Saturday, January 30, 2010

Thank you Flaherty - GST cut saved thousands of jobs

Now, I am sure you will never here this in most media sources, but today the National Post is running a story on how a senior Liberal wants to raise the GST, and subsequently kill thousands of jobs.

What is interesting is the last couple paragraphs, where the president of Infometrica discusses how his firms modeling data showed the GST cut created 162,000 new jobs!

Carl Sonnen, the president of Infometrica, said his firm's economic modelling shows a two-point cut in the GST translates roughly into about 162,000 new jobs. Conversely, reversing the Conservatives' cut would mean losing those jobs.

"You can't argue that raising the GST rate won't hurt jobs. It will," said Mr. Sonnen, who said the Conservative GST cut likely softened the recession's blow. "In our analysis, we got some positives out of that [cut] for GDP in the second quarter of last year. Otherwise we might have been in recession much earlier."

I remember back when the GST was cut, and Minister Flaherty described it as stimulus, the media and opposition attacked him for it. Seems he was right after all. A little more vindication for the Conservatives.

It has been a good month for Conservative vindication. Winning two court cases against Elections Canada, a Liberal complaint to the Ethics Commissioner also dismissed, lots of faux scandals dismissed.

I wonder how long it will be unit the next faux scandal?

5 comments:

skuleman said...

Somehow I'm just not surprised Flaherty was right.
Regretfully, I'm also not surprised by the media's reaction then and their actions now.
I'm not sure when it happened, but at some time in my lifetime the MSM in Canada stopped unbiased reporting the news and became the marketing & promotion arm of the liberal party.

Pissedoff said...

So I guess when the Harper Sales Tax comes in, in Ontario and BC we will see thousand of job losses.

AnonymousCoward said...

Ohhh, clever PissedOff, Harper Sales Tax never heard that one before. Actually, in theory it should reduce the cost of inputs into product, thus reduce the cost of the product.

Should make it cheaper to run a business, maybe allowing that business to hire another employee.

In theory, they say 100K should be created when moving to the HST. Guess we will need to wait a few years to see how it plays out.

Pissedoff said...

anon coward, I am not in Canada and know the Libs are calling it that. Being on a fixed income I don't go in for theories or maybes. This is going to increase the price of heating oil and electricity to name but two. Besides the millions Harper as bribed, with taxpayers dollars including yours, his two liberal buddies to bring in HIS sales tax.

AnonymousCoward said...

Pissedoff, that is a simplistic view, but what else should I expect from a liberal.

It's not really HIS sales tax is it? It takes two to tango.

A harmonized sales tax saves the province money in administration, saves companies money in administration, moves the PST to a VAT model which most economists predict is a better tax system.

And it doesn't stop there:
- While some prices will go up, hundreds more prices will go down.
- Past experience shows wages will go up
- HST lowers business costs
- HST encourages investments to become more productive and competitive

This is proven in every jurisdiction in the world.

Educate yourself, even the TorStar is in favour of this.

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/587565
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