Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Lautremont]

http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/NationalNewsArticle.htm?src=n120115A.xml

Economists are apparently wary of Stephen Harper's "Oh yeah? Well WE'LL cut two percent off the GST!" plan. One of them, a con himself, called the plan "stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid," which has a nice ring to it - the Tories may wish to adopt it as their campaign slogan. Others remarked that, if you really want to help the poor (as Harper claims to), you'd cut their taxes, thereby encouraging saving and not more spending.

Anyway, the game's afoot, and Harper's out the gate all mushy-footed again.

[Telly Savalas]

1. Why did I know just from reading the title of this thread...

that it was going to be about something Stephen Harper said?

So what's he gonna do, pay for the tax cuts by slashing "waste and mismanagement" from government? :rofl:

[iverglas]

2. how short our memories

http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/ndp/english/factsheets/gstfact.html

1997

Alexa McDonough and Canada's NDP will fight to reduce the GST and to phase it out.

In 1993 Jean Chrétien said the GST would be gone within two years. Four years later, it's still with us. And the Liberal government is determined to blend it with provincial sales taxes across the country.

... Canadians will never forget that it was the Conservative government that forced the GST through, even though fewer than ten percent of Canadians supported this new tax. Conservative Senators endorsed the Liberals' harmonized GST.

... In a report on the GST in 1994, the Reform Party congratulated the Liberals on their attempt {to} harmonize the GST with provincial sales taxes.

The Reform Party recommended that consumption taxes should be levied on the broadest possible base. This would mean extending the GST to food, medications and nursing home charges.

Hmm. Which party's platform has been consistent from the beginning?

The Conservatives giveth us the GST, the Liberals promiseth to take it away, the Liberals keepeth it, Reform embraceth it, the reformed Reform promiseth to take it away ...

{from the article posted} Others remarked that, if you really want to help the poor (as Harper claims to), you'd cut their taxes, thereby encouraging saving and not more spending.

Those others must be hoping that the people listening are really stupid.

I dunno, I guess people are going to open their wallets and say: Oh look, $5 more this week than I had last week ... now, it's there because it didn't get deducted from my pay cheque, so I'd better go put it in my RRSP ... lucky it didn't get there because I didn't pay it out on GST for Christmas shopping, because then I'd have to go spend it at Canadian Tire right away.

Reducing sales taxes will benefit people who pay no income tax at all because they are the working poor or receive social assistance. And we can't have that, can we? Even though they'll spend that extra $1 a week on goods and services right in their communities, at businesses where their neighbours work.

How will Harper pay for the GST cut? I say: mu. It's a loaded question. Does no one really think that Harper would take power and suddenly discover that the Liberals have been lying about the surpluses? What GST cut?

But heck, I'll play. He could start by de-listing abortion from services covered under the Canada Health Act ... that'd save probably 30 million.

http://www.acpd.ca/acpd.cfm/en/section/ActionAlert/articleid/237

Actions an Anti-Choice Government Can Take to Limit Your Access to Reproductive Health Services

1. Change government health policy to state that abortion is not a medically necessary procedure to terminate a pregnancy which would allow provincial governments to opt out of funding abortion services in hospitals as well as in clinics.

2. Allow the provinces to act in violation of the Canada Health Act by opting out of paying for abortions under Reciprocal Billing Agreements.

{New Brunswick and Quebec are still in violation}

Not to hijack the thread ;) -- but that's exactly what a lot of his party is itching to do, along with a variety of other scummy things. Both trusting Harper when he promises to do the right thing and letting his promises overshadow the rest of his scummy party's scummy ideas would be bad ideas.

[Lautremont]

3. I'm sure you're right about the abortion angle.

It's creepy and scary and fully consistent with every other reform angle.

I'm not convinced that reducing the GST even appears to be the right thing to do w/r/t helping the poor, though. The "working poor" pay surprisingly high income taxes, though, often because they fill out the forms themselves and don't know what accountants know. Working to cut taxes to the lower income segment seems to me a better approach to improving their living standards.

Cutting two percent off the GST is going to save a ha'penny per loaf of bread or an eighth of a cent on a box of KD, for a total of perhaps a few hundred dollars a year, maximum; or, on the other hand, will save the rich person fifteen hundred bucks when they buy a Maserati. Who benefits more?

You're also dead on about the inconsistencies of the Liberals and the Reform on the GST matter. Talk about your flip-floppers.

[elare]

4. Ok, just getting a bit picky here ...

There is no GST on a loaf of bread or a box of KD (food bought in grocery stores is not taxed unless it's considered to be "junk food" like chips, cookies, pop, etc.)

For what it's worth, I didn't believe Chretien when he said he'd eliminate the GST, and I don't believe Harper when he says he'll reduce it.

[Lautremont]

5. Quite right, of course. I wasn't thinking 'bout that.

But you take my point. In fact, it kind of bolsters my point when I think about it - that means a GST reduction will help lower-income people even less, since, presumably, a lower percentage of their spending is of the discretionary sort apt to have a GST appendage.