Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacks
Ya, ask them which taxes should be raised. You can bet that almost all of them will say to raise taxes on people who make more than they do, or of course corporations. I'm sure non drinkers will be in favor or raising booze taxes, non smokers are good with raising taxes on cigarettes, healthy people are good with health user fees, etc etc etc.
95% of 59% of people are in favor of higher taxes that they don't have to pay.
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Which is fantastic in a democracy because 95% of them won't be affected by a tax hike on the province's wealthiest personal and corporate incomes.
I have a difficult time coming to terms with this psychological phenomenon. I understand it in it's relationship to America. John Steinbeck held that, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”, and that makes sense from the perspective of American exceptionalism, but i've never understood it in relationship to Alberta, and I grew up in it.
Earlier in the thread I pointed out that companies, freed from 'excessive' taxation are just sitting on their money and not even returning it as dividends while at the same time not reinvesting it in the company and by association the community. That was dismissed because that would be 'bad business'. Yet, that is plainly what companies in Canada have done with their untaxed profits. To think otherwise is to
ignore reality.
Quote:
Statistics Canada said Thursday that private non-financial corporations increased their cash holdings to $630-billion in the first quarter of this year — up from $621-billion at the end of 2013.
“It would be nice if we could wake it up and get it invested in the economy,” said economist Erin Weir, at the United Steelworkers union.
“This accumulation of ‘dead money’ helps explain the lack of business investment despite record corporate profits.”
Corporations have been singled out by the Bank of Canada for not contributing more to the economic recovery, which has relied heavily on consumer spending for growth since the 2008-09 recession.
It has been nearly two years since Mark Carney, Canada’s central bank chief until his departure last June to head the Bank of England, ruffled corporate feathers by publicly uttering the phrase “dead money” to describe money sitting idle on balance sheets.
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Statistics Canada data released Thursday show companies has a total of $629.7-billion in cash reserves in the first quarter of 2014 report, up from $620.6-billion during the September-to-December period last year. Compare those levels to the $534.6-billion in corporate cash reserves in the fourth quarter of 2012 and$513.5-billion in the first three months of that year.
“I think the striking thing is that there has been quite a consistent trend, for at least a decade, of just steady increases in cash being held by private non-financial corporations. It slowed down a little during the financial crisis — but not much,” Mr. Weir said in an interview.
“The story for years has been one of optimism about a recovery right around the corner that never really seems to materialize — at least not in terms of investment and employment in the real economy. But there has been a huge recovery in corporate profits,” he said.
“The gap between the recovery and profits, and the lack of recovery in investment, is what explains this huge accumulation of corporate cash.”
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Financial Post
I mean,
The Financial Post isn't some communist sidewalk literature.
Ten years ago, when this trend started, is when this rush to the bottom nonsense began in earnest in Canada. According to Jim Freakin' Flaherty, these companies aren't using their bundles of cash to invest in the economy, so, let's just get on the same page here that corporate tax rates are absurdly low in Alberta and have not generated the desired economic impact that cuts were designed to produce. If we can all agree on that then maybe we can all agree that raising them to pre-deficit levels might be a good place to start to deal with the current budget deficit?
Just say this outloud, "Alberta could raise their taxes to the point of still being the lowest taxed province in the country and raise an additional $11 billion in revenue." How absolutely, incredulously, ideologically partisan do you have to be to not see that as the
obvious solution to this issue?
I'm pleading with guys like you, Jacks, crazy_eoj, to actually present something of a counter argument here, but then I get this drivel about nobody wants to be taxed so there's no solution except no taxes, or how they mis spent my money before so I'm not going to give them any more blah blah bullspit?
More than anything else, it's this kind of mentality that bears the responsibility for situations like the one Alberta finds itself in right now. I guess that really is what it comes down to; willfully ignoring reality in favour of austerity hysteria and sloganeering from the 1980s.
Where is the disconnect between believing higher taxes are necessary and voting for someone who proposes higher taxes?
If I'm an Alberta voter, why bother?