I don't agree with the raise spending part, and agree that's stupid, but he cut taxes to help the economy. He did that much right.

GST sucks ***. They promised that, oh we'll put in the income tax just to help pay off the war (the World War), it'll be just for a little while, and the citizens were like, oh, it was a hard battle fought and won, let's help our government out. This was 50 years ago. Jackasses.

GST != income tax, but it's the same shizzle.

No, but the humongous amount of taxes they pay there probably doesn't help them any.

I'm not saying that there aren't other issues at hand, just that that's one of the more prominent ones.

Germany's economy and stuff... it's socialist type o' system of taxation and welfare is a tad 'blah'.

Wait. Would this be a tax in addition to sales tax?

Yes.

By spending, more jobs are created through the government. And with more jobs, people can have more money. It's a nice way to expand the economy. If the economy is climbing too rapidly and inflation is increasing, add more taxing and cut spending to take in more money.

Everybody wants better schools, better roads, better healthcare, better elder care, better defense, better everything. The government has many programs that cover these and many other areas, but all this stuff costs money and when someone even breathes a whisper about raising taxes everyone gets all up in arms over it. From what we've seen in America over the last 4 years is that a Conservative government is really good at spending money and is also very good at promising tax cuts.

Now we're in a defecit and the way things are looking there isn't much hope of pulling ourselves out with the current way of things. At some point someone is going to have to pay and it's going to be the taxpayers.

Unfortuneately, the same taxpayers who would now scoff at a new tax or tax increase were the ones inviting the problem back for anoter 4 years last November.

Nope. Taxes serve two purposes, one to give the government a source of revenue for montary policy, and two to control the distrobution of income. Taxes fund welfare. Without taxes the rich would be much richer and the poor would be, well, dead.

The government doesnt 'control the money' per say (although it does have control over the growth of money in an economy but that's another issue), the government is simply a conduit for redistributing wealth amongst the population.

Easy. Take your money out of the bank.

It would be nice if it was that simple. Unfortunately there's also interest rates and their close relation with the balance of payments, the exchange rate, and inflation to factor into that equation.

The problem with messing with economic factors is that when you change one thing to make something else better, you'll inevitably screw something else up in the process.

...Then use it to wallpaper your house when it becomes less valuable than real wallpaper after Greenspan causes hyper-inflation by eliminating interest rates and increasing the money supply 10-fold?

It's true, if he really wanted to Greenspan could send the US economy straight to hell.

Here in New Zealand, we pay 12.5% GST on everything.
It's been like that ever since before I started buying things.

Listen to Spork, people. He was an Econ major.

Exactly, all the more reason to get control out of the US economy out of private hands and back into the public control of the US treasury where it belongs. As it is, our money is only good b/c the Fed says it is good. That frankly isn't good enough for me; you have to have gold behind currency or you may as well use it to start your fireplace with.

I would like to see the day when our money says "US Treasury Note" instead of "Federal Reserve Note".

True. But jobs can be created without the government just as easily as with (for the most part) by just increasing economic activity, so this just puts the government in control of more businesses. Personally, that's not something I want to see. I don't like the idea that government should be heavily involved in the economy, because generally, when it leaves an economy alone, the economy does better (GENERALLY, not always).

And I don't agree very well with welfare, for the reason that if it's too good of a program, people don't have the incentive to get a job and start contributing to the economy instead of sitting on their butts and soaking it up.

Didn't know if Americans had VAT, so I left it out.

Don't forget about heavy taxes on fags and petrol, though. It's about £4 for a pack of 20 generic, I think...

They have a sales tax, the amount varies by state. None of them are as much as 17.5% though.

And yeah, the tax's on booze, cigs and fuel is silly here too.

Uh...they tried that. It didn't work. So they switched to our current system. Voilá, it worked.

Thank you, and yes I am



The world economy operated on the Gold Standard until something like 60 years ago. Under that regime each country's government would state a rate in their own currency at which they would buy an ounce of gold, and the exchange rates were calculated accordingly. The problem with the system was that exchange rates were essentially fixed, which created problems in a growing global economy. Ecomonies fluctuate, and if the exchange rate cantfluctuate with it it can create problems. Britain abandoned the gold standard in I think the early 30s, and with the the pound as the dominant currency at the time it wasnt long before other currencies dropped the system. The proposal was to go back to a gold standard sometime in the future, but WW2 ended that idea with Britian spending almost its entire gold supply on war.

The floating exchange rates we have today make a lot more sense. A currency is backed up by a country's entire economy, not just a hunk of metal. The exchange rate is determined by the balance of payments (exports and imports) and the money supply, the outcomes of which can freely fluctuate, but the government has just enough control over at any time to keep it from shifting too dramatically. As such the exchange rate is a slightly lagged but good indicator of an economy's health.



