{"id":19080,"date":"2016-03-23T13:06:13","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T18:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19080"},"modified":"2016-03-23T13:06:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T18:06:13","slug":"remember-the-people-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19080","title":{"rendered":"Remember the people involved"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"story-title entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mises.ca\/remember-the-people-involved\/\" target=\"_blank\">Remember the people involved<\/a><\/h3>\n<div id=\"right-content\" class=\"relative\">\n<div id=\"content-area\" class=\"left relative\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mises.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/People_in_waders_and_boots_working_to_restore_a_pond.jpg?516b7c\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-19254\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mises.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/People_in_waders_and_boots_working_to_restore_a_pond-300x229.jpg?516b7c\" alt=\"People_in_waders_and_boots_working_to_restore_a_pond\" width=\"300\" height=\"229\" \/><\/a>When I was in University, I vividly remember one of my economics professors telling students to always remember the people involved when analyzing a policy change. I was reminded of this sage advice upon reading Matthew McCaffery\u2019s Mises Daily article titled,\u00a0<em>\u201c<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/blog\/who-will-pay-it-wrong-question-ask-politicians\"><em>Who will pay for it?\u201d is the wrong question to ask politicians<\/em><\/a>. McCaffery\u2019s point is the question often focuses too much on the question of\u00a0<em>who<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>how to pay<\/em>\u00a0which distracts from more important issues such as\u00a0<em>what<\/em>\u00a0<em>is being paid for<\/em>? I would add to that,\u00a0<strong><em>who<\/em><\/strong><em>\u00a0is being\u00a0<\/em>paid? By emphasizing the basic problem of finding the money, what is sometimes overlooked is the problem of whether new government programs will actually work of whether they will be wasteful and counterproductive, and who the tax consumers are.<\/p>\n<p>Asking questions such as \u201cwho will pay for it?\u201d and \u201cwhat, specifically, is being paid for?\u201d are particularly pertinent given the federal budget is to be unveiled today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.ca\/2016\/02\/23\/deficit-spending-trudeau-canada_n_9299288.html\">Early reports<\/a>suggest cumulative budget deficits over the next two years will be well above $50 billion (about 1.3% of GDP). The question, \u201cwho will pay for it?\u201d is answered quickly as the federal government has only three sources of revenue: current taxpayers, future taxpayers and increasing the money supply (inflation) by selling bonds to the Bank of Canada.<\/p>\n<p>The consequences of higher taxes and more inflation doesn\u2019t seem to faze many people, including some\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/report-on-business\/top-business-stories\/analysts-on-tomorrows-budget-deficit-paranoia-is-mind-bogglingly-stupid\/article29308661\/\">well-known economists<\/a>\u00a0in Canada.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/why-shouldn-t-corporations-flee-high-tax-countries-including-america\/?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=fee_daily&amp;mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokv6jNZKXonjHpfsX86OwrXqeg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YECTsJ0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEBS7TYRKtst6cMUw%3D%3D\">Doug Bandow<\/a>\u00a0observed that left-wing activists tend to favor corporate taxation. They imagine a society divided between businesses and people. However, firms are owned by people, employ people, sell to people, and contract with people. Taxing companies means taxing people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember the people involved When I was in University, I vividly remember one of my economics professors telling students to always remember the people involved when analyzing a policy change. I was reminded of this sage advice upon reading Matthew McCaffery\u2019s Mises Daily article titled,\u00a0\u201cWho will pay for it?\u201d is the wrong question to ask [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[942,1928,103,4950,353,7617,11901,954,783],"class_list":["post-19080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bank-of-canada","tag-budget-deficit","tag-canada","tag-federal-budget","tag-gdp","tag-mises-institute","tag-mises-ca","tag-money-supply","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19081,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19080\/revisions\/19081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}