Preaching austerity at the wrong time

Posted on September 28, 2011 in Debates

Source: — Authors:

TheStar.com – opinion/letters – Re: Recession fears drive market mayhem, Sept. 23
Published On Tue Sep 27 2011.    Stephen Woof, Haliburton

Way back when Canada hosted the disastrous G8 and G20 we were told that we were coming out of the recession, therefore debt reduction must start immediately. President Barack Obama was the lone voice saying that forcing austerity at that crucial time could cause the world to slide into a new recession.

But our Prime Minister sent his finance minister on a world mission to preach austerity. Good job guys! Now we are probably back in recession and Stephen Harper with his right-wing mate, British Prime Minister David Cameron, are telling us to stay the course. Why? So we can move into a full-blown depression?

They won’t raise taxes on the wealthy. They won’t stop subsidizing the wealthy oil companies. They won’t consider taxes on financial transactions even though a tax of just pennies a trade could reap billions of dollars that could be used to stabilize economies, and they keep lowering business taxes to ridiculously low levels, thus starving their governments of desperately needed revenues.

Even the governor of the Bank of Canada has said lowering business taxes has done nothing to create jobs or improve competitiveness. In case you haven’t noticed, these same companies are shifting our jobs to China and India and more Canadians are out of work than ever before.

On top of this, Harper’s agenda in Parliament is not job creation, it’s putting more people in jails and, of course, spending billions to build new prisons and house the inmates. I am just a citizen, not an economist, but it seems that Harper sings and plays the piano while the world economies burn.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1060691–preaching-austerity-at-the-wrong-time >

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