I don’t really have time to write anything today… not even with my usual time-saving trick of not bothering to write an ending. I spent much of the day driving and I need to be up early tomorrow.
So, in lieu of thoughts, have some political grumbling.
Joe Oliver just announced an increase to the limit for tax-free savings accounts. As a way for people with money to avoid paying taxes on it, I automatically think it’s probably a bad idea… but the defense of the increase is pretty terrible.
“Why don’t we leave that to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s granddaughter to solve that problem.”
Of all the things in the world he could have said, this is what he goes with? Let’s create a problem that future generations will have to solve? Let’s hope that the governments of the future are better than ours? Let’s saddle our grandchildren billions in debt and hope they figure out a way to deal with it?
He also said “If you have to go to 2080 to say there’s a problem with the program I think you’ve got a pretty good program.”
There are problems with it already, not 65 years from now… but perhaps not by his math. According to this article the Parliamentary Budget Office predicts a 1.3 billion dollar shortfall this year. The government’s numbers are 1.1 billion over five years… that’s a pretty substantial difference. This means that, unless Parliament expects the deficit to become a surplus, they are predicting 6 times the deficit that government is predicting.
Well, if there’s one good thing you can say about this, it’s that at least Oliver is expecting a future Prime Minister to be a woman. Even if she’s a Harper.
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