When Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks write their sequel to The Trouble With Billionaires, let’s hope they’ll help us understand why the 1 per cent whine even when they win.

Take Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the Blackstone Group; worth $4.7 billion, Mr. Schwarzman is the 52nd richest person in America. He describes his business philosophy candidly: “I want war, not a series of skirmishes. … I always think about what will kill the other bidder.” He sees Wall Street locked in fierce battle with President Barack Obama which he once described, yes, as a war: “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Mr. Schwarzman eventually apologized for his language – but not for the sentiment behind it. The heinous act that provoked him to compare the U.S. President to Hitler? Mr. Obama’s attempt to prevent billionaires like Mr. Schwarzman from paying tax at a lower rate than Warren Buffett’s secretary.

What’s particularly noteworthy here is that despite the success of the Occupy movement in putting inequality on the international agenda, it can safely be reported that just about everywhere, the 1 per cent are still laughing all the way to the bank. In fact they own the bank. Just a little south of here, the Bank of America was bailed out by American taxpayers to the tune of $45-billion. It claimed a pre-tax loss of $5.4-billion and so paid no taxes for the past two years. In one of those years, it dished out executive bonuses and compensation worth $35-billion. Could I make this stuff up?

The bargain between the 1 per cent and the governments of the 1 per cent is clear: huge tax breaks for the big boys, austerity for the 99 per cent. Can you handle more figures? Since the geniuses on Wall Street gave us the great crash of 2008, American banks received $7.7-trillion in bailout money and British banks $1.3-trillion. Yes, trillion, in both cases. To offset those losses to the public purse, the United States will cut public spending by $2.4-trillion in the next decade and Britain $128-billion. In Britain this will include almost half-a-million lost public sector jobs.

It’s time to resurrect the biting formula given us years ago by John Kenneth Galbraith, an earlier generation’s Paul Krugman: private affluence, public squalor.

Canada merely proves the rule. Despite our ever-receding kinder/gentler reputation, Canada is actually becoming more unequal faster than most other countries. There’s an elephant in the room here (as elsewhere) that’s almost always ignored. As economists Sam Gindin and Paul Kahnert report in the April CCPA Monitor, there’s far more wealth in Canada today than ever before. Per capita GDP is 50 per cent higher (adjusting for inflation) than 30 years ago. Yet most of that wealth has been transferred to the richest Canadians through tax cuts and government subsidies.

Since 1980, the ultra-rich have increased their share of the national income from 8.1 per cent to 13 per cent, a shift of $67-billion. Here’s a strange coincidence. The combined federal and provincial deficits now run at about $65-billion annually. So let’s see now. If taxes on the super-rich had stayed at their 1980 level – when no well-heeled Canadian was exactly suffering from cruel and unusual tax torture – there’d be no federal or provincial deficits today. Interesting.

Privileging the few and hurting the less privileged has been very much a non-partisan tradition in Canada, from Bran Mulroney through Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin to Stephen Harper. Between 2000 (Chrétien-Martin) and today, corporate taxes have been reduced to 15 per cent from 29 per cent, but instead of putting their extra profits into productive business investments Canadian corporate leaders have engorged themselves on their $500-billion windfall. Looking at the Harper government record alone, from its first year in office in 2006 to 2013-14, tax cuts will cost the government – that’s us, the citizenry – $220-billion, creating the very deficits that are now used to justify government spending cuts. Interesting.

But if the 1 per cent are still winning the brutal class war, the 99 per cent are not yet surrendering. Portents of hope are everywhere. France, of course. Britain, where the austerity-obsessed Tory-Liberal coalition got smashed in municipal elections last week. The United States, where Mr. Obama is framing Mitt Romney as the candidate of the 0.00001 per cent.

And if you sometimes fear that Occupy was just a dream, look hard and you can still find evidence across the United States of its existence. In fact there are mini-Occupies all over the country – Occupy Colleges, Occupy Our Homes, Occupy the Securities and Exchange Commission, even an Occupalooza organized by Occupy Fullerton, which seems to be a town in California.

