What is the PNM's plan for the economy?

[ingalook]

So, this government has been taking some questionable steps in dealing with the economy (says me) especially the "tighten yuh belt" mantra we have been hearing over the past few months. "Why is this questionable" you might be asking, "shouldn't a government warn the people of tough times?" , "shouldn't we spend less in times of economic slowdown???"

The answer to the last question is "No!" - the economy basically runs on "happy feelings" (consumer confidence if you want to get technical) take away consumer confidence, people stop spending - now THAT is a recession.

The question is, why actively destroy consumer confidence?

1. Government wants us to accept various Austerity measures (look it up, austerity is VERY VERY bad and has destroyed economies around the world - I don't want to go into that here)

What measures?

-Removal of the Fuel Subsidy (actually the government is aiming to make a profit from the sale of our natural resource to us)

-Property tax (at a higher rate than we would accept without all the "hard times" talk)

-Increase in Motor Vehicle Tax - it coming (under the guise of trying to reduce the amount of cars on the road)

-Internet Shopping Tax - This coming for sure, thanks DOMA (it eh go be nothing too big, maybe 10 - 25% automatically charged by banks when you make online purchases and passed on to government)

Austerity???? BUT DEY REDUCING VAT!!!!

And exactly who does a reduction in VAT benefit? Consumers or retailers? (eh DOMA???)

In the states a reduction in sales tax benefits consumers, why? Because it is not included in the price of the good (much to the chagrin any trini who has traveled there) What that means is, if tax is 7% and it is reduced to 5% for them there is an instant drop in the price of the item if an item is advrtised as $100 they would actually pay $107 before and $105 after

Lets see how that works in Trinidad:

The majority of our products have VAT included in the price.

Lets say you go to the mall and see a short pants for $99.99, VAT is alredy in that price. When VAT moves from 15% to 12.5% do you really think they are going to start selling those pants for $97.57??? No - its $99.99 like it always was... who benefited? That 2.5% went directly into the pocket of the retailer as profit.

Did we really benefit from the removal of VAT from foodstuffs? Or did Massy stores just see a massive spike in profit?

Stay there and FEEL the government doesn't know what its doing...

They are reducing hundreds of millions from the public purse with this reduction - it goes back to the businessmen (DOMA) and someone will have to foot this reduction - thats where the austerity measures mentioned above come in

Happy New Year T&T!

[ruffneck_12]

ehhh dont listen to ingalook

[RASC]

*snifffff*
Smell that?
Smells like old Chuna is back... You guys been missing for 5 years!

[ingalook]

ehhh dont listen to ingalook

And exactly how did that work out for the last muffler bearing who said that?

[Daran]

Reducing the VAT is absolutely rediculous at this point. Given the amount of money laundering in our economy, VAT is one of the best methods of moping up revenue from black money.

With regards, to businesses benefitting from the VAT reduction, they obviously will, however their prices will initially represent the effects of reduced VAT (to avoid public backlash) but after sometime they'll go back to the 'easy on the eyes' price of 9.99 etc.

[ingalook]

*snifffff*
Smell that?
Smells like old Chuna is back... You guys been missing for 5 years!

You are a rare breed of stupid (or stand to profit from all of this) because you know I post critiquing the economic decisions of this and ALL governments since I've become a tuner all those years ago

As much as I want to call you stupid I fear its the latter

[Daran]

Double post

[RASC]

*snifffff*
Smell that?
Smells like old Chuna is back... You guys been missing for 5 years!

You are a rare breed of stupid (or stand to profit from all of this) because you know I post critiquing the economic decisions of this and ALL governments since I've become a tuner all those years ago

As much as I want to call you stupid I fear its the latter

Awwwww *hugs*
Missed you too bro!!

[zoom rader]

OP men vote for dat, so let dem take it.

[racedriverpro]

ehhh dont listen to ingalook

Just eattttt...we living in the land of plenty. I thought ingalook fly out for a wedding tho.

Sent from my C6603 using Tapatalk

[fallen_angel]

You all worry too much.
Be happy, we are past the point of having hope, the economy and the country is going to hell, us and our future generations are all going to suffer.

It don't make sense we worry again, let us just enjoy the ride, it might be our last chance for blind happiness in this hopeless country.

