NB Election Results
This posting is for the lone Mercan who was curious about the results.
Well the Liberals eeked out a win. Actually the Conservatives got the most votes at 47.7% of the votes cast to the Liberals 46.9% while the NDP got 5.1%. But that did not translate to victory for the Conservatives, with the Liberals getting 29 seats to the Conservatives 26. As I expected and prayed for, the useless left wing nuts NDP lost their one and only seat. I did not see it reported, but I was informed by another blogger that we had a 70% voter turnout. N.B. typically gets better turnouts than the rest of the country. Howere that is still too many non voters, too much apathy.
The liberal candidate for my riding won with 3221 votes to the Conservative’s 3028 votes. The hapless NDP got 326 votes. Though I voted against the Liberal, I am ok with that as I said before, he is a nice guy. And there is not much difference between the parties, the difference on ideology is much more pronunced at the federal level. At the provincial level, both parties had similar promises, bribing us with expensive promises with money we don’t got.
We had 8 years of Conservative fumbling and I expect 4 years of Liberal big spending and mismanagement with a good whiff of corruption thrown in for good measure. Actually the Conservatives managed fairly well but they screwed up royally on a three big issues, car insurance, financial disaster with our power generation corporation(government controlled) and the nursing home issue.
posted by Canuckguy @ 1:15 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
Lack of voter "turn out" is shameful no matter where it is. I have no sympathy for those individuals that think the politicians have their best interests at heart.
People need to start voting issues rather than the "my family has always voted for this party and I will to no matter what".
I did not realize how broke our social security system was until I became eligible and started drawing. All I have to do is live about 5 more years and then everyone else that is still working will be paying for my retirement.
When I come across someone that thinks everything is A-OK with social security I ask them one simple question: Why do you think congress set up their retirement system instead of using the social security system that they set up for us?
I have to make a correction about voter turnout, it was actualy about 70% which is not bad for a Canadian election. N.B typically get higher turnouts than the rst of the country. Still lower than Iraq but not as shameful as 6o%
Lou:
I guess your Social Security is somelike our system. We have two government flows to the retired. We have the OAS(Old Age Security) which every Canadian citizen gets at 65 and it is presently $487/month. It is indexed to inflation. Does matter whether you ever worked or not.
The second is CPP(Canada Pension Plan). The current max payout is $844/month(indexed as well) but to get the max, you have to have worked until you are 65 and have at least 30 years in or so. You can collect at 60 but there would be a 30% discount.
Obviously that is not enough to life on normally even if one gets the max total of about $1330/month. If the retiree only has these two sources of income and is not getting the max, then the government has another program that guarantees about $12,500 total income with a top up supplement. Still one better have a private retirement plan to keep from starving.
Leftist enough for ya? And how does that compare to your system?
I have to work on this one.
I will try to make this short and sweet.
A small percent of a workers check goes to social security each month. This percentage is matched by the employor each month. This part is easy: $2 from you + $2 from employor = $4. This $4 then goes into a social security account for all to draw on. OR IT USED TO. A few years back the politians decided they wanted to use this money (to spend). They moved it from the social security account to a general purpose account.
This part is basic. They have established rules for who can draw it out and at what age it can be drawn out. There is a lot of fine print in here but this is basic.
I will use my case as an example of what is wrong with social security. My last statement prior to my drawing social security indicated that I had put in approximately $38,000 for all the years that I have been working. This means that the matching funds make my portion worth about $76,000. My first check was $1,069.00. In 1 years time I will have drawn out $12,828.00. In 5 years: $64,140. I only have to live 6 years past my retirement date to have used up everything that was put in under my name.
There are several things that need to be changed.
1. The government needs to own up to the fact that this is our money - not theirs.
2. The money needs to come out of the general account fund and go into an individual social security account fund.
3. The government does not pay interest on our money.
I think you can see the problems in our system. The things that Bush wanted to do (& I agree with) or this.
1. Put a portion of the money into an account that would draw interest such as a 401k plan or other investments that do not lose principal such as money market funds.
2. The account would become a part of an individuals esstate and could at death be passed on to the dependents.
Now you can see why congress decided that they would not use the social security system for their retirement system.
For years under Clinton they were saying the system was broke and needed to be fixed but they did nothing to fix it. Clinton also established the the income tax on our social security earnings. Bush comes along says I agree with you - it is broke and needs to be fixed. All of a sudden those that said for years that it was broke changed their tune and could find nothing wrong with the system.
Do you remember my smoking post? The same thing applies to the social security money. If the small amount that goes each month to the account is put in a principal protected interest baring account the individual would be rich when he retired and would not be dependent on the government.
I hope that this has been of some help. I have not checked my grammer or spelling so please forgive me.
Lou:
Thanks, that was interesting. I am just going to throw some real numbers on our Canadian system, I shall quote numbers from my daughter’s pay cheque, she is just starting out as a teacher.
On her bi-weekly cheque;
Gross $1765
Deductions:
CPP: $80.72 or 4.6% of gross (the employer kicks in an equivalent amount as well)
Teacher’s Pension: $128.86 or 7.3%
Unemployment Insurance: $33.01 or 1.87% (the employer kicks in an equivalent amount)
Income Tax: $328.59 or 18.6%
There are other deductions for the health plan and teacher dues.
It seems to me that your Social Security is more generous than our CPP. You pay less in (percentage wise), but get more bucks out. However to date, our CPP system has a surplus though it is not overly large.
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