In Canada too there’s a revival of protest. Of course most controversial are the Quebec students. But whatever you think of them – and I for one believe their protests have become counter-productive – it’s obvious these young people are amazingly committed and tenacious; that’s the spirit that the 99 per cent need.

Voices-Voix, a non-partisan coalition of civil society groups and NGOs disappointed by the Harper government, is revving up its collective clout against the government. Canada can also now boast of Doctors for Fair Taxation, Lawyers for Fair Taxation and Faith Leaders for Fair Taxation. (Anyone who needs extra motivation should take a gander at Kevin O’Leary’s treatment on CBC TV not long ago of a serene and knowledgeable Tanya Zakrison, a surgeon representing Doctors for Fair Taxation.)

A couple of weeks ago 15,000 protestors demonstrated in Toronto against the McGuinty government’s attack on Ontario’s public-sector workers. Along with ever-lower taxes and an end to government regulation of the corporate world, destroying the trade-union movement has for decades been a key objective of the 1 per cent.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has now accomplished what the majority everywhere are fighting for. She actually forced the minority Liberal government, anxious to avoid an election, to agree to a small surtax for the 23,000 Ontarians who declare earnings of more than $500,000 a year. If I were advising Ms. Horwath, I would mobilize those crusading doctors and lawyers for fair taxation and make equality and fairness my campaign cry in the forthcoming Kitchener-Waterloo by-election.

I don’t think either American or Canadian billionaires have to sell off too many of their private jets just yet. But they shouldn’t be too complacent, either. The rich world is due its Spring Revolutions too.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/gerald-caplan/update-on-the-class-war-1-winning-99-regrouping/article2430024/singlepage/#articlecontent >

Dear Prime Minister:

When I heard your words in the House of Commons that were deemed an apology for the debacle of Canada’s residential school system, I was heartened. At that time, it was nothing short of amazing to hear a prime minister use the word “wrong” in reference to Canada’s treatment of aboriginal people. Now, nearly four years later, I look at the astoundingly hurtful cuts to organizations whose sole purposes are the re-empowerment and well-being of aboriginal people, and I am disheartened. Hell, Mr. Harper, I am downright angry.

You said “sorry” and you were not. In aboriginal context, an apology means that you recognize the flaw within yourself that made the offence possible and you offer reconciliation based on understanding the nature of that flaw. That reconciliation takes the form of living and behaving in the opposite manner. You have not done this. In fact, you have continued in the same vein that made the original apology necessary.

Residential schools effectively separated aboriginal children from the influence of everything that could sustain, perpetuate and define them. When you cut funding for the National Aboriginal Health Organization and the Native Women’s Association of Canada’s health program and ended the mandate of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, you did the same thing.

Your apology and any actions you have undertaken since have only been the expedient motions demanded by tragedy, catastrophe or the public outing of your government’s callous indifference to the needs of Canada and her people.

Because it’s not just aboriginal people you harm when you deign to disengage us from vehicles of healing. You harm Canada. You make the entire country less.

As someone graced with a chief’s headdress and a native name, as you were by the Blood people, it is incumbent on you to learn the teachings those honours arise from. One of them is that the honour of one thing is the honour of all. Similarly, the dishonour of one is the dishonour of all. So when you dishonour us, you dishonour the country. You dishonour that headdress and the ceremony attached to it. You dishonour protocol, tradition, spirituality and the foundational principle of both the headdress and Canada – equality.

Residential schools left deep and grievous wounds on our national consciousness. Your actions only continue that legacy.

As individuals, we seek to heal through a process of learning to embrace our hurts, to hold them, so we can learn to let them go with grace. We learn to embrace our hurts by coming to understand and accept our whole story, our whole history. We leave out nothing. Only when we can accept our whole story can we move on as enlightened, empowered and whole people.

It’s the same for a community, a municipality, a province, a society and a nation. Aboriginal people understand this, and our health and healing organizations are geared toward the perpetuation of that process. We seek to build strong people within the context of Canada, to integrate whole people into the flux and flow of our homeland. But you choose to disallow us that and we can only feel the hurt of yet another wound and ask why.

