Not A Dirty Word

In his column the other day, Rick Salutin wrote a stout defence of taxes, making it very clear that for him and many others, the word and the concept are hardly obscenities.

Public programs need to be adequately funded and expanded, the opposite of the American mentality:

Take tax reform. To U.S. Republicans, it means one thing: cuts. It’s their ultimate “reason for existing” (Financial Times). They staggered into the light this week to say (again) that Americans should keep their hard-earned money to pay their medical and university bills. Ha ha ha. There’s no way tax cuts will cover most such costs, though you might be able to repave your carport. What would help? More taxes. That could fund national “free” health care or tuition. But it would mean bigger government, levying higher taxes.

Here in Canada, the need for an expansion, not a contraction, of government intervention in people's lives is becoming increasingly obvious. Salutin cites the sad situation of dismissed Sears workers who are facing loss of severance and reduced pensions as a result of the chain's bankruptcy. This dire situation is mirrored in larger society by the growth of precarious work and the fact that company pensions are fast becoming relics of an earlier era. Echoing a sentiment recently expressed by his colleague, Thomas Walkom, he offers this:

The obvious solution is the health-care model: public programs like CPP not to supplement private pensions but to replace and amplify them — i.e., bigger government.

The mystery is why anyone ever thought private companies were the way to cover huge costs like health or pensions. It’s costly and patchwork; public programs make far more sense. They’re stabler, better funded and include some democratic oversight.

The rub in all of this is that such transformation requires something far too many have become allergic to: increased taxation.

Public programs, however, mean you need revenues to fund them. And presto, you’re back to taxes...to run national programs, taxes must be accumulated, not just endlessly cut.

It’s a simple picture and it’s amazing how Finance Minister Bill Morneau managed not to paint it with his summer tax “reform” rollout: get more tax revenues from the rich, who can afford it, to fund big programs; and give cuts to those who’ll spend to stimulate the economy, generating more revenues.

Salutin ends his piece by a personal testament to the need for properly-funded programs:

In recent weeks I’ve had (public sector) fire trucks at the house twice — for a fallen branch on power lines, then two false CO alarms in two days. They came swiftly, cheerily and competently, unlike my private gas provider, who effectively said, from wherever on the globe, that they didn’t give a flying leap.

I will close with a letter from today's Star that echoes Salutin's sentiments:

The big government era isn’t over. It may just be getting started, Salutin, Oct. 27

For the love of our aging and long-lived demographic, Rick Salutin has nailed it. We need to reframe the tax conversation. I don’t know where we’ve lost our way about this as a country or even as a society, but I remain confused when people say such things as, “but taxes will increase,” like a venomous accusation, rather than recognizing what it means to enjoy things such as clean drinking water and not having to build in a $50,000 rainy-day fund just in case we slip and break our hip (in the middle of the forest, no less, with no one to sue).

It scares me to think that if Canada had tried to socialize health care in this day and age, society is at a point where we would have said no and cried out for “lower taxes, not my money” instead.

If all we ever hear about is scandals and corruption, it’s little wonder why no one trusts government to handle the public purse anymore. I say keep at it, let’s talk about the privileges our society gets to enjoy for the value of its tax money and how much we’re going to need it in the decades to come.

Jennifer Ng, Richmond Hill