“17% of the time, it works every time.”
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Summary
On today's show, we bring on Sandeep Karan Karan, a member of Parliament for Newmark and Aurora, to talk about the Prime Minister's recent national address and his call for the younger generations to sacrifice even more.
Transcript
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hello and welcome once again to the blueprints this is canada's conservative podcast i'm your
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host jamie schmell member of parliament for haliburton kawortha lakes with new content for
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you every single tuesday 1 30 p.m eastern time don't forget to like comment subscribe
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and share this program don't forget to tell your friends too they can download it on platforms like
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cast box itunes google play and spotify you name it it is out there on today's show mark carney the
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prime minister makes a national address and of course 17 of the time the canada revenue agency
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is right every time to talk about this and so much more we bring on sandra kobena member of
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parliament for newmark and aurora hopefully you got your name right i've messed it up a million times
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i'm so sorry that's perfect all right we appreciate you coming on the show congratulations on your
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election i know it was a few months ago but first chance you've had to come on the show
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yes thank you for that but you've been very active you're a member of the finance committee you've
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been up in question period pretty much weekly uh doing a fantastic job keep up the great work
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thank you i appreciate it mark carney the prime minister makes a address last week to
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to canadians i'm not even actually sure what it was about it just seemed to be a bunch of
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you know word salads whatever but the big takeaway is again you know linking into our first topic
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it will take some sacrifices and it will take time this seems to be the the leftist way about doing
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something right we'll try a new government program and if we fail well we just need more time
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resources and of course your patient taxpayer by the way give us some more money that's right
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well and the the irony of the the speech is that it was delivered to a room full of students
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and him calling on uh the younger generations to make even more sacrifices but we know
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that there is nothing to sacrifice anymore right they have been sacrificing for failed liberal policies
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for the last 10 years and so now the legacy continues and uh he stood up and said
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no actually you need to sacrifice even more because we're going to dabble down on those policies
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yeah well you can't afford a house you probably care having a tough time doing groceries like going
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grocery shopping uh the job market's a little shaky right now but yeah you're right make a few
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more sacrifices you're right what else to what else is there left to sacrifice well that's that's the
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main feedback that i received and there was there's a couple in aurora that uh you know recently
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married they have five jobs between the two of them and they cannot afford a home and they are
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delaying starting a family because they cannot afford it so imagine that couple listening to the
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prime minister say well you're going to have to sacrifice even more what is there to sacrifice there
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is nothing to sacrifice and then there's another gentleman uh a welder in new market at my writing
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that i was speaking to and he said all i'm asking is to be able to afford a house
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close to my parents because i don't want to go far away that they are all i have he's a welder he's
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working long hours what is there to sacrifice and so i think that's what the frustration is uh from the
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next generation not only because there's nothing to sacrifice today but they are taking on so much
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debt that they are leaving us my generation my children's generation with generational debt
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yeah and so nobody seems to care about the numbers on the liberal side uh but it is a lot of debt that
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they're taking on and when he's asking for sacrifices i i don't think that sits well with the people that are
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truly struggling well especially when the sacrifices will not affect mark carney and the champagne
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socialists that's right they won't be affected yeah they'll still be the wining dining large
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while the the the you know the working class get hammered again until they figure it out yep yep so
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we have the parliamentary budget officer a bit of an earlier uh an older clip but still rings true to
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what we're talking about now play cup one i think everybody should be concerned it's a really serious
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day right this is the first time in 30 years that we've tabled uh an economic and fiscal outlook
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where the fiscal anchor of the general and probably most important fiscal anchor for any government
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is a declining or at least stable debt to gdp ratio uh and this is the first time in 30 years that
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i've seen one in which that ratio is going up over time so that's definitely a that's definitely a
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cause for concern so first time in 30 years we've seen debt continuing to go up and the fact that the
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gdp so in essence our ability to make stuff is going down well like explain as a member of the finance
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committee this must shock you right like well you know um what took me aback was actually the the
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description of the parliamentary budget officer uh when he talked about our economic state so he he uses
