"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." A Liberal-supporting, environmentalist blog. We blog according to our opinions, not those of the party or government. Free speech must win and that's why we have this blog. The views of two Montrealers and a Libertarian.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
BC votes NO on HST
In BC the results of the referendum came on Friday. 55% of BC residence voted to eliminate the young new HST while 45% wanted it to stay. That is much closer than I imagined. I knew BC would vote no on the tax thought it would be more like 67% 33%. I thought this because the people who are really against were energized to vote against the tax, but it seems the tax has been more popular over the course of time, and quite frankly I think one more year in and the HST would be popular enough to not have enough people sign a petition to vote on the tax., but the Liberal BC government has decided to move to eliminate the HST. What a shame! The HST actually helps the economy and is revenue neutral. B.C got 1.6 billion dollars for moving to the HST and is going to have to give it back now, because Harper isn't going to give BC money for doing nothing. B.C lost out on this referendum. 113,000 jobs were predicted to be created over 10 years because of the new HST, And companies would have been more competitive and have a better bottom line, and consumers would see the difference. My take BC should have kept the HST regardless of the vote. Being a leader means doing something that is right versus doing something that is popular.
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The HST had lots of nice, noisy predictions about creating jobs and such. In the time that the HST's been around, have any of those jobs and other predictions started to come true? Why wouldn't the magic low-tax jobs just move over the border to no-tax Alberta instead?
ReplyDeleteDear Happy Wanderer: I disagree with your assessment of what the HST would have done for BC. The tax was designed to give the Feds more tax dollars and less taxes to be paid by big businesses. There were some smaller businesses (depending on the industry) who would also have paid less tax and apparently it was easier to manage by business but on the whole this tax was using the whole "trickle down" theory of economics and is only a good idea for big businesses. No, the HST is not a good tax and the provinces who have already signed on have already discovered this. This is a tax that places the burden on the shoulders of the millions of citizens who will be paying more taxes on everyday necessary living expenses, not less as the Gov't has stated in their efforts to convince people to accept this tax. I for one am thrilled that people did vote it down. The GST/PST wasn't the best managed tax but now it can be reorganized and made better for businesses to work with. This is a great opportunity to make things better for everyone. Well, except all those big businesses who care only about their huge profit margins. Their executives will have to come up with another scam to get their excessive bonuses and salaries.
ReplyDeleteAs a Montrealer you're to be forgiven for totally misunderstanding the referendum vote. There was a great deal of anti-government fury in this. The governing il-Liberals even turfed their leader in a desperate move for self-preservation. To make sense of this vote you would need a working understanding of everything else - BC Ferries, BC Rail, BC Hydro and other corporatist scams foisted on the province by our "free enterprise" rulers. The dissent out here is building. It could boil over when Harper drives through the Northern Gateway pipeline across our mountain ranges to a supertanker port at Kitimat.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when we understood the relative merits of regressive consumption taxes versus progressive income taxes. Then again, we've forgotten a great many things over the past thirty years.