8 ms·

Not sure I understand all the subtlety but as a Canadian (where we have about 3 big cities and the rest has no voice) I'd love to be able to divert my tax away

Not sure I understand all the subtlety but as a Canadian (where we have about 3 big cities and the rest has no voice) I'd love to be able to divert my tax away from the city I live in and to my home town. If course we don't really pay income tax directly to the city, so it would be complicated and probably just make more bureaucracy.

pc86 3y ago
I say this as someone who grew up in a small rural area and now lives in a slightly-less-small suburban/rural mix (but not in Canada). All this does is overfund rural areas and underfund urban areas which are likely already underfunded - although my only experience is the US so maybe Canada is a little better about this. Rural areas do not "have no voice" - they have exactly the representative power of their population, the same as urban centers. I'm not sure what makes people in or from rural areas thinks that once people live close together their voice should count for less. How is it "right" or "fair" to move to an urban center, take advantage of urban amenities and services, take advantage of that higher salary, and siphon some of that tax money away to rural areas because of nostalgia?
- ejstronge 3y ago
  Curiously, rural regions of the US have a fair amount of power due to how electoral seats are distributed. I'm not sure if this is also true in Canada, so it is possible that the GP's situation differs from your own experiences.
  - pc86 3y ago
    You're 100% right, the more rural your state the more power your state holds in Presidential elections, and indirectly in the Senate, but not much beyond that. I don't think there's a corollary in Canada but I could certainly be wrong.
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    This is about suburbs, not rural areas, but Canadian politics provides an interesting history in suburbanites wresting power from city dwellers. Among other concrete impacts it means more parking, shifting funds away from public transport (which is less useful to suburbanites), etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamation_of_Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamation_of_Toronto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkO-DttA9ew&t=35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkO-DttA9ew&t=35s
  - mlinhares 3y ago
    They're also heavily subsidized to make them "work", a considerable piece of rural America would already be gone if there wasn't a large amount of government funds being diverted to keep it alive and we will spend even more as it becomes less and less desirable to live there.
    - subroutine 3y ago
      As soon as WFH became an option people flocked away from cities. NYC lost 200k people over two years; SF lost 60k. I would say there is a large population of city folk who desire to move to more rural areas.
      - dfxm12 3y ago
        If you listen to the news, they're all moving to other cities, like Austin, TX, not to rural areas.
        ghaff 3y ago
        Yes. Other/smaller cities, college towns, etc. I'm sure some have taken the opportunity to move somewhere that looks more like rural--but I have to believe the lifestyle shift would be a bridge too far for most.
        mlinhares 3y ago
        They're moving to suburbs near big cities or cheap big cities in less populated states, not rural areas.
        ghaff 3y ago
        >suburbs near big cities It's not really true of the Bay Area--and it's at least complicated around Manhattan. But a lot of cities like Boston an hour or an hour and a bit drive in reverse commute, much less weekend, traffic can bring you to a lot cheaper housing. There are expensive suburbs too. However, it's pretty easy to find suburban or exurban towns that are accessible to Boston for an evening event that have relatively modest home prices. Not Midwest cheap but reasonable. (Of course there are very expensive towns as well.)
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Nominally, it's also true in Canada. Due to lower populated rural ridings, one rural vote can be worth up to 4X an urban vote. But in current conditions, votes in rural Western Canadian ridings are basically worthless. They're ultra-safe Conservative seats, so they can be and are ignored. But it wasn't very long ago that they were highly competitive ridings split between two right wing parties. Because Canada doesn't quite have the same 2 party system as the US does, the situation isn't as static.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    That’s true of states that are as a whole relatively rural (think Wyoming) but not, say, upstate NY.
  - Zach_the_Lizard 3y ago
    I'm guessing New York farmers don't have as much power as their Montana cousins. Rural and low population _states_ have a fair amount of power due to having a fixed number of senators per state, but rural areas in an otherwise non-rural state may find themselves outvoted and thus mostly irrelevant. The opposite situation, city slickers outvoted by country bumpkins, is of course possible in rural states.
    - runako 3y ago
      This obviously varies by state, but tends to not be accurate at the state level either due to the way state legislatures are elected. For example, in my state the majority of residents live in the largest metro area. But the smaller towns & rural areas are able to more or less permanently control the legislature (because legislators have geographic districts). As a result, our laws are frequently written in ways that are openly hostile to our major city, while favoring more rural areas.
- jdasdf 3y ago