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the words uh shocking unsustainable uh stupefying and so as somebody who who comes here to hear this
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for the first time for instance i thought to myself well this is really serious right and when he talks
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about the debt to gdp ratio going up so things getting worse it's also quite alarming but it seems
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like it's only alarming to our side not not to the liberal side and so um i i am still shocked at how
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um easily they are giving up this debt to gdp ratio that is supposed to be the fiscal anchor for canada
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and if you look at all the serious countries g7 countries that is their fiscal anchor but it is
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getting so bad that this government is choosing to also give it up um and so now there's great concern
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because there is no accountability um and we know that the budget is coming but it's going to be
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totally different so for the first time in our nation's history the budget will be split into
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two but not only that they are changing the definition of some of those expenses that would
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typically be operational and they're calling it capital to make this side look better uh but that's
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only obviously a communication strategy to confuse canadians and absolutely uh again uh calls into
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question well where is the accountability for this government absolutely we know the government
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has a great track record of picking winners and losers in the marketplace the battery plants billions
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of dollars talantis is on the way out you know we don't know where most of this money has gone if
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it's being returned uh they you should be letting the market decide but at the same time these these
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nation building projects that were announced most of them were already in the process some including
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darlington had shovels in the ground already but without addressing the ability to get our energy
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to market to tidewater building pipelines getting rid of the emissions cap getting rid of the tanker
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ban we'll never be building anything there's no proponent that is going to line up even though
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pieces of legislation the liberals have passed allow them to circumvent the existing piece of
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legislation already in place why you don't address that is beyond me but at the same time
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there's easy fixes to this absolutely and if you take a step back on the major projects for instance
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i was talking to a gentleman in my riding in aurora and i said now imagine uh just a simple park
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a community park and you know the the slide only works for some children and the the swings work for
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other children and you go back to the manufacturer and say can you just fix the park so that it works
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for all the children and they will say no no no just pick one or two and we'll make sure that the
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park only works for two well that's what they're doing at a national level where they are saying
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we pick who are the winners and losers we pick who's going to make money and who's not the rules
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clearly don't work but we're going to make an exemption just for a select few and guess what
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we pick them absolutely that's why government loves big business right you can surround yourself
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with lawyers and lobbyists and they can do what they do to the politicians and the money just keeps
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on flowing that's right the small businesses that small businesses will suffer because they cannot
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afford the expensive lawyers expensive uh accountants expensive lobbyists to be able to
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get these major projects yeah and it's always a small business that takes the brunt unfortunately
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canada revenue agency my goodness another gem and uh we got a right we got a laundry list here
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um my goodness the auditor general did a report on canada revenue agency it it doesn't look too great
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for them uh the biggest stat i think to come out of this and we'll let the other generals maybe queue
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up cut too um is that 17 of the time the canada revenue agency was actually correcting giving out
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information that's shocking uh i'll get your comments let's play cut to it i'll get your comments
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auditors from my office placed calls to contact centers and asked general or non-account specific
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questions we found that agents responses to individual tax questions were accurate only 17 percent of the
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time and business or tax business tax or benefit questions were accurate just only half of the time
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to test the accuracy of agents responses to account specific questions we reviewed a sample of recorded
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conversations we found that the accuracy was much higher when questions pertain to specific accounts
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what are your take when you listen to that what's your take well for for the cra to be uh
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uh to be wrong 83 percent of the time that is if you actually get through that's oh that is a good
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point uh that is because obviously you you cannot get through and so if you get through you get the wrong
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information 83 percent of the time on individual tax questions i don't think that gives people a lot of
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confidence here um we know that the the minister of finance knew that this report was coming and that
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he knew how scathing was going to it was going to be so they of course tried to plan around to plan to plan
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um and so but what that tells me is that this is obviously an ongoing issue that has been getting
