>My son and his wife had a new (first) baby a year ago and my daughter-in-law in not planning to work until the baby is at least in school. But they are finding it to be a REAL TOUGH JOB, even though he is earning a decent wage and they buy very little except food and a few clothes. They don't know if they can make it for 5 more years without having to declare bankruptcy (i.e. she will have to go to work, probably). It looks like two incomes is becoming more and more NECESSARY, at least if you want to stay out of the credit trap.

You are making my point. If I remember correctly, the Canadian Federal gov't taxation rate is about 40% with or without the nationalized health care added in. This is way too high. People should not be working to support a government way of life. This is socialism which has been proved to not work.

I look at income as my hard earned money. The politicians look at it as their money and how lucky the taxpayer should feel should they decide to give any of it back. The more we surrender in the form of taxation, the less freedom we have. Can you honestly say we [the US] need a Dept of Education at the Federal level? How about Dept of the Interior which is a misnomer since its domain is the great American outdoors. We do not need the Depts of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Commerce and Energy for that matter.

We need to approach funding our Federal [and all] gov'ts from a totally different angle. Each budget period should re-start at ZERO with the lawmakers deciding what is needed to run their respective government instead of what is wanted to run [burden] the lives of the governed.