What Recession?
The loss of 400 jobs were announced this week in the greater Moncton area. And yet today, January 19th, in historically the slowest retail month of the year, the stores were packed. Parking lot full packed! Go figure.
And it wasn't just people browsing, their were long line ups at the checkout. It was like that at The Source, Future Shop, Wal-Mart and Staples. And it isn't as if things were on sale or anything, prices are up significantly when compared to Boxing Day/week sales.
The (Harmonized sales tax) HST is now 13% in New Brunswick. How many provinces took the opportunity to raise their sales tax to compensate the federal government lowering theirs? None.
So please, no more talk of federal transfers, partnerships or fiscal imbalance. The federal government lowered the sales tax, the provinces had a golden opportunity to raise them, but didn't.
In summery, based on a two hour venture outside on a beautiful Moncton Saturday, the economy is doing fine and a 13% sales tax is to low. Now resume investing on the stock market (so I can recoup the 1000 bucks I lost in two weeks!!!) and encourage your local government to spend more (so I can go back to being a well paid civil servant instead of poorly paid call centre worker).
Thank you.
PS. My annual raise was 0% this year. Zero, nada, nothing. Inflation meanwhile is at 2.5%. Not sure how I'm supposed to cut 2.5% out of an extremely frugal budget, but stay tuned as this blog gets a tad more bitter.
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