Abolishing Property Taxes

Municipal taxes are going up in my municipality: Tantramar, a relatively recent amalgamation of several former smaller communities and a rural Local Service District (or, LSD ... potential an unfortunate acronym). The tax increase has prompted the usual cry against tax increases and the usual social media debates about what people are actually "getting" for the tax increase. I'll take this to be a fair discussion and a fair question.  The problem is that we don't often get fair answers. Maybe those aren't to be expected on social media. With some notable exceptions -- I know some people who try -- social media is not about reasoned political discussion. I'm trying with this blog but ... does it make any differences? The point is this: most of the time, reasoned discussion is not what social media is about. 

But, let's take this question (or, cry) as an invitation to try to answer it. First, there is a specific context.  Recently, the provincial government of then-premier Blaine Higgs amalgamated a number of smaller communities (towns, villages, LSDs) to create larger municipalities. There was some resistance to this on the part of communities that believed they were losing their identity and on the part of some folks who rightly asked questions about policies and changing tax rates. It turns out that taxes went up and that was by design. The Higgs government's goal with amalgamation was to increase taxes. There actually was little other need for it. What they were trying to do was to find a way to increase municipal funding without themselves -- as a conservative low-tax government that was planning to run for re-election, in part, on that issue -- having to increase taxes. Local municipalities needed more money so Higgs was confronted with a choice. The province could provide that funding, as provinces have constitutional control of and jurisdiction over municipalities, or it could use that control to pull a con game. It could engage in the age-old political bait and switch and hand the ball off to newly created amalgamated municipalities. That was what they chose to do.  It made them look good (they didn't increase taxes and could even promise to decrease them) while foisting what was a needed revenue issue onto others -- politicians at a different level of government -- who would have to pay the political price for it. 

There is an immediate problem with this kind of approach to taxes, or likely more than one. The first and most obvious problem is that there is only one taxpayer. It does not matter too much which level of government levies the taxes because they are all coming from the same source. Passing the buck to municipalities, in other words, creates an illusion. Whether I pay those taxes through property taxes or income taxes or sales taxes is largely irrelevant. What is going on, in all instances, is that money is being re-allocated from the individual to the state. Governments, in fact, go through great lengths to disguise this with all sorts of different names: surtaxes, mandatory levies, mandatory user fees, etc. But, they all amount to the same thing. I'll get to the question of what we "get" out of this in later. My point, however, is that this dishonesty is, in fact, dishonesty. In the case of the Higgs' government, they were introducing a policy that they *knew* was going to increase taxes at the municipal level and was, in fact, designed to do precisely that all the while pretending that they were the party of low taxes. In this case, the policy was an act of manifest dishonesty in which Higgs did one thing while pretending he was in favour of another. 

Amalgamation was, then, from its beginnings a policy that was intended to upwardly harmonize property taxes. This is what has happened. Those complaining about this harmonization are, however, asking another question: is this fair? If my taxes go up and I don't get any new services, am I being ripped off? 

Maybe, but maybe not. The big point I want to make here is that this is an empirical question. There are many reasons why taxes go up. One is inflation. If part of our taxes go toward buying certain products (say, salt for winter snow removal or car parts for municipal vehicles or lawn mowing equipment, etc.) municipal governments are left with two options: increase taxes or decrease services. Someone might say "cut the fat," and that could be an answer but it depends on there being fat to cut. It is an easy and popular answer, particularly among opposition politicians because it makes an implicit promise: I'll cut the fat so you (taxpayer) can have your cake and eat it too (that expression never made sense to me but that is another story).  I will create a situation, this politician says, where you can have everything you have now (or, in some cases more) and you won't have to pay anything extra for it. So, yes, prices went up and that means that the things our town (for instance) buys cost more but we won't pass that extra cost along to you. We will find a way that you can enjoy things that now cost more at a lower cost than you otherwise would pay. 

Political figures like this because it works. It gets people elected by promising the electorate something (some kind of municipal service in this case) without taxpayers, in effect, having to pay full freight. I will come back to this another time, but you can see the appeal. If taxpayer voters don't check things out and work with their ideological perspectives (government = bloat), they could be lured by it. Few people run on this platform: elect me and you taxes will increase.

