On the one hand, I like the Green candidate as a person much better. On the other hand, I support McGuinty and most of what he's trying to do. On the other hand, the local Liberal candidate came out against MMP for a really dumb reason. On the other hand, the Green candidate said that his party supports consumption taxation rather than income tax. On the other hand...
I found this in my front door today:
At first I thought the NDP candidate had dropped by, until I opened it and saw this:
I actually phoned Gary Zemlak's office to find out if this was for real. Oh yes, they assured me. We just wanted to make sure everyone trying to decide between Liberal and NDP was aware of the potential consequences.
"I see", I said. "So what you're doing is telling people not to vote NDP, not because of their policies, but because it might split the vote and the Liberals might not get in?"
"Well... yeah."
The guy I talked to seemed genuinely baffled by my indignation. He kept saying that he was sorry if I was offended or confused, but parties do this kind of thing all the time during elections.
Sorry, but I don't remember ever seeing anything this blatant.
To top it all off, Gary Zemlak doesn't even like MMP, so as far as I can tell his ideal government would only ever have two parties: his, and the losers.
In any case, these guys have done me a big favour.
I've finally decided who to vote for.
the Green candidate said that his party supports consumption taxation rather than income tax
ReplyDeleteThat's the basic gist. But it's kind of complex. Where appropriate, Greens support siloing of taxes. There are some things that are of general benefit to society (healthcare, police, pension, education, military) that should be paid for out of the general budget. We'd like to see income taxes lowered and consumption-based taxes raised.
As an example: we'd like to see the cost for road maintenance and construction come out of the pockets of those who use the roads (by gas tax or something of the like). The idea is to discourage behaviours that don't benefit society.
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