The Harper told the press he was an economist when announcing his GST cut.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. George Bernard Shaw
Hmm, I thought he was a policy wonk for the National Citizens Coalition.....anyways here is a response from a REAL economist to Harpers 2% GSTcut.(which still leaves 5% GST, the Harper is not bold enough to eliminate it entirely so why bother fiddling with it). It is appropriately entitled; Dumb and Dumber.
2 comments:
The savings of Candians has been ain freefall since the Economic frunch of the 1980's way before the Liberals or the introduction of the GST. In fact like the NEP the GST, both hated in the west and which gave rise to the Reform party, was put in place as a way of tempering the high interest rate regime and the collapse of the market the recession of the 1980's which took a decade of Reganism to adjust to. Credit card capitalism which then expanded into the market has created the conditions where No One in North America has savings as our parents once did. But then again our parents lived in the post war boom, the Golden Years of 1954-1974 before the first of the economic crisises hit with the rise in oil prices.
If you want to really affect a GST benefit for all Canadians then eliminate it.Period. Its regressive. But of course capitalism and the state share a similar problem they are junkies, the former for profits at any cost the latter for taxes.Once imposed, such as income taxes after WWI, it is hard to wean the state off its bottle.
Harper is NOT suggesting an elimination of the Gouge and Screw Tax, so its moot if it will save us anything in our wallets. On the other hand if he really had balls he would have scraped the tax.
And abrogated the NAFTA, which were the slogans of the Left during the 1988 election.
Exactly it is the availablity of cheap credit and now even more credit thanks to the hot housing market in North America, which has gone beyond the traditional real estate boom to now include mortgaging the home for credit such as the scandalous CHP home loans which swindle seniors. I have bloged here on the credti crisis. It has to do with capital. We moved from productive industrial based capitalism into market driven capitalization with the crash of the market in 1987. The prelude to which was the recession begun in 1982-84. The reason I use a two year period is that in Alberta the oil boom was still bouying up the economy here while the recession hit the manufacturing economy in Ontario.
Since the crash of Wall Street in 87 money markets and finance capital were used to bail out global capitalism. The growth in the global money market began then. As a result of the recession traditional real estate markets collapsed as did the savings and loans businesses, shades of It's A Wonderful Life, all of these conditions should have created a far deeper and larger crisis in capitalism, that is a depression. It didn't. Since then the market in $$$$ has relied on Schumpeters Creative Destruction of actual and real capital, factories, technology, workers, in order to put more money into play. The Peso crisis of Mexico due to NAFTA is an indication of this. The country should have melted down and the result should have been a political crisis leading to revolution. Instead the banks bailed it out. The Asian melt down which happened three years later should have resulted in a run on Wall Street and the collapse of the World Economy as happened in 1929.
It didn't, global $$$$ markets created credit to support these economies.
Today the United States is bouyed not by production nor investment, nor tax credits but consumer credit cards and homes being mortagaged to the hilt.
The other basket of capital that capitalism is now trying to loot is pensions and benefits.
The capital market is in the process of destroying production in the countries and shifting it abroad. It is producing nations of consumers and creditors living beyond their means in order to consume an overproduction of goods.
This creates the conditions for an even more serious crash and collapse than Black October 1929.
Your thoughts?
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