RE:RE:Just for red deer !!!
Red deer, Sorry, I re-read BOTH articles and I could not find where there was a suggestion that raising interest payments was beneficial (?)
"Hey PACKER__HighLighting "Increasing INTEREST Payments" as a BENEFICIAL FED Initiative in this Article IS A JOKE eh !!!!!
In my view we must guard against constantly comparing ourselves to the US...and only the US.
I found it interesting that European countries are wrestling with the same productivity "problems" like we are.
The US has a tremendous advantage because of its reserve currency status....and it should also be noted that the US is in an even worse fiscal position compared to Canada at the moment. Given your hatred of government debt I suspect that is one aspect of the US that we should NOT try to "catch up" to or copy.
The Canadian government has made a few investments to spur innovation in the last couple of years...some of them to keep up with the US government...or be left in the dust.
The often repeated call that Canada should slash regulation and oversight in just about all sectors to mirror the US business environment glosses over the consequences of such action (or inaction).
The US regularly experiences spectacular failures that most people attribute to very loose regulation.
The savings and loan debacle in the 80s, Enron, the financial crisis, PG&E, Wells Fargo, FTX, Silicon Valley Bank are ALL examples of what I'm talking about. One would hope that in those cases it is the investors that suffer the loss but more often than not it is the taxpayers or ratepayers who have to come to the rescue and pick up the tab.
I'm not surprised that all the gig economy CEOs are decrying the rise in capital gains taxes. For years they have paid empoyees with stock options to minimize tax or eliminate it completely. After years of this strategy being used by more and more companies the government has attempred to rein some of it in before it grows even more widespread. That's no surprise and should be expected. It reminds me of the Income Trust phenomenon. It was a logical good fit for RE companies because of the nature of the business/investing environment but when all sorts of companies made the switch to become Income Trusts so they didn't have to pay taxes at all....it had to be stopped. I think Telus was the last straw....and then Flaherty had to suddenly declare the whole scheme over. That triggered a spectacular crash in stock prices that lasted for over a year. The moral of that story is that it's better to curb these things earlier than later.