@globeandmail Yeah, suuure, we'll spend it all on widows and orphans, yeah, yeah. None will get siphoned off to corrupt leaders' off-shore bank accounts while they perpetuate the "crisis'. We're such morons.
On Sunday Switzerland votes on a referendum to end mass immigration by capping the population at 10 million.
Would you vote yes to put a cap on Canada's population?
@globepolitics How can this be done without digital ID's for everyone? Convince me that it won't grow into government digital control and spying on everyone. Convince me this won't turn into Big Brother blocking all non-progressive wrong-think.
@globeandmail Ever tried talking to mere mid-level elites in the "public service"? They live in their own BS world, living high off the taxpayer feeding trough.
Milton Friedman's greatest regret.
The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.
Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.
Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.
This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.
Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.
82 years ago today Scotty from Star Trek was shot 6 times during D-Day while fighting for Canada during WWII. On June 6, 1944, James M. Doohan of Vancouver, later of Sarnia, landed at Juno Beach while serving in the Canadian Army. He was wounded six times later that day by friendly fire and later became best known as Scotty on Star Trek. 🇨🇦
@globeandmail We used to be diverse. Now we're just giving the country away to hoards of foreigners plundering our social welfare system and public pension plan.
@globeandmail You mean the existing GST rebate that's been around for over 20 years... Thanks Carney, for wasting money putting a new name on it so you can take credit for it.