These items may save us from financial Armageddon??
Budget snippets that are touted as financial lifelines:
- Tax cuts that give people earning $80,000 pa about $200
- Tax cuts that give people earning $20,000 (only the deserving poor) $500
- Give the unemployed (the 30% in Ontario that qualify) another 5 weeks on benefit
- Give a home reno credit of 15% (10% after tax)
- Give Municipalities access to lots of dough but only if they match it (pushing local taxes higher because municipalities aren't allowed to run deficits)
- Seniors get another $1000 age credit but no relief for the RRIF ballsup that has cost them money this tax year.
- A whack of money for retraining but retraining for what, we don't have a national skills database or even know exactly what trades need to be replaced due to the ageing workforce. And if we did would they get hired? For example we know that we need nurses but can't afford to hire them!
- I hate to be cynical but when this happens what else is there? - $8.3-billion skills budget over two years, half of which will be used to freeze premiums. So business gets a break (they pay double premiums so they benefit doubly) and it is touted as training!!
On quick assessment this budget strikes me as a failure all round, because :
- Not enough money without strings to do anything realistic.
- The Cons have produced a Lib budget to stay in power, abandoning all semblances of conservatism. How the party base can handle this is anybody's guess, they must be going nuts.
- The Libs will produce an amendment but will fail to get support and end up supporting a budget that could have been written by them.
- The infrastructure money will really only mean that those construction workers laid off last fall might get to get to work a little longer next fall as some of the projects may kick in.
- The unemployed didn't get what they needed - more weeks and better access to a crappy system, nothing for provincial support to help when the workers drop off EI and go on Welfare.
- The municipalities will not be building much because they do not have matching funds. For instance will Cobourg accelerate its plans for a seniors centre just to access infrastructure money? I doubt it if taxes have to go up.
Just a few morning thoughts, comments please
4 comments:
I liked your suggestion "Not enough money without strings to do anything realistic."
That's what we need more of. Lots of cash spread around will-nilly. The pigs will come running to that trough. Adscam II here we come.
One of my favourites is the announcement of a further $407-million for VIA Rail. This on top of the over-and-above $691-million then-Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon handed the Crown Corporation in October of 2007. I say over-and-above because VIA receives a regular subsidy of $200-million a year. Albert Einstien defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But what has all this money bought us? Same old same old. This is insane. Somebody has to get up in the cab of this runaway money train and find the emergency brake before it's too late.
Maybe it already is.
Dr Strangelust has been saying the same thing over and overty and poverty. Canada Copach lines gets me from Montreal to Toronto for $38. Looking forward to VIA matching that
IF VIA runs a lousy service it is only because of the endless funding cuts it has endured over
many long years.
We need more and faster trains and a lot fewer cars on the road. If you look at Europe and Japan you can see how this type of transportation system can work to everyone's benefit. Not only is it faster and more convenient, it's cheaper and much more environmentally sustainable.
GO VIA!
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