The Weekly "Raise Taxes" Article

Ahh the weekly Tyee article advocating higher taxes. Are we as a society really that bereft of ideas? The average Canadian already pays 41% of their income to taxes. (source: http://noticias.lajornada.ca/1230_english-content/1575589_how-much-tax-do-canadians-really-pay-be-afraid-be-very-afraid.html )

But thats not enough because theres still homeless people with no shoes and junkies shooting up in alleys and the working poor stuck in dead-end minimum wage jobs.

All of those issues should be addressed. But NONE of them can be addressed by raising taxes and putting more stress on and already stressed middle-class. For the middle class, wages have been stagnant for 30 years, while the cost of basics such as housing has skyrocketed.

As I have argued before, encouraging wages to rise rather than stay stagnant for another 30 years, and lowering unemployment, will automatically raise the revenue from existing taxes without having to raise tax rates. In fact, if we raise wages and lower unemployment enough, we could even start lowering that 41% tax rate back down to something sane.

Wages have been stagnant for 30 years

Source: http://csls.ca/reports/csls2008-8.pdf

My Favorite Subject Poverty!

I'm Disabled and on Welfare, not by choice!

I Do Not Need Help! Never collected a Dime from a Charity!

Why? Because I make Double the Welfare Rates by Qualifying for every extra there is.
Monthly Nutritional Supplement.
Special Transit Subsidy.
Volunteer Supplement.
As a disabled couple we can also earn $1,600 per month, (we wish!)

So I know for a fact that Alberta Doubling the Disability Rates, WORKS!

I have stable housing!
My fridge is Full.
My freezer is Full.
Transportation is Covered Fully.

From what I've read, there maybe 6 Disabled Couples in all of BC that Qualify for all the things I've listed.

BC needs to Double the rates and end poverty.

Yes I Am Grateful...

To me Charities should hand over all cash, welfare could then double welfare rates and homelessness and hunger would be over within 30 days! No extra taxes need be collected!
Just to simple!

Hate to tell ya Bill, but I

Hate to tell ya Bill, but I think Jesus was pissed-off with our system long ago. Now, just don't get me going on this whole 'Christmas' and 'goodwill towards men' thing either.

thanks Bill

It is truly appalling.

On the other side of the BC Liberal government's ledger is the $600 million provided as royalty credits to the oil and gas companies operating in BC since 2004. That's $600 million that was lost to the provincial treasury.

Shell in 2011 made more than $3 million an hour in profit yet we provide them with a royalty subsidy! Shell's CEO made $11 million in 2011.

Bah Humbug!

Made?

The standard Ayn Randian mantra is that the rich "make" money through their extraordinary intelligence and diligence. While there may be an element of truth to that argument, it is equally true that in may cases the rich simply GET money. They grow up in wealthy households, have access to the best education and travel experiences money can buy, inherit trust funds, and slide into well-connected employment in companies owned either by family, friends, or connections.

The phrases "made money" or "earned a salary," etc, are often wildly overused.

The notion of earning something in capitalist society implies that that impartial arbiter, the free market, directed funds someone's way in return for his dramatic and valuable contribution to society.

Bankers' bonuses? Feebly taxed capital gains? Crony-directed opportunities? In many cases "earning" doesn't come into it.

I believe Jesus was unconcerned about whether or not someone deserved justice or charity in a world where ALL have fallen short of the glory of God. Thanks, Bill. Let's try to GET the poor some more money.

Tax rates

I somewhat agree with titus_steerpike, taxing regular joes isn't going to make things better because our regular joes used to be middle class and now most of them are slipping down the ladder.

Its the obscenity of low taxes at the high end and in the corporate world.

Things like free trade agreements, half a million foreign workers being allowed in to depress wages, decreasing unionization in the private sector, low minimum wages etc, all that needs to change. There is no single panacea, we have to look at why the post-war world did things better than we have since we embarked on this monetarist experiment in the early 1980s.

The thirty years of stagnant wages isn't an accident, it was done by design.

titus_steerpike

That website (a Fraser Institute cheerleader) hurts its case by adding in stuff that really isn't taxation at all.

