09-13-2024, 05:51 PM
A lot of the government energy that inspired big things after the Second World War can be traced to the desire to avoid the turmoil that immediately followed the First World War, plus the fear that not looking after the population at large could lead to, among other things, communism. Interestingly, that same post-war period also inspire many private and community "big ideas" that still exist today. Rather than complaining that everything was broken, people simply got things done.
As a thought exercise, if some of the wealth that is currently parked in the 1% were sent to the public purse in some way, how much of the infrastructure and programming backlog could be fixed?
On a similar note, the Mulroney government introduced the GST (now HST) which went a long a way towards bringing new revenue into federal coffers. The Trudeau government introduced the carbon tax as means to pay for the desperately needed climate resiliency (and other environmental damages). When the Chretien Liberals were elected, they promised to get rid of the GST, but here it is more than 30 years later. Once challenge for the Polievre Conservatives will be how to replace the lost revenue if they follow through on their promise to remove the carbon tax. After 40+ years of cost-cutting and asset selling, there really isn't much left to do that won't be problematic.
As a thought exercise, if some of the wealth that is currently parked in the 1% were sent to the public purse in some way, how much of the infrastructure and programming backlog could be fixed?
On a similar note, the Mulroney government introduced the GST (now HST) which went a long a way towards bringing new revenue into federal coffers. The Trudeau government introduced the carbon tax as means to pay for the desperately needed climate resiliency (and other environmental damages). When the Chretien Liberals were elected, they promised to get rid of the GST, but here it is more than 30 years later. Once challenge for the Polievre Conservatives will be how to replace the lost revenue if they follow through on their promise to remove the carbon tax. After 40+ years of cost-cutting and asset selling, there really isn't much left to do that won't be problematic.