Thursday, August 6, 2009

Young Liberals Want Higher Taxes, Hydro Rates

From CTV News:

The provincial Young Liberals will meet this weekend in Quebec City, and they are advocating some fairly radical ideas.

Julien Gagnon is calling on his elected counterparts to implement a hefty Hydro rate hike, road tolls, and higher fees for many other government services.

"We are proposing to increase the gas tax," said Gagnon.

Read more ....

My Comment: Why not cut back on government. Nope .... these kids want to work for government when they are old enough.

Raising taxes will only mean less money for the economy .... hence less money for the government. But it is impossible to explain these simple rules of economics to young people who (in most cases) are reliant on other people's money (like their parents) to get by.

Using their logic .... lets tax 100% .... I am sure that it will solve our budgetary problems perfectly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your argument is not necessarily correct.

These "kids" (what is that supposed to be derogatory or something) probably took econ 100 and know how supply and demand work in concert to determine the price. They are probably also considering the future environmental impacts of using hydro derived from fossil fuels. These externalities (an econ 101 term) are not reflected in the current market price, and so it is the role of government to attempt to correct for the externality by introducing a tax to curb demand.

After all economic growth is a means to an end, try not to forget what the end is supposed to be (higher quality of life). Many people would probably agree that we are now at a point where economic growth is causing environmental degradation which lowers our quality of life by more than the benefit of the increased wealth.