this is a terrible idea.

if it actually succeeded, it would remove the gst from a small number of items that few people pay and replace it with inflation on everything. instead of paying 13% on non-essential services that most poor people rarely purchase, we'll see a return to high inflation that affects everything. the reason is that corporations will increase prices to adjust to the tax on profits.

as a poor person, about the last thing in the world that i'm concerned about is a tax on luxury goods like cable tv or cell phones. these are items purchased by wealthy people, not by poor people. the policy reflects the fact that the ndp's voting base is actually the upper middle class.

surely jagmeet singh is aware that there are no taxes on grocery store food. i have no idea what he's talking about when he claims there's gst on grocery store food; that's absolutely false.

frankly, i think the idea of taxing luxury items like cell phones to pay for services is a good idea and i would vote in favour of it, not against it. this the kind of basic "progressive taxation" policy you expect the ndp to support, not oppose. this is in truth an extremely right-wing proposal. what side of the spectrum is the ndp coming down on?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-writes-premiers-gst-cut-1.7388318

i think taylor swift is intending to create music for very young girls and that these middle aged or older women at her shows are really not her target demographic, even if they are largely responsible for her obscene wealth.

listen, i'm just too old to listen to taylor swift. i remember britney spears, but i thought i was too old for that, even. i did like the spice girls, but i didn't tell anybody.

in fact, i had a bunch of madonna records in the 80s and 90s and that would be my actual age group, which makes me two or three generations removed from taylor swift, in terms of little girl or tweenage girl pop.

i would argue that watching a middle aged woman dance to and sing taylor swift songs at a baseball stadium like she's an eight year-old is sort of sad and pathetic and something that really belongs in the bathrooms and closets of the world rather than in giant stadiums for exorbitant prices, but i also have no real concept of what tiktok even is, which just exacerbates the generation gap.

so, i'm sorry, but i'm too old for taylor swift, and i'm not interested in having a midlife crisis or on holding on to being a tween into my 50s or on pretending i am.

i grew up in the 80s. i didn't watch or care about wrestling myself (i very correctly realized it was idiotically stupid), but i had to sit on the bus with little boys that did and it was actually somewhat traumatizing for some of them to learn the truth, as it unfolded.

you know wrestling is fake, right?

no! no!

they're all actors. paid. it's bullshit.

no! it's real!

i think a lot of americans are in truth like those little boys on the bus, and at some point they'll have to face the truth of it. it's been obvious since reagan, at the least. i can't comment on anything before that at this level, as i can't understand this by reading about it. trump has just utterly dropped the bullshit.

you know the elections are fake right?

no! no! they're real!

trump's tendency to pick actors, personalities and news hosts for cabinet rather than politicians or executives may perhaps suggest that he's setting up his administration like an entertainment event.

are the elections in the united states any less fake than wrestling? fake news? fake president?

on some level, what these people actually do is just read lines anyways. is being a fox news host substantively different than being the secretary of defence? shockingly, it might not be.

the open question left to answer in my view is whether trump is setting up a reality tv show to be orchestrated from the oval office, and this is all being coordinated as a form of entertainment, or if these actors and news hosts were chosen precisely because they're trustworthy agents of the deep state that will read what they're told without any push back.

it's been clear for quite a while that the real reason biden got pushed out is because he thought he knew better than the generals and he wouldn't listen. the system is designed to give the president authority, but the president is also a civilian leader, and any president that isn't retarded should know to defer; biden was clearly on an ego trip and he may have started world war three in the process. the comparisons to lbj are longstanding, but he seems to have been removed for the same reasons that kennedy was, although they did it the gentle way this time. he was unstable and not somebody that the pentagon could leave with his finger on the button.

the corollary of that is that empty suits repeating talking points is actually exactly what the pentagon wants and exactly what the pentagon has wanted for years. they don't want these civilians walking in and thinking they know better; and, clearly, almost no president has ever been qualified, and especially can't be now due to the shifts in technology since the 18th century. the last president that was qualified to be commander in chief was eisenhower.

we'll have to see how this unfolds; it's not currently clear. are these employees of the trump reality show, or were they picked because they wouldn't talk back?