Just did my taxes and am pretty upset after it. I get taxed to death because I made a little more than I did last year. but I HAD to work more and make more to pay for injustices this lame goverment puts upon the working class poor. there is no rent control in nova scotia so when my land lord raises my rent every year I have no choice but to comply, the sherriff office charges $2000 to serve a piece of paper to someone, gas is ridicously expensive for a province that it is drilled from and refined in, I pay for $50 in groceries and leave with one grocery bag. Something has to give. i can’t take reading about another goverment official giving themself a $200,000 pay raise when practically 1/4th of what I make is taken from me and then even more at tax time, and I’m not making alot at all. Just skimping by really. Thanks Nova Scotia. I’m drowing in you. —Throw Me a Raft
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2013.
I agree but I think you’re way off for the price of a document service from the Sheriff’s Office. I think you meant $200 which is too high in my opinion, but there are other options out there. There are many Provincial Civil Constables who will serve your documents for less. Like anything else, shop around and get all the info (basic charge, if there’s charges for extra trips, mileage, taxes).
I feel your pain! The government rapes every working person in this province! They take a huge chunk of our pay and slam us with the highest taxes in the country. To rub salt in the wound, they send out the lovely GST rebate to welfare recipients, yet people who bust their asses at a job don’t get a f*cking cent! Welfare comes from our tax dollars so, not only are we paying their way in life, we are also giving them a tax rebate for money that came out if our pockets to begin with! It is INFURIATING!!!
The rest of us only have life preservers…..and you want a whole RAFT given to you?!…….just kidding.
There are only 2 ways out…..
1. Move to…..lets say…….Alberta and you’ll make more money and pay less tax…….so there’s enough left over to satisfy yourself.
2. Devote yourself into a position where you make SO MUCH MONEY……there’s enough left over to satisfy yourself.
(or a blend of the 2)
Bitching about it won’t do shit! You gotta build that raft yourself buddy.
A couple I know, retired and in their late 60s are picking up stakes and moving to Kelowna next month. They’ve had it with the taxes, poor health care and how much more everything costs in this province. Personal income tax is $5000 less in BC than in NS so that played a part as well. Hub-Unit and I might consider a similar move in the next few years.
Let me say that I feel you man! But don’t get too carried away.. As a citizen of this great province it’s your duty to pay no mind the hands in your pocket, and the dick in your ass.. Now the booze, smokes, and VLT’s are over there, please go drown your sorrows in them so we can just move on from this little outcry! (Maybe you’ll win so you can pay that ludicrous power bill down!)
P.s. Look at the bright side! With all the funds the government has generated off our cozy populous of belligerent, gullible, Ill-informed sleep walkers; they can now afford proper crystal whiskey glasses, and calf skin notebooks to conduct business with! We’ll have new corporate shit holes to die in, in no time now that we’ve got the tools to ink the deals!
And with cuts to animal welfare, you can now use your cat or dog as a punching bag when your especially drunk and angry!
Pet Shop Boys – Go West!
Ha, welcome to life…. fun, isn’t it?
I don’t think they made cuts to the $3,000 annual support to the SPCA for the enforcement of animal cruelty.
The province just thinks that that is enough to cover 18,000 complaints and rescuing over 5,000 animals!
I guess they think 5¢ a complaint investigation and 41¢ an animal rescue is PLENTY! They’re non-profit….right?
“the sherriff office charges $2000 to serve a piece of paper to someone” Damn.
… yeah, one distinct feature of Canada is that you have to pay FOR EVERYTHING. It makes me very angry sometimes.
op, what the heck are you bitching about? don’t you realize how rich you really are?
*you* paid $2,365 for Christmas cards last year for a MLA to send out.
*you* paid $17 for someone to clean a f-ing window for a MLA who must have been too lazy to pick up a paper towel and do it themselves.
*you* picked up the tab for $1.98 carton of milk
I will gladly pay thousands more for the joy of living in nova scotia, i love it here, but i cannot abide the waste and squandering from one hand, and the petulant hold back from the other when organizations of real worth need funding. starter salary for an MLA is 87K and he can’t pay his own $1.98 for milk?
if you want to get very angry, here is the link. my bp was 165 today at dr visit, and when i stroke out i am going to drag myself to the legislature and let my corpse sweeten the stench of that place.
http://nslegislature.ca/index.php/people/o…
See, meteoman has it right! The “Well I guess this is it” attitude, is the lube that keeps Nova Scotia’s crank turning..
MOLLY WHY’D YOU POST THAT?!?!? ARRRRG
They can’t even buy their own coffee??? WTF IS WITH ALL THE CHRISTMAS CARDS??? I didn’t fucking get one. Ah, they don’t even have to pay their banking fees.
i have to force myself away from those expenses just to cool down.
i have been tweeting dexter with all my suggestions on how to save a few bucks.
get all the mlas on the same bloody cell phone plan and demand a discount.
i can see the coffee for their constituency offices, but why $1.98 milk charge? for a month. that means it couldn’t possibly be to provide milk for his office for a month. it’s just too low a figure. so some yahoo went out and bought a pint and decided to ‘expense’ it to US, the taxpayers. at $87,000 base salary for an MLA you can buy your own damn milk. and bank charges? what the heck did you do to rack up that much in bank charges. if you went OD it’s your own darn problem.
i wish they broke out the franking and travel expenses.
they drill for oil and gas in n.s., who knew? as to the rest, well you might try out west or t.o, either will kill your paycheque too.
