• zephyreks
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    1 year ago

    Are these subsidies or tax breaks? I can never be sure tbh

    • Avid Amoeba
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      1 year ago

      There’s no significant difference between the two.

      • zephyreks
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        1 year ago

        Tax breaks remove potential future tax revenue, but aren’t spending tax revenue acquired from another source.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Yea, there’s no significant difference - tax breaks spend revenue from a future source.

          • zephyreks
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            1 year ago

            But with a tax break in an emerging business, that revenue wouldn’t otherwise exist because the company wouldn’t have opened operations here when it could take advantage of egregious US subsidies instead.

            • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              You’re falling into something akin to the broken window fallacy. Economic resources aren’t created or destroyed by incentives, they are shifted. If that tax break didn’t exist those loans, employees, potential capital etc… would be doing something else. Tax breaks need to be extremely precisely honed to avoid lowering future income.

              • zephyreks
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                1 year ago

                Economic growth doesn’t happen on its own. The Canadian economy isn’t some entity that magically sees growth without investment.

        • Avid Amoeba
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          1 year ago

          I meant in this context where it’s established companies that have the means to build the factories they’re planning to build.