Post #1780727

2026-04-28 19:42 UTC

Good public services are often invisible, we don&#39;t know how important they are till they are gone. This leads people to think that they are getting nothing in return for their taxes. Those same people then in turn get angry when money is tight and they see what appear to be large deductions from their pay going towards taxes (since they don&#39;t think they are getting anything for those taxes) Politicians then exploit that anger to get elected by promising to cut taxes. When people get angry when their life gets harder because of service cuts (services they didn&#39;t even know they benefited from) those politicians blame their predecessor for &#39;mismanagement&#39;. Then the cycle gets repeated. There needs to be a coordinated effort to draw attention to invisible public services that we all benefit from. So I am going to go first: Food Safety. Knowing that the food I buy at the store isn&#39;t going to kill me or my family matters more than having an extra dollar or two to spend each week. #cdnpoli #politics #taxes

Replies (7)

@AnnieBuddy@thecanadian.social 2026-04-28 19:50

@RantingCanuck Education. I don't have kids, but I want my neighbours kids, nieces and nephews to get the best educations possible. I want them to be filled with curiosity. I want them to be able to reason. I want them to be able to think about the consequences of what they do, in the immediate, but also down the road. I want them to be able to explore the world around them and to find the joy in learning about doing things differently.

Open ##1880366
@Pinchy63@ottawa.place 2026-04-28 19:52

@RantingCanuck Water treatment. Walkerton anyone?

Open ##1880367
@HollieK72@mastodonapp.uk 2026-04-28 21:11

@RantingCanuck Healthcare, free at the point of need. In the UK it's the NHS they are busy defunding so that it doesn't work as well, and they can bring in US-style private healthcare instead.

Open ##1880368
@acroamatis@kind.social 2026-04-28 23:45

@RantingCanuck Building standards and inspection. I enjoy having confidence that I can enter and be inside a building without it electrocuting me, catching fire, or collapsing on me.

Open ##1880372
@wendypalmer@mastodon.au 2026-04-29 00:18

@RantingCanuck funding the creation and maintenance of social infrastructure - libraries, community centres, parks and green spaces etc. Relatively cheap, measurably beneficial, the first in line for cuts because “poor people don’t deserve free stuff”

Open ##1880374
@LieschenrelleuM@kolektiva.social 2026-04-29 00:24

@RantingCanuck social safety nets that ensure support for people who, for various reasons like health, age, (dis)ability, opportunity, luck… cannot work jobs that let them earn enough to live decently. Your chances of becoming one of these people are, btw, quite high.

Open ##1880375
@dfloyd888@fosstodon.org 2026-04-29 00:32

@RantingCanuck I am weird... I don't believe that cutting taxes is a good thing. It is like someone who has a table knife saying he is going to operate, or someone with a drill and a reciprocating saw saying they are going to remove weight by carving out random sections. Recessions are when governments need more resources, not fewer.

Open ##1880378