Comments | 5_leaves_left: Holy shit, can you stand the excitment??

5_leaves_left

Holy shit, can you stand the excitment??

Jan 26, 2009 17:57

Wow. With all these deliberate leaks of details of tomorrow's budget it would appear that the Big-Oil-loving, science-of-global-warming-doubting, Iraq-war-supporting, and Palestinians-are-lesser-human-beings-believing Harper Conservatives are doing whatever they can to seem as progressive as possible! The Tories can't seem to appear Keynesian ( Read more... )

Comments 6

Devil's advocate. dzuunmod January 26 2009, 23:33:38 UTC

How to answer the people who point to the fact that even minimum-wage jobs like those at Home Depot are disappearing as it is, though? And what's going to happen with those when you raise wages across the board?

Re: Devil's advocate. 5_leaves_left January 27 2009, 16:06:11 UTC

Oh I hear you. People will lose their jobs. But throwiong perminant tax cuts at people who make $80,000 a year isn't going to help anybody. Maybe there can be some recipriocal tax credits to help retailers afford higher wages. I dunno. Like I said, thinking out loud.

Re: Devil's advocate. 5_leaves_left January 27 2009, 16:08:09 UTC

And duh! Wages are provincial. I didn't even think of that. (I just read Jesse's note below).

Re: Devil's advocate. dzuunmod January 27 2009, 16:10:12 UTC

True dat.

xquerenciax January 27 2009, 06:16:02 UTC

I was making the same call reading the paper about the budget this morning. We shall see.

Thing about minimum wage is that it's determined provincially. Beyond that, I've always wondered what would happen-- I once read that in states that raised minimum wage by a large amount, the cost of living rose at the same time as work declined for those businesses that were struggling, and the consequently because of inflation, poor people ended up still making basically what they'd been making before. I don't know how accurate that analysis was because-- while I'm a genius in so many other matters--I don't understand a fucking thing about economics and I'm bad at math.

Also, I hate admitting that publicly, but need to here.

Anyway, it seemed on some level like a plausible series of events. Much better for the government to be investing in affordable housing, EI, welfare, hospitals, and education, etc. A roof is still a roof, no matter what inflation says-- and even my math-free ass knows that doesn't change.

5_leaves_left January 27 2009, 16:15:43 UTC

Oh I’m down with all those investments in EI, education and housing. We’ve been demonstrating about this for years now.

It’s the permanent tax cuts for people who make $80,000 and less and the corporate tax cuts as ‘stimulus’ that has me worried. If stimulus means people spending money, and an economic crisis means that people aren’t spending and that’s dragging down the economy, wouldn’t it be great if stimulus was applied in a way that helped people at the same time? Maybe that’s impossible? I don’t know. I don’t understand economics either.

I’ve heard of a similar study (second hand, tho) about wage increases (in this case it was unionization) but with the opposite effect. So I guess you never know.