  >Rural areas do not "have no voice" - they have exactly the representative power of their population, the same as urban centers. I'm not sure what makes people in or from rural areas thinks that once people live close together their voice should count for less. How is it "right" or "fair" to move to an urban center, take advantage of urban amenities and services, take advantage of that higher salary, and siphon some of that tax money away to rural areas because of nostalgia? 2 wolves and sheep deciding on what's for dinner huh? Have you considered that the key problem here is the lack of direct control that people have over their own lives, causing these sort of situations where you have groups of people who permanently have zero effective agency over their futures? I agree, giving people more voting powers just because they live in a certain place isn't the right way to fix this. But the fact that there is a problem is undeniable, and the fact that this inequality in voting helps ameliorate this problem is true as well. The right answer here is to remove power from the state and elected officials, and return it to where it belongs, those being asked to pay for it either directly, or by being affected by it. There is nothing as democratic as everyone choosing for themselves. In the same way we should not have a vote to decide what's for dinner, and the winner means we all eat the same thing, we should not have votes on local and personal matters. Democracy isn't voting, it's agency over what rules you.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Lots to unpack here, and as I said I don't know much about Canada and next to nothing about Japan so this is strictly about the US. > 2 wolves and sheep deciding on what's for dinner huh? Tired analogy that doesn't actually make any point. > groups of people who permanently have zero effective agency over their futures This applies to approximately 0% of people in the US. Yes there is a small proportion of people who are so poor they can never move away from where they're born. Most of these people happen to live in urban areas, not rural. > the fact that there is a problem is undeniable For it being undeniable you haven't actually said what the problem is - only a strawman that rural Americans have no agency over their futures which is utter nonsense. > return [power] to where it belongs, those being asked to pay for it either directly, or by being affected by it If democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner wouldn't you want more power in the state and elected officials, so they could protect the sheep? The problem is everybody acts like they're the sheep being taken advantage of by big bad government when it's almost never actually the case.
- icodestuff 3y ago
  More, even, since ridings don’t all have to have the same population, unlike Congressional districts.
- pauldenton 3y ago
  Major urban cores of Canada are not underfunded Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver do not need more of a political voice. They do not need more love and attention they have too much focus already.
dfxm12 3y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "voice". I think in common use, you would mean power in government. This scheme was put into play because rest of Japan, in fact, has a louder voice than Tokyo: Tokyo and the regions could have resolved their differences through the democratic process, in which the regions outvote Tokyo and could have altered Japan’s national tax and economic policies to their advantage. Tokyo obviously doesn’t want this, and instead agreed to an opt-in system which allays some of the regions’ concerns. Doing some back of the napkin math wrt representatives in the House of Commons and senators, in Canada, the situation probably wouldn't be much different for Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. In a lot of ways, this where the US is. NY (the city) foots the bill for not only most of NY (the state), but also its tax money funds projects and services in other states as well. Living in a US state's biggest city myself, it is a drag to see the rest of the state constantly block legislation that will help us grow, while on the flip side they are gladly taking our taxes, as we pay by far the most into the state's coffers. What I mean to say is, due to the way we pay local, state/province and federal taxes, the big cities are already a net positive in terms of tax revenue for the rest of the province/country.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  This is a relatively common use of the word "voice", I don't think GP "means" anything else. A politician running for election might promise to give a voice to some part of their constituency that so far had been ignored (no political power). In general "the power of the people" ~= "the voice of the people".
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    I thought so, too, but it didn't make much sense given the context of the article and what they were saying :)
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      Yes it does, in my opinion. Seems very clear. Canadians outside their three big metro areas feel like their government represents those metro areas and not the rest of Canada. They feel like they "don't have a voice compared to the big 3".
thsksbd 3y ago
It'd certainly be more elegant and transparent than the equalization payments with largely similar results (Maritime's getting help from their diaspora).
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Aren't you essentially doing that already? The Federal government spends disproportionately outside of cities.
renewiltord 3y ago
In the US, this is pretty simple actually. If you set up a charity whose sole purpose is beautifying some region (that will pass IRS's tests), you can donate to it and reduce your taxable income. I imagine Canada has a similar structure.

