Garth Turner, MP for Halton, has long campaigned for income splitting. I’ll give him credit for being consistent at least, since he campaigned for this as a Conservative, and Indepenedant, and now as a Liberal. Garth has many posts on this topic, including his latest today.
For the record, I am against income splitting as I have written previously.
Upon reading his post, and his reasons for why income splitting is an idea whose time has come, I could not hold back from commenting. Here’s my comment to Garth, in case anyone wants to agree or disagree with me.
Hey Garth, I understand that there are some benefits with the idea of income splitting, but I’m not convinced that all of the effects you list are in fact benefits for society.
I have been against income splitting for some time, despite thinking that my wife and I would benefit from it. I’ve blogged about this in the past and the reasons I’m against it. Perhaps I missed it in your previous posts, but this is the first I’ve heard that the income splitting you propose would not apply to those of us without dependent children at home. So in fact I would not benefit from it for the same reasons as you.
One of the effects you list is to “encourage child-bearing.”
Are you serious? You actually want to encourage this? If so, are you out of your mind?
Have you looked lately at the worlds population, both current and projected? Have you considered that many of the problems we currently have around water shortages, food shortages, energy shortages, and other resources are directly related to population?
No, encouraging population growth is that last thing our governments should be doing. Instead, we should be concentrating on devising an economy that does not depend on the pyramid scheme of never ending population growth.
Forget income splitting, we need an economy that works best with a stable population.
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I have to give Garth some credit for his openness to blogging, interacting with his constituents and his occassional good idea but he is no economic genius.
He makes blanket statements about economics and finances but refuses to defend this theory or methodolgy. He still believes is the utopian endless growth model while professing his enviromental credentials. You can’t have it both ways, more people, more resource depletion and more polution equals more future pain.
He also refuses to comment on the relationship between rampant inflation ,consumerism and it’s root in the monetary policy of cheap money and over stimulation of the money supply.
Until we can rid the system of endless growth economists we are doomed, yet this is still what the universities pump out of their programs.