On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Part of Gordon Campbell's mantra during the 2001 B.C. election campaign was that tax cuts promised by his B.C. Liberals would 'pay for themselves.' He repeated this over and over: in stump speeches, presentations to the Vancouver Board of Trade, television ads, the one and only leaders' debate (moderated by CNKW talk show host and avowed Campbell fan Bill Good), radio interviews, you name it. Now, very few economists, except for those who always believe that the tax burden always intersects the upper part of the Laffer Curve, believe that income tax cuts of the type proposed by Campbell pay for themselves. Neither did Liberal advisor David Bond, who figured that you could count on about 40% revenue recovery due to increased economic activity. That statement cost Bond his job at HSBC.
Well, the tax cuts aren't paying for themselves. The Vancouver Sun didn't print this footnote to Paul Willcocks's post-budget column, but here it is:
Footnote: Are the tax cuts paying for themselves? Income tax produced $6 billion for government services before the cuts. This year they will be about $4.2 billion. At the curent rate it will be 2008 before they have recovered. Not necessarily bad; but not what the Liberals promised.Looks like the guy with the Ph.D in economics (Bond) was right all along, and the certified flight instructor (Finance minister Gary Collins) got it wrong.
Reports, opinions, columns, and anything else on this site, are © 2002-2003 Ian King unless otherwise noted. Permission granted to use material on this site for non-commercial purposes provided that the work is attributed to the original author. All other uses require specific permission of the original author. Contact weblog owner with any inquiries.
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