Liberal Desperation?

On the way into work today I heard the latest Liberal Party of Ontario attack ad on the radio. You can watch it below.

Outside of the fear mongering and outright lies (who knew that firefighters were provincial and not municipal), I was shocked by the begging and pleading for a strategic vote from the Liberals.

I don't remember any other ads from political parties asking for strategic voting before. I have heard special interest groups advocate for strategic voting, I have heard leaders and candidates imply that strategic voting was the right thing to do at campaign stops, but I do not remember anything quite so blatant as below.

Has anyone else?

Is Hudak Peaking too Early?

I have to admit, I am having a lot of issues with the polls this election.  They are all over the map!

Progressive Conservatives up. Liberals up. Liberals leading in voter intention. No, the Progressive Conservatives leading in voter intention. Its a damn bloody mess. In fact, it gives damn bloody messes a real bad name!

So I (like I am sure most) are following threehundredweight.com to try and make sense of it all. The latest numbers seem like good news for the Progressive Conservatives, they are trending up in all areas at the expense (mostly) the Liberals.

However, looking at the region tracker of threehundredeight.com I begin to wonder if they might be peaking a day or two too early.

See below, and tell me what you think!

Peaking too soon?

23 out of 26 peer reviewed taxation papers show that.......

...tax cuts create jobs and promote growth. Period.

"This review of empirical studies of taxes and economic growth indicates that there are not a lot of dissenting opinions coming from peer-reviewed academic journals. More and more, the consensus among experts is that taxes on corporate and personal income are particularly harmful to economic growth, with consumption and property taxes less so. This is because economic growth ultimately comes from production, innovation, and risk-taking."

Some money quotes of particular interest in this election:

• "Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. Fiscal consolidations based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to succeed at reducing deficits and debt and less likely to create recessions." -Alberto Alesina & Silvia Ardagna, Large changes in fiscal policy: taxes versus spending, in Tax Policy and the Economy, Vol. 24 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010)
• "Taxes directed towards public investments first add then subtract from GDP." - N. Bania, J. A. Gray, & J. A. Stone, Growth, taxes, and government expenditures: growth hills for U.S. states, 60 National Tax Journal 193-204 (2007).
• "Tax-financed spending reduces growth in developed countries, increases growth in developing countries." - Stephen Miller & Frank Russek, Fiscal structures and economic growth: international evidence, 35 Economic Inquiry 603-613 (1997).

Sure you can quibble that Tim Hudak's Million Job plan won't create a million jobs, but you cannot honestly state that the main thrusts of lower taxes, lower spending, reduced corporate and home expenses, and reduced regulation won't have a positive impact on the economy. Almost every study agrees that it will.

The Liberals, the NDP, and their union and media lapdogs are simply economic deniers putting their children, and their children's children at financial risk so they can continue down "me me me only about me" path.

h / t to Jack Minz's article in the Financial Post on May 29th. I had to fix his link to get it work.

Hudak Emerges Victorious

I believe Tim Hudak emerged victorious in the debates! And it seems the poll at CTV Ottawa agrees. At least at the time of this blog post writing :)

Unfortunately, I don't believe it was a knockout for Mr. Hudak. He wins on points, but I am not sure he connected enough with voters to swing the electorate firmly in his camp. Andrea Horvath exceeded expectations tonight.

Tell me, what did like and dislike from the leaders debate?

A 'Bozo eruption"

John McKay calls Justin Trudeau's pontifications on abortion a "bozo eruption". In reality, it might be more accurate to just call Justin Trudeau a bozo. Or perhaps more diplomatically, say that Justin Trudeau had yet another 'bozo eruption".

Restoring my faith in humanity!

Three New York teenagers purchase a couch and chair from the Salvation Army for 55 dollars and find the couch a bit lumpy. Turns out that the lumps were envelopes stuffed with cash! Rather then keeping the cash for themselves (which many people would have done), they found a deposit slip in one of the envelopes and tracked down the owner of the money and returned it.

You have to give credit where credit is due, these three young teenagers are honest to god, good human beings.

How many of us would have done the same? I cannot say 100% for sure I would have returned the money.

Be honest in the comments below.

Two Surprising Facts about the Ontario Public Sector

Ok, so it has been many years since I last posted. I offer up the usual (lame) excuses. Work, family, leisure activities, service with the CAF, and many other (irrelevant) excuses. You know what they say about excuses....

I was inspired to write this blog post after reading some posts on the National Post about the sunshine list, disclosure of public salaries, and other recent election articles. So, after reading the comments, and doing some digging on the state of the public sector in Ontario I realized just how much trouble we are in.

Yes, yes, Mr Johnny-Come-Lately over here, but I think what I found out would shock anyone. Sure, we all know there are lot of public sector workers in Ontario. And we all know there are a lot people on the sunshine list as well. But I doubt realized just how well off the public sector is in comparison to the rest of the population of Ontario.

Yes Virginia, it's more then just a defined benefits pension and great dental and health.

FACT: 28% of all tax filers in Ontario earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year are employed in the public sector.

According to StatsCan, there are 5,840,200 full time workers in Ontario (private/public sector). Armine Yalnizyan of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, states only about 6% of tax filers in Ontario have an income greater then 100K.

So, let's do some math:

• 5840200 * 0.06 = 350,412 workers in Ontario earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year.

According to CBC, there are 97,796 works on the March 2014 sunshine list.

So let's do some more math:

• 97796 / 350412 * 100 = 27.908 %

FACT: Nearly 9% of all public sector employees are on the Sunshine list.

If I take this to include just public sector employees in Ontario, there are 1,107,042 public sector employees working in Ontario at the provincial and municipal level according to StatsCan. (Note, you may need to add some filters for geographic location and to filter out federal public sector).

And since math is so fun, let's do some more:

• 97796 / 1107042 * 100 = 8.83 %

You are four times more likely to be earning more than one hundred thousand dollars a year if you work for the public sector vs private sector. And this is not counting benefits or pension.

It's a great gig if you can get it, no wonder its a prime target for Tim Hudak to make cuts in the quest to slay the deficit and conquer the debt.