I weep for Canada

I have been in love with Canada and with the Canadian people as long as I have drawn breath. Decent people, who would no more drive past a person in trouble than they would allow an old one to starve. Not saints or anything like it, Canadians have all the same difficulties all humanity is heir to.

Just decent people, who know that no one can survive a Northern winter without the help of his neighbors.

I weep for Canada now, conquored by a wicked foreign creed without a shot fired. Sold like cattle to corporate criminal elements with a psychopathic belief that those who can be robbed through their weakness or misfortune don't deserve protection.

I'm sad to have to say at this time of year that I agree with those above who think that if he showed up now, Jesus would return with wrathful vengeance for those who have caused all this havoc and used his name to justify their crimes.

Manitoba NDP Government

Child poverty is now the highest in the country under the Manitoba NDP government. And it continues to rise. Imagine that!

OTOH, the Manitoba NDP government:

1. Eliminated the corporate capital tax;

2. Eliminated the small business tax;

3. Reduced corporate tax rates from 16.5% to 12% and eventually intends to reduce the rate to 10%;

4. Introduced a variety of expanded corporate tax credits;

If I didn't know any better, the foregoing would be the BC Liberal tax reduction playbook/template.

It never ceases to amaze me how New Democrat partisans can wilfully turn such a blind eye when one of their ideological own is responsible for the highest child poverty rate in Canada but continues on corporate tax reduction spree. C'est la vie.

Poverty 3rd World Style.

I read that the Congo is 228th in the World for Poverty.

Yet there is a staggering (USA) $24 Trillion Dollars worth of resoures in the ground.

The Congo is full of Canadian Mining Companies, evil at it's best...

Are we really trying to get Canadian mining to come back to Canada, where they can't just work their workers to death, for $20 or less, per day.

Jesus gave this planet to all the people, I own the Trees, the Oil, the Gold.

We as God's children, don't play nice!

Santa, private do-gooder charity tuning citizens into customers?

Canadians, like Europeans and Americans, are starting to feel the fact that not all governance is good governance.

Are higher taxes the 'social change' with which to invest our political management teams that they may better partner private do-gooders to service the needs of society?

Is that what good governance looks like?

Is instrumental use of Santa's fingers the 'charity services partnership model' by which the many holes in the civic dike are stop-gapped, the better model of governance?

Why is a dismantled civic service as proscribed by current liberal and conservative's 'wealth management models' of governance one which is divisive in drive and profoundly anti-democratic in its aims?

Because, the models sabotage the public purpose of civic infrastructure to morph citizens into customers, or worse, dependents. And that public infrastructure we built up over decades? It has become a privatized or a private-public partnership now serving citizen-customers who were the former legitimate owners.

The top feeders of the model, private mega-corporations, become too big to fail. Their investor class hoard their profits, and socialize their losses. If malfeasance is scrutinized, the penalties are disproportionately small, making corruption and fraud a cost of doing business. Confidence in democratic sovereignty is eroded as equality before the law is betrayed.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/12/the-second-great-betrayal-obama-and-cameron-decide-that-banks-are-above-the-law.html

Who really believes BS like this??

"The reason is because we'd rather not pay higher taxes to redistribute wealth more equitably."

Why would the plutocrats ever pay us more in wages proportionate to the production output we generate? It has completely figured out that is is far easier to keep the difference as profit, propagandize to us that our consumer needs must be met immediately vis a vis credit, and then loan that increased profit margin back to us workers at interest?

Pay more tax huh? Well, if the system were anywhere near fair, we could all put everything into a pot and never want for anything. If the system were fair I'd gladly hand it over. But it is anything but fair ...

the game is so rigged, thinking we are solving matters while continuing to operate under capitalism with centralized wealth and power -- as we have for centuries -- is laughable. Democracy is absolutely impossible under this system, representative or otherwise.

"Pay more tax" only works if the state worked foremost for the people, but it obviously does not. One more time -- the state represents its constituent plutocracy.

NEXT.

Luke

McGuinty's debt in Ontario is how far north of 200 billion?

