i don't know anything more about corruption in the pmo than anybody else, although any sane analysis of democracy (beginning with plato) would argue it must be there.

but, i immediately pointed out that the most likely cause of the indigenous attorney getting sacked was a refusal - or the perception of a refusal - to take particular types of instruction.

i wouldn't be surprised if the story ends up being that the pmo didn't feel comfortable intervening, rather than that they actually did.

but, i'm sure there's a story there. and, i would expect that conspiracy theorists will find more salacious details by focusing on the new appointee rather than the old one.

as ted is a sophisticated financial expert, he surely understand that if you taxed poor people at...really at all....then they wouldn't be able to buy anything and the economy would collapse. then, stocks would fall, and his hard done by parasitic upper class would have to get jobs - with wages so low that they can't pay taxes.

if there's a structural problem here, and i'm not convinced there is, then it doesn't help to get the rich angry at the poor.

the problem is that wages are too low. if you support policies that boost wages, then you pull people into higher tax brackets.

but, it's just an accounting trick, at the end of the day, because the monetary system is circular - it doesn't really matter if you force employers to pay out or you send people checks. what's important is making sure that poor people have enough money to spend.

https://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/trudeau-is-right-40-of-canadians-dont-pay-income-taxes-which-means-someone-else-is-picking-up-the-bill

that said, my experience suggests that there may be a serious ignorance problem with low wage workers around the question of what kind of tax return they're entitled to, if they'd actually do their taxes. i would suspect that millions of dollars in refunds probably go unclaimed because legions of minimum wage workers are simply too stupid to fill out the forms.

i used to have this argument with people that i worked with all of the time, when they complained about the money being taken off their check. and, i'd ask them point blank - did you do your taxes?

"no. but, don't tell anybody, i don't want to get in trouble."

i can't count the number of people i tried to explain this to, and essentially nobody believed me when i did. they seemed to expect that if they did their taxes, they'd have to pay them - so they just don't do them. they had no idea that there's a check with their name on it sitting at the cra. really...

i guess it's a cost-benefit analysis as to whether non-tory governments want to get the word out or not. they might pick up some working class voters - but at the cost of giving them their taxes back.

as a poor person, i can confirm that i do not pay income taxes. even when i was working, i always received tax refunds at the end of the year to the point that i can say with clear confidence that i have not ever paid any income taxes at all.

while i do pay consumption taxes in theory, essentially all of the money that i actually spend is on food, which is not taxed. while i do not receive yearly tax refunds on disability, because i do not pay payroll taxes, i do get gst and hst rebates that work out to about $65/month from the province and $100, quarterly, from the feds. so, i get back about $90/month in taxes - and might spent $5, tops, most months.

by my calculations, harper's gst cut put something like $10/year back in my pocket.

in fact, i'd like to spin the situation around on the tories - and demand that they stop with the nonsense about how cutting taxes benefits the poor, because it doesn't, considering that it's usually tied to cuts in services.