jimmy

They do now. I just fondly remember 1991 when Prost drove the Ferrari 642, a few others were in V12s too. Wasn't that long ago.

realisticman

"I'm beginning to look forward to not working after Jack gets into the drivers' seat and all the nasty companies have scattered to nasty low-tax havens"

That's strange, all the companies will leave if they don't get tax cuts? Since they already don't have them why haven't they already left?

Frank

Geez, Frank, you should know by now that kind of logic doesn't cut any ice with RMan. :-)

Th nasty companies will stay

Th nasty companies will stay where the resources are. Especially the Europeans, because they should know what it is like having tons of money, but nothing to work with and to spend it on.

Europe has been sucking off the resources of the world for 500 years and without them they're dead. As they were after WW2, with millions starving and running around in rags. Including us, so we know what it was like.

To the best of my recollection in a so called "market economy" the people who have the resources will call the shots and prices.

Not according to our brainwashed economists and so called "conservatives", licking the boots of the buyers and beg them to take everything for peanuts and then even pay them to rob us blind.

Ed Deak.

Th nasty companies will stay

Th nasty companies will stay where the resources are. Especially the Europeans, because they should know what it is like having tons of money, but nothing to work with and to spend it on.

Europe has been sucking off the resources of the world for 500 years and without them they're dead. As they were after WW2, with millions starving and running around in rags. Including us, so we know what it was like.

To the best of my recollection in a so called "market economy" the people who have the resources will call the shots and prices.

Not according to our brainwashed economists and so called "conservatives", licking the boots of the buyers and beg them to take everything for peanuts and then even pay them to rob us blind.

Ed Deak.

Frank

"Since they already don't have them why haven't they already left?"

Because the tax rates are currently OK, I guess. We all know that if a government plans to raise them then company boards will be obliged to consider this added cost in deciding whether or not to continue functioning in one location, or moving to another. Just like rent, if it gets too high and another place is much lower you move. 'Twas always thus. Look at Europe. Trade barriers and tariffs have come down and there is a common currency. Borders have become almost invisible and goods, products and people move seamlessly. The concept of war is now absent within these countries where border posts have disappeared. This is the recipe for peace.

"Thanks to globalization, it is now increasingly easy for capital to cross national borders. Investors naturally prefer lower–tax jurisdictions, so there is a shift of jobs and investment out of high–tax nations. This is having a big impact on tax policy. Simply stated, tax competition is compelling governments to dramatically lower their tax rates. This has important implications for China, the United States, and other every nation seeking to play a role in the world economy.

Even Europe's welfare states are engaging in tax competition. Sweden used to have a 60 percent corporate tax rate, but it has been reduced to 28 percent. Norway's rate has fallen from more than 50 percent to 28 percent as well. These are not isolated examples. The average corporate tax rate in the European Union is now 26 percent. In the last five years, at least 16 European Union nations have dropped their statutory tax rate on corporate income."

The NDP talks about raising taxes, or canceling the planned lowering of taxes, and abrogating trade deals like NAFTA and stopping any further ones. Closing the doors. No thanks. Peace, brother.

realisticman

Yes, capital can leave any time it wants etc. That's the world the Right wanted and got.

But, let's say you're a company producing widgets for one of the G7 markets and the tax rate is really not any higher than most other places in the G7. Which it isn't.

Why would you incur costs to your bottom line by moving away from your market, labour and resources and then having to pay all those transportation costs to bring those resources to your new location and pay more transportation costs to ship the finished product back to that market?

Unlike taxes all that transportation hits your operating costs. When you add in that that company operates in a world that is trying to reduce emissions and its a matter of time before it pays carbon taxes or has to buy carbon credits for all that transportation, it becomes non-sensical to consider moving away from your market, labour and resources in a fit of pique because you hate Jack Layton because he didn't give you the tax cuts that Steven Harper promised you.

The Conservatives support the policy of companies playing governments off against each other in order to get lower taxes or grants and interest-free loans. Trade agreements that free companies to leave Country A to find the best deal from other gov'ts while not losing the market and resources in the country they're leaving do not help the citizens of Country A build a better society. Quite the opposite. The answer is to fix the trade agreements, not race to the bottom.

R/man

More uncited references.

This is getting to be a bit of a bad habit for you.

I know the Cato Institute is kind of biblical for guys like you...but why be so shy about telling us about it?

realisticman, please stop embarassing yourself.

