What a beautiful HST free day

[EmployeeoftheMonth]

Why would I blame you? You did what you thought was best for yourself, your family, and your province. I suppose one could lay blame at the voters' feet if one held a populace in high regard as educated and involved into matters of provincial administration. I don't. I see voters as sheep who need to be herded, and the sheep should not be faulted for the shepherd's failure to herd them properly. Some will even blame the big bad Vander Wolf.

I blame the leadership that lied about the HST to win, then brought in HST and angered a whole lot of voters, all the while failing to explain the benefits of the HST and selling it to the province.

[Lockout Casualty]

Not to a population that likes easy answers, no personal acountability, and the attention capacity of a gnat.

"Serious tax discussion" vs. "Oh nooes! I haz to pay more for my latte!"

Upper level victories are next to impossible with the lowest common denominator.

[Heretic]

Well shoot, how'd Vander Zalm make the horse drink when the provincial Liberals couldn't? Blame the horse, it's a stupid horse.

[ronthecivil]

Why would I blame you? You did what you thought was best for yourself, your family, and your province. I suppose one could lay blame at the voters' feet if one held a populace in high regard as educated and involved into matters of provincial administration. I don't. I see voters as sheep who need to be herded, and the sheep should not be faulted for the shepherd's failure to herd them properly. Some will even blame the big bad Vander Wolf.

I blame the leadership that lied about the HST to win, then brought in HST and angered a whole lot of voters, all the while failing to explain the benefits of the HST and selling it to the province.

[ronthecivil]

If BC was unique in that regard, I'd be inclined to agree with you. However, BC is not unique in anything except the amount of pot we consume annually. Ergo, if other provinces, states, and nations can lead their people to make the right choices, it's a failure of the leadership when they don't.

[Lockout Casualty]

Yup and I was wrong which means I and other voters take some of the blame for that. It's easy to just point at the government and say it's their fault. It's a lot harder to take on any personal responsibility. The information was out there for anybody to look at. Vanderzalm took advantage of the fact that most people wouldn't look in any detail... he was right...barely.

[Heretic]

I suppose we'll have to agree with disagree. I wouldn't trust the populace to make the right decision, so I won't blame them for doing as expected.

Don't make promises you can't keep? Don't keep a promise by lying to the voters? Voters didn't seem to have a problem understanding why they don't need the HST and how they were lied to. The leadership failed to make it make sense to the voters, plain and simple.

[Lockout Casualty]

And/or the opposition lied to them about the benefits of not having HST and filling their heads with misconceptions and attacks against the government...

[Heretic]

Right. Lying about it from the start to win an election is irrelevant...

[Lockout Casualty]

How did they lie about it?

Did they say "we not not have HST" and then implement it? That would be a lie, yes.

[Heretic]

Read more: http://bc.ctvnews.ca...4#ixzz2PK23siCl

[aGENT]

Short term gain...long term pain.

What a lack of foresight.

[Sapper]

In all honesty the people here who supported the HST and did not take the BC Liberals to task are the mind set that caused this mess. No singularily they are not to blame - but collectively they are.

When the HST was brought in the BC Liberals did it in a very poor manner. By the time the anti HST forces began stirring the people it had become very clear that things like when the HST had been discussed was not completly as suggested - none of the so called trickle down savings or pay raises had come to realization - and with soaring tax revenues it was absolultley crystal clear that the HST was anything but revenue neutral - BC tax payers where being hammered with extra costs.

Now imagine running a businuess like that - Pissing off the majority of your customers - raising your prices and ignoring their complaints by telling them an educated person would understand. That businuess would be out of businuess pretty quickly.

When one looks at the facts ( only in how the HST was brought in - implimented and attempts to sell it - nothing at all in regards to the economic benifit ) - only the ignorant would not understand why the HST failed.

The HST failed due to the narcissistic attitude and belief of devine right of goverance that this provinces right wing have. The real sheeple if you will are the followers of the BC Liberals that didn't grasp that the role of goverment in this disaster was to sell it to the voters - not to bring forward stories of how if businuess actually passed on the savings we would prosper... Problem is the questions asked most of the panels was based on the trickle down actually happening and if it did - we would have benifited greatly. Even the goverments review panel on it had to admit the HST turned out to be anything but revenue neutral and was costing workers more money -

No, true leadership would have been something like this - after the HST failure if BC Liberal supporters had actually cared about the province and not simply political ideology ( yeh the whole concerned BC citizen stuff is bunk ) - they would have demanded that Cristy step down. The Next leader of the BC Liberal party should have then brought back a completly redesigned HST and called an election right then and there - and ran on the new HST ( promising to bring it in if elected ).

