Sounds about right to me.

I think we could start with an export tax on all energy exports. I’d peg that at 20% to ensure we have a domestic 20% advantage here in BC.

Furthermore I think the way energy is taxed is flawed. It provides no incentive for energy companies to hold the line on costs as everything just flows through to the end consumer, and therefor energy companies and government are on cahoots pillaging the working class consumers.

I’d say the best solution is to remove all taxes on energy products… that’s the fuel tax, the HST tax, and the carbon tax… then increase the tax on all corporate profits over something like 6% ROI to something like a 70% income tax rate.

With a new tax policy on energy it would cost the energy companies little to spur price discount wars that significantly benefit the domestic market creating productivity efficiencies for all sectors of the economy, and yet when they engage in windfall profits on foreign supply and demand speculation they are constrained by tax commitments.

Currently we have it all backwards, bought and paid for by the multinational corporations that fund our governments political parties. They currently create GDP by robbing the domestic markets of productivity and the standard of living falls.

BC has minerals and resources that are hard to find elsewhere in the world so it’s a given that companies are not going to close up shop just because thier bottom line goes down a bit. It looks to me that BC has been trying to follow the alberta model, which is, extract, extract, extract and sell sell sell at any cost to keep it moving. It doens’t matter that they are have pretty much given over thier own natural resources to foreign multinationals and in return are getting a fraction of the royalties they enjoyed in the 70s and 80s under lougheed. So thier remedy for this was to open up the tar sands even more, expand it beyond reason to gain more income, at the expense of the environment and Canadas reputation. The big difference between what alberta is doing and what BC wants to do, is, albertas main industry is located in one area so logistics and expenses are kept down, whereas BC has to open up virtually the whole province to multinational corporations to exploit our resources, so to offset the cost of exploration and extraction our gov’t give the resources away at less than firesale prices to whoever shows up at the door with the money. The greed and stupidity has to stop before this province has NOTHING left to bring business in.

Why, oh why, did Carol James run Bob Simpson off. He has consistantly been the one politician who has spoken the truth, (perhaps I just answered my own question).
Just think if the NDP had Bob as it’s leader in the next election. At least we know he is honest about why the Lieberals can claim the cupboards are bare. With him as leader we might have a chance of at least starting to fix the damage that the lieberals have cost us, the citizens of what should be Canada’s leading province. Instead we get Adrian Dix who has yet to speak the simple truths as to why we find ourselves behind the eight ball. What a waste.
I have often heard it said that in B.C, (compared to the states), we do not assasinate our bad politicians, we re-elect them. I supose that what has caused Bob Simpson to be an independant, is the inverse of that saying. What a shame.

I think what we are hearing from Mr. Simpson is that when our representatives are non partisan then things can be dealt with in an honest and transparent manner.

Both of the two major parties need to be brought down to size so as to end the cycle of dictatorships and polarised kaos.

That is the only way that we are going have our MLAs represent us instead of their party master’s spindoctors.

I can’t add to that so I’m going downtown to sign the AAP against borrowing– I sure hope Prince George voters would get rid of the AAP and replace it with a streight majority.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable summary by Mr. Simpson to me. And let’s be honest here folks, MOST large corps would not flee the Province if they had to pay a little more income tax, ESPECIALLY if BC remained competitive on rates, which they would even if there was a bump up. If that logic held true, there would be no corporations (or people for that matter) residing in Quebec.

Oh and to provide more balance to this discussion, it’s probably also worth pointing out that personal tax rates has also declined considerably in recent times and that too contribues to the issues that Mr. Simpson speaks of.

Hmm, I make more money now, my income tax percentage is less, yet I have less money to spend. Could it be the income tax was replaced by other taxes we never had before? HST, Carbon, just to name a couple.

“Hmm, I make more money now, my income tax percentage is less, yet I have less money to spend. Could it be the income tax was replaced by other taxes we never had before? HST, Carbon, just to name a couple”

That could be the case, however, it’s really impossible to know unless you did a complete reconciliation of your current income and spending and compared that to your past income and spending. These are subjective things and will be completely different for each individual as their income levels and spending habits change.

What we do know for a fact is that both corporate and personal INCOME TAXES have been on a rather considerable decreasing trend over the last decade or so. I think it’s also generally accepted that many of the government services we come to expect have had their costs follow an increasing trend over that same time period.

Unless the economy has grown so much that the government is able to offset those tax rate reductions through an increased number of taxpayers contributing to the overall coffers (this seems to be a fairly common theory of how things work when taxes are reduced say many right wing pundits . . . I tend to think it’s an incredibly simplistic and unsubstantiated claim myself), then something will give.

And this is all assuming that we operate in a bubble without being influenced by international fiscal policy, culture change, more complex business and financial arrangements, the desire to shift money and operations offshore to increase ROI, etc. It’s really as though someone is just pulling levers, pushing buttons and hoping for the best outcome when they put some of this policy together. I’ve sat through many courses on these subjects and like many things, what happens in the “real world” doesn’t always follow the theory one finds in textbooks.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure if anyone really understands how it all fits together. If they did, wouldn’t you think we could have avoided the chaos that we are experiencing right now and at various times throughout our history?

NMG Rarely are the individuals who truley understand how things work, politicians. We vote for people who have proven they have the ability to accumulate wealth and little other true incite into how society works. This is why we are lost as once again the economy is here to support society but, we are governed by politicians who believe that society is here to support their economy. It is no great mistery what is going on as long as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer we can all see that someone clearly understands how to manipulate our systems for their own well being. Not for tha betterment of all society. We need leaders who believe that all are entittled to money not just the so called wealthy elite.