I, for one, believe in the idea of Canada. I believe in the incredible potential for social greatness that resides here. I believe there is nothing we can’t accomplish as a country if we all work together to make it happen. For the most part, aboriginal people believe that, too. Every political motion we undertake is a step toward the vision of Canada we carry – of a homeland built on equality, harmony and unity.

But those things cannot occur when exclusion is allowed to happen. This is what we know. We seek to be a fully functioning part of this nation’s march toward a shining common future. We strive to be whole and well. We seek personal, community, tribal and collective fulfilment. We seek to be good citizens. In this, we are no different from our non-native neighbours.

I hope you have it in you to hear this. I hope you know that, of the one million aboriginal people in Canada, a significant number of us are potential voters and that our numbers can influence hundreds of ridings. I hope you know that three years is not a long time and that, if your hope is that Canada forgets your missteps before then, we as aboriginal people will not come election time.

Richard Wagamese, a B.C.-based columnist and author, is the recipient of the 2012 National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media and Communications. His latest novel is Indian Horse.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/aboriginal-reconciliation-an-open-letter-to-stephen-harper/article2416077/ >

Republicans in the Senate have blocked the Buffett Rule — in essence, a fair tax rate for millionaires — from coming to a floor vote. They’re betting that letting the wealthy continue to pay taxes at a lower rate than average working people will not light a fire under voters this fall.

Polling today indicates otherwise.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire critic of U.S. tax policy, started it all by lamenting that his tax rate is lower than his secretary’s. A secretary who has a few hundred or thousand more dollars in disposable income is likely to spend it, whether on food or on sending a kid to college. This spending will stimulate the economy. People who make, say, $5 million a year might use a tax break to splurge on an extra house, but they also will probably invest in financial instruments that are more likely to drive layoffs to increase a company’s profit margin than they are to create jobs.

A variety of polls indicate that moderate and independent voters agree with that argument, in proportions ranging from 50 per cent to 67 per cent. A CNN poll released Tuesday shows more than two-thirds of its sample, with a three-point margin of error, thinks the current tax system is unfair to working men and women. Moderates and independents agree by wide margins. Even Republicans are evenly divided on it.

The creation of wealth in America, whether it accrues to the struggling or to the already rich, relies on a base of public infrastructure — roads, mass transit, schools to prepare the next generation of workers and police agencies to keep communities safe. These all require public planning and investment to create a nation where businesses and individuals can thrive.

The United States needs to cut spending to get the deficit under control, but without increasing investment in key areas, its economy will erode just as badly as if the deficit is ignored. Spending cuts alone will increase that erosion. Some additional revenue is needed.

The Buffett Rule is a simplistic way to reform the tax system. It would be far better to have comprehensive reform that sets truly fair tax rates and starts from scratch to encourage things we value, perhaps home ownership and job creation, and to discourage harmful practices such as creating offshore tax shelters.

Pollyanna optimists, we hope for real reform someday. But expecting it anytime soon is like looking for peace on Earth to break out next week. A step at a time is the way to go, and the Buffett Rule — with its focus on tax fairness — would be as good a place as any to start.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1165614–buffett-rule-a-good-place-to-start >

It’s hard to fight a class war without a billionaire onside. Hence Andrea Horwath’s dilemma.

The Ontario NDP leader has thrown down a gauntlet of sorts — demanding, or at least politely requesting, that Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal minority impose a new slightly higher tax rate on Ontarians making more than $500,000 a year.

The move is a small toe-in-the-water toward restoring the progressivity that’s been stripped out of the Canadian tax system. But it’s also a bold unlacing of the stays on the political bodice that has confined mainstream Canadian politicians for the past few decades.

Of course, U.S. President Barack Obama is paving the way.

But it’s easy for Obama; he has a billionaire backing him up. It’s doubtful Obama would have had the audacity to suggest the rich should pay tax rates as high as their secretaries had the idea not been suggested by Warren Buffett, one of the richest men alive.

Obama has even dubbed his proposed new tax the “Buffett Rule” so that it’s clear this isn’t just some idea thought up by the president of the United States; it has the full clout and authority of a billionaire.

Horwath, on the other hand, is out there riding bareback, taking on the most powerful forces in Canada all by herself, showing more boldness than this country has seen in a while.

