> Other Canadians eat up negative Alberta news like nothing else, and the media will no doubt provide them with the type of news that they crave.
The reality is more the complete opposite. People from not-Alberta care about their own provincial governments and issues and don't really think about Alberta at all.
It's the media and government in Alberta that is encouraging this notion that "Alberta is under attack" from others because lazy grievance politics works and it's a good distraction from scrutiny on the failings of the Albertan provincial government. You see the government of Quebec do the same thing, blaming Rest of Canada for all their woes, wrapping themselves up in the provincial flag, etc etc.
This is my experience as well, as someone who grew up in Alberta and has spent a fair bit of time in other provinces. This narrative that the rest of Canada is anti-Alberta or anti-Quebec (or that the federal government is seeking to undermine those provinces) seems to be invented and pushed by those provinces' governments to drive votes and avoid culpability for their role in their province's problems. It does not seem to be reflective of the opinions of people (or governments) from other provinces.
That is not my experience at all. Canadians are obsessed with American politics for example, and many people I know follow what's happening in the US closer than their own federal or provincial politics. In general people care more about federal politics than provincial. And hating on Alberta is almost as beloved an activity as hating on the USA.
Yea really. Feels like a bit of a communications exercise and effort to create arms length distance from the Federal government and spending on major projects.
Now it's not the Federal government and taxpayers propping up the oil industry by buying yet another oil pipeline, but rather a "sovereign wealth fund" (funded by Canadian taxpayers).
Yeah and like, if they want to use it for infrastructure, mining, and LNG development, isn't that at odds with retail investors who require more liquidity? Doesn't it require the fund to either hold massive cash reserves to manage redemptions or rely on government bailouts if retail sentiment sours before projects mature?
To me it sounds less like a "sovereign wealth fund" and more like a domestic infrastructure bank wrapped in populist messaging. I expect plenty of boomers to invest to "stick it to Trump", elbows up!
There are other aspects beyond simply being more permissive. I recall reading for example that property transfer tax is remarkably less on bare land, enough so that when travelling in Japan you will regularly notice bare lots for sale, as it is beneficial for the seller to tear down a lot before they sell it. This sort of thing encourages churn of housing, and coupled with liberal zoning, enables an accelerated increase in denser building. Tbh it probably encourages lower construction costs since more people are doing construction.
IMO in this whole conversation, whether discussing any jurisdiction not just japan, impacts of zoning is an over emphasized and tax policy under emphasized (ie. almost never discussed).
Property taxes on land zoned for residential use are 6x more expensive if left bare. That’s why Japan has an akiya plague, because even a dilapidated building will keep taxes down.
I couldn’t find a more general article so here’s an example from a generic small town council.
Leaving aside your mistake, you raise a great point. Why are there so many empty lots in central Tokyo for sale? It makes no sense financially! Maybe they assume they can tear-down the existing structure and sell it faster than the tax penalty will hit?
I have a hard time believing that a tax code that incentives destruction in any capacity is a good thing.
If the land is more valuable without a structure the current owner has natural incentive to do that, or someone else has incentive to buy, demolish and re-list.
Folks are not paid terribly high wages in Japan. I saw McDonalds "we're hiring" signs when I was eating there and I don't recall the wage but it was below 1000¥.
(That being said I tried to calculate the ratio of hourly wage to McChicken sandwich and Japanese workers came out with a better deal than Canadian ones)
I suspect they've been behaving like google in using a stable golden goose to fund moon shots, but unfortunately for them now that golden goose is rather sick and no longer making so many golden eggs.
> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?
The situation is something that makes people pause for a second.
Like everyone knows that EVs are the future, but when gas is fine, status quo fine, that future can be a fuzzy thing in the distance and it's really easy to shut off your brain, live in the present, and not really do any thinking and just go through the motions.
A sudden oil shock puts the issue of EVs on the front burner and gives people reason to think about things for a moment.
The value of homes is very well known and assessed annually in many provinces (some have weirdly become laggards). So no real problem there.
Any piece of art that is of any real value would have a provenance and it would be very well known what the value it was at any given time and at sale. If no one knows the artist or can determine the value it is very safe to say its value is nil.
It's really not that easy at all. Especially with art or jewelry. We can know the current value. It could even be a very famous piece of art.
But these types of things are found all the time in attics and basements. Art especially is moved around without sales records all the time, and jewelry even more-so.
Heck, I have things I bought myself that I have no idea what I paid for them.
But I'd sure be upset if I had to pay cap gains taxes on these things assume their prior value was zero.
House purchase price might be easy to determine; although old records aren't always great; certainly the price paid indicated on the front of the deed is often a formal requirement value, not the actual price, so hopefully the real price was written down on the recorded deed too. I wouldn't rely on assessed values, at least without a lot of cross referencing many jurisdictions setup assessments so that they reflect market value, but jot directly.
On the other hand, cost basis in a house is not just the purchase price. Many improvements add to the cost basis, and good luck finding records to support that. Especially for a home owned by your parents since the 1970s.
That doesn't make it equitable to step-up on death; but it does make it very convenient.
yeah it's not perfect, but there's absolutely well enough data for the ballpark appraisal. Onus is not on the government to do any of this. So keep records folks.
I think the government now actually does keep tax records of buying and selling homes (became a bit of a question during the foreign buying debate) so going forward it's going to be no concern.
> One of the issues with our proportional electoral system is that smaller, more extreme parties can become kingmakers and in our current situation the centre-left governing party relies on the support of the far-left party to stay in power, and those guys are rabidly anti-nuclear power.
A side comment but I'm sad to say I don't think that another electoral system (or at least not FPTP) fixes this issue of there being a niche group being kingmakers.
In FPTP the dynamic that occurs is that an enormous amount of seats become "safe" and then the kingmakers end up being the relative handful of seats that are likely to trade hands. This ends up creating distortions where certain regional seats and regional issues rise well above how important they should be.
PR seems like a more fair way to represent a niche group. At least they are a genuinely representative part of the population, and the influence isn't an accident of electoral math distortion.
The reality is more the complete opposite. People from not-Alberta care about their own provincial governments and issues and don't really think about Alberta at all.
It's the media and government in Alberta that is encouraging this notion that "Alberta is under attack" from others because lazy grievance politics works and it's a good distraction from scrutiny on the failings of the Albertan provincial government. You see the government of Quebec do the same thing, blaming Rest of Canada for all their woes, wrapping themselves up in the provincial flag, etc etc.
Don't fall for this stuff.
reply