Since you'd have to hail from the Darth Vader School of Economic Policy
to want to hike taxes when the economy is hurting, the real aim of
Famara Jatta's 'prescription for catastrophe,' is to appease the codicils
of
the Kanialai Emperor's looting and booting scheme.
The basic lessons of tax policies are as old as Adam Smith - in most
every instance, the more a good or service is taxed, the less of it is
supplied and demanded. So if Fams is trying to raise more revenue
through higher taxes without incentives for increase in income, chances
are there will be lower consumption. An increase in sales taxes will lead
to fewer sales, and an increase in taxes on businesses will lead to fewer
businesses to employ workers. Translation? Deeper economic trouble.
Tax hikes can do damage to an economy at a vulnerable moment like
ours. While there may be some success in closing the budget deficits
through a variety of tax increases, the victory will be pyrrhic. The
economic evidence is very clear that these tax increases will hurt the
economy, lower incomes, and slow business creation as economic activity
will tend to move to low-tax locations. This is obviously a high price to
pay to avoid making tough choices on government policy of state
spending or should I say Emperor Jammeh's impulsive spending policy,
for lack of a better expression.
Some economic think tanks have identified several possible approaches
to alleviate and ultimately resolve a deficit problem. Some prominent
economists, like Milton Friedman, object to tax hikes as a means to
reducing budget deficits and advocate, instead, tax cuts to achieve that
objective. Others, for example, Robert Barro, reject these tax-oriented
solutions and argue that a better strategy lies in spending cuts, provided
there exists a concrete spending policy. These opposing postures are of
course based on the presumption that the two components of the
government budget – tax hikes and spending cuts - are interrelated.
Fams' contention seem to be with those who argue the opposite that
government spending and taxation are independent of each other. They
believe that any tax hike can reduce the deficit because spending will
remain constant in the process. Clearly, policy implications and the
proper strategy to resolve the deficit predicament – which Fams' seem to
have ignored in his projections – should be sensitive to the particular
relation between government spending and taxation. Just imagine how
many second-hand generators or tractors Yahya would want to buy out
of the blue knowing that government revenues have doubled in three
months. Not to talk about the brown bag exchanges that goes on behind
closed doors/under the table. Such negligent disregard of strategic
planning is what we have to deal with. Simply inept!
Folks, the shit is coming down the hill and guess who's at the bottom of
the hill.
-BambaLye
==============================================
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
====================================================
"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have
acted, the
indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the
voice of justice
when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph."
-Halle Selassie I
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