Re: $1.98 Milk – maybe someone should consider how sad a situation it is when a governemnt paid employee is so piss poor and broke that s/he has to steal a $1.98 carton of milk from the tax-payer? Its a way deeper problem then the govt over-expensing… think about what kind of environment must exist to force someone to steal $1.98?
I think there needs to be some uprising from the working poor in this shit hole. The problem is that you can pay a job 70 grand a year or 40 grand a year and there is still a line up of smucks who don’t know any better ready to take it… so when someone demands a market level wage, they just move on to the next one who is ready to be raped with a terrible salary.
Can’t we have some kind of revolution about this bull shit and say enough is enough? Hell knows there is enough piss poor nova scotians making more than 50K a year who can’t afford to pay their light bill or even plan a retirement.
I guess the old addage from Harper holds true – we’re a culture of defeat out here… we’ll bitch and moan all we want but when it comes time to actually do something we will just look around like we’re fucking stupid and wait until someone else does it (i.e. we’re lazy too).
And to you fuckers who are going to say “well why don’t YOU do something” here is what im doing: my employer raped me with a salary offer that I had no choice but to take… I am specialized and it takes about 6 mos to a year to get up to speed and actually be productive… I am expecting a new job offer this month which will pay 10K higher – then I’m going to stick it to my boss… tell him I love my job, I want to stay here, but I can’t afford it. He’ll say thank you, good riddence, and will be stuck training someone else for another 6 months to a year … Maybe when his productivity gets so poor from turnover, he’ll think – maybe I need to pay them enough to stay. Meanwhile I am enjoying my raise.
Looking at the expenses: Frank Corbett has his office rental from a Bernie Corbett, I don’t think that you were allowed to rent from family, hopefully he is not… He’s also got a casual employee paid $1,000: wonder how much time that is for?
2.20 for cream at Pharmasave
4.55 milk, 30.96 coffee, tea, milk, and 5.69 milk
3.78 for water: I thought HWC had great water?
7.99 tea, 5.52 milk
1.35 and 3.44 milk, sugar, 10.79 coffee
2,400 to print (not buy) Christmas cards!?!
Small potatoes but the principle behind it is there: we pay for services, not luxuries. Coffee, tea, water, milk, cream, sugar, etc are NOT required for your work and thus should not be expensed. You want to indulge yourself, pay for it.
Also, MLAs should not get an apartment rented for them, they should get a set amount and live within that (be it outside downtown, or (gasp) getting an MLA roomie…). You also should not be flying back and forth, drive, get driven, train? I not for paying for commutes as well, I have to get myself to work on my dime, why can’t they?
This could go on…..
al, isn’t that just a dilly of an expense account? january 2013 totalled 268,000 for us to keep our mla’s expense accounts paid. that does NOT include their own salaries, base rate 87K a year.
yeah, the christmas cards kill me too.
ustwess, if your employer ‘forced’ you to accept a salary because you couldn’t get an offer of anything higher anywhere else in this market, then he paid you ‘market rate’. market rate is the rate here and now, not somewhere else, or in your mind. the ‘market rate’ in calcutta might be $190 a month, and in Singapore, $190 an HOUR for your job. but that’s not here.
But yet I was offered another job dodin ghte same thing, five minutes up the road for 10K more… thus the market drove me to take the other job 🙂
if employer a is offering 50k, and employer b, c & d are offering 60k then employer a will not get employees to work for him. he is not paying market price for the labour.
if employee x voluntarily accepts employer a 50k salary when he know employer b, c & d are offering 10k more, he must have some other reason. why did you accept employer a at 10k less? or is it that you accepted 10k less a year ago? and now the market rate has gone up? or perhaps you now have another 10k worth of marketable experience to put out there?
Accept 10K less because I would have to wait another two months for job B to come up and was broke.
And If I didnt take the 50K job, there would be another three people in line to take it.
And… who are we kidding, market rates dont go up around here. They struggle just to keep up with the consumer price index… which they usually don’t.
Wow, posting the link to the NS Legislature expenses really opened my eyes up! I will definitely be sharing this with all my friends on social media; you should all do the same. This shit has to stop!! I struggled for years robbing Peter to pay Paul, taking care of two children, mostly on my own, and working for much less than my worth and putting up with it. Some days we were down to bread and milk, nothing else in the cupboards….peanut butter it was! I wasn’t able to give my children as much as I’d liked but we made do. No one should ever have to live that way! So much of this wasted money could be put to better use…..educating those less fortunate (for free!)….helping people get better jobs….improving our healthcare system…more community outreach programs…giving the SPCA the resources they need so desperately. I have a 2nd job, my first in years, and just got my T4s. I made another $2,400 and had $5 taxes taken off! I can’t WAIT to see how I get fucked up the ass for just trying to keep afloat 🙁 NOT COOL!
Can’t wait to get out of this godforsaken Public Service ridden douche of a province.
ustwess, it must be we are using ‘market rate’ in two different ways. if 3 other people were willing to accept that $50 k then that is what the ‘market’ will bear. thats market rate.
labour is a commodity like anything else. if 10 stores sell bread for $3 a loaf that is the market rate. one store has higher expenses, so he needs to sell his bread for $11. he won’t get it. no one will buy it, because the ‘buyers’ (that is employers/hirers) are not going to pay more than they get can it for everywhere else.
thats pretty good only getting a fourth of what you make taken away from you. My nets only 54% of my gross every pay lol