Actually, she’s showing the kind of boldness that in recent years has largely been confined to the political right.

That boldness — along with enormous financial support from the wealthy — has been key to the phenomenal success of the new conservative movement.

Conservatives have managed to peddle policy changes — notably tax cuts for the rich — that offer no benefit to ordinary citizens and in fact undermine public welfare by depriving government of revenue needed for social programs.

They’ve pulled this off partly by being sneaky, but also by forcefully defending their positions.

This has enabled them to present themselves as tough and principled — even when there’s no principle beyond enriching themselves and their allies — giving them an aura of strong leadership.

By contrast, their opponents have often come across as unable or unwilling to articulate the case for progressive policies.

Take, for instance, the issue of progressive taxation — the notion that tax rates rise as income rises. For decades, it had been accepted by all political parties in both the United States and Canada as central to the postwar “social contract” — the implicit bargain that stipulated the economy would run on capitalist principles, but that capitalism’s harsh effects would be mitigated by social programs protecting the well-being of the citizenry.

Starting in the 1970s, the conservative movement set its sights on eliminating the second part of the bargain. Its method was the demonization of taxes.

As the well-funded anti-tax campaign swept over the political landscape, politicians of all stripes cowered or climbed on board, abandoning the fort of progressive taxation as soon as it came under fire, without even putting up a fight.

The campaign was ostensibly against all taxes, but its real goal was reducing taxes on the rich. (And it succeeded. Statistics Canada numbers show that between 1992 and 2004, the actual tax rates paid by the richest .01 per cent of Canadians dropped by 25 per cent, while the actual tax rates paid by the bottom 95 per cent dropped by a mere 1 percentage point.)

Now, into this abandoned frontier rides mild-mannered Andrea Horwath, daring to go where no mainstream politician has gone in a long while.

The guns are out for her. On CTV, businessman Jim Doak described Horwath’s tax as “ethnic cleansing” of the rich.

Similarly, Wall Street titan Stephen Schwarzman denounced an attempt by Obama to close a tax loophole for hedge funds managers as “war — it’s like when Hitler invaded Poland.”

Another possibility is that higher taxes on the rich aren’t about war or ethnic cleansing, but about restoring the social contract that used to bind society together.

If Horwath can make that point with boldness and conviction, she might even succeed without a billionaire watching her back.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1164806–it-would-help-if-andrea-horwath-had-a-billionaire-onside >

Readers of The Globe and Mail may have been left with the impression, as a result of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent sentencing decision involving two aboriginal offenders, that all aboriginal offenders are receiving automatic discounts from their sentences. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Coverage of the 157-paragraph Supreme Court case involving Manasie Ipeelee in Ontario and Frank Ladue in B.C. paints a distorted picture. It focuses on the criminal history of one of the offenders – Mr. Ipeelee – and suggests that the court’s decision gave him, and will give other aboriginal offenders, undesired leniency because they are aboriginal.

We would do well to acknowledge the important story of Mr. Ladue, the other offender whose sentence was reviewed by the court. Like Mr. Ipeelee, he had a long criminal record, but he was denied the chance to attend a halfway house and rehabilitation program designed for aboriginal offenders, including offenders who – like him – are residential school survivors. Instead, he was sent to downtown Vancouver, against his express wishes, where he breached the condition that he not become intoxicated.

What the court actually decided in these cases was that one-year imprisonment was the appropriate sentence for both individuals for their breach of long-term offender conditions that they abstain from intoxicants. In both cases, the court held that trial judges erred by imposing three-year sentences that were disproportionate to the offence. The offence was not about violence – the offence was becoming intoxicated.

Proportionality between the offence and the punishment is a traditional and, indeed, fundamental purpose of sentencing. It applies to all offenders. Many may have preferred the three-year sentence and that, if errors are made, they be made on the side of public safety. But where does this argument stop? Indeterminate detention would eliminate more risk. But it is fundamental in a democracy that people be sentenced for what they have done – not what they may do.

The Supreme Court is also criticized for favouring rehabilitation over public safety. But this is a false dichotomy. In the case of most offenders, there will not be true public safety unless there is rehabilitation. The court said that the purpose of a long-term supervision order – the order that was breached – is to aid in the rehabilitation and reintegration of an offender. The order was not designed as a tool to keep people who had finished their sentences locked up forever.