One answer to the increase in taxes in Tantramar then -- and I have not checked this out -- is that some people are now paying more in taxes because they are having to pay a harmonized rate that represents  the actual cost of the products they are receiving. I hasten to add that I don't know this is the case, but I'll repeat my earlier point as well: this is an empirical question. We can measure it. I'll make up an example: if there were a person living just outside town who had gotten town services (snow removal, water, sewage, access to town supported libraries or events, etc., you can find some of the stuff my town does here), then it would be fair that taxes increased because before they were, in effect, a free rider on other tax payers. If they had subpar services, then, the reverse becomes true. Other tax payers are free riding on them (getting them to subsidize their services). 

I have more to say about this but, you can see the points I want to make. Even a preliminary effort at reasoned discussion takes us a good distance from "taxes are too high" discourse. It asks us to consider what constitutes fairness, to look at tax rates and services, to think about the reasons we have taxes, and how taxes can be politically manipulated. By considering this, we clear away a bunch of misconceptions and -- in my view -- some pretty rank dishonesty and that allows us to take a step toward having a serious and mature discussion about taxes and tax rates. 

Carbon Taxes and Fairness

New Brunswick now has a carbon tax. Noting our current government's support for carbon-based energy (although this appears to be waning), one might ask: why? A lot of people are not particularly happy with it and view it as a "government imposition." Well ... of course it is. Aren't all taxes government impositions? Aren't all laws? Is not that law against murder (which I support!) a government imposition? Is not that law against child abuse and that one against human trafficking, a government imposition? The carbon tax is a law and for those who are going to call it a government imposition, where do you think the rest of our laws come from? Using language like "government imposition" taps into a deep (and, I think, growing) subculture of distrust in government and, indeed, rejection of the idea that the government (through the state) should do things to improve society and promote fairness.  Hence, things like the Ontario government's (as an example) ditching free prescriptions for youth, original plan to cut funding for treatment for autistic children, cuts to French-language services, etc. If it comes from government, so this theory goes, it must be bad and we need to get rid of it.

I don't want to defend government in all things. My own view is that policies should be assessed in context and on a case-by-case basis. One should not, in other words, make up one's mind in advance that a policy is good or bad based on some preconceived notion (which could change next week -- don't believe me ... watch Fox News in the US waffle with regard to the powers of the presidency when the person in that office changes) of the state. Instead, one should assess the merits of policies, their reasonable chances of success, processes of implementation, etc., as part of a process of determining whether or not a policy should be implemented. Making up one's mind in advance is not, in my view, a "critical perspective" but its absence. It is taking one's cue from ideology as opposed to actually thinking and I tend to be in favour of thinking. So ... with that in mind, what do we think about a carbon tax?

The people that I was chatting with get a carbon tax wrong. Let's begin with some basics: a carbon tax will not, by itself, address (or "solve") the environmental problem. No one ever said it would. A carbon tax is one piece of what should be a series of policies designed to address environmental change and degradation. If one wants to argue that the federal government of Canada has messed up the implementation of a policy or mis-explained it ... get in line. There is a long line of policies that have been messed up or which are, in my opinion, pretty bad. But, don't let that distract from the way in which you think about a carbon tax and its purpose. If you believe that it will, by itself, solve all environmental problems, well, that means: (a) you must think that anyone who opposes a carbon tax is a rotten human being for standing in the way of the one policy that will save the planet, or (b) you are setting up the carbon tax to fail, as it were, by creating a completely unreasonable goal for it. Either way, I disagree with you.

What is more, this line of argument serves to mystify what the tax system does and why we have taxes. Like the whole idea of a federal "imposition," it detracts from clear and democratic debate on the merits of different policies in the name a quick one-liner that makes its speaker feel good but does not get us where we need to be at in order to assess the policy.

