HST and Post Budget Town Hall Meeting in Quesnel
By 250 News
Tuesday, September 08, 2009 03:46 AM
Quesnel, B.C.- Cariboo North MLA Bob Simpson will be holding the first of a series of town hall meetings tonight.
The subjects for the sessions are the Harmonized Sales Tax and the September budget update.
The session this evening in Quesnel is set to take place at the Quesnel Legion and will get underway at 7 p.m.
There will be a similar session tomorrow evening in Williams Lake in the Gibralter room at 525 Proctor Street.
The provincial New Democrats have been gathering signatures on a petition to stop the harmonized sales tax, saying it will put a burden on those who are already struggling. Those who support the HST say it will make British Columbia more competitive for investment and exports. The HST is receiving support from the forestry and mining industries, while the hospitality industry says it will have a further negative impact on their sector which they say is already facing double digit losses because of the economic downturn.
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Posted by: lmorge on September 8 2009 8:42 AM
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It will only make BC "more competitive for investment and exports" if the forestry and mining firms invest in new, "labour-saving" technology. Which will further displace existing 'jobs' in those industries. That would be absolutely wonderful if those displaced still had "incomes" equivalent to the ones they've just lost through the displacement of their labour by machines to which no 'wage' will ever be distributed. Will they? Will they even have alternative "jobs" that'll pay them anywhere near the equivalent?
The HST won't do anything to make any existing investment "more competitive". The BC Sales Tax has already been paid on THAT plant and equipment, and can only be recovered as a "cost" by charging it into the "price" foreign buyers will have to pay for our exports. If they're to be sold at a price that covers the full cost of making them, that is.
Now look at this situation closely. The proposition is that we can only exist by being "globally competitive", by "capturing" some other country's market, and holding it.
So if we export, say, 60% of all our 'production', and import, (because isn't that what the nature of 'trade' is really all about?), 40% of our 'consumption', we're said to be running a "favourable" trade balance.
If we boosted this up to 80% exports vs. 20% imports, people like Gordon Campbell would think they'd achieved nirvanah in our economy!
But what if we exported 100% of all our production, and imported nothing? Are we getting 'richer' or 'poorer'? We are shipping 100% of our "real wealth". What, then are we receiving in exchange for it?
Some other country's 'money', you say? But what good does that really do US? We don't use Chinese 'money', or Indian 'money', British 'money', "Euros", or "Yen", or even American 'money', to BUY goods and services IN CANADA.
All THAT 'money' is ONLY good for is buying goods and services in the respective countries that issued it. But we don't want their "imports", we want their "money"? What for?
It is not a logical proposition that ANY sovereign country has to import some other country's "money", not to buy its goods in exchange for our own, but just to "imagine" it has to to be able to buy its OWN goods and services instead.