Raise the Hammer

idiot, >> The city would have less money, but that's ok because they would only have to fund the bare necessities (aka the things that *I* use, such as streets and sewers).

Why not address the actual statistics I referenced in my previous post? If cutting tax rates (to levels found in richer, yet functioning communities) hurts government revenue, than why has corporate tax revenue gone up as rates have come down? How do you explain that, idiot?

>> Any and all projects that are frivolous should be funded only by the people who will use them directly.

Any money the city spends on maintaining parks, bike lanes, etc, is money not spent on other things. Furthermore, because city goods are either free or heavily subsidized, we don't know how in demand they are relative to other items that are priced by the marketplace.

As an example, if the city started running the parks system based simply on market demand and didn't use tax funds, would these parks bring in enough revenue to cover the costs of maintaining them? Would the population of Hamilton vote with their dollars and keep the parks in business, or would they choose to spend their limited capital elsewhere? If they decided that they would rather spend their money elsewhere, that means we are currently wasting limited capital on goods that people don't want. A very bad idea if you want to increase the quality of life in the city.

Lastly, if the goods and services the city offers are so useful, why not put a price on them. If the demand is there, consumers will gladly buy them, just as they do when they go to the mall.
The reason is because politicians have no clue as to whether or not their spending either increases or decreases wealth. They are an investment black hole. When businesses lose money, that is a sign they are misallocating capital and the market puts them out of business. When a company uses capital wisely, it increases overall wealth and it gets rewarded by having more capital to invest.

In effect, the free market gives more responsibility to those who can best allocate capital. However, because government is not disciplined by the potential of limited capital, we never know if they are creating wealth or not? At least not directly. However, if you compare our downtown with that of Burlington or Oakville, it's pretty clear our government has not been investing our limited capital very wisely. Therefore, the only solution is to take away their ability to waste any more. Capping tax rates at 1% would be a great start.