So, if a carbon tax is not, by itself, the solution to environmental problems, what does it do? The key thing it does is try to put a price on pollution. The basic argument is this: when you drive, you create pollution but you don't actually have to pay for the cleanup of the pollution that you make. We have been doing this for so long that we don't even recognize this. We get in our car (or, on a plane, etc.) and get going without thinking "what happens to the exhaust?" I seems to just disappear.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn't. It goes into the environment, creates climate change, and that creates expenses. In other words, when we drive our cars or heat our homes, etc., we make a mess that needs to be cleaned up.  That clean up costs something.  What is the cost? Well, all kind of things. In my town, we have a big water diversion project because of flooding caused by climate change. We have to rebuild dikes and fix roads that we did not have to fix in the past or clean up flooded towns.  Those are just the most evident costs; there are a bunch more. Who pays for this? Well, right now ... no one. We put off paying for it by asking the environment to absorb the cost and the environment has said "I can't do this any more." I myself don't actually think the environment speaks.  That is a metaphor but that is what, in effect, climate change is. It is the environment saying "I am so full of pollution that I cannot process it all and keep the planet in equilibrium and things are now going to start to go out of whack."

A carbon tax is an effort to ensure that the people who make the mess actually pay for fixing the problem. Yes, indeed, previous generations who contributed to the mess will not pay but we can't make dead people pay so that is a rather spurious point. What the carbon tax here in NB is doing is asking me (Andrew Nurse) to pay for the mess I am making as opposed to pushing it off, say, on my kids and asking them to pick up the tab (by paying for clean up later).

One of the basic principles of economics is that there is a cost to everything. People get confused up because they associate costs with money and this is a fair enough confusion because most of the time they are right. We do indeed measure our costs in cash. But, a cost need not be in cash, as everyone knows. Imagine you are waiting for a friend who is late. What is the price of waiting for that friend? Time. Imagine you are reading this blog. What is the cost of reading this blog (you get it for free)? Well, it is the other thing you could have been doing with your time (playing mahjong online, say, or reading a good book). What we have done with pollution, as I explained above, is to pollute but to ask someone else (or, something else) to pay the cost of our pollution.

Now, if you think about this for a minute, you will see that this makes a certain sense. We cannot just do whatever we want with, say, the local high school soccer field. If I were to take my garbage up to the field and dump it (heck, let's include all those nasty things you have in your shed, half full cans of paint, etc.) on the field, what would happen? If I did, I would be (a) fined and (b) required to pay for the clean up.  The fine affixes a cost to my violation of the law; the clean up is only fair. It is not a punishment. I am being required to fix the problem I created.

One can agree or disagree with this view. You might, for instance, think, gee, why can't I just dump my trash anywhere? Why can't I leave garbage bags on the soccer field or drop off my paint products in front of the elementary school? And, I will come back to this point in future blog, because there are folks who actually kind of think this way. But, for those who don't, you see the point. There is actually nothing particularly unusual about asking people to pay for cleaning up the mess they make. The problem when it comes to the environment is that people:

1. Don't see the mess and so assume it is not there
2. Have been doing it so long they think it is their right to leave a mess for future generations
3. Believe there is some magic solution that will, ultimately, solve all problems
4. Have not paused to think about who is actually paying the cost for the mess they are making and who will have to pay to clean it up

This is one of those situations where people are more than happy thinking they are "getting something for nothing." They made a mess and ... well ... unlike dumping garbage on the local high school field, no one has come and made them clean it up and so they assume they can just keep making the mess. 

This is a blog and we can't go through each of the points above. Clearly, if you think there is no such thing as climate change ... well ... I don't have a lot to say. We are speaking a different language and there is no use in talking about the issue and we need to find some other subject if we want to have a meaningful dialogue. 

The key point I am trying to make is directed toward other perspectives. It is directed toward those who might not have thought about the environment or about the costs and the cleanup bill and fairness. One can disagree with a policy; one can develop better and more effective policies but the idea that those who helped make the mess should actually clean it up is not radical.  In fact, it is painfully ordinary and normal and a point that, I hazard a guess, most of us take for granted. 

Democracy's Disjuncture: Money, Economics, Health Care and Politics

In my last post, I tried to pick up a thread from over a year ago where I looked at Trumpism for what it tells us about the shifting dynamics of American public life. This is not a discussion of whether Trump is right or wrong; good or bad. We have to engage empirical issues in any analysis. That is life and if you don't believe that ... well ... you and I have different conceptions of what constitutes analysis.  But, if we put the question of Trump's merits or demerits on hold and look at what the discourses associated with his government tell us about American public life (or, the changing character of American public life), we can, I think, produce both interesting, nuanced and accurate treatments of this subject. This analysis may have some implications for Canada as well.