But the NDP isn't talking about raising them, rather freezing them. The rate is currently 22.12%, and will drop to 19.5% this year. The Conservatives want to reduce it to 15% by 2013.

Oh, and what's that you have in your post? A quote? From who? You obviously could never write something as coherent. So who did? A quick search in google produces...

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8382

Yikes. An far-right "think tank" i.e. PR firm intended to advertise neo-liberal policy, like our own fine Fraser institute. Hardly a scholarly or objective source.

If you had even the slightest pretence toward honest debate, you would include your sources in your posts.

Specifically which ones?

I haven't read that anywhere, but I have read about Layton talking of renegotiating NAFTA to improve environmental and labour standards.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=bf0ea5e4-6ba0-4ff4-bdfb-86c926cfeac7&k=87976

So, do you have a source indicating that the NDP wishes to throw out NAFTA? Or did you just invent this as well?

G West: You spotted the

G West:

You spotted the Cato Institue thing too, eh? It seems plagiarism is all realisticman has.

I'll try

and remember to cite any quotations but can you dispute the facts? They are the important items. I quoted the comments Jacques, that's not plagiarism.

OK a new and improved NAFTA. Quite a bit. More than just a tweak, a whole new ball game. Will take years.

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:J3am5xOcRK8J:www.peterjulian.ca/page/598+peter+julian+nafta&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1"

WASHINGTON, DC – Following a conference held on March 5th at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which took a critical look at how NAFTA has impacted the North American region, legislators from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico agreed today to launch a Task Force to push for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The Task Force on Renegotiating NAFTA, will be chaired by NDP Trade Critic, Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster), U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the Honourable Yeidckol Polevnsky (Senator for Mexico State and Vice-president of the Mexican Senate), and the Honourable Victor Quintana (Deputy of the State of Chihuahua, Mexico), with support from their respective political parties. Members of the Task Force undertake to promote within their respective legislatures the renegotiation of NAFTA.

The objectives of the Task Force include transforming and rebuilding NAFTA in order to achieve a fair trade policy. This fair trade model is designed to safeguard the sovereignty of the three countries, and includes enforceable measures for the protection of workers and the environment, and allows for all three governments to regulate in the public interest.

“In the United States, Mexico and Canada, income inequality has grown dramatically in the almost fifteen years since the free trade agenda took effect. In Canada, families are worse off today than they were when the first agreement was implemented in 1989,” said Julian. “More and more Canadians work harder without being able to keep up. Over 291,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada since 2002 with increasing hardships in softwood lumber communities and elsewhere in Canada.”

“NAFTA has sucked good American jobs away, destroyed the Mexican countryside, deepened our immigration crisis, wiped out the Mexican and middle and small business classes, not brought about promised investments in infrastructure, and hammered communities across the continent. It’s time for Mexico, Canada, and the United States to work together to change this flawed trade model”, said Kaptur.

“It is indispensable that legislators from all three North American partner countries work together to design an alternative project that takes into account each nation’s sovereignty, environmental protection, economic competitiveness, migration, and labour rights,” said Polevnsky. “We must work hand in hand with civic organizations to launch a progressive program that considers the well-being of human beings as the raison d’être of public policy. The Mexican Senate is looking forward to hosting this Trinational Task Force in the near future”, she said."

So Harper using Howard's Speech about Iraq

So Harper using Howard's speech about Iraq wasn't plagiarism because there were inverted comments on his teleprompter?

Give me a break R/Man.

errata

that should be 'inverted commas'...

The world is awash with worthless greenbacks - the result of decades of trade deficits and wanton military overstpending....now were given to understand that Paulsen's friends from Goldman Sachs are going to straighten things out!

The party's over 'realisticman' and your buddies at Cato and the American Enterprise Institute - not to mention the Fraser Institute - haven't even gotten the message yet.

jimmy_laroux

Sure did. It seems to have become a habit for realisticman of late.

BTW, send me an email someday if you have a moment

garthwest@hotmail.com

Thank you, realisticman.

You did not indicate a source. Without giving a source and and with just quotes on a very large, two paragraph passage, it would be easy for someone unfamiliar with your usual standard of writing to mistake the passage as your own. Especially considering people do not always aim for immaculate spelling/formatting when posting on the internet, and your leading quotes could be considered simply a typing mistake. Also, I seem to recall you pulling a stunt like this before, copying a large passage from Wikipedia (no less). So at best you were dishonest, at worst you plagiarised.

I'm glad you admit that you were lying.

