Friday, August 26, 2011

Good riddance

At long last, B.C.'s HST has met its end. Vaughn Palmer reminds us why, while Iglika Ivanova looks at what comes next.

2 comments:

  1. robinwitch6:34 p.m.

    It's really dumb to celebrate this "victory," since a lot of the people voting against the HST were actually voting against paying any tax at all.

    Flat-out government lying, as was involved in the HST affair, should be punished by that government losing power, not by the ham-handed interventions of referenda. Otherwise you get a situation like in California, where the electorate both wants government services and refuses to pay for them.

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  2. jurist8:32 p.m.

    Obviously a California-style combination of conflicting and ongoing initiatives would be a serious problem. But this is a single decision which doesn't have the same effect.

    And I'm less concerned with why some people voted for the referendum than the fact that it succeeded: if anything anti-taxers would have had reason to switch to a "no" vote in search of a lower rate, while it's a combination of general justified outrage and concern about a tax shift onto individuals from business that carried the day.

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