Raising Taxes in Ontario and Jeffrey Simpson

On September 1st I was reading a print version of the Globe and Mail (I won't buy the paper because of their stupid columnists AND because of their endorsement of stephen harper in the last federal election. The latter crime revealed the paper's utter contempt for Canadian democracy and is unforgivable and irredeemable.) wherein Jeffrey Simpson was pontificating about the promises that were soon to come thick and fast from the political parties in the upcoming Ontario elections.

Simpson made sense in so far as he said most of them would be bullshit. Given that the premier is a serial liar ("No taxes" followed by the "health care premium" - which, strangely enough, goes straight to general revenues) and Tim Hudak is nothing but a lying buffoon, that observation isn't particularly prescient. I've been waiting for the editorial to come online though, because it was after conveying the obvious that Simpson then went right off the rails.

Simpson said that the only thing possible to rein-in Ontario's deficits would be to cut, cut, cut. As usual, Simpson yammered about the expense of public health care and the annual growth in expenditure being unsustainable like he's been doing for the past thirty years.

It seems though that the Globe and Mail, in a desperate attempt to get people to pay for their corporate propaganda, hides some of their columnists' more recent offerings and I've been visiting their site and subjecting myself to Simpson's other drivel, trying to find it.

So why don't I deal with Jeffrey Simpson first?

In his editorial "America as a trading partner, yes; economic model, no" Simpson talks about a poll that shows that Canadians (in the light of the obvious economic and political meltdown in the USA) are more optimistic about Canada's future than the USA's. Simpson takes this as an opportunity to wax philosophically about the increased confidence Canadians have in their country (ostensibly due to our dedicated adherence to the neo-liberal policies espoused by Simpson and the rest of the gang of idiots at the Globe):

Asked which country has the best long-term prospects for prosperity, an astonishing 86 per cent said Canada. That shows historic levels of confidence in the country’s economic future.

Remember two decades or so ago when Canadians were debating free trade with the U.S.? How many times did we hear that Canada could not compete. There would be a great sucking sound toward our neighbour. Moreover, shouted the critics, Canada would lose its pension scheme, health care, unemployment insurance and other social programs.

The fear-mongering was rubbish then, and it’s rubbish now. The Canada Pension Plan, while far from perfect, is in much better financial shape than Social Security. Medicare, although needing an overhaul, still produces better value for money than the U.S. system. Unemployment is lower than in the U.S. Our government deficits, although too high, are still much lower on a per capita basis than in the U.S. Our debt situation is also much better. And Canada Post doesn’t face bankruptcy, as does the U.S. Postal Service.

Now, let's point something out. It's obvious, but Simpson, capable of seeing only what he wants to see, and having been paid for this talent for decades, sees Canadians being more confident in Canada's future as a result of the implosion of the USA, and believes this to be an increased confidence in Canada in general. This is akin to asking someone sitting in a lifeboat and asking them if they think they've got a better chance of survival than the people clinging desperately to floating flotsam, and writing an essay about the lifeboat inhabitant's greater reserves of self-confidence.

Canada hasn't done, or achieved anything in recent years to warrant any increased confidence in our future. Canada appears to have avoided the fraud-induced meltdown of the USA's financial and real estate sectors. (This, remember too, is not the achievement of our current government, which began pursuing the same bankster-led deregulatory mania, only to be forced to call it to a halt when Wall Street's own criminality blew-up in its face.) A series of US-American presidents has been monkeying with US economic statistics over the decades and it seems that the economic dislocation in that country is much greater than the relative economic statistics between our countries would seem to indicate, hence the obviously greater extent and intensity of poverty in that country.

If Canada is in economically better shape than the USA it is because we have, to a small extent, avoided the very US-American policies that Simpson and his newspaper have been advocating since forever. If Canadians are more confident about our future than about the US-Americans' that itself isn't a vindication of anything that Canadian policy-makers have done.

Now let's get on to Simpson's stupid comments about "free trade":

Remember two decades or so ago when Canadians were debating free trade with the U.S.? How many times did we hear that Canada could not compete. There would be a great sucking sound toward our neighbour. Moreover, shouted the critics, Canada would lose its pension scheme, health care, unemployment insurance and other social programs.

The fear-mongering was rubbish then, and it’s rubbish now.

"Rubbish" 'eh? As I recall, the warnings were that Canadian manufacturing employment would be devastated and that we would be told that our social programs (and the taxes that paid for them) were making us "uncompetitive" with the US-Americans and that we'd be forced to dismantle them. Well, the predictions about manufacturing were born out and only a senile, doddering fool like Jeffrey Simpson could have failed to notice the decades-long assault on social programs and the rise in inequality and misery that have resulted.

The last thing I want to point out is this little bit of disingenuous nonsense:

Medicare, although needing an overhaul, still produces better value for money than the U.S. system.

Sure Jeffrey. Whatever you say. Actually, what do you mean by "overhaul"? I read you for a couple of years and all I can recall is your droning on and on about how public health care is expensive (without mentioning that private health care is expensive too and often more so) and calling for creeping privatization. You're just like your partner is crime, [PDF!] Preston Manning who said you guys would have to kill public medicare in stages, because Canadians would react to a direct assault. [PDF!]