Public understanding of the case also has not been helped by subsequent reports of a case in which Del Louie, a 22-year-old man diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, was sentenced to 18 months at an alcohol rehabilitation centre. The impression given, again, is that the judge reached this decision solely because the offender was aboriginal.

The decision does not amount to a lower standard of accountability – the offender was found guilty and given a lengthy sentence – but rather an attempt to deal with the reasons why the offender was before the court and to respond to the causes of his behaviour.

Judges are required to look at the circumstances of aboriginal offenders because Section 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code requires them to do so. The need for such consideration exists because, as the court found, aboriginal people face direct and systemic discrimination in the criminal justice system.

The section does not require or mandate lower sentences for aboriginal offenders. What is required is that judges take the time to look at the circumstances of the aboriginal offender and the types of sentences available to address the offending behaviour, in order to determine an appropriate and fit sentence. Considered sentences that hold offenders accountable and address the causes of their offending do not jeopardize public safety, they contribute to it.

Kent Roach, a professor at University of Toronto Law School, was counsel for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. Jonathan Rudin, program director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, was counsel for Aboriginal Legal Services in the Ipeelee and Ladue appeals at the Supreme Court of Canada.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/special-consideration-for-aboriginals-in-the-courts-is-a-matter-of-fairness/article2408189/ >

The spirit of the Occupy movement lives on.

François Hollande is leading France’s presidential race with a promise to slap a 75-per-cent levy on everyone earning more than €1-million ($1.3-million).

In the United States, President Barack Obama has latched onto income inequality as a key wedge issue to go after Mitt Romney, his likely opponent in November’s presidential election. Mr. Obama is touting the so-called Buffett rule – a 30-per-cent minimum tax on millionaires inspired by billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s sheepish acknowledgment that he’s taxed at a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Closer to home, Ontario New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath has made a 2-per-cent levy on people earning at least $500,000 a make-or-break condition for backing Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty’s minority budget. No tax, and Ontarians could be headed for the polls again.

The idea of taxing the rich is suddenly in vogue. But are these simply populist attacks on an easy target? Sure, there’s a dose of that.

But the recession and the financial crisis have left a lot of people feeling vulnerable, bitter and more conscious than ever of the widening gap between haves and have-nots.

“It’s a very legitimate discussion to have in the context of that type of inequality,” pointed out Miles Corak, an economics professor and income inequality specialist at the University of Ottawa.

Not surprisingly, the Bay Street crowd isn’t amused by the New Democrats’ tax-the-rich gambit. Money manager Jim Doak of Megantic Asset Management, a former chairman of the Toronto Society of Financial Analysts, has likened Ms. Horwath’s proposal to “ethnic cleansing.”

“It’s nasty,” Mr. Doak complained to CTV News last week. “She’s defined a group, not by culture or by language, but by how much money it makes, and she wants to get rid of them.”

The vast majority of Canadians agree with Ms. Horwath. More that 80 per cent approve the idea of a tax on the wealthy and two-thirds are ready to take a personal tax hit, according to a new poll of 2,000 people by Environics for the Broadbent Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Seventy-seven per cent worry that the growing income gap is “a big problem” for society.

The unease felt by many Canadians is rooted in an uncomfortable reality. Recent work by economists Mike Veall of McMaster University and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley show “an explosion in the earnings of the top 1 per cent” in Canada from the early 1980s to 2007. The top 1 per cent of Canadians pocketed nearly 14 per cent of all income in 2007, compared with 8 per cent in 1982.

The growing concentration is most evident in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, where the top 1 per cent now takes in 17.6 per cent of income – more than twice what it did in 1982.

In the United States, where the concentration of income at the top is even more pronounced than in Canada, there’s a growing clamour for rebalancing a tax system that has shifted an unfair share of the spoils to the ultrarich.

And it isn’t only flakes and marginal voices making the case. MIT’s Peter Diamond and Stanford’s Kenneth Arrow – both Nobel Prize winners in economics – have joined Mr. Obama in calling for a tax on high income earners.