pc86 3y ago

I say this as someone who grew up in a small rural area and now lives in a slightly-less-small suburban/rural mix (but not in Canada). All this does is overfund rural areas and underfund urban areas which are likely already underfunded - although my only experience is the US so maybe Canada is a little better about this. Rural areas do not "have no voice" - they have exactly the representative power of their population, the same as urban centers. I'm not sure what makes people in or from rural areas thinks that once people live close together their voice should count for less. How is it "right" or "fair" to move to an urban center, take advantage of urban amenities and services, take advantage of that higher salary, and siphon some of that tax money away to rural areas because of nostalgia?

ejstronge 3y ago
Curiously, rural regions of the US have a fair amount of power due to how electoral seats are distributed. I'm not sure if this is also true in Canada, so it is possible that the GP's situation differs from your own experiences.
- pc86 3y ago
  You're 100% right, the more rural your state the more power your state holds in Presidential elections, and indirectly in the Senate, but not much beyond that. I don't think there's a corollary in Canada but I could certainly be wrong.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  This is about suburbs, not rural areas, but Canadian politics provides an interesting history in suburbanites wresting power from city dwellers. Among other concrete impacts it means more parking, shifting funds away from public transport (which is less useful to suburbanites), etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamation_of_Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgamation_of_Toronto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkO-DttA9ew&t=35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkO-DttA9ew&t=35s
- mlinhares 3y ago
  They're also heavily subsidized to make them "work", a considerable piece of rural America would already be gone if there wasn't a large amount of government funds being diverted to keep it alive and we will spend even more as it becomes less and less desirable to live there.
  - subroutine 3y ago
    As soon as WFH became an option people flocked away from cities. NYC lost 200k people over two years; SF lost 60k. I would say there is a large population of city folk who desire to move to more rural areas.
    - dfxm12 3y ago
      If you listen to the news, they're all moving to other cities, like Austin, TX, not to rural areas.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Yes. Other/smaller cities, college towns, etc. I'm sure some have taken the opportunity to move somewhere that looks more like rural--but I have to believe the lifestyle shift would be a bridge too far for most.
      - mlinhares 3y ago
        They're moving to suburbs near big cities or cheap big cities in less populated states, not rural areas.
        ghaff 3y ago
        >suburbs near big cities It's not really true of the Bay Area--and it's at least complicated around Manhattan. But a lot of cities like Boston an hour or an hour and a bit drive in reverse commute, much less weekend, traffic can bring you to a lot cheaper housing. There are expensive suburbs too. However, it's pretty easy to find suburban or exurban towns that are accessible to Boston for an evening event that have relatively modest home prices. Not Midwest cheap but reasonable. (Of course there are very expensive towns as well.)
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Nominally, it's also true in Canada. Due to lower populated rural ridings, one rural vote can be worth up to 4X an urban vote. But in current conditions, votes in rural Western Canadian ridings are basically worthless. They're ultra-safe Conservative seats, so they can be and are ignored. But it wasn't very long ago that they were highly competitive ridings split between two right wing parties. Because Canada doesn't quite have the same 2 party system as the US does, the situation isn't as static.
- ghaff 3y ago
  That’s true of states that are as a whole relatively rural (think Wyoming) but not, say, upstate NY.
- Zach_the_Lizard 3y ago
  I'm guessing New York farmers don't have as much power as their Montana cousins. Rural and low population _states_ have a fair amount of power due to having a fixed number of senators per state, but rural areas in an otherwise non-rural state may find themselves outvoted and thus mostly irrelevant. The opposite situation, city slickers outvoted by country bumpkins, is of course possible in rural states.
  - runako 3y ago
    This obviously varies by state, but tends to not be accurate at the state level either due to the way state legislatures are elected. For example, in my state the majority of residents live in the largest metro area. But the smaller towns & rural areas are able to more or less permanently control the legislature (because legislators have geographic districts). As a result, our laws are frequently written in ways that are openly hostile to our major city, while favoring more rural areas.
jdasdf 3y ago
>Rural areas do not "have no voice" - they have exactly the representative power of their population, the same as urban centers. I'm not sure what makes people in or from rural areas thinks that once people live close together their voice should count for less. How is it "right" or "fair" to move to an urban center, take advantage of urban amenities and services, take advantage of that higher salary, and siphon some of that tax money away to rural areas because of nostalgia? 2 wolves and sheep deciding on what's for dinner huh? Have you considered that the key problem here is the lack of direct control that people have over their own lives, causing these sort of situations where you have groups of people who permanently have zero effective agency over their futures? I agree, giving people more voting powers just because they live in a certain place isn't the right way to fix this. But the fact that there is a problem is undeniable, and the fact that this inequality in voting helps ameliorate this problem is true as well. The right answer here is to remove power from the state and elected officials, and return it to where it belongs, those being asked to pay for it either directly, or by being affected by it. There is nothing as democratic as everyone choosing for themselves. In the same way we should not have a vote to decide what's for dinner, and the winner means we all eat the same thing, we should not have votes on local and personal matters. Democracy isn't voting, it's agency over what rules you.
- pc86 3y ago
  Lots to unpack here, and as I said I don't know much about Canada and next to nothing about Japan so this is strictly about the US. > 2 wolves and sheep deciding on what's for dinner huh? Tired analogy that doesn't actually make any point. > groups of people who permanently have zero effective agency over their futures This applies to approximately 0% of people in the US. Yes there is a small proportion of people who are so poor they can never move away from where they're born. Most of these people happen to live in urban areas, not rural. > the fact that there is a problem is undeniable For it being undeniable you haven't actually said what the problem is - only a strawman that rural Americans have no agency over their futures which is utter nonsense. > return [power] to where it belongs, those being asked to pay for it either directly, or by being affected by it If democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner wouldn't you want more power in the state and elected officials, so they could protect the sheep? The problem is everybody acts like they're the sheep being taken advantage of by big bad government when it's almost never actually the case.
icodestuff 3y ago
More, even, since ridings don’t all have to have the same population, unlike Congressional districts.
pauldenton 3y ago
Major urban cores of Canada are not underfunded Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver do not need more of a political voice. They do not need more love and attention they have too much focus already.