Last post I tried to argue that there were important implications to the disjuncture between image and reality in American public life with regard to health care. The right-wing discourse of the problems of Obamacare, for instance, focused on a failure that was, in important ways, difficult to specify.  The American health care system has its problems. No one debates that but, overall, the issue of the cost of health care -- associated by Republicans in the US with Obamacare -- is intensely problematic because it fails to understand why health care costs have increased. There are a number of reasons for this, but one reason is that health care is expensive. I've made this point with regard to Canada.  Canadians periodically complain about taxes being too high (which is both an empirical and philosophic issue) but those doing the complaining fail to tell us what those taxes dollars have done. And, one thing they have done is improve the health of the country.  We now, for instance, live longer than we used and not by a little bit. By a lot. Moreover, the recovery from serious health problems -- say, heart attacks or strokes -- is astronomically better than it was when I was a kid. Said differently, we are getting things for our dollars.

Does this mean  that one cannot have health care "reform." Of course not, but it does mean that if you start from the wrong premise, you get the wrong answer.  If you begin, for example, from the assumption that the cost of health care is *not* related to its increasingly high tech nature and increased costs but must, instead, be related to something the government is doing, one begins to toy around with policy when, in fact, that might *not* be the thing to do.

In this blog, let me take a long diversion to make a point about taxes, honesty, and democracy. Trump and his crew may have problems with honesty. Frankly, I think they believe their own propaganda. But, ultimately, I want to suggest that on economic issues there is a disjuncture built into democracy between reality and ... well ... image, for lack of a better term. We can use the health care debate in the US to illustrate this point.

This is an important consideration for the US because we key proponents in the health care debate tell people something that is not true. I've complained about this before. The anti-tax perspective in Canada, for example, tends to ignore the costs of not paying taxes? There is a cost to not paying taxes?! Does not lower taxes, in fact, save us money?  As anyone who has taken economics 101 will tell you -- and this is the reason that there were so few economists on board with ant-tax think tanks -- there is a cost to everything. This is called, in economics, "opportunity cost" and it is a basic principle of economics. It is not, in other words, some fancied up confusing newfangled idea. It is a basic foundation upon which the discipline is built.

What is it? In effect, the principle of opportunity cost states that there is a price for everything. Money is a valuation of that price but it is a valuation only. Saving money saves you money but it also comes at a price. What is that price? You give up what you otherwise would have done with that money. Let me give you an example or two. Imagine that I have a dollar and I can buy a hamburger for that dollar. I decide to not buy the hamburger and keep the dollar. What is that price of that dollar? The hamburger I could have had. So, I have a dollar in my pocket -- money I have "saved" -- but I am hungry. Likewise, I go to work to make money. The price of going to work (even if I like my job) is what I could have done outside that job (say, go for a hike, weed my garden, sit in my hot tub, etc.).

This relates to taxes in this sense: the issue is not "how much money would you have if you had not paid taxes" but what is the cost of not paying those taxes?  What does our society -- and the people in it -- not have that they otherwise would have had? In Canada, these costs are big. Taxes are used to pave roads (which are often, btw, needed for business development), make sure the medicines we buy are safe to use, pay the coast guard, repair the water supply, maintain schools, keep electricity flowing, make sure I don't get mugged walking down the street, etc. Said differently, we can give up on taxes but we also have to give up on all the things that we get from those taxes. That is the cost of *not* paying taxes.

What this means is that for most people, there are good reasons to pay taxes. Some people -- say, just about everyone who lives in New Brunswick -- is a net beneficiary of the tax system. That is, what is being purchased through taxes is fairly valuable and are things that we don't want to give up. Moreover, because we do them collectively, we realize something called "an economy of scale". This is another important concept that is also *not* fancied up. An economy of scale is something you all know. That is: it is less expensive per item to do things on a big scale. For instance, if I am making shirts, one shirt costs a lot to make. If I am making 1000 shirts, however, the cost per shirt falls because I can get a deal of raw materials, set up an assembly line, etc. Thus, while making one shirt might cost per shirt $25.00. The per unit cost of a 1000 shifts might fall to $15.00. Making things on a big scale, in other words, for a lot of people, allows those lot of people to benefit.