The most commonly heard argument against taxing the rich is that it’s an attack on wealth-creators; the rich will simply move to lower tax jurisdictions or work less.

It’s also true that taxing the rich isn’t a panacea for indebted governments. The 2-per-cent Ontario tax, for example, would bring in roughly $500-million in a province that’s running a $15.3-billion deficit.

But consider this: Governments everywhere are in austerity mode. The middle class is being squeezed by stagnant incomes, pension clawbacks and the steady erosion of government entitlements, such as Old Age Security.

Basic fairness suggests all segments of society should share the burden.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/barrie-mckenna/taxing-the-rich-akin-to-ethnic-cleansing-seriously/article2402977/ >

I’m not surprised by the results of the poll released by the Broadbent Institute on income inequality in Canada. Studies from all over the world have shown that the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else is creating real problems, particularly with young people and anyone who is at or near the bottom of the economic ladder. We know for a fact that there is a direct correlation between levels of income and the rate of poverty, chronic disease, addiction, mental illness and incarceration. The poll also shows that Canadians believe the inequality gap is undermining our democracy and core values. These values are under attack from the increasing inequality gap and all fair-minded Canadians want this situation reversed. The fastest way to close the inequality gap is by making our taxation system fairer. A slight increase on the wealthiest, as suggested by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, is a step in the right direction. But more than that we need a conscious effort by governments at all levels to recognize the facts on the ground and to begin implementing policies that will take us back to our values of fairness and equality.

Virginia Ridley, London, Ont.

I don’t begrudge Ontario’s millionaires their millions. But I also don’t think it’s too much to ask them to pay a little more when so many in the province have been asked to sacrifice so much. To me it’s a question of fairness. We all have to tighten our belts a little to get the deficit down and they probably have a bit more room to spare when it comes to tightening. Much more than a mother on social assistance with a couple of kids who’s already going to the food bank every week. I hope that Premier Dalton McGuinty will seriously consider the NDP’s suggestion for a surtax on the richest, not just to avoid an election, but because it is the right thing to do.

Dora Robinson, Aurora

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1161577–the-increasing-inequality-gap >

Health and wealth

The Globe believes hospitals must show restraint and due diligence at the top (Be Happy, Tax The Rich – editorial, April 12). We agree. That’s why Ontario’s hospitals recently proposed overhauling executive compensation.

Hospitals would voluntarily adopt an evidence-based framework to guide boards’ decisions about CEO base compensation; implement a pay-for-performance program that would carve up to 30 per cent, or $47-million, out of existing executive pay packets over three years and force executives to re-earn it by achieving clearly-articulated provincial and organizational goals; voluntarily extend the existing freeze on executive compensation to five years – a year more than the public-sector freeze in the Ontario budget – for a $23-million savings.

Ontario’s hospitals utilize almost $18-billion annually in provincial tax dollars and employ 200,000 health professionals. An arbitrary policy that would damage the leadership of these important public institutions is in nobody’s interest.

Mark Rochon, interim president and CEO, Ontario Hospital Association

………

Your editorial’s vigorous defence of high income earners – you argue against a surtax on people who earn more than $500,000 a year – ignores growing income inequality among Canadians and unfair taxation’s contribution to this divide.

Ontario’s highest personal income tax bracket (46 per cent) has not been this low since the Great Depression. This rate starts at $132,000, so it’s a flat tax for the rich. Billionaires pay the same rate as doctors.

Conversely, the budget freezes social assistance rates – despite these payments’ buying 60 per cent less than in 1995.

Canada is becoming more unequal faster than almost any other country. As doctors we know that growing economic inequality causes social and health problems that put more pressure on public services. It’s time for high-earning Canadians to pay our fair share. Tax us. Canada is worth it.

Rosana Pellizzari, Michael Rachlis, Tanya Zakrison, Doctors for Fair Taxation

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/letters-to-the-editor/april-14-letters-to-the-editor/article2401994/singlepage/#articlecontent >

Ontario’s New Democrats are tapping into the zeitgeist by asking for a two per cent surtax on people who earn more than $500,000 a year, in return for their support of the minority Liberals’ budget. The rich will always be with us, goes the thinking, but they answer to us, and we’re not in the mood for excess right now.