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progressively worse um in there they have not offered any fixes and the liberal tendency the
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approach has typically been we'll throw more money at the problem yes uh but we see that the the uh
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the costs for the cra continue to go up uh but the issues also continue to go up so it's very inefficient
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what would it you know i may be wishful thinking wouldn't it be a good idea to maybe simplify the
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tax code yes definitely wishful thinking like to make it so complicated that regular people
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can't figure it out where they have to call the canada revenue agency the administrator um and
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they're having trouble figuring it out at that point it should be like maybe we should address this it's
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true because i mean they they try to uh rely on ai as well as you know there's a chatbot called charlie
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but even charlie got the answers wrong two-thirds of the time so there is no hope uh it's uh it's a
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serious issue and i think i think what needs to happen here is they need to look at the fundamental
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issues of the cra yeah right and uh and stop simplifying uh you know the the the solutions
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and just throwing more money because clearly it's not working no it isn't working i think there needs
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to be a simplification of the tax code to the point where regular canadians don't have to you know wait
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online to get an operator they don't have to go out and spend money on on accountants no offense to
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accountants they're lovely people but it's just gotten overly complicated where people just throw
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up their hands and have to turn to other methods in order to file their taxes to do the right thing
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absolutely yeah i mean uh i don't know if uh people have seen but they're the one of the latest news
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also has been uh with regards to the automatic tax filing but there was a fraud uh that caused the cra to
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pay out close to five million dollars out to a company that only uh generates 250 000 and it wasn't
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even the cra who caught it it was actually the financial institution who caught it and had to call
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the cra and say um i don't think this looks right so there there's there's a lot of money at stake and
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it's taxpayer dollars right that uh that are being wasted are being mismanaged uh because at the end of
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the day when we talk about costs and spending it is canadians heart earned uh income and the taxes
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that that are paid from that that are being wasted here and even during the pandemic there were warning
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signs that money was leaving the you know the government's hands and going to people not even
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living in canada or multiple accounts or a wide range of fraudulent activities and yes their money did
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go to people who needed it absolutely and conservative support of that but we did raise
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many red flags about the fact that there was the possibility and the reality of it actually happening
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of fraudulent accounts and people getting money they weren't entitled to at all yes and there was there
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was no way to actually recover that to those funds right so that's why these um policies that are that uh
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give away money so quickly are like you have to think through uh what you're doing because chances
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are you're not going to get that those funds back they go into debt or they're printing money
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but then it's the next generations yeah that are going to have to pay for it right that's right
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so it's it's uh there are real consequences to overspending yeah absolutely i think even some
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CRA employees managed to help themselves to some COVID relief funds too so uh unbelievable anyway
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we're pretty much out of time thank you for coming on show um the guests always get the last word so
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we allow the floor to go over to you and you can sum up any way you'd like well uh yeah i mean uh
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there are some serious uh concerns and of course we have the budget coming up on november the 4th i am
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as a member of the finance committee and as a finance professional particularly concerned about the budget
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uh and the approach that they're taking to it specifically um with the redefinition
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of some of the expenses the parliamentary budget officer as you know is a budget watchdog uh nonpartisan
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and he has voiced um his concerns uh it blurs accountability it goes outside of international
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standards uh and this is the approach that there are that they they want to take to manipulate the
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budget so that the numbers look better uh that is very wrong and i'm particularly concerned about
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that in the future of um the next generations with the amount of debt that uh that are that are going
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to be left on the backs of uh the next generations yeah the next generation won't be better off and
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that's a weird trend that we are now seeing yeah so many years so many decades the next generation has
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always been better off and now that's changed that's right very unfortunate sandra thank you very much
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for coming on no problem got it there we go after a parliament from new market aurora thank you for
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your time thank you for yours as well don't forget to like comment subscribe and share this program
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tell your friends to download it on platforms like cast box itunes google play and spotify new content
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for you every single tuesday 1 30 pm eastern time until next week remember low taxes less government