Capital Flight Question Dodged by Mulcair During the Economy Debate

Stephen Harper did just fine in last night's Globe and Mail debate on economics.  The policies speak for themselves.  They are clearly proven to be the best ones.  This government significantly lowered taxes while increasing revenue.  Higher revenues allowed a balanced budget and increased spending.

Only Stephen Harper knows how to do that.  We know because he did it.  He promised us he would have a surplus and increase the UCCB and he did it.  He did it in a sustainable way.  He did it despite volatile markets, sovereign debt instability and blooming global security threats.

Stephen Harper has it covered.  You can put Conservative promises in the bank.

Nobody believes the NDP will have balanced budgets.  They have a raft of spending promises that they pretend will be paid in real time with higher taxes.   Not even the NDP believes it.  It's unsettling that they can so casually look people in the eye or into a camera and make impossible claims.  We are being asked to believe that Thomas J. Mulcair of the NDP is a better economist and conservative that Stephen Harper.  We are being asked to accept that a party that has never been in power and has ruined every province they stumbled into will somehow be better than the decade of sound fiscal judgement that is the hallmark of Stephen Harper's leadership.

There was a moment in the debate last night where Harper could have scored one on Mulcair.   The net was open.  The puck was loose.  Harper didn't take the shot.

Here is the exchange:

David Walmsley:   If corporations move their money elsewhere, you lose both your balanced budget and your revenue.

Hon. Tom Mulcair:  That’s why you’ve also got to work at the same time against tax havens. Mr. Harper has done nothing about that. We’ve had cases where other authorities in other countries have given full lists of Canadians who have been using illegal tax havens, and Mr. Harper has done nothing about that.

The economic phenomenon Walmsley describes is called Capital Flight.   If a government makes business conditions unfavorable by raising taxes or imposing onerous regulations those businesses will eventually leave that jurisdiction.

Mulcair didn't deny that was a possibility, instead he evaded the question by promising to go after a specific form of tax evasion.  That will not attract a dime of foreign investment.  There is no way to punish foreign investors into bringing their money to Canada.

Capital Flight is on my mind.  I lived through capital flight.  I spent months in Saskatchewan and British Columbia two weeks at a time.  The Progressives in Alberta decided to have a royalty review (tax hike on drilling) and so all the majority of smaller Operators fled east and west.  What did they expect?

What does the NDP expect to happen after they hike taxes?  There is oil and gas practically everywhere.  Even Canadian oil companies aren't obligated to invest here.  There is no law saying thou shalt drill.  No one would put their money into a place with such laws.  That is exactly the problem the NDP is creating.

Yes there's a global oil glut.  Good!  OPEC is dead.  Very good!  I've read that unconventional oil can handle some very low prices.  There is money to be made helping Operators cut costs.  That's Capitalism baby and we rock it.

We aren't made of sclerotic union shops like the government itself.  You can keep your tax funded bailouts for the mega zombie corps that are ready to die at the slightest trouble.  But before you do.  Just take a moment to recognize how things are stacked in these left wing parties.

Ontario's auto sector gets bailouts.  The West's economy get's what?  Taxes.  Anti-bailouts.  From our own insane NDP government no less.  Trudeau and Mulcair have a double dose of goodies in store for us should they win this election.  Carbon taxes.  Cap and Trade.  Endless regulations.  Only the rigs aren't going to British Columbia or Saskatchewan.  They are going to North Dakota and further.

Are they crazy though?  Do they not understand they are killing our jobs and industry?  Well ask them?  Every second policy mentions ending fossil fuels.  The left doesn't care about our jobs.  They don't give a damn if the resource industry shuts down like Venezuela's.  That is what they are after.

So these left wing parties are going to cut back on spending because they killed off their biggest source of revenue from resources right?  No they won't they never do.  Its the green shift under another name.  Either the green shift works and there is no Oil and Gas industry.  Taxes then have to come from other industries.  Or nothing shifts and everyone just has to pay ridiculous economy stifling taxes.

Programmers are just as talented in Belarus or India.  What magic will make these "good jobs" come and pay for NDP mistakes in Canada?  Same goes for manufacturing.

The NDP is bad news.

Trust Stephen Harper.  He knows what he's doing.  He's proved it. Surpluses and tax cuts exactly on time.  That is the kind of government we demand.

America Deserves Obama

Obama won.  Americans lost.  Oh well.

I wanted Romney to win, not for Romney, but for me.  -for we.  We all do well when they do well.  Economics is pretty simple.

This isn't the end.  Mark Steyn has it wrong.  A negative "hockey stick" is just as improbable as the positive ones.  We never hit the asymptote.  That is we fly right past where its supposed to be.  Time is the x axis and time never stops.  So if the area behind the asymptote is undefined then we know that infinite exponential curves plotted along a time axis, positive or negative, will always be wrong.  Always.  Another variable always intrudes on our simple little graphs to change the outcome.  The curves either plateau or they crash. 

Obama will not be the end.  Obama will be their Pierre Trudeau.  An icon of an age and then everyone will agree he was wrong on most everything.

Obama put ~$1,000,000,000,000 on the American credit card in the first term.  There is only one direction that number will go.  He is raising taxes across the board with Obamacare and still plans to tax job creators.  He stepped in to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline twice for political reasons that seem to have paid off.  All the while the economy suffers.

This might sound like partisan campaigning but I'm sorry the problems above are not going away.  These are real problems caused by Obama.  Binders, Bain Capital and Big Bird, those are going away forever because they were never there.  Smoke and mirrors.

Socialism ends in misery my fellow Humans.   

Europe is in tatters.  The Middle East is burning (still).  China is building ghost cities with slaves.  The United States is blind and stupid.  I just can't see how any of this will be resolved painlessly.

The affirmative action presidency is just not up to the job.  I think what Americans really wanted was a mascot when they picked Obama.  Oh well.  What else can I say?  Some kids don't learn until they get punched in the face.

The invisible hand of markets is going to be a fist next time around.

I think the world economy is hooped.  America's credit card is maxed out.  They are incapable of slowing down their spending rate, nevermind staying below the "Fiscal Cliff" credit limit.  Then they print money, thereby increasing the need to borrow even more because that money doesn't buy what it used to.  Then you have government spending on pet projects that creates false demand that raises prices for real profitable private businesses.  Don't forget the borrowing for the spending and interest on borrowing that all has to be paid with taxes someday. 

This is a flushing toilet bowl.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out this is a recipe for negative growth. 

The only way to overcome this is with a booming private economy that grows so much it pays these extra costs without blinking.  Do you see that happening?  What kind of an economy can make a trillion borrowed dollars feel like nothing?   Not this one.  No sir.  This is an artificial economy propped up by deficit spending and low interest rates.  You want unsustainable?  Look at current fiscal policy around the world.

Oh well.  I still have my xbox. 

I hope I'm wrong about it all.  I'll tell you this though: I will be contributing as little as possible to this economy.  I've set myself up to cruise to my destination with fuel to spare.  I can afford to lose some altitude and climb back later.  I've built that into my flight plan on account of the massive obstacles ahead.  I encourage you to think about your flight plan and watch out for mount Obama.