While I agree with you that welfare shouldnt be 'too' good, there is still a strong need for it for some sense of equality in the distrobution of wealth. Remember social welfare doesnt only cover a standard of living for the unemployed, but also for many millions of deserving people such as the handicapped, single parents, the elderly etc etc.

You sound like Milton Friedman and his laissez-faire policies. The problem with very little government intervention is that yeah, the economy will potentially thrive in a purely economical sense, but in a real sense the rich will get richer and the poor will get much, much poorer.

There is emperical evidence both ways on the outcome of more or less involvement in an economy from a government. The way I see it there's a choice between letting an economy run itself and maybe getting a great result or most likely run it into the ground, or keeping taps on the economy through fiscal and budgetary policy and it keeping it somewhere in the middle.

The government is involved either directly or indirectly in every single aspect of the economy, and if you take that control out, well I can tell you what happens for each specific case if you want.

i'm all for higher taxes on those things. much higher taxes for the consumer.
currently in ontario we pay over $9 for 25 cigs. should be more like $20.
a case of beer is $34. should be more like $50.
gas is expensive. any reason to curb waste and blatant useless consumption would be welcome.

the taxes on all those items in the US are very low. if they actually wanted people to quit smoking the price of a pack of cigs would be more than $3 (i figure that's where it's at by now. i used to pay $1.40 for a pack of marly reds). to get people to actually quit they should raise the price of smokes to $15US. then about 25% of smokers would actually quit, 50% would get them illegally and the rest would pat for them.
the government doesn't really want you to quit. they want your money and they think that shutting down the tobaco companies would be a great loss of jobs. talk to a meat packer about loss of jobs. the government doesn't care about the loss of jobs in the meat packing industry but they do care about them in the tobaco industry? hilarious.

I have to go home every two weeks. Working for my dad is my only viable source of income. This means I end up using about $20 of gas every two weeks. I really don't want to use $40 of gas every two weeks.

Makes sense. The tobacco industry is worth something like $50 billion in America and directly supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, but most importantly the government makes big bucks off of it. Around 30% of the price of a pack of cigarettes goes to the government in the form of sales and excise tax. That would be much, much less for meat.

i spend $220/month in gas just to go to work. on my way there every day i see so much frickin' waste. it makes me very angry.

that was kind of an example spork. the point is that the government doesn't want you to quit smoking. they have too much to lose.

Spork--yeah, I agree there needs to be some government regulation. It's a very fine line though, and I think this tax would cross it just a bit, and personally don't want it to happen.

California has 8-8.5% sales tax, so it wouldn't make much difference for us......

stop complaining. Our dollar (Australian dollar) is about the same as the canadian dollar and we have a 10 percent GST. It was brought in even after a promise that it wouldn't. stupid jonny howard and his non-core promisises.

Hoever, all prices on price trags are the prices after tax. I actualy had to slightly talk down a price during a land stop on the cruise I did a few years ago. (although, they were probably used to the fact that many of the people that stopped there on the cruises were overseas visitors that may not have had experiance with price tags listing the before tax price.)

So just because you have something we should accept it readily?

Kim Jong Il can kill anyone in his country that he so chooses at any time he wishes. So does that mean we should let old W. put anyone to death at any time? I mean hey, they do it in Korea. Why not here?

or invest in something like precious metals or even oil barrels (epecialy with the increaseing price, he could make a killing if he bought a whole lot now.)

no, I was telling the canadian guy to stop compianing of his 7.5 percent GST when we australians have a ten percent GST that was installed by a man who made a promise (that turned out to be non-core) that we would never have a GST.

It is not as bad as you think, I just see it as a slight raise in prices of a number of things. The only thing you should complian about is the fact that you have listed prices that aren't the price after tax.

Slight? Sir, 7% added onto a tax rate that's anywhere from 6 to 12% as is, is not slight. We're getting to for every 5 dollars you pay, you pay one in tax. That's BS.

And yes, it is as bad as I 'think'. And the Canadian guy has a right to complain. Not everyone just goes "Oh, more taxes? Oh well."

the fact is, it is being added directly to the prices, not the income tax report that you file every year. Also, why is it that some people can't understand why we have taxes.

Oh my god.

Your...wow...

READ this thread before you reply next time. I understand why we have taxes, and the last thing we need is MORE of them. Not to mention, that's my gripe. The fact that you add 7% sales tax onto everything that already carries anywhere from a 6-12% sales tax as is. That's not good.

Jesus, listen to me if you're going to attempt to hold some form of debate.