cchangg wrote:
加拿大的稅也很重，但...(恕刪)
剛巧今天看到MSN Canada對這方面問題作的一篇簡短專文。
http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/investing/insight/article.aspx?cp-documentid=5616634
內容就是在講，加幣漲，物品價格卻不見下跌的事。而且開宗明義就說了，想要在未來短期內會下跌嗎？別肖想了！
我是覺得...在這波暴漲之前就買好房子的有屋族，以及早已累積積蓄行年有餘的早期移民，真的是該挺開心的。像我這種美金從1.5掉到0.9卻一直計畫要搬回加拿大或是才剛從台灣過去的人，才真的是想哭都哭不出來
等吧！物極必反，加拿大政府應該會慢慢的有一點措施，只是要見到效果，恐怕又得五年十年吧。
原文轉貼如下：
Loonie parity doesn't mean retail stores make same price shift, observers say
David Friend, THE CANADIAN PRESS
October 23, 2007
TORONTO - Shoppers might be hoping that the strong dollar will push down prices of goods in Canada to a level on par with what's in U.S. stores, but industry watchers say consumers can keep dreaming because there's more than just the loonie to consider in the price of everything from cameras and TVs to fruits and vegetables and clothing.
* Quiz: Are you in tune with the loon?
"Historically, there has been a perception that there are only price differentials between Canada and the United States because of a different currency exchange, but there are a lot of other underlying costs that tie into that," says Elizabeth Evans, director of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will meet with Canadian retailers Tuesday in hopes of encouraging them to drop prices as quickly as possible to more closely reflect the two dollars' near parity. But he's expected to face opposition.
On Monday, John Williamson, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, fired off a letter to Flaherty saying that price parity between Canada and the United States isn't realistic.
"Our economy has more costly regulations and higher taxes and until this is changed, Canadians cannot expect price parity with the U.S., which has a more dynamic, lower taxed, less regulated and therefore less costly market," he wrote.
"As such, Canada cannot have radically higher minimum wages, higher business taxes and more costly regulations and suppose prices will be the same on both sides of the border - it is an economic impossibility."
In response to the letter, Chisholm Pothier, a spokesman for Flaherty told The Canadian Press that the Conservative government has been working to cut taxes.
"Mr. Williamson always ignores the fact that this government reduced taxes since coming to power by a total of $41 billion for individuals and businesses for over three years," he said in a phone interview.
"But we agree that Canadians still pay too much tax and both the Prime Minister and the finance minister have indicated that Canadians will be getting broad-based tax relief soon."
Retailers have blamed manufacturers, distributors and importers for their inability to adjust to the loonie, claiming that prices along the entire distribution chain will need to drop before the customer gets some relief.
So far, the Canadian dollar has surged ahead by about 20 per cent from Jan. 1, 2007, with about half of that increase coming since mid-August. The surge reflects weakness in the U.S. greenback and the strength of Canada's resource-based economy, profiting from record prices for oil and metals.
Currencies in other resources countries such as Australia and New Zealand have also soared against the week U.S. dollar.
The quick jump has given manufacturers little time to react, suggested Camilla Sutton, currency strategist at Scotia Capital.
"They're always faced with currency risk and no matter which way it moves they're always caught between a rock and a hard place," Sutton said.
Some economists say that Canadians could be spending as much as 20 per cent more for the same products as Americans.
Generally, the manufacturing industry sets its prices at the start of each year and products are still being priced based on estimates from last January, Sutton said.
In the new year, pricing will be up for negotiation once again, fuelled by pressure from the public to bring down price tags.
"That's the time when we'll start to see things change dramatically and start to embed more of the currency appreciation into the pricing," she said.
But not every retailer has been waiting to renegotiate contracts.
On Friday, Hudson's Bay Co. said it would cut prices on select items at nearly 300 Zellers discount department stores.
"Those vendors have really been experiencing the benefit of the rising Canadian dollar," said HBC spokeswoman Hillary Marshall.
"We've certainly noticed with the dollar rising that there's been an imbalance. That's why we decided to approach some of our vendors."
Marshall said that HBC suppliers agreed to give the company retroactive payments as well as a "go-forward" terms agreement for future orders.
Wal-Mart Canada has also cut the prices of some video games.
She said costs of producing food are so much higher in Canada, compared with the United States, that it's pinching manufacturers.
"The manufacturing sector has been losing money significantly over the past five years and there is not a lot of room for them to go."
Croitoru said that food products made in Canada generally don't receive the benefit of a higher dollar.
Couple that with higher costs to repackage imports to bilingual labels and different product formulas to meet government standards and suddenly the cheaper U.S. products become more expensive, she said.
Then there's the cost of transportation to ship products to a fewer number of citizens in the far reaches of the country and higher per capita market costs, say some observers.
Despite the higher charges, eventually suppliers and retailers will have to answer to the public, suggests Derek Holt, assistant chief economist RBC Capital Markets.
"The longer the story goes on, the weaker those reasons become," he said.
He suggests that retailers will probably take a more marketing savvy approach to adjusting their prices.
"A lot of retailers talk about how Canadians go for the hard-sell approach," he said.
Companies "get a bigger bang for (their) buck from a marketing standpoint if (they) offer bigger sales and free upgrades as opposed to a one-off price adjustment on shelf prices."
是啊是啊，您說的話最有邏輯最make sense嚕～
