Raise the Hammer

"Are you telling me that if tax rates were brought down to 1% and then capped, the city couldn't pay its bills?"

Yes. You live in some sort of theoretical dream world. As I mentioned previously, you haven't reviewed any of Hamilton's budgetary restraints which makes your argument moot. If you think we're spending the difference between actual revenue and your dream revenue on discretionary spending, you are wrong. If the citizens wanted that it could be worked in as a long term goal (decades), but to switch the tax rate overnight would be catastrophic. That you can't fathom that is unbelievable.

Looking at corporate taxes strictly during a time of growth (1999 to last year) is also a joke. When the 2009's numbers are finalized let me know if your theory holds true (I'll give you a hint, our increase in corporate tax revenue has to do with a surge in demand for Canadian resources (extra hint, Canada has the largest percentage of exports as a portion of GDP of any country) or if it turns out that that on the cherry picked set of data from 1999 to 2009 will show that the reduction in corporate taxes ends up resulting in a loss of tax revenue (which it will). If you think that's not the case, feel free to speculate where the doubling of tax revenue came from, because I don't recall any major companies relocating their head-quarters to Canada in the last decade. But feel free to correct me. Actually doing that instead of spouting off arbitrary cherry-picked data would be a nice treat.

Comparing corporate, income and property taxes is the most ridiculous logical leap you've made yet.

That is until you later argued that the lack of downtowns in such thriving cities as Burlington and Oakville is an indicator people don't want their own downtown but then immediately argue that they love the concept of living near Toronto's downtown. I didn't realize that having an hour long drive to work and recreational activities was ideal.

If you were actually curious on our ability to keep up with our debt, here is a good place to start...

http://www.myhamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/8D...

And finally, if you bought property for investment on the assumption that property taxes would be lowered, you are in no position to be giving financial advice to anyone.