only knows how much more someone else was paid to come up with.

Similar examples are rampant throughout all levels of government, and go on uncorrected, year after year.

Bad as that is, it's likely only the tip of a much larger iceberg. And that is the use of our tax dollars to pay tribute to the financial sector in the form of perpetual interest for money borrowed publicly to allow the ongoing, and otherwise unrepayable, floating debts of the private sector to periodically be transformed into the unrepayable fixed debt of the government.

This will continue, unabated, even if we were successful in bringing governments back to their senses in properly negating the current waste of taxpayer dollars they all engage in.

It is a major problem that we will have to deal with, and soon, or taxation will still eventually absorb ALL our incomes, and even so, there still won't be enough 'money' to fund what needs doing.

Quite often legitimate complaints are referred to as whining, usually by people who walk around in a daze One day they will wake up and say **what the hell happened**

Most Governments these days tax and spend because they can. They are always looking for different projects to pour our money into, because the alternative would be to reduce taxes, and downsize Government.

If you look at Prince George which has a great tax base, you would think that we could operate at least at a break even point, but no, we are millions in debt, and looking to borrow more. This of course means more taxes.

If we stuck to the basics we would have lots of money, however thats certainly not going to happen in the near future.

Every project that we pour money into is supposedly going to attract people to Prince George, however it has never happened. The only people we attract in any number is Government Workers. Other than that,things remain pretty much the same.

The City will continue to come up with schemes, that allow them to borrow and build, because thats what they do. So get ready for the next phase of useless buildings.

1. Performing Arts Centre

2 Grandiose Police Station

3. Wood Innovation Centre (Whatever the hell that is)
4. Co=Generation plant to heat downtown buildings. This one will be good for tearing up all the buildings and streets to install pipe etc, at a huge cost, that will not be factured into the overall project. Considering that these buildings already have Natural Gas, and Hydro., one would think that, that would be sufficient, but no, lets go for heated water, and spend millions.

We need a serious change of attitude when it comes to spending tax dollars. Politicians should return to the basics.

Yep, Palopu. there is nothing wrong with whining as long as it is on a higher more educated and knowledgeable level! :-)

If politicians return to basics who is going to pay for the entitled ones amongst us. Read a book called Affluenza and you will have a new outlook on life!

Im not whining on any levl PrinceGeorge merely stating some observations. It would behoove a hell of a lot of people on these posts and in this town to start to look at whats taking place around them, and at how their money is being wasted.

If more people took an active interest in how they are being screwed to death by Governments we could start to make some headway on these problems.

This latest fiasco the 2015 Winter Games is a prime example. Who the hell asked for this to come to town??? The Mayor, and some others at City Hall and maybe some merchants.

So these dudes make an application for the games that at the outset costs us $400,000.00. If we dont get the games that is the end of the $400,000.00. If we do get them then it is going to cost us something in the neiborhood of $13 Million dollars. Supposedly there will be a benefit to the economy of $50 or $60 Million dollars, however this is a nebulous number at best. If there is big money to be made it will be made by local business, however the costs of the games for all intents and purposes will be paid for by taxpayers.

The icing on the cake is that the City and the Local Merchants want 3000 or more people to volunteer to work for these games to make them a success.

So lets see if we have this right. Local Business makes $50-60 Million dollars and the volunteers get the opportunity to work for nothing. Sweet bloody deal.

Volunteers havent woken up to the fact that they are the cheapest form of labour in the world.

With all the money to be made you would think that they would offer to pay a little for their help. Not bloody likely.

What Palopu is talking about exists at all levels of government, and it comes about because our current financial system is NOT fully 'self-liquidating' in the economy as a whole in each succeeding cycle of production.

So long as there is ongoing, overall labour displacement in any modern industrial economy, and most people still receive their incomes as payment for their labour, overall incomes will be falling in ratio to the overall costs of production continually coming forward into prices at the point of final retail.

Distributed incomes in their totality will be inadequate to fully liquidate the total costs of production, and, as a result of that, overall business profits, from which loan principal will be repaid will be unable to fully amortise loans as contracted ~ UNLESS (a.) the country continually runs a "favourable" balance of trade, where we constantly export MORE than we import, and receive international credit for the difference, (something which is impossible for any country to sustain without completely depleting its actual resources), or, (b.) there is continual ongoing expansion in the economy which distributes additional incomes NOW, in respect of costs which will be deferred for as long as possible into the future.

And this is one, and quite probably the main, reason WHY governments spend so seemingly stupidly on the kind of projects Palopu mentioned, plus Olympic Games, Site C dams, new ships for the Navy, etc., etc.

Of course not all these things are entirely ridiculous ~ some do have considerable worth in their own right.

But the hidden reason for all of them is the same. To distribute incomes sufficient to enable the private sector to more fully amortise its borrowings, and allow the financial sector to continue to lend.

The debt incurred is unrepayable, but because it has now become 'public' debt instead of 'private' debt, the assumption is it will always be able to be forcibly serviced through taxation. Ergo, the HST, et al. And what will come after that. Unless we call a halt to it. NOW.

It is a foolish way to accomplish something which could be done far more effectively, and with far fewer negative repercussions, both here, and in other countries, if it were done differently. (Some of those repercussions are:- constantly increasing taxes; prices that continually outpace incomes; rising business, consumer, and public indebtedness; international friction caused by the ongoing need to continually 'dump' product abroad to gain export credits; a future rise in interest rates; and an underperforming, wasteful, economy that constatly replaces existing plant that is fully adequate to meet any consumptive demands on it, with newer, larger plant whose capital costs can only INCREASE prices instead of decreasing them, envirionmental degradation, and a number of others too long to list here).

All these things could be dealt with simply by properly equating 'prices' to 'incomes', and making the economy fully financially self-liquidating in each and every succeeding cycle of production. It is not difficult to do, and it is likely the ONLY way we'll ever be able to get ourselves out of the taxation mess we're now sinking ever deeper into.

Fraser Institute bullshit.