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As a single household expenditure most Canadians are paying more to maintain their governments than they are paying for their housing

Taxes Number One Household Expenditure


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By —— Bio and Archives May 21, 2011

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Remember the myth that buying a home is the largest expenditure you’ll make in your lifetime? Not so since government is costing you even more. As a single household expenditure most Canadians are paying more to maintain their governments than they are paying for their housing.
According to 2009 data published by Statistics Canada, average annual household expenditures in Canada for personal income taxes exceeded shelter costs. The table, which breaks down yearly household expenditures into food, shelter, clothing, recreation, personal care, income taxes and other expenditures, found on average income taxes cost the most at $14,399 with shelter amounting to $14,095. As can be expected, transportation comes in next at $9,762 with food taking forth spot at $7,262. Add in all the taxes citizens pay over and above their income taxes and it becomes clear just how much money we spend on government relative to other costs of living. In spite of the crushing demand that maintaining government makes on our incomes, many Canadians still cling to the nostalgic notion that they are working for themselves and their families. After all, most of us would rather believe the sacrifices, stress, long hours away from family and costs associated with training and preparatory education are for the betterment of our families, children and quality of life. Rather we are working to support bloated salaries, gold-plated pensions and shoddy services that are typical of governments everywhere. As governments continue to grow Canadians are becoming more like share croppers in colonial times where slave masters claimed the majority of production while the slaves eked out a sustenance living based on the leftovers. Canada needs its own revolution and its citizens desperately need emancipation from a system that is turning them into serfs in the service of a monarchical and confiscatory state. So absolute is the government’s ownership over salaries that it claims its share even before the worker – the person who actually did the work – gets their share. One need only look at one’s paycheque each month to see the pittance left over after the government skims its portion. This is particularly troublesome since the average public sector wages outstrip average private sector wages. In other words, the productive member of society is penalized and the government bureaucrat is rewarded through the toil and sacrifice of the worker. This obliterates the notion of private property and imparts upon the government the right to claim a significant portion of its population’s productivity to use in whatever manner it sees fit, bereft of oversight, fairness and fiduciary responsibility. Is it right that government worker salaries are so bloated that many can retire at age 55 when most average working Canadians are having to work beyond age 65 to maintain a reasonable quality of life? Canada has developed its own caste system where a new, political privileged class has emerged, which accumulates its wealth based on the sweat equity of working people. Many of us don’t realize what tax free day means. In 2009 the Toronto Star reported that June 6 was tax freedom day; the day when the average Canadian family has worked enough to pay its total tax bill to all levels of government. In case it isn’t clear, each and every day a Canadian goes to work for the first six months of the year, they do so for the government. Unfortunately the government isn’t quite done with you yet. It seems that the six months of labour we must invest each year to maintain our governments aren’t quite covering all the costs since many provinces are introducing new user fees. Examples are B.C.’s health premium and new school fees being introduced in Calgary to cover study materials and lunch-time supervision. In spite of the mountains of money transferred from Canadian workers to the greedy politicians and bureaucrats, it seems the later are still incapable of providing core services within budget. There’s a saying that if government managed the Sahara desert it would run out of sand. In spite, shockingly, I come across a few Canadians – Liberals and NDPers alike – who say taxes aren’t high enough, that government should do even more. I shudder to think what their idea of tax freedom day should be, August, September or October? Perhaps we can all forgo that dream of one day owning a house and instead we can live in cardboard boxes so we can set aside even more of our money for government. Let’s face it my fellow Canadians, our families and quality of life are secondary and presumably we must sacrifice everything else in life lest our government contracts and those poor, overworked civil servants must actually get real jobs. Don’t kiss the kids good-bye before going to work each morning since they are not the main inheritors of your sacrifices. Instead we ought to be kissing bureaucrats and politicians.



Tom Barak -- Bio and Archives | Comments

Tom is a Canadian-based freelance marketing consultant and writer and has been a long-time member of the Conservative movement. He received his MBA accreditation from the University of Manitoba and splits his time fundraising for community centres and mentoring and consulting with local and national businesses.


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