Taxes can be like this. If we all pay into a central fund and organize, say, our health care or education or road paving or electrical supply collectively, we can all save money. Yes, we have to pay taxes but those taxes are buying us something at a lower rate than if we tried to go out an buy it individually.

I don't want to get more deeply into this at this point in time. What I am trying to indicate, however,  is, I hope, by now clear. Taxes are not just a loss. There is a price to lowering taxes and that price might be significant. Moreover, there are good reasons to have central purchasing of some product because they allow us to realize an economy of scale, thus lowering the per unit costs for everyone. Said differently, taxes can actually save you money if you get a product that you would otherwise have bought for less. Health care is an obvious example. In Canada we buy it collectively and it costs us less than it does for Americans who buy it individually (through insurance premiums). Why? Economies of scale.

I've taken too long to get to my point but bear with me just a nick longer.  What does all this have to do with the health care debate in the US? If you use these simple tools of economics, you start to realize that the debate is on the wrong track. The anti-Obamacare people do not explain in their discussion that if you get rid of Obamacare, there is a cost and that cost is health care. Yes, you will pay less. But, you also will not get the same product. And, why would you? We live in a capitalist society and you have to pay for what you get, right? That is the nature of capitalism.* (*I will provide a refresher on markets and lower costs in a future blog.)

What this means, for the federal governments and an increasingly section of the population (as they come to understand the issues) is this: you can't get something for nothing. I recognize that that is not an ethical position that, if you are a politician, wins elections. If I come out and say to people -- in the US or Canada -- look, I am running for election and what I have to tell you is that you have to pay taxes *if* you want certain things -- roads, health care, a military, disease control, schools, police officers, fire departments, electricity, etc. -- and, because of that, if you elect me, I will not lower taxes, I doubt I will win. The person who says "I have found a way to save you money" and this will mean that you will get to keep all you are getting now and still have more money in your pockets, will have a better chance of winning. If they say, I will lower taxes and you will still have good roads (in fact, I'll make them better), you will still have health care (in fact, I will make sure its cheaper), you will still have a military (in fact, I will rearm), etc. ... which position will sound better to the average Joe? This person is the person more likely to get elected even if they are not telling the whole truth?

What this means is that here is a bit of a disjuncture built into democracy. When it comes to economic issues, like taxes, there is a strong incentive to not tell the whole truth. Now, I recognize some people don't tell the whole truth because they believe something other than this. They believe, for instance, that "entrepreneurial spirit" will lower taxes. Exactly what this is, is never explained and I, myself, am deeply concerned about things that are not -- or, cannot -- be explained. I recognize that someone who believes in this might say "gee, Andrew, if you were a business person you would understand" but I have a brain. Explain it to me. I've never been to the moon and I can understand what the moon is like when a scientist explains it to me. Don't tell me "you can't understand because you are not X" because that basically says only people X  can understand and, that being the case, why would anyone believe you? The only thing we can do -- if we cannot understand -- is accept it on faith and that is the definition of metaphysics.  And, I, personally, think metaphysics is not a good ground on which to build a polity.

What this means, though, is that democracy suffers from a problem. It suffers  from a disjuncture between reality and image and that is connected to electoral politics.

Vancouver, Transit, and Taxes

Metro Vancouverites have voted overwhelmingly to reject an 0.5% increase in sales tax that would have been used to fund transit. If you missed it, CBC reporting on the story is here. The vote was not even close. The margin was, if memory serves, close to 2-1 against. I confess that I would have voted for this increase. But, what confused me is not that others voted differently than I do. I've said before, I'm used to being in the minority. I recognize that the vast majority of Canadians seem to think about public issues differently than I do and the fact that I happen to disagree with the majority is not a good enough reason to write a blog. Indeed, if that were my standard for blog writing, I'd be writing all the time :)

What is interesting about the Vancouver vote is how confusing it is. I remember being similarly confused when BC rejected the Harmonized Sales Tax and, by referendum, decided to keep the GST and PST, which means that BC residents pay tax on tax (something that would have been eliminated by the HST, thus ultimately saving British Columbians money). I found it confusing that in the name of rejecting a tax (the HST) British Columbians elected to actually pay more tax (PST + GST). What seems to be at issue here is the word "tax," the conception of what taxes are spent on and who spends them, and the results. I'll speculate that there is something else going on here as well and that something else is a failure on the part of pro-tax people to properly explain what taxes are, what they do, and why they can be a good thing. There is a certain degree of nuance in this argument (or, at least there should be, whether I meet that bar or not remains to be seen), so bear with me.

