Decision 2010: Calgary Municipal Election

[MalcolmTucker]

Umm, well surely the province could have put aside funding for now when it was cheaper to build, but once again if the city did, the funding to the city from other level of governments would have been cut.

As for the whole income taxes taking away freedom thing. You know why we need broad based taxes to fund our government? A lack of universal tariffs, which is what funded our government up to the first world war. (and a vast expansion of government, but even without that we would still need income or consumption taxes to fund our government)

Ultra right wing people often bring up before the first world war when we didn't have taxes as a golden age, and then ignore how we funded things. You have to get revenue from somewhere.

Taxes are useful, they provide services that have natural monopolies, and huge positive externalities. Taxes provide services that would otherwise not be provided efficiently due to a myriad of market failures.

Taxes, are most efficient and create the least amount of deadweight loss when applied to the broadest base. In Calgary's case, a value added tax or income tax or both which brought in equal revenue to a phased out property taxes would be much more efficient, and would distort the market much less.

Property taxes create a disincentive to capital investment, just like the capital tax that still exists in some provinces. It encourages labour intensive solutions and decreases productivity.

To increase accountability at the same time it would make sense to stop transfering funds from the federal and provincial levels, and to transfer tax points instead, and/or the gas tax. That way politicians would be solely responsible for all the spending in the city.

There would be no excuses of capital vs operational spending, no complaining to Ottawa or Edmonton, just sheer representative government.

As for spending money more wisely, everyone has a different view of what is wise. For me wise would be a city even more intensive than the one shown in Plan-It, since it would save tonnes of money. A city the would never need the second ring road. In that city, it makes sense to build a higher quality public realm because many more citizen would be sharing less space. We can get higher quality at a lower price per person.