Let us all come together to make Carnival 2016 the greatest show this earth has ever seen

Since everyone here are car people, we should probably save all our old tyres, when the country is totally wrecked and we have no food, jobs or income, we can make a big fire and gather around and sing kumbayah

[5onDfloor]

Ingalook, when find the answer to why the previous Administration never took measures to give us a soft landing during falling oil prices, then u can ask what the PNM has plan for us. Until then STFU.

[ingalook]

Ingalook, when find the answer to why the previous Administration never took measures to give us a soft landing during falling oil prices, then u can ask what the PNM has plan for us. Until then STFU.

Yes... so taking money from poor people and giving it to retailers IS the answer?

Yuh DOMA membership cards showing breds

[5onDfloor]

^^ you prefer highly overpriced contracts to friends and family? So they can show off their Bentleys and lambos? One for each day of the week?

[5onDfloor]

The world over economies that rely on Brent crude are making fiscal adjustments. To be honest we get off slightly thus far.

[Habit7]

What is up with these threads? OP you are asking questions the man addressed on Tuesday. At least counter some of the things he said. You are uninformed and demanding answers from your ignorance.

Another thing is you accusing the govt for things you conjure up in your own mind. Increase MVT and internet shopping tax? The proof for this lies on the shelf between dead man water and what really caused the SOE.

PNM took the economy in 1991 after POS was burnt down and they floated the dollar and started LNG. By the time 2001 come around we were in position to receive the gas boom and the economy grew as one of the fastest in Latin America. Now that the money done again, allow the govt to be prudent and put things in place so that your children can be comfortable and another leader can waste money on laptops for them again.

[ingalook]

You are selectively ignoring the fact that the government is reducing VAT to transfer funds to Retailers and planning on making the populous pay for it, isn't that corruption? Is that what you voted for? Is PNM corruption better than PP corruption? Or should we not stand for any of it?

[5onDfloor]

Habit7, welcome to tuner 2007-2010. When every week we had anti government threads. Expect more as time passes by.

[5onDfloor]

You are selectively ignoring the fact that the government is reducing VAT to transfer funds to Retailers and planning on making the populous pay for it, isn't that corruption? Is that what you voted for? Is PNM corruption better than PP corruption? Or should we not stand for any of it?

Your info is anecdotal at best. Brings facts.

[ingalook]

OK 5onDfloor and Habit7

Answer 2 questions:

1. WHO BENEFITS FROM A REDUCTION IN VAT?

2. Why, when we are being fiscally responsible would we deliberately reduce a government revenue stream?

[5onDfloor]

The reduction of VAT by 3% was a campaign promise. Why not complain about the increase in personal allowance? The Mof did say they expect an increase in collecting tax revenue.

When Kamla zero rated food items why didn't u ask that then?

[5onDfloor]

While answering the above, take time to answer why we stop collecting land and building tax for 7 years??

[Trinispougla]

So, this government has been taking some questionable steps in dealing with the economy (says me) especially the "tighten yuh belt" mantra we have been hearing over the past few months. "Why is this questionable" you might be asking, "shouldn't a government warn the people of tough times?" , "shouldn't we spend less in times of economic slowdown???"

The answer to the last question is "No!" - the economy basically runs on "happy feelings" (consumer confidence if you want to get technical) take away consumer confidence, people stop spending - now THAT is a recession.

The question is, why actively destroy consumer confidence?

1. Government wants us to accept various Austerity measures (look it up, austerity is VERY VERY bad and has destroyed economies around the world - I don't want to go into that here)

What measures?

-Removal of the Fuel Subsidy (actually the government is aiming to make a profit from the sale of our natural resource to us)

-Property tax (at a higher rate than we would accept without all the "hard times" talk)

-Increase in Motor Vehicle Tax - it coming (under the guise of trying to reduce the amount of cars on the road)

-Internet Shopping Tax - This coming for sure, thanks DOMA (it eh go be nothing too big, maybe 10 - 25% automatically charged by banks when you make online purchases and passed on to government)

Austerity???? BUT DEY REDUCING VAT!!!!

And exactly who does a reduction in VAT benefit? Consumers or retailers? (eh DOMA???)

In the states a reduction in sales tax benefits consumers, why? Because it is not included in the price of the good (much to the chagrin any trini who has traveled there) What that means is, if tax is 7% and it is reduced to 5% for them there is an instant drop in the price of the item if an item is advrtised as $100 they would actually pay $107 before and $105 after

Lets see how that works in Trinidad:

The majority of our products have VAT included in the price.