One thing that is confusing about the vote is that the proposed tax increase was very small ... very, very small: 0.5% increase on the PST. Here is what this change amounted to. Imagine you are buying a chocolate bar and the PST is 7% (BC's rate). The GST in BC is also operative, thanks to an earlier referendum so  we have a total sales tax rate of about 12%. That means that if you buy a chocolate bar for $1.00, you pay $1.12. Everyone who has ever bought a chocolate bar is familiar with this. PST and GST apply to some goods and not others. Necessary goods -- like groceries -- are not taxed. If this tax increase had passed, the price of the chocolate bar would have rise to $1.125, let's round up $1.13. That is it. You would have paid $0.005 extra per dollar that you spent on taxable items. In return for this, BC  would have gotten what everyone agrees are needed improvements and maintenance to its public transit system. In addition, this tax increase would have leveraged other funds that would have actually brought more money in than was being spent in local tax dollars. In short, for a small price, people would have gotten a good return and sustainability longer term for public transit in a rapidly growing city that really needs this transit.

What will be the result of the no vote? Well, it is hard to say. We should not exaggerate the effects of referenda vote (as I argued in a previous blog). However, the longer term prospects for public transit are not good. We can expect more crowded commutes into the city from outlying suburbs, more time absorbed for commuters as more people are on the road, an increased need for road maintenance. In short, this vote will not eliminate the need. Public transport is simply something that is needed. I just got back from a vacation in NY where I used public transit -- the subway -- and it was great. I've done the same thing in Toronto and Montreal. Transit is the ability to move people from one place to another. That is what you get for it. All cities need this ability because people need to move from their homes to their work or to shop or go to school or to play sports, etc. Thus, voting against maintaining transit will not eliminate the need for it and will simply push people to use alternatives (private transit), which comes with its own costs (particularly but not exclusively road maintenance). Thus, the situation in rejecting this tax is not "will you pay the tax or not?" but "when and why will you pay?" If you do not pay, you will not get the service. You can see why I am confused. I did not understand why people would vote against the GST so that they could pay tax on tax. I don't understand why people would vote against this minor tax so that they can make their lives more difficult -- and potentially more expensive -- in the future.

The tax rate is important here. It is not just that it is small but that it is so small that it will go unnoticed. The anti-tax people made it seem that each person was going to have to pay a new tax rate at the end of the year. Their web site is here. But that is not the case. In fact, with the rounding up and rounding down that we do when we pay for things now that the penny is defunct, it is doubtful that anyone would have noticed any increase at all in terms of their disposable income. I've said this before but a very small tax spread over a very large number of people can generate important revenues that we can use for important public goods that ultimately save money. Hence, health care is supported in this way and ultimately saves Canadians money.

The problem seems to be that there is an institutionalized group of tax opponents and that there is considerable public confusion about the use of tax dollars. Generally, both of these factors relate to increased alienation from the policy formulation process and from government. I listened, for instance, to one public transport advocate on CBC arguing that measures such as this should never be put to a vote anyway. The government should simply have made the "tough decision" and imposed the tax. This would, of course, allowed him to get what we he wanted (and, btw, me) but it would have been wrong. The issue not that people voted against a tax increase that was not really an increase for reasons that are deeply confusing and ultimately counterproductive. The issue is that it is difficult to make the case that the state is a good guardian of public funds. In the case of this  tax, a great deal of opposition to it seems to be related (at least according the web site I cited above) to antagonism to transit authorities. About that, I know nothing but it would not surprise me. In other words, people voted against the tax because they believed that any increase in  taxes was wasted money. The anti-tax people seem to have taken advantage of this belief.

Why would people believe this? In part, as I've also said before, I think it comes from a false set of beliefs about how things get done and the politics of public policy. Elections are rife with people telling other people that they can get something for nothing. I don't think the people who voted against a very small increase in taxes that would have gone unnoticed really are that cheap; nor do I think they oppose public transit. Nor do I believe that they just want to pay more down the road for the same product that they are getting now (aka, transit). I think their opposition to the tax was vested in a sense that the state is malfunctioning and that they will pay more taxes (even if that amount is small) and get nothing in return.

