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Originally Posted by Shazam
Well if it makes you feel any better Alberta is not even close to being the lowest income-taxed jurisdiction anymore. So mission accomplished NDP.
As a portion of GDP, resources is becoming lower and lower. It's almost like people know that O&G is volatile. It takes time though. You don't build new industries overnight. Most of BC's GDP is now "real estate transactions" (and their main exports are still coal, LNG, wood and minerals), so let's see how "sustainable" that is.
And man, people will never understand how corporate income tax works. Changing it doesn't do what people think it does.
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nah, actually resource revenue is a greater proportion of alberta government revenue now that it was in the 90s. That's the economic legacy of the PC governments of the last 30 years. It's becoming lower and lower now out of bare necessity, but it's not a strategy, it's a reaction to market forces any serious economist saw coming.
I also understand the corporate taxes argument. I can get behind arguments that favour exceptionally lower corporate tax rates. The problem is, the 'fiscally conservative' governments weren't making tax policy based on mainstream economics, they've been making it on ideology. I simply can't support that kind of willful blindness in the face of being wrong.
And BC's housing bubble is a HUGE problem. It shouldn't make Albertans feel any better to point to a neighbouring province also looking at revenue shortfall deficits as a reason it's OK Alberta's 'fiscally conservative' governments paved the way. If anything, it should help them question even further just how 'fiscally conservative' modern conservative movements actually are.