Fuck-off.

Anyhoo, ... that was my reply to Simpson's latest. I can't find the editorial I read in the coffee-shop last Friday, but take my word for it that Simpson was saying that Ontario's precarious fiscal state means that there are going to have to be cut-backs in provincial spending, not increases, and his bemoaning the fact that no politician has the courage (like Simpson does) to tell it like it is.

Which is nonsense. Excuse me? Cut-backs? There is grid-lock and there are traffic jams on the highways leading to Toronto for much of the day. We need a massive expansion of commuter rail service. Monthly welfare payments for the long-term unemployed have fallen frighteningly behind the rate of inflation over the years. Humanity says those rates need to be increased. We still have intolerable emergency room waits. We have sky-rocketing post-secondary tuition (in an era when post-secondary education is practically mandatory). We have a massive urban infrastructure deficit.

BOTH levels of government need to ratchet-up the spending. Big time. We have been living through a period of government austerity since at least 1993 (when the Liberals regained power with Paul Martin as their finance minister).

The ONLY things our elites have seen fit to spend money on are boondoggles that reward their political friends, such as E-Health, and gifts to the construction industry of the building of hospitals and schools without hiring health care providers or teachers to staff them, or money so that patients and students can access them.

The reason we have these deficits is because our governments have been cutting taxes to business and the wealthy and there has been no reciprocal, corresponding increase in investment.

We need to look at tax policy with a new attitude. Neo-liberals yammer that ALL taxes are a drag on growth, whereas Keynesians argue that tax increases during periods of recession are counter-productive. But what happens when tax cuts have been indulged in and there has been no benefit to the general public? What if it's been the case that governments have cut taxes to spur investment but have only seen a drop in revenues that have been used as an excuse to cut services?

What premier could sell THAT to the public? "We have to cut taxes across the board because the wealthy need more money to burn in the stock market and I need an excuse to under-fund health care and jack-up your tuition rates!" Nobody would buy that. But that's what we've been taking.

How about this? If tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporations have failed to spur economic growth, AND the rich have more money than they know what to do with (re: all the wealthy fools who bought garbage from Wall Street because the real economy was in the doldrums) AND governments have been faced with deficits in combination with cut-backs to public services, then maybe it's time to reverse course.

There are no magical economic "laws" people. If you give money to people in the hopes of getting some benefit from it, and the benefit does not materialize, and you find yourself short for necessities, then take the money back. (Of course it's entirely valid to point out that the people give the money to the government first, via taxation. But, if you want to go there, you're going to have to deal with the reality that the wealthy and the corporations have the wealth that they have as a result of deliberate government policies to transfer money away from labour and towards capital. We are supposed to be a democratic society and if the vast majority think their health care system is more important than the top five percent of income-earners gambling in the stock market, then that's going to have to accepted.)

We have (to reverse the words of the idiotically wrong Mayor Rob Ford) a revenue problem, not a spending problem. We have vast social problems to address and this requires money. Taking the money from the people who have too much of it and using it to hire people to provide needed services is going to give Ontario's economy more of a shot in the arm than the dogmatic attachment to discredited economic theories ever will.

UPDATE:

The irreplaceable Alison at Creekside has found the editorial for me. Here's the relevant juicy bit:

Given Ontario’s fiscal situation, spending cuts will be the order of the day no matter who wins the election. But no party apparently has the courage to tell voters this truth, and voters can only blame themselves since they don’t seem to want to know the truth.

The Conservatives, at least, are marginally honest in telling voters that, yes, they would make cuts; whereas the Liberals, who have presided over the ballooning of the province’s deficit, are campaigning as if none existed.

The Conservatives’ identified cuts are so limited that, when placed against their spending promises, the financing of their entire platform is a joke. As for the Liberals, they always campaign by showering pledges of more spending on the electorate. And they’re true to form this time. They know they need to rein in their spending, which is why they’ve asked respected economist Don Drummond to review the province’s spending.

As I said, complete nonsense. I ought to add this bit of howling hypocrisy from Simpson about the misplace priorities of the ONDP this election:

Not to be outdone, the New Democrats have joined the bunfight of promises, but with a twist. The NDP has moved away from some form of social democracy toward jerky populism, vowing this or that bit of tax relief or spending, adopting the federal Conservatives’ strategy of identifying target groups and pitching precise messages to them.

A classic case of targeted populism and stupid policy is the NDP’s promise to remove the HST from heating oil, hydro and gas. This removal will indeed save consumers a small amount on their bills, while costing a lot for the deficit-laden treasury. It’s a far cry from the kind of redistribution of income and fundamental social change for which the NDP ought to fight.

Yeah, right asshole. So, you'd be their champion if only they'd fight for the redistribution of income and fundamental social change? More like you'd have a fit and scream for the party to be outlawed. (Simpson was just trying to make up things to criticize the ONDP and got a little ahead of himself.)