And even Clinton's 'surplus' only had the effect of reducing, not eliminating, a US government debt that has been around since WWII! Incredible, they're still paying off WWII debt!
Harpo says no tax hikes needed!!!!
- Thread starter Nuggler
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But I do quite agree with you, SJP, that a truly fiscally conservative conservative party would be promoting spending reductions, with any tax reduction being conditional on that.
'scuse me? Do you really have such a black and white view of reality? Conservatism cannot be described as "no taxes period". What we have now,though, and have had for many years, or decades, is a tax burden of around 52%. We pay more in taxes, collectively, than we take home. The largest employer in this country is government. Governments do not create wealth, they stifle it. Such inefficiency caused the collapse of the Roman Empire, and more recently the Soviet Union. Unless we want to become a banana republic there is no room to raise taxes. Government has become far too bloated and has to be cut, it cannot be allowed to grow in good times and bad, as it has done in the past.
Wake up and smell the history, we too are headed into the abyss, like our predecessors who made idiotic demands of our government.
I agree we need to increase government spending, but until a party can pull that off, we should not be reducing taxes. Harper has failed to reduce spending. In fact, he's increased it overall. If he were responsible, he'd be honest about it and raise taxes. In that case, a tax increase could be a good thing because it would make voters more aware of just how much government actually costs, so then they might just vote in a party that will reduce government spending. Otherwise, if Harper increases spending but reduces taxes, it gives voters a false impression that we can afford this kind of spending, and so will continue to expect more government spending. A government that links taxes to spending, though, is likely to promote more support for spending cuts among the general population.
Why do we need to increase government spending? What we need is inteligent spending of what the government already takes in. Some things need to be cut in order to do that. A tax increase would be a bad thing, anyone who pays attention to what they earn and what goes out to all levels of government knows that we are at the saturation point. Any further increase in taxes will have a negative impact on the economy and tax revenue.
A number of years ago, a member of Roy Romanow's government, Pat Lorje, published a column showing the loss of tax revenue each time the PST was increased, and this was an NDP government. It can be summed up as the law of diminishing returns. The more taxes go up, the more people deal in cash, and the less government takes in. That's just the way it is.
So here is the corrected version of what I typed:
I agree we need to increase government spending, but until a party can pull that off, we should not be reducing taxes. Harper has failed to reduce spending. In fact, he's increased it overall. If he were responsible, he'd be honest about it and raise taxes. In that case, a tax increase could be a good thing because it would make voters more aware of just how much government actually costs, so then they might just vote in a party that will reduce government spending. Otherwise, if Harper increases spending but reduces taxes, it gives voters a false impression that we can afford this kind of spending, and so will continue to expect more government spending. A government that links taxes to spending, though, is likely to promote more support for spending cuts among the general population.
I agree we need to increase government spending, but until a party can pull that off, we should not be reducing taxes. Harper has failed to reduce spending. In fact, he's increased it overall. If he were responsible, he'd be honest about it and raise taxes. In that case, a tax increase could be a good thing because it would make voters more aware of just how much government actually costs, so then they might just vote in a party that will reduce government spending. Otherwise, if Harper increases spending but reduces taxes, it gives voters a false impression that we can afford this kind of spending, and so will continue to expect more government spending. A government that links taxes to spending, though, is likely to promote more support for spending cuts among the general population.
Aside from that error though, I think my comment still stands. A responsible government does not reduce taxes, giving a false sense of affordability, without first reducing spending; and even increases taxes if necessary to balance the budget if it should fail to reduce spending.
I would prefer gov't to trim down, too. Like people, if gov't carries too much blubber around, it becomes really inefficient. Give it a diet and get it to exercise and it becomes lean and efficient. I don't mind the odd deficit here and there, but not a steady diet of it. Seems to me before this economic crunch, Harpy's efforts were winding the national debt clock backwards. I liked that because it meant less money being uselessly spent on interest payments.
I must be tires. I did not correct the 'corrected' version. Well, anyway, you understand that I meant 'reduce' and not 'increase'.
He may have been winding the debt clock bakwards, but not as quickly as Chretien was, in part because he had increased government spending. Remember Martin's budget surpluses allowing for debt payments? That's the kind of government we need and there are only two ways of doing that:
1. Reduce spending, or
2. Increase taxes.
Harper has been gradually increasing spending and reducing taxes simultaneously, the worse of both worlds.
Good point. I should add that reducing spending is cool, as long as it isn't like Campbull's methods: reduce education funding, reduce health funding, spend like crazy on the Olys then add a brand new tax (HST).
Loads of people (the provinces, seniors, etc.) weren't happy with finance minister Martin's cutbacks either, especially when he gave nice handouts to his rich buddies.
Loads of people (the provinces, seniors, etc.) weren't happy with finance minister Martin's cutbacks either, especially when he gave nice handouts to his rich buddies.
Now you are being unreasonable, Machjo. How can getting rid of the deficit also get rid of the debt, except in the long run? Debt and deficit are two totally different issues.
Suppose USA has 10 trillion $ of debt. The president goes from say 500 billion $ deficit to balanced budget. How is that going to pay off any debt? To pay off debt, a country has to run a surplus for decades, not for a year or two.