As such very little of the pro HST crowd has much credibility when they complain and play the blame game. The HST failure rests in its entirity with the BC Liberals. The sheeple bought into the party line and when every reasonable person in BC understood that the HST was going to be voted out - they started the blame game instead of accepting responsibility.

I have a few home renovations that I will now move forward on ( they dropped in cost April 1 st ) , but other than that my spending habbit really wont change. When restaurant costs went up my tip amount went down. I asked the staff if they preffered same tips with less visists or less tips same # of visits. Our regular dinner was pretty clear - less visits by folks means lay offs. So today I raised my tips back from 15 to 18 % and as such my meal costs remained the same.

[Heretic]

In all honesty the people here who supported the HST and did not take the BC Liberals to task are the mind set that caused this mess. No singularily they are not to blame - but collectively they are.

When the HST was brought in the BC Liberals did it in a very poor manner. By the time the anti HST forces began stirring the people it had become very clear that things like when the HST had been discussed was not completly as suggested - none of the so called trickle down savings or pay raises had come to realization - and with soaring tax revenues it was absolultley crystal clear that the HST was anything but revenue neutral - BC tax payers where being hammered with extra costs.

Now imagine running a businuess like that - Pissing off the majority of your customers - raising your prices and ignoring their complaints by telling them an educated person would understand. That businuess would be out of businuess pretty quickly.

When one looks at the facts ( only in how the HST was brought in - implimented and attempts to sell it - nothing at all in regards to the economic benifit ) - only the ignorant would not understand why the HST failed.

The HST failed due to the narcissistic attitude and belief of devine right of goverance that this provinces right wing have. The real sheeple if you will are the followers of the BC Liberals that didn't grasp that the role of goverment in this disaster was to sell it to the voters - not to bring forward stories of how if businuess actually passed on the savings we would prosper... Problem is the questions asked most of the panels was based on the trickle down actually happening and if it did - we would have benifited greatly. Even the goverments review panel on it had to admit the HST turned out to be anything but revenue neutral and was costing workers more money -

No, true leadership would have been something like this - after the HST failure if BC Liberal supporters had actually cared about the province and not simply political ideology ( yeh the whole concerned BC citizen stuff is bunk ) - they would have demanded that Cristy step down. The Next leader of the BC Liberal party should have then brought back a completly redesigned HST and called an election right then and there - and ran on the new HST ( promising to bring it in if elected ).

As such very little of the pro HST crowd has much credibility when they complain and play the blame game. The HST failure rests in its entirity with the BC Liberals. The sheeple bought into the party line and when every reasonable person in BC understood that the HST was going to be voted out - they started the blame game instead of accepting responsibility.

I have a few home renovations that I will now move forward on ( they dropped in cost April 1 st ) , but other than that my spending habbit really wont change. When restaurant costs went up my tip amount went down. I asked the staff if they preffered same tips with less visists or less tips same # of visits. Our regular dinner was pretty clear - less visits by folks means lay offs. So today I raised my tips back from 15 to 18 % and as such my meal costs remained the same.

[silverpig]

The HST failed due to the narcissistic attitude and belief of devine right of goverance that this provinces right wing have. The real sheeple if you will are the followers of the BC Liberals that didn't grasp that the role of goverment in this disaster was to sell it to the voters - not to bring forward stories of how if businuess actually passed on the savings we would prosper... Problem is the questions asked most of the panels was based on the trickle down actually happening and if it did - we would have benifited greatly. Even the goverments review panel on it had to admit the HST turned out to be anything but revenue neutral and was costing workers more money -

[Sapper]

An example is Windows - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/09/19/bc-home-renos3.html

Cost to replace an entire house's windows drops 7% as the labor is only subject to GST not PST. There could be more exemptions but that's the one I was reffering to - the savings are in the labor as it is no longer subject to the PST portion that was added when they brought in the HST

[Heretic]

An example is Windows - http://www.cbc.ca/ne...ome-renos3.html

Cost to replace an entire house's windows drops 7% as the labor is only subject to GST not PST. There could be more exemptions but that's the one I was reffering to - the savings are in the labor as it is no longer subject to the PST portion that was added when they brought in the HST

[Sapper]

It would be an extremely inefficient form of "governing" if the government just pitched all of the decisions to the general populace. They wouldn't be a government, just an aggregator of decisions and administrator of referenda. What's more, they wouldn't be able to make very good decisions because the general populace doesn't have the time to spend on researching and understanding these issues to the same extent that someone whose full-time job it is.

[Sapper]

Obviously you haven't heard of the "gray" market whereby a consumer can save the "labour" tax all together by paying in cash.

Material still costs the same - and would be cheaper if we had the 10% HST.

[Gurn]

"Obviously you haven't heard of the "gray" market whereby a consumer can save the "labour" tax all together by paying in cash."

So you are suggesting somebody not pay tax at all? And yet you have a problem with people getting rid of a tax?