Apolitical Staples

Who is Jim Stanford? Just another person in a long line that you’d expect to read in the Toronto Star and are shocked to realize that you are reading the Globe. How far the Globe has fallen in the last ten or fifteen years is staggering.

He’s bang on. One of the arguments made by conservatives is that giving more tax cuts to corporations will grow our economy. So if corporations aren’t going to use that money to grow our economy then there’s no reason to give them further tax cuts.

And corporations are not individuals nor are they entitled to the same rights as individuals.

Yeah,

I think Stanford’s argument is not that corporations aren’t spending their government welfare cheques the way the government wants them too, it’s that their not spending them at all. They’re just hoarding the money.

One can’t claim they need tax cuts to be competitive if all they’re going to do is throw the money in a bank account, announce even larger profits the next year, and say “there, now we’re competitive!”. If anything, we’re subsidizing some of these companies to help them stay UNCOMPETITIVE. Why work to compete in the free market, if the government is willing to just cut you a cheque for the difference?

I keep quite a bit of money in bank account. Certainly more that the average. Certainly more than financial advisors and economists would recommend.

Is that not my right. Should those people be able to raise my taxex because they don’t approve.

On second thought don’t answer that. It already happens.

So if corporations aren’t going to use that money to grow our economy then there’s no reason to give them further tax cuts

“Give them tax cuts”. What a joke. It is THEIR money that the government is TAKING AWAY FROM THEM. This notion that we “give them” a tax cut. Aren’t they lucky that we don’t STEAL their own money from them.

IT IS THE CORPORATIONS MONEY. THEY CREATED IT. ROBERT THINKS THAT IF THEY DON’T USE IT HOW HE WANTS THEM TO USE IT THEN HE SUDDENLY HAS A RIGHT TO IT.

What an idiot.

They’re just hoarding the money

They aren’t hoarding “the money”. They are hoarding “their money”. And by “hoarding” you mean saving.

Guess what savings are used for?!? Investment! When you put money into your savings account do you actually think that the bank keeps your five thousand dollars sitting in the back room of the bank. NO! It is lent out to people needing loans to purchase equipment and houses. The more money we save the lower interest rates will be.

It really blows my mind how leftists have no comprehension about how the markets work. They actually think that saved money isn’t being used. It is being “hoarded”. Imbeciles.

No, Ferretface, it’s not just their money. Canada is like a mall. Canadians built and own the mall. Corporations are like the mall’s tenants. And like any tenant they pay rent—taxes in this case—in exchange for us providing them the basic infrastructure of the mall under which they operate and make a profit. So it’s not just their money. It’s our money too on the basis that they owe us for creating a society in which they can operate. That doesn’t come cheap and it shouldn’t be given away for nothing.

Ok Robert, since no one has a right to save their own money I’ll take whatever you have in your bank account, you aren’t spending it the way I want it to be spent so I’ll just take it off your hands.

No surprise that a CAW economist does not relate cash flows to capital already invested. We don’t know what the return on investment is. If it were high that would be encouraging to more investment. If it were low that would be bad and cash would be needed to weather a storm. Maybe this is a hint: We do have news today that the automotive sector in Canada is becoming unattractive on a global competitive basis.

I hope that one of the things the Conservative Government gets accomplished is “property rights”. Because you never know when the Feudal mall owners might get in power again and treat the tenants badly.

I’ll ignore the idiot rantings of McClelland and just address the idiot rantings of Standford.

Companies don’t let cash do nothing for long. Sometimes cash piles up in the short run but a CEO not utilizing the resources he has available in the most efficient manner won’t get his new ferrari come bonus time.

Right now in Canada, a lot of the companies with large cash inflows are resource companies. Resource companies are cyclical. That means they make money for a while when commoddities are high then when the commodity prices fall and they stuggle to stay in business. If they don’t set aside liquidity to last through the bad times they die. Then we get to pay the EI benefits of their now out of work employees. Stealing this rainy-day money is bad public policy regardless of your political bent.

If there are other companies out their making piles of money, they don’t keep cash for long. They do certain things with that money. They can:

~Increase dividends ~Buy Back their companies shares ~take over other companies ~retire debt ~increase employee compensation ~spend money on CapEx.

If Capital is taxed, why would companies spend money on CapEx if they don’t have to?

Also, short-term deposits don’t just sit there. They are lent out to other businesses to use to meet their short-term liquidity needs. This money is not idle either.

Damn it. I can’t resist. McClellend, if a mall charges too much rent, they’ll be empty very shortly. There is more than one mall in the world. You make an idiot out of youself even when you think you’re being clever - which you’re not.

So if corporations aren’t going to use that money to grow our economy then there’s no reason to give them further tax cuts.

Aside from the facts that businesses don’t just accumulate money in mattresses and that any sort of investment implies the money is in fact being used productively somehow, the only reason needed is that the income was theirs in the first place.

Corporations don’t owe the nation and the people a thing. Businesses large and small are the enablers, not the consumers. They don’t owe us - we owe it to ourselves to create an environment in which businesses can thrive. Otherwise, we are all reduced to surviving off the land.