Why tax cuts make us weak
Rabble
by Murray Dobbin
November 1, 2007

So here we go again, another round of huge tax cuts as the country continues down the road to a neo-con dystopia. Over the next five years the revenue that pays for the things Canadians say they want will drop by $60 billion. There are cuts to the GST, to personal income taxes and corporate taxes — with the latter dropping by 2012 to 15 per cent (from 21 per cent today), an outrageous corporate giveaway, giving us third world status in the “attract investment” race to the bottom….

It's not hard to list the things we could now be enjoying as a country had those cuts not been made, especially taking into account the annual revenue we would have: a national child care program, a national pharmacare program, a home care program, social housing, radical cuts in tuition fees, and the elimination of this country's staggering infrastructure deficit, estimated to be between $60 billion and $120 billion….

The issue of income tax is only important if you actually make an income.

And what about child care, another purely left wing demand? Hardly, if you take seriously all the corporate hand-wringing about the worsening labour shortage. What do the tax-cutters think will solve the labour shortage? Tens of thousands of Canadians have long since given up even looking for work because child care is so expensive it would absorb most of their take home pay. A major Health Canada study revealed that deteriorating conditions in work/life balance was the key factor in Canada's plummeting birth rate. No wonder there's a labour shortage — we aren't making workers any more….

…. It is long past time that civil society organizations, especially national unions, take up the challenge presented by massive reductions in government revenue. Let's mobilize Canadians around the conviction that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.