A comment from this thread which is in response to this article on CBC.

By:JA Penn

I am not sure of the exact figures offhand, but about half the working population makes < $5 + min wage.

The tremendous irony is that a flat tax does nothing to make people work harder or make more money. Everyone in NB knows that if you have a good job, then you probably work for the government! That means your salary is paid by people’s taxes. If your taxes go down, the government is giving you a raise, meaning it has to pay you more. Where is the tax money to do that going to come from?

If you work in the private sector, and make a good salary, then chances are you do business with the gov’t as a chief client, or with some gov’t-sponsored entity. That means it is still tax money that finds its way into your pocket.

If you do business entirely with the private sector, then it has nothing to do with the public of NB, and is therefore of no benefit — except by the taxes it pays to the public purse. If someone does business on your turf, they should pay a rent, no?

And finally, if you work in the private sector, then chances are you work for barely a living wage (if you call that living). It is true that these people get screwed over by gov’t taxation and deserve better. We should reduce taxes on annual incomes of <$36,000, and increase the 0% bracket to half that amount.

Our income tax regime is progressive at low and medium incomes – the marginal tax rate above $100k is flat. So the poor and middle class get screwed, the rich do quite well.

As for value-added and sales taxes, they are regressive. They suck more of your income the less you have. Indeed, they plain suck.

The Liberals can’t be serious about these measures. They simply won’t work in New Brunswick. The public is in general disadvantaged economically; only government intervention gives us a good standard of living. The measures the Libs propose would impoverish the public coffers and make the people leave the province in greater numbers, setting up a vicious circle.

We can reduce taxes progressively AND have greater expenditure on public goods and services (education, health care, elder care, child care, etc.) – i.e. have our cake and eat it too. But we will need to elect a government that establishes publicly-owned enterprises that make money for us the way capitalists make money for themselves: Earning profits from producing and selling things, charging rents on land and resources, and receiving interest from finances. These would funnel economic surpluses back into democratic hands.

Socialism or barbarism, in short. There you have it.