Of course they are. Binders full of studies to prove it.
When the Boomers are gone, each generation in succession is likely to be equally selfish. It's not as if conservative parties in Canada are overthrowing Liberal and NDP governments everywhere on the strength of voters under 60, and most new spending programs are established by Liberal or NDP or both working together.
Based on history, expecting Canadians to show low support for defence spending is the safest bet. As much as some people gripe in the abstract about the cost of OAS, I can guess that a large number of people will very concretely have at least one relative or know one recently departed who is/was just getting by on OAS/GIS. Reformers ought to be very specific about reform; if they don't distinguish themselves from "cut OAS" and sloppily express their aim as "cut OAS", they'll be branded as "cut OAS" and won't get much sympathy. I support stricter means testing; I'm confident that the people who are projecting bitter inter-generational resentment and refusing to correctly select the aim for fixing federal spending aren't going to succeed.
vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca
I understand that there are games that can be played with words and numbers in order to advance points of view. OAS has become a new whipping boy (in some mentions surpassing the deficit itself for first mention), but it works best if the biggest possible number can be presented. So we have people writing about how the annual cost of OAS is projected to be more than $100B in a few years. It's not the actual amount that can be saved short of eliminating the program, and it's not even the actual amount spent right now, but it's a nice round big-sounding figure. It's fair to call that behaviour out.
Compared to $100B, yes.
I get worked up a particular new cost because it contributes to the accretion of costs. It shouldn't be difficult to correctly comprehend that I don't object to $7B in savings; it's just that I want it talked about as $7B in savings - preferably alongside a whole bunch of other proposed absolute cuts - and not obscured by misleading top line numbers that are not what is achievable.
"5%" is a political fad, created in part by people who are just looking for some way to flip a middle digit to Trump by pretending they're going to spend a lot of borrowed money to reduce their involvement with the US. Their bluff is going to be called by their own taxpayers and their own appetites for other spending. In Canada, people reaching for it are going to look greedy, and end up losing almost all the recent gains; we can pretty much depend on there being some sort of eventual backlash from the ploughshares factions. People who settle for "2%" and work within that envelope on a coherent whole rather than a slap-dash of whatever was shovel-ready are going to look reasonable and prudent and have some hope of retaining that improvement.
Go read the story in the Fiscal Reference Tables.
So cut both.
Except we don’t, we are financing it through our children’s future.
Because like health care, it’s the one and only other thing where we are mostly treated all the same.
The 100k is a joke. The ‘sunshine list’ in Ontario reports on those making over 100k grows and grows yearly because they’ve not increased the amount for 25+yrs! The real amount should be 200k or higher now.
