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RPCanadian
01-10-2008, 03:51 PM
I've recently looked up income tax rates for both Canada and the US. Perhaps surprizing to you Americans is the fact that us north of the border pay no more income tax than you. At the federal level our tax is roughly the same (15-35%) and also are similar at the provincial/state level.

It makes me curious, we Canadians enjoy:
-free health care and many other government services
-much much lower crime rates
-now a more valuable dollar
-a higher standard of living
-higher educational acheivements
-much quicker increasing salaries and a higher minimum wage
-a decentralized government
-and are the only G8 country running an budget surplus

What the hell is your government spending it's (actually your) money on?

Surely the "Global War on Terror" is not that expensive?

Any comments / thoughts on this?

jasonuher
01-10-2008, 03:55 PM
Surely the "Global War on Terror" is not that expensive?


:rolleyes:

Current 'defense' spending, when combined with past 'defense' spending (interest on loans we have yet to pay back, veteran benefits, etc) make up almost 50% of the governments budget.

I actually found a link I was looking for in my history (that's news!): http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

BobSmith
01-10-2008, 03:57 PM
I think we spend alot on Maintaining debt.

Pork barrel spending

Goldwater Conservative
01-10-2008, 04:08 PM
Our federal budget is about $2.8 trillion. We spend about $700 billion on "defense" spending (25% of our budget). We spend about $240 billion on interest payments on the debt (9%). We spend about $1.62 trillion on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other welfare programs (58%).

http://www.answers.com/topic/united-states-federal-budget-2007