Let us consider the claim made by the anti-tax folks. The new tax will cost each taxpayer $258.00 year. This might be true. I don't know and I'd like to see the math, but let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it is true. This sounds like you will have to write a cheque for $258.00, of course, when you won't but there is something else to notice here as well. For the average middle class Canadian $258.00 over the span of a year, even if you had to pay it directly, is not a lot. It amounts to $5.00 (give or take) a week. There are Canadians for whom this is a serious amount of money and that in itself is a problem, but the average middle class Canadian will, I suspect, spend a great deal more on Tim Horton's coffee each week. If you live in Vancouver ... Starbucks will run up that tab even quicker. The total amount, in other words, might be something that is subject to debate in terms of who can pay what but ... it really is not big.

So, we are left with a question: are Vancouverites dumb? Are they so dumb that they would rather save a pittance now to pay more later; are they so dumb that they don't understand that the need to move people is a fundamental element of the modern city? Are they so dumb that they cannot recognize that their clogged commute in their cars is the result of a bad transit system? Of course not. Instead, what this vote highlights is the depths to which the public perception of government has fallen. Ordinary, reasonable people are not willing to trust the state with an $0.005/$1.00 tax increase. They can't believe the savings will make a difference to them because they are not that dumb. The real lesson, the real issue, then is a need to regenerate the state and get it working. Rather than trying to find a way to impose this tax increase in an anti-democratic way, the advocates of public transit -- myself included -- need to redouble their efforts. We need to show how a democratic and transparent state can work effectively. Until that happens, these kinds of votes will continue to happen.  

Arbitration Awards or the Dilemmas of Public Financing

We don't have enough money ... it is a common enough refrain. When I was a kid, I heard it all the time with regard to wage settlements and workers' raises. Today, it is particularly common in the public and semi-public sector. There is a logic to, at least intuitively because it seems to make sense. Imagine, for instance, that I work in the semi-public sector, like my current job. The money for any raise I get has to come from somewhere and it is easy enough to say "well, that money has to come from somewhere and so students will have to pay a higher level of tuition." The same thing happens with workers -- say, as we recently have seen in Saint John -- with regard to police officers and firefighters. In Mirimachi, I believe, the municipality simply refused to pay its inside workers what they were looking for and there was a strike or a lock out or something. For workers employed in the public sector, you can substitute the word taxpayers for students. The result is that these workplaces can become very divisive.  While the vast majority of students, just as an example, during the faculty at Mount A were nice, encouraging, polite, a few weren't. A very small group started to speak about what I "owed" them.

Division is only one of the problems created by what we might think of a dilemma of public financing. "We don't have enough money" seems logical, but, I want to show, that it is not. In fact, it is tied up in a fairly disturbing contradiction. I recognize, though, that I am challenging some commonly held beliefs. Like most people, I'd like to believe that I would have a whole bunch more money if not for some greedy so and so who works at the DMV or in the university or whathaveyou. What I'll suggest, however, is that holding down public sector wages will not put more money in your pocket. It requires an open mind to rethink this problem. That is what I ask from you as you begin reading this blog.

What is wrong with the "we don't have any more money" argument. The first thing is that it is not accurate. There is more money. The truth is that politicians -- particularly local politicians -- don't want to access that money because it means (in their view) raises taxes. Canadian taxes are not, of course, "too high" but most people don't know this. Most people have been told so long and so often that "Canadian taxes are too high" that they simply assume this is true. But (and, look this up if you doubt me), Canadian taxes are about average with the OECD countries to which Canada compares itself. In other words, if we look at the other relatively wealthy, developed countries, what we would see  is that Canadian taxes are not at all out of whack. Hence, there is some room for an increase in tax, particularly if we are looking at maintaining vital services.

The problem is that politicians often run for office on precisely the opposite platform. At election time politicians can fall all over each other to offer "tax breaks" to Canadians. Local politicians are no different from federal or provincial politicians. Hence, their ability to bring in a very small tax increase to pay, say, firefighters a bit of a raise, is limited because their opponents in the next election will accuse them of broken promises and lying and they, in turn, will promise tax cuts.

