train said:
Your point only really makes any sense OJ, if we are currently still running a surplus on EI. There is no evidence of that and it has been sited as a major reason the deficit was higher than expected in the first 6 months. Tough for us to discuss this if we don't have the facts at hand.
If you want to run it as a seperate stand alone fund then that apparantly ended with the Liberals so it's not likely it will return. What benefit is it really whether the funds are in the left pocket or right pocket ?
The Federal Government has always backstopped EI and everyone that paid is still entitled and being paid. You are just entitled sooner if you live in NFLD which doesn't seem fair.
The government still collects Employment Insurance Premiums—not taxes—from employer and employee alike, and could as easily report the intake as it can the payout. That accounting's as simple as it ever was. But it isn't being done.
Lets imagine this insurance plan—unlike any other—had no obligation to bank any previous surplus against an unforeseen increase in claims. Let's even imagine—without evidence, as you say—that after bankrolling the government's general account for years the plan itself is now in deficit. Since we don't hear hordes of workers crying, "I paid in, I'm qualified, but my enevelopes are empty!", where is their money coming from?
If you can run a deficit to finance your defective plan, then you can run a deficit to run a fixed plan. That defective plan already funded the giveaways to defective carmakers, the useless last—"No I never intended to win a majority"—election and the ill-advised GST cuts (in the Martin years the EI surplus consistantly amounted to around 16% of the overall surplus). But now they spent it all on other stuff, and everyone else's needs come before the unemplyed. The least the government might do is run a deficit it didn't hafta apologize for.
I myself have no problem with abolishing the entire EI scheme and as you say, have all the money go into, and come out of one pocket. If we wanted we could even still collect from paycheques in a distinctively named "payroll tax" rather than EI. But none of that would fix the two obvious broken elements. And guys like flattery and Harpo would still renege, shortchange and play favourites. Not that the other side are different. Which kinda argues for a separate visble accounting don'cha think?
1) The collection methodology doesn't pace/match/or provide for swings in the number of unemployed. See what a good boy I was, I didn't add, "which it was intended to". But it's a very profitable tax.
2) The provisions for the unemployed—which used to come from general revenue, before we complained about that and invented a self-financing insurance fund. [Can't help it. History. Sorry]—still are not adequate to the need.
Trouble is, this government having raided the fund like its predecessor, is now crying poor and refusing to backstop the fund (and we don't know it needs to)), which was a necessity the 'reforms' were supposed to obviate, along with the rechristening EI from the bad old UI.
But over to you: All the money
is in one pocket and has been for years, the government's always backstopped the fund (so you say) and there's at least one defect you've pointed out. We'll neither of us point out the Rock's got a better unemployment rate than the manufacturing sector here, and what does geography have to do with having a job anyway? Just that it's a defective system. If we're not gonna fix it now when huge numbers need it, we're never going to and we should just abolish it.
but it has to be a bit telling as to how they delivered the message and the fact that Smith spoke with such seeming authority.