dfxm12 3y ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "voice". I think in common use, you would mean power in government. This scheme was put into play because rest of Japan, in fact, has a louder voice than Tokyo: Tokyo and the regions could have resolved their differences through the democratic process, in which the regions outvote Tokyo and could have altered Japan’s national tax and economic policies to their advantage. Tokyo obviously doesn’t want this, and instead agreed to an opt-in system which allays some of the regions’ concerns. Doing some back of the napkin math wrt representatives in the House of Commons and senators, in Canada, the situation probably wouldn't be much different for Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. In a lot of ways, this where the US is. NY (the city) foots the bill for not only most of NY (the state), but also its tax money funds projects and services in other states as well. Living in a US state's biggest city myself, it is a drag to see the rest of the state constantly block legislation that will help us grow, while on the flip side they are gladly taking our taxes, as we pay by far the most into the state's coffers. What I mean to say is, due to the way we pay local, state/province and federal taxes, the big cities are already a net positive in terms of tax revenue for the rest of the province/country.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago
This is a relatively common use of the word "voice", I don't think GP "means" anything else. A politician running for election might promise to give a voice to some part of their constituency that so far had been ignored (no political power). In general "the power of the people" ~= "the voice of the people".
- dfxm12 3y ago
  I thought so, too, but it didn't make much sense given the context of the article and what they were saying :)
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    Yes it does, in my opinion. Seems very clear. Canadians outside their three big metro areas feel like their government represents those metro areas and not the rest of Canada. They feel like they "don't have a voice compared to the big 3".

thsksbd 3y ago

It'd certainly be more elegant and transparent than the equalization payments with largely similar results (Maritime's getting help from their diaspora).

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

Aren't you essentially doing that already? The Federal government spends disproportionately outside of cities.

renewiltord 3y ago

In the US, this is pretty simple actually. If you set up a charity whose sole purpose is beautifying some region (that will pass IRS's tests), you can donate to it and reduce your taxable income. I imagine Canada has a similar structure.