Separately, the Broadbent Institute, a think-tank set up by former federal New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent, claims that Canadians want to pay higher taxes. “Would you personally be very, somewhat, not very or not at all willing to pay slightly higher taxes if that’s what it would take to protect our social programs like health care, pensions and access to post-secondary education?” Sixty-four per cent were either very willing (23 per cent) or somewhat willing (41 per cent) to payslightly higher taxes.

One might flip around those results to say: Faced with health care, pensions and universities crashing and burning, only 23 per cent are very willing to pay even slightly more tax.

Still, the day may come when it’s necessary to pay more tax – for everyone, not just $500,000-plus earners, who already pay at the highest marginal rate, making for high individual contributions. An extra two per cent is a form of punishment for success. If you can’t cut off the head of the tall poppy, tax it.

It’s as if to say it’s a bad thing when someone earns lots of money. Better, says the NDP, to discourage initiative and entrepreneurship by taxing its successful manifestations. Our society won’t be any more equitable if we bleed the rich a little.

The NDP would also cap public-sector salaries at $418,000 annually, an arbitrary figure. Public hospital or university boards do need to show restraint and due diligence at the top – the top needs to be a model for the entire organization.

The logic of restraint, applied fairly to all, is the most sensible policy, before any talk of raising taxes.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/punishing-the-rich-with-extra-taxes-not-an-answer-to-inequity/article2398986/ >

It’s the risky “third rail” of Canadian politics. From Parliament Hill to Queen’s Park, politicians cringe at any talk of raising taxes, no matter how pressing the need or how good the cause. Most are paralyzed by the spectre of voter backlash. One touch, they seem to think, and you’re fried.

Maybe not. A new survey flatly challenges that timid conventional wisdom. It turns out that Canadians are ahead of their political leaders on this issue.

Fully 64 per cent, including a majority of Conservatives and wealthy people, say they are willing to shell out a bit more in taxes to protect social programs such as health care, pensions and access to higher education, all of which help reduce income inequality. Less surprisingly, there’s even more support — 83 per cent — for raising taxes on the wealthiest.

These findings by Environics Research for the newly created, progressive Broadbent Institute confirm that the public is genuinely concerned about the growing rich/poor gap. They vindicate the Occupy Canada protesters who caught the nation’s attention last year. And they challenge our policy-makers.

“The option of raising taxes to protect the social programs we cherish and to address income inequality has been absent from public debate for too long,” says the institute’s namesake, former federal New Democrat leader Ed Broadbent. “Our research shows Canadians are prepared to do their part and they expect the wealthy, corporate Canada, and their own governments to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.”

Ideally, these findings will pry open some space for a thoughtful debate about what Canadians truly value. Of course, they must be treated with some caution. It’s one thing to be open to higher taxes in theory, and quite another to shell out. But the results invite us to spend more time thinking about how we might imagine a fairer society, and less lamenting why we can’t.

Certainly, this challenges Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s approach to governance, with its premise that taxes are toxic.

Fully 89 per cent think addressing income inequality should be a government priority and 77 per cent think it’s a serious problem. They are right, though you wouldn’t know it to judge from the recent federal and Ontario elections where equity issues got little traction.

As Doctors for Fair Taxation noted on these pages recently, the wealthiest fifth of Canadians have seen their income rise by 40 per cent over the past 30 years, while the poorest fifth saw theirs fall by 11 per cent. Meanwhile, Ottawa and the provinces have been busy cutting taxes for years, to the benefit of high earners. So much for the “just society” that Canadians once imagined they were building.

While the United States is still saddled with the largest rich/poor gap among the advanced economies, “the gap in Canada has been rising at a faster rate,” warns Anne Golden, outgoing president of the Conference Board, the non-partisan research organization. That gap is hard to justify, and bad for social cohesion.

As Broadbent argues, “gross inequality isn’t inevitable, it’s a political choice.” One that has distorted the public agenda for too long.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/1159364–a-new-canadian-survey-on-the-rich-poor-gap-and-taxes-should-spark-debate >