Deficit must be eliminated, that is the short term problem. Getting rid of deficit stops adding to the debt, it stops the bleeding, but it does not pay back the debt. So when Clinton ran surplus, I assume he was able to pay off a tiny portion of the debt, but it is unreasonable to expect him to make any substantial dent in the huge debt USA has. That will take decades of balanced budget, running a surplus.
It is all very well to glibly talk of cutting spending, but the question is, where and how? If it was that easy to cut spending, don’t you think governments would have done it before this?
But no government has cut spending, except in isolated instances. Harper has actually increased spending (so did Bush and the Republicans); he did it even before the current economic meltdown. But I do agree with you, spending must be cut, sometimes the government has to be ruthless about it (as Liberals were during Chrétien). However, I also would oppose any tax cuts while we are cutting the spending. Any money saved from cutting spending should to towards reducing the deficit and if there is no deficit, towards paying off the debt.
Sounds like what Mike Harris and his conservatives did in Ontario back in the 90's. Where still trying to fix what he did to our health care and education systems.
Leaving aside what he did to health care and education spending, Mike Harris did not cut spending overall. He left office with a deficit of 6 billion $ (which conservatives fraudulently claimed to be 2 billion $ during the campaign).
Retraining isnt stimulus,it does nothing to help in the short term and the banks dont mean much to self employed peeps like me as they wont have much to do with us anyways.
Your pretty well on your own when self employed,no help anywhere that I can see and I'm not alone.I know of many small companys all throughout Canada that are toughing it out on their own yet they will be the ones the govt wont get taxes from this year and judging by all the assessments and reassessments I have got the last 6 months I think it's safe to say they havent figured that part out yet.
I guess the autoworkers needed to keep those high paying jobs and pensions.:roll:
Sorry for the misunderstanding. Of course I wasn't suggesting that Clinton pay off the debt overnight. What I was suggesting was that Clinton had understood the importance of the debt and so made efforts to pay it off, whereas Reagan, to a lesser extent Bush Sr., and to the greatest extents Bush Jr. (he'd even out-Reagan-ed Reagan by a long-shot!) seem to have had a 'we-te-the-greatest-country-one-earth-so-we-don-tneed-to-pay-off-the-debt-so-let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may' attitude.
It is stimulous to some degree in that it does create teaching jobs. Ok, not exactly the biggest stimulous on earth, but a stimulous none-the-less.
Add to that that the unemployed who go back to school are kept busy doing something productive (i.e. upgrading their skills for the end of the recession) rather than wasting their time looking for jobs that aren't there). This takes them out of the employment loop altogether for a short time, thus reducing the unemployment rate. In a sense, they are employed, employing themselves in the betterment of themselves so as to be better prepared for the end of the recession. That's not exactly stimulous, granted, but it still protects the unemployed from the ravages of the vicious cycle of no skills to get the job they need to go to school to get the skills to get the job they need.
Another point is that we don't want to jump from the frying pan of deflation into the fire of inflation. Such a policy would help pus some money into the economy for education thus helping to fight deflation, but at the same time ensuring that once out of deflation, we'll have skilled workers entering the workforce helping to produce more value-added goods and services thus helping to counter the threat of inflation later on. Essentially, any counter-deflationary policy ought to be calculated so as to lay the foundations for a counter-inflationary policy as soon as we're out of deflation.
Who cares about the banks? If a banker loses his job, and he has no skills for whatever other jobs are out there, then we can always retrain him too to prepare him for the jobs that are likely to appear after the recession. Why should bankers get any special treatment?
What kind of help? Again, if you can't find work, either find new work or, again, if the issue is lack of skills, then learn the skills for the jobs that are or will be available. By the time you graduated, the recession would be over and it wouldbe perfect timing, with you going back to work, self-employed or otherwise, with the skills you need to succeed. If you can't afford education for the new skills you need, then sure I'd have no issue with paying higher taxes for that. I do have issue with government bailing out banks and certain industries that are 'more equal' than others like the car industry. It ought to be equal for everyone. No industry ought to get any bail out. If it fails, it fails. Only people should be helped, and that by giving them a hand up through education and not a hand out like we like to do.
That's fair enough. Personally, I think we should scrap business taxes altogether and just have personal taxes instead. After all, if you invest your money into your business, you're doing the economy a favour by developing it. If the issue is with exploitative employers, fine, then just introduce co-determination laws like they have in Germany to protect the workers. Problem solved. Other than that, it's only natural that if you make too little money you should be exempted from paying taxes. That's common sense.
Now that I have an issue with. They should not have been treated as 'more equal' than you or me. Instead, we ought to have just let the industry fall and, like any other unemployed worker, offer them education for the trades and professions of the future.
Looking at it that way, a recession could be viewed as a blessing in disguise. It's a chance to purge the market of the older industries to make way for the new, all the while retraining the unemployed for the new industries, thus putting us in an ideal position to ensure currency stability in the face of inflationary pressures later on. Sure we must counter deflation, but without causing inflation. It's a fine balancing act.