I am not knowledgeable about taxation. I probably know almost as little as you do. I can't speak to the article, except to say that I've heard that many European countries have low corporate tax rates, while having high income tax rates (e.g. Ireland). They seem to feel that a different distribution of taxes works better. Maybe it does, I have no idea. Regardless, the Cato institute is neither an objective nor a scholarly source.

But just out of curiosity... Dropping the corporate tax rate will surely mean a loss of revenue for the Federal Government. Do you propose to increase income taxes to make up for this lost revenue?

East Europe is becoming a

East Europe is becoming a colony of the West, governed by a mindless bureaucracy taking orders from the corporate mafia, while eastern criminal gangs are penetrating the West.

I can read the stories from there and don't have to rely on propaganda translations gloating over the borderless paradise, sold by economists and bought politicians.

Foreign investment is a fraud, it brings nothing to a country, because today's money is nothing more than an imaginary perception.

Canada never needed a penny of foreign investment, because when you have resources, you have capital, but when you only have money you have nothing.

Anybody who knows anything about business should know this, unless they're crooks.

Borders are necessary for the survival of democratic freedoms and local decision making powers.

The Soviets tried to erase borders in their Workers' Paradise and created a bloody mess, as the EU will become one day.

The purpose of the common currency is enslavement, because it strips countries of their freedom and rights.

Ed Deak.

realisticman, you'll be voting NDP tomorrow?

So you agree with Layton after all. You'll be voting NDP tomorrow, then?

I asked you above and you did not answer me. What taxes are the NDP going to raise?

Indeed, look at Europe. According to the very article you quote, their corporate tax rates are higher than Canada's. Which European companies are picking up and moving off to Canada?

Why is everybody screaming

Why is everybody screaming against taxes, when a few multinationals are multiplying their profits by stealing Canadian producers and the public blind?

Profits area also taxes, but nobody dares to question them ?

We sold our calves last week and received an average of .83 cents/lb. 10 years ago we were getting $1.25 to $1.40.

But that was before the US company Cargill got control of our meat and much of our grain markets, also, all over the world, with their profits in the clouds, while our farmers and ranchers are going broke.

Has anybody seen any meat, or generally food prices going down?

And now Steve wants to cut more of their taxes, while people here can't even get decent medical care.

Ed Deak.

Real Wealth, Real Wisdom

Fiat Lux wrote:

Ouote:

"Foreign investment is a fraud, it brings nothing to a country, because today's money is nothing more than an imaginary perception.

Canada never needed a penny of foreign investment, because when you have resources, you have capital, but when you only have money you have nothing."

Always appreciate reading the wisdom of your words. Thanks for so clearly defining the heart of the matter from all the distracting kerfuffle.

I have learned a lot from reading your posts over the years.

jimmy

"Do you propose to increase income taxes to make up for this lost revenue?"

Revenue increases due to higher business and workers activities. Why would all those European countries do it?

By the way. I suspect that TheTyee has changed it's software because I can no longer use the 'select' & 'underline', 'italic' 'quote' features. I found the article and the information, I'm not familiar with the Cato Institute or whether it has any bias.

Tax rates here:
http://www.ey.com/global/content.nsf/canada/tax_-_Calculators_-_Overview

realisticman

you can still use them - you just have to write the HTML code yourself.

Just remember to use square brackets

realisticman: Quote:Revenue

realisticman:

I am very skeptical of this statement. Do you have a (reliable) source?

I don't know, and obviously you don't either, otherwise you wouldn't be asking. To venture a guess, maybe they've supplemented income by increasing other taxes, e.g. consumption taxes or income taxes. Or perhaps they've cut social spending, which is what I was getting at with my original question regarding lost revenue in Canada.

So you just quote (and in this case do not cite) random sources with no consideration for whether or not they are reliable? As long as the quotes fit your ideological preconceptions, anyway?

You've still not addressed my question about this quote. So you admit that you were lying about this as well?

jimmy

Quote, Jimmy:

"Why would all those European countries do it?"

That's what we call a rhetorical question Jimmy.

Here's some research for you to gain a perspective and formulate an opinion. An opinion is recommended since the question of taxation is substantially a philosophical one.

http://www.oecd.org/document/23/0,3343,en_2649_34487_40499607_1_1_1_1,00.html

I don't believe I lied Jimmy

Google this, in its entirety:

the party says it would reverse the Conservatives’ cut this year to the corporate income tax rate, raising it to 22.12 per cent from 19.5 per cent.