Lets say you go to the mall and see a short pants for $99.99, VAT is alredy in that price. When VAT moves from 15% to 12.5% do you really think they are going to start selling those pants for $97.57??? No - its $99.99 like it always was... who benefited? That 2.5% went directly into the pocket of the retailer as profit.

Did we really benefit from the removal of VAT from foodstuffs? Or did Massy stores just see a massive spike in profit?

Stay there and FEEL the government doesn't know what its doing...

They are reducing hundreds of millions from the public purse with this reduction - it goes back to the businessmen (DOMA) and someone will have to foot this reduction - thats where the austerity measures mentioned above come in

Happy New Year T&T!

Firstly, economies are based on much more than investor confidence. Commodities and foreign exchange are much more important. Commodity markets are based on confidence. Which is why after the attacks in Paris, the price of oil and gas went down. Secondly, how you think America got out of their slump. They tax the hell out of their people and improved collection of debt. That is why so many homes went up for foreclosure because many people were avoiding paying tax. that is how you get through a recession chief. Spain also taxed their people in addition to laying off many workers which is why they had youth unemployment of almost 50% among university graduates 19-30. Trinidad ain't reach that bad. We are trying not to. We don't want to end up in a situation where we have little foreign exchange like Barbados who only have enough forex for 16 weeks of import cover. In order to have to have enough forex, you need to have local money in the system to rely on hence all the taxes. That is what happens in a recession

[Habit7]

ingalook you need to explain why Kamla's laptop program secretly funded Hezbollah and their activity in the Golan Heights.

Or why the baby grant is causing microcephaly in Brazil.






Like you I have no proof for either one of these but I feel very strongly about it.

[ingalook]

Trinispougla

I'll only address you since dem posers refused to answer straightforward questions

I never said "investor confidence" I specifically said "consumer confidence" - that is the engine in the economy, you can have a crapload of money floating around in your system - without consumers spending the economy collapses.

America came out of the slump by LITERALLY printing Billions of dollars and bailing out the biggest companies- people are still living in tents in Wallmart Car park - some big men benefited heavily from that financial crisis, the small man and middle class suffered and still suffering - if you want to go T&T to operate like that we know where you loyalties lie

As you mentioned that financial crisis... why wasn't T&T affected i wonder?

[Trinispougla]

Firstly, where you think they got the money to bail out those companies from? Tax payers. As I said, it is evidenced by the fact that so many people lost their homes during this periodand in any case, Trinidad does not control any markets so we can't simply create new money. As I said Spain tax the hell out of their people and layoff like crazy. Trinidad was not affected because we had sound managers of the economy. The price of oil went down to 32 dollars in 2008/2009. By all accounts we should have been in trouble. What you would notice is that while oil went down, gas and hydrocarbons were soaring and at the time, we were the leading exporter of methanol. You really could not live in a first world place. Belgium alone makes their people pay 42 % in taxes. Yuh feel trinidad is Pakasakas?

[Trinispougla]

What you should ask yourself is whether we would have been in this situation if a major push in diversifying the downstream sector aka the Aluminium smelter was pursued. It was discovered that 1) there were ways to mitigate the air pollution, the major concern in the smelting process and 2) given the fact that aluminum is over 1000 us per tonne at this time

[desifemlove]

#UNClogic

Cool scene, bro..

be de scene ent that cool..

namely OP advocating Keynesianism......this doh wuk.

Fact is in a recession, consumer confidence inevitably falls. If unemployment rises, businesses lay people off, and then people spend less. this is how it is. Best the state can do is just enable businesses at all times to employ people with less regulations.

but then which government never mentions the prospect of recession? to never do this is irresponsible.

And what was UNC's plan? she had five years to do ting.....she didn't.

it Kams being disingenuous to say it ALL PNM's fault now....she had office for five years, and never has taken any responsibility for dis...but #UNClogic prevails, eh? When you hear in the USA dat Bush's policies ent affecting ting even now? GOPs doh say dat, cos it not how public policy works.....but agiain #UNClogic

[Trinispougla]

And that's the thing, several leading economists have classified this period as a period of stagnation which is very different from a recession. I personally think we are in one due to low oil prices and that we somehow managed to increase gov't spending in the first two quarters of 2015. I think a recession after those major upheavals was inevitable. We also somehow financed a major infrastructure project with our own money which is a major reason why we have arrived in this dark situation

[5onDfloor]

OP and others yet to answer or lay blame on Howai, Kamla and Jawala for deceiving us. The signs were there since last qtr of 2014, yet they pull wool over our eyes.