Payroll taxes up 1% starting Jan. 1, 2011

Oh boy.  If you make about $35k per year, expect $70 extra taken off each monthly pay cheque.  That's no small change and works out to $850 per year for that income, I'm sure a lot of struggling families cannot afford.  Happy frickin' new year.

I agree with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and saying that if you haven't used EI, you should pay less over the years, like a true insurance system would work.  I've never used it and can't imagine how much of that I paid into it since I started working in high school could have been used for other necessities or whatever I want to use it for.  Call me crazy, but maybe like a Super RRSP, we each have our own EI account and are required to pay into it, not a general unmanaged fund.  What if, we could invest that money and if we did become unemployed, could then easily tap into that insurance fund?