From the NDP web site:

quote:
"We'll restore a uniform 22.12% tax rate"

http://www.ndp.ca/platform/jobsandaffordability/corporatetaxes

Quote:

"To pay for the spending, the party says it would reverse the Conservatives' cut this year to the corporate income tax rate, raising it to 22.12 per cent from 19.5 per cent. "

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/CanadaVotes/News/2008/09/28/6907106-cp.html

You need not apologize to me but you may want to apologize to the other readers.

Followup on RMan's post - "I'll try"

Though I am distrustful of his reasons for doing so, I nevertheless compliment RMan for his lengthy quote above re a Task Force to renegotiate a "new and improved" NAFTA. My excerpt from his quote follows :

"In the United States, Mexico and Canada, income inequality has grown dramatically in the almost fifteen years since the free trade agenda took effect. In Canada, families are worse off today than they were when the first agreement was implemented in 1989," said Julian. "More and more Canadians work harder without being able to keep up. Over 291,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada since 2002 with increasing hardships in softwood lumber communities and elsewhere in Canada."

That and other information in RMan's quote pretty well sums up the reasons so many Mexicans, Americans, and Canadians have consistently opposed the agreement since it was signed. But that's old history.

What's new - for me at least - is that this is an official acknowledgement by the three countries involved that NAFTA has worked contrary to their National interests, and worse, has worked to the considerable disadvantage of the citizens of all three countries.

So who's pocketed all the profits then? My guess it's been the same people who've given us Enron, the subprime mortgage market, and the the whole mess of contrived derivatives that are now unravelling and will continue to do so for some time to come.

Perhaps one of our resident neocons might be prepared to tell us why a whole bunch of these crooks shouldn't wind up in jail, along with the politicians they've paid to facilitate their corrupt schemes.

Excellent points

And those neocons and their supporters who've taken the unearned profits into their rapacious embrace at lower and lower tax rates into the bargain ME2 - which addresses the other point realisticman raises about taxes.

However, the real solution to this conundrum of the growth of income inequality is tax reform.

All income should be taxed at the same rates - special deals for dividend and capital gains income are the real problem. In essence, it doesn't matter where the income is taxed - it only matters that is be taxed fairly.

As the Carter Commission found many many years ago and subsequent governments - both Liberal and Conservative - have dutifully ignored. Therefore creating the growing inequality, poverty, greed and economic distress in our society.

The point is, people like realisticman simply want to make things worse - despite the evidence of where our past missteps have taken us.

I demand an apology, realisticman.

realisticman:

Haha! As in you have no idea what you're talking about. I thought so.

Fine, fine. Returning tax rates, which have recently been set, to the level they had been for many years before, could be considered "raising".

Haha! First I'd like you to apologise to me as well as the other readers for plagiarising that article from the Cato Institute. You might want to send the Cato Institute an apology as well. Also I'd like you to apologise to everyone for plagiarising Wikipedia. Then you can apologise for lying about the NDP planning to "abrogate" NAFTA. You can also apologise to me and everyone else reading for trolling this thread. You don't even have to apologise for the countless other threads you've trolled. Just this one. What do you say? Do we have a deal?

A deal?

Let me run that by my counsel Jimmy. I might counter-sue. Lie is a big word my son.

By the way West, did you like that story by Gary Mason in today's Globe?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081014.BCMASON14/TPStory/TPComment/?query=

Also an encouraging one about the BC logging co. turning forests into farms.

I saw it, it's a nothing story

It is typical of Mason's technique - he selects a couple of feel-good, or feel-bad (when he's talking about cops - which is his main [i]bête noir[/b]) examples - usually ones he's been guided to by some idiot millionaire or his/her friends - and then acts as though things are actually getting better.

They're not. Gary’s a great believer in the system – pretty much what you expect from a sports writer.

I think the idea of turning forest lands into farming lands is absurd and just another way for big forest companies to cash in on realty values

I'd rather let all their land revert to the crown and force them all to go bankrupt. After high-grading the best lumber from the Island, the last thing I want them to do is turn themselves into depletion farmers and hang around to rape another generation of workers.

If they aren't going to use the land for forestry - which is what the ecology generally requires – given climate and marginal fertility - turning unsuitable soils into farmlands isn't going to work.

And further, the acreages are so small as to be largely irrelevant compared with the holdings these companies have.

realisticman: Quote:Lie is

realisticman:

:) If the shoe fits...

realisticman: Are you, by

realisticman:

Are you, by any chance, Stephen Harper's former speech writer?