[Newsbot]

Title: Kenney to announce plan to reboot Alberta economy
Category: Provincial Politics
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2020-06-29 08:02:12
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

Oh yay! More cuts to corporate taxes!

[Thanos]

If it keeps more small businesses afloat then the tax cuts are a good thing because far too many of those kind of outfits are in "can't get blood from a stone" condition. It's those business that provide the majority of employment in the economy and they need major help before they start to go under like a row of dominoes. "Corporate" doesn't mean evil. Nine times out of ten it really means a business employing less than a hundred people, not some unaccountable transnational giant headquartered in parts unknown. The word really needs to no longer be mentally associated only with mega-companies who get away with murder all the time.

Overall the plan looks good on the surface. It's already monumentally pissed off the usual austerity-obsessed degenerates who want nothing but crippling spending cuts happen, so in that light it could turn out to be a positive. Seeing Kenney having to drop the "no interference in the sacred free market" crap that conservatives always spout is good for a laugh if nothing else.

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

If it keeps more small businesses afloat then the tax cuts are a good thing because far too many of those kind of outfits are in "can't get blood from a stone" condition. It's those business that provide the majority of employment in the economy and they need major help before they start to go under like a row of dominoes. "Corporate" doesn't mean evil. Nine times out of ten it really means a business employing less than a hundred people, not some unaccountable transnational giant headquartered in parts unknown. The word really needs to no longer be mentally associated only with mega-companies who get away with murder all the time.

Overall the plan looks good on the surface. It's already monumentally pissed off the usual austerity-obsessed degenerates who want nothing but crippling spending cuts happen, so in that light it could turn out to be a positive. Seeing Kenney having to drop the "no interference in the sacred free market" crap that conservatives always spout is good for a laugh if nothing else.

Wouldn't businesses with less than a hundred employees count more as small businesses? I don't ask that to be snarky, but I'm genuinely curious. I'm also curious as to where you're hearing about how mad the austerity-obsessed degenerates are. Is it just anecdotally, or have you seen it online? I believe you, but I'd like to see it myself if I can. Is it on some place like Rebel Media or the Small Dead Animals blog?

If the tax cut is to small business, that's something Notley did too earlier. All this spending on infrastructure is a good thing...but it's also something left-wing economists have been repeatedly suggesting for years. With interest rates being so low, borrowing costs are really low too, making it an ideal time to borrow money. So it's notable to see Kenney borrowing from the leftist playbook.

I'm not an economist, so I haven't really studied this in depth, but I keep reading in a lot of different commentaries about how so many tax cuts have led to big businesses buying back stock shares instead of actually investing in new equipment, R&D or employees. I wonder how much of a trend that is...and whether we've reached diminishing returns on large corporate tax cuts.

[Thanos]

Those small businesses typically don't have shares. When they get a tax cut they can save it, pay off debt, invest in new equipment, and numerous other things. These aren't the sort of companies that generally use it to give the executives another 20% on their bonuses.

As for the austerity creeps just give it time. Good Ol' Rick Bell for one should be retracting his tongue out of the UCP's ass to start screaming "traitors!" at them anytime soon for not following Saint Ralph's old cut-and-slash plan to the letter. And the comments on the SUN or Herald/Journal websites should soon be a spectacular display of total ignorance with the usual clever "I balance my chequebook, why can't the government balance theirs?!?!?!?" monomaia. As if the personal finances of some long-retired Boomer living off of a grandiose company pension + CPP + OAS or some always-pissed-off farmer with an inherited family spread that's been paid off since the 1960's is equivalent to the running of a government in a province that could be permanently trapped in near-catastrophic levels of distress.

We shall see what happens. It's Kenney so flip that coin because it's always a 50/50 chance with whatever it is he comes up with as to whether or not it's legit or just some more nonsense couched in the usual ideological conservative fiscal douchebaggery.

[bootlegga]

Google seems to define small businesses as those with less than 100 employees:

https://www.stradegy.ca/insight/canadia ... ss-defined

While I agree with the gist of the plan overall, it loks like the majority of the funding is still aimed at huge corporations and financial institutions.

https://www.alberta.ca/recovery-plan.aspx

How much 'agricultural and forestry protection' will $75 million get us? Or $21 million for family supports? or $18 million for child care programs? And a lot of these reliefs funds will go right to big banks and financial institutions, which aren't in desperate straits the way some indsutries are. Even most of the infrastructure spending will go to huge construction companies and not little companies struggling right now.

Far too much is also going back into O&G and not into next generation technology like electric buses or renewable energy. By my rough calculations, almost $3 billion is going to support O&G, with mere pittances for other industries, and very little going into actual government owned infrastructure, spending only $600 million on infrastructure (compared to $3 billion for O&G):

I think that should have doubled or even tripled - as Jared noted, rates are low, so this is the time to invest in these kinds of projects.

[Thanos]

Not to defend them but the govt might have to do that in order to prevent the bigwigs from bailing out on Alberta altogether. Not good but perhaps necessary.

[herbie]

BC Liberals define small business as Telus, Shaw, RioTinto, Canfor, etc. If you have a dozen employees you're 'toss to the wolves insignificant'.
Every time.