The Fraser institute is well-known for its take on taxation and the burden of financing government placed on taxpayers. It came up with the Tax Freedom Day concept to illustrate how long Canadians have to work in order to earn enough to cover all the taxes they pay in a year.
And now they have developed a new illustration…this one looking only at federal finances.
Based on their research, they say if the average Canadian family spent like the feds do, they’d be in debt to the tune of $427,000. And that figure will only continue grow.
The federal government, the think tank says, has posted 17 consecutive deficit budgets amounting to 68-percent of national GDP. To compare this to household finances, the average median income is $102,000 but spending would be $110,000 so the debt would get larger each year and interest would claim 11-percent of your total income.
For the average person, we’d probably end up selling something to pay off the debt but government has little to sell so the pile they build falls to taxpayers to fund.