It never ceases to amaze me how Liberal partisans can wilfully turn such a blind eye when one of their ideological own is responsible for the highest deficits in Canada but continue to claim they're good money managers. C'est la vie.

Sigh

Yet another prophet claiming to know what Jesus thinks. Aren't we all full up on bullshit?

Yes, Bill, what you say is right and good and just, but it's got bugger-all to do with what you think Jesus thought, said or stood for.

We need to do the right thing and the just thing, simply because it's who we are as humans. Emulating psychopaths is not what we're called to be.

...speaking as a church-goer...

My Donation

One of my donations will be to the B.C.NDP, with the objective of ridding this Province of the B.C.Liberals (or whatever they morph into in the future) for a very long time.

titus

I see you're still pushing the absurd suggestion that average Canadians pay 41.5% of their income in tax.

They do not.

The article you quote is disingenuous and misleading - as I've pointed out to you several times already.

You conflate different kinds of levies with income taxes; many of the things the article quotes are not taxes related to income and categorizing them as such is incorrect.

What Jesus Did and Caeser Harper Agustus does

The Christmas story, according to St Luke, begins with ‘the decree that the whole world should be taxed’. Done with a lot of Roman fanfare it was a forced giving that mostly went to pay for military hardware. Today American military costs $700 billion, over 20% of the federal budget in 2010. And here in Canada the costs of F-35 fighter jets are now at over $40 billion of taxpayers dollars. Hardly what the Prince of Peace is about and hard to believe that so-called Christians run our governments. We must as Bill argues do more from our taxation giving to ensure at least that child poverty is eradicated? Or are children like the ones born into marginal conditions like Jesus ‘taking’ too much?

Wonder what He would say about...

the 100,000 Canadian citizens that were killed in hospitals because they were inconvenient?? Nearly 2,000 were over 21 weeks old, not really that faceless blob stage we like to comfort ourselves with as we turn our heads away. Any society that can do that, can hardly be expected to make righteous decisions......... I doubt Jesus would be angry, I am sure He is weeping all the time........

What are our leaders doing?

I'm Disabled on Welfare and my frige and selfs are full of food. I do not collect a dime from charities.

I talked to manager of a food bank and they don't get a penny of government money. Yet the Bell ringers are funded by
Welfare
Health Autorities
Corrections Branch
BC Housing at over $100. per night for shelter mats.
Bell Ringing
Mail outs
TV Radio Adds
Private Donation
City porperty tax exemptions
People willing their estates
You Get The Idea.

Our Leaders Want The Poor To Find Jesus.

All These Funds Are Raised For The Poor Disabled Like Me.

Funny if a Bell Ringer handed me $20. I would then have to report that $20. to Welfare, if not, I would be charged with Fraud. That $20. would be Deducted off my next Welfare Cheque.

No Charity, does nothing for me and if I'm looking for Jesus, well he died 2012 years ago. I attended a Christian Boys School for 10 years, and I no longer believe.

Yak yak yak.

Bill Tieleman replies

Merry Christmas to all Tyee readers! And thanks for the comments - a few responses.

First, Cool Hand, it sounds like the Manitoba NDP has copied the BC Liberal playbook on taxes - as you say - and got the same result on child poverty! It's very unfortunate two provinces with significant resources have the worst child poverty rates in Canada - and the NDP has to take it's share of the blame as the provincial government for the last many years - I'd never say different.

The Nova Scotia NDP government - one of the most unpopular in Canada, say the polls - increased its regressive HST by 2% - another mistake in my book. Voters there will decide, as they will in Manitoba.

Titus has a good point on wage stagnation. The causes are many but certainly an unequal tax burden on middle-income Canadians and a lightening load on big corporations is a significant factor. De-unionization of workers is another. But years of tax cuts for business haven't "trickled down" to higher wages for their employees.

IgbyMac wants a revolution, I presume. Keep praying.

Zalm doesn't want me interpreting Jesus' words - no need, the Man said it for himself. But in the spirit of Christmas, I accept Zalm's point that we don't need Jesus to tell us to do the right thing - we should do it ourselves! Season's greetings to all!