Keep the great articles rolling
When Neil Reynolds was editor-in-chief of the Telegraph Journal, there were many so-called experts who criticized him for being way off track when it came to economic development. Funny, because the way I see it, if you are being criticized by the political establishment and economic developers here in New Brunswick, then you must be saying or doing something right. I mean, it was the mainstream thinking from that bunch that got us here in the first place, no?
Anyway, here's another terrific article by Mr. Reynolds. One I'm sure will ruffle a few feathers in the status quo corner, or better yet, the guy controlling the provincial purse strings. Regardless, I think it's time some people started listening.
1 Comments:
Dude, thats spurious logic. When everybody says Neil is an idiot then that's hardly grounds to say 'he must be brilliant'.
Again, there are two different groups here. New Brunswickers are doing lousy, and small business is suffering some, but CORPORATE New Brunswick has been all smiles for years. And why wouldn't they be? Just look at the St. John Board of Trade, until Atlantica came along they were singing the praises of Lord and how wonderful everything is.
Now, of course, when Irving wants another refinery, everybody has been told to change their smiles to frowns so that people will think the sky will fall if there aren't two refineries.
However, first of all, I don't think anybody thinks there is such a thing as a 'corporate tax rate'. Corporations contribute very little to the budgets of either the federal government or provincial governments, not even the equivalent of their wealth. The tax code for corporations is mammoth, and there are loopholes to avoid taxes quite easily.
I'm just saying this because I like the blog and anybody taking pot shots at government suits me fine, but if you're trying to sell the idea that Irving, McCain, Ganong and Moosehead are paying TOO MUCH, when they contribute a mere 3% of the provincial budget and problably none to the federal budget, then you can have all the studies in the world on a daily basis and nobody is going to buy it.
In Canada and the US its well recognized that the government simply doesn't look at corporate books and that governments will help pay for expenditures. That's why even corporations aren't complaining about this. If anything, these guys get away with unarmed robbery.
So such cuts only help to make large corporations richer, so the idea that it INCREASES taxes by cutting them, well, thats more specious than the old 'trickle down' theory.
There is something to be said for targeted tax cuts such as mentioned in regards to the companies starting out in animation. However, once again they must be targets aligned with general revenues. IF FatKat gets a tax break, there has to be a mechanism whereby you know that that money will go into hiring, otherwise its just less money that the government has, and more money that gets invested in Nestle stock.
As for ranking the 'competitiveness', I would sort of agree with Switzerland, but since that is such a totally different environment you can't even compare apples to bananas. The swiss have hardly any federal government at all, and municipalities control their own taxes. In a way that's not a bad idea, but it has to be accompanied by their democratic structures. So cities can have taxes that they ensure go into hiring, and not into technology that lays off workers. In OUR society, you know damn well what would happen, because it DID happen all through our history, corporations simply played off muncipalities one against the other to get the most handouts. That led to the whole centralization in the first place.
So its one of those cases where you have to change EVERYTHING to make the recommendations comparible.
And once again, competitiveness isn't necessarily a great thing and its a tough thing to gauge.
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