this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
43 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

7241 readers
107 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Canada’s government should look at taxing excess profits instead of relying on higher interest rates to bring down inflation, according to the head of the left-wing party propping up Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in parliament.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't think it's that simple. We definitely need to do something since we have monetary policy conflicting with our current fiscal policy. Everyone is feeling the pinch right now and something is going to give soon.

But everytime someone suggests taxing our way to success,Ii get very sceptical. This is the default Canadian response.

What is considered excess profits? Where will the proposed tax put us compared to other countries? We are doing everything we can to drive away competitiveness and innovation in this country.

[–] fresh 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From a macroeconomic perspective, lowering inflation is exactly what taxation does.

Economists were initially skeptical, but they are increasingly in agreement that so-called "seller's inflation" (called "greedflation" by the media) is real. "Excess profits" means profits in excess of what would be expected under competitive market conditions. Here's the economic puzzle: when costs go up, profits should go down. But the opposite is happening. There must be some market failure.

Correcting this failure doesn't "drive away competitiveness". Excess profits are a market failure precisely because of a lack of competition! I think what many Canadians confuse is "defending industry" and "defending competitive markets".

Coddling uncompetitive industries is precisely how we get things like the worst telco industry in the world, and super high grocery prices. That is what actually stifles competitiveness.

load more comments (2 replies)