But, perhaps even more to the point, there is money in the system but politicians don't want to spend it on things that don't inherently improve their public image. Municipal politicians have road repairs, playgrounds, parks and rec programmes, water and sewer and a range of other things to think about. Increasing someone's pay means taking money away from something else. At this point, in a budget debate, someone will (usually rhetorically) say "what do you want me to cut?" But, rhetoric aside, we know that it is more difficult to allocate money for things that people don't use (and hopefully won't have to use, like fire and police protection) than for things that people do use (roads, water, parks). It does not mean that fire protection is less valuable than parks and rec, but it is more difficult for public figures to shift money from a visible aspect of their job to an invisible one, regardless of value. Why? Because they need to get re-elected. Saying "OK, this is the road paving we did" or "this is the new park equipment" might win votes. Saying "we kept fire protection at the same level," likely will not. The first significant problem with this statement is that it is not accurate. It is just against the perceived self interest of politicians to address and so they claim that the cupboard is bare.

The second important problem with stating that "we don't have any money" is, as I intimated above, divisions that it creates. These divisions are, by and large, needless. But, even more important than that, they are often hypocritical. We have been through a period in NB history where we have become more aware of how dangerous some forms of public service -- police work, in particular -- actually can be. And New Brunswickers have, rightly, taken to reflecting on the importance of police officers and periodically giving them a thanks for the work they do. I hope this continues. But, then ... a police union asks for a raise and all the good comments, all the acknowledgement of the dangers of these jobs, disappear and the police are portrayed as a bunch of greedy so-and-sos looking to milk the public trough. This is hypocrisy. Either these people do a job that is dangerous and we should thank them, or they don't. At the very least, I am less than certain politicians should try to mobilize public opinion against their workers in order to pressure them to lower wage requests. But, to say "you do a dangerous job and you work hard and we are so grateful. You are heroes and if you die, I"ll leave flowers in front of the police station but I won't give you a raise if it causes a small increase in my property taxes" is ... well ... to give a lie to what one is saying.

Third, is there ever enough money? Seriously. Imagine if a town had enough money to give a raise to its workers ... would they? Or, would the people who make up the town budget take that surplus and start applying it to all matter of other things. A few years ago the provincial government of NS briefly ran a surplus. The opposition immediately demanded a tax cut, but why? Because there is a surplus (there actually wasn't because that surplus was on the deficit; not the debt, but that is another story). You see my point. If there was money, political figures start spending it in ways that either (a) they like (which might be good or bad, let's be agnostic on this one) (b) look to reduce the amount of the surplus by cutting taxes (which might be good or bad ...). Political figures will not suffer a surplus for long. They will use and there is nothing wrong with that but the effect of using it is to create an artificially constricted budget that does not allow for wage increases. In other words, the "we have no money" argument is, in fact, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most people who have worked in the public or semi-public sector for a long time know this because they have seen surpluses spent on things other than workers over and over again; they know labour is not a political priority and if they wait for it to become one ... well ... they will wait a very long time indeed.

Finally, the "we don't have enough money" argument is shaky because it does not take into account public safety. We've seen this before, unfortunately. We've seen what happened in Mike Harris' Ontario when beds in mental hospitals were closed, women's shelters lost their funding, and money for testing labs was contracted. It was not a pretty picture. The folks got their tax cut, but people actually died as a result. The question, then, that we should ask ourselves before we take one side of this debate or another is this: what consequences am I prepared to live with? If the price of my tax cut is that a battered woman has no place to go and so stays in her house ... am I good to live with that? If the price of my tax cut is that beds in mental hospitals are closed and now mentally disabled people live on the street .... am I good with that? If the price of my tax cuts is that services are contracted ... am I prepared to live with that?

Let me be clear. There are cheaper firefighters out there than the ones we currently pay. Heck, I'll do it for you (P/T of course as I have a regular job) for a fraction of the price firefighters are currently changing you. You won't like the results. In fact, its pretty doubtful I could even put out a kitchen grease fire, let alone carry someone from a burning building. I could be a cop, too, if you want but I doubt I'd ever catch a crook or stop a robbery. One of the big lies offered by the "we don't have enough money" argument is implicit: you can get the same level of service for less. You can't. Or, if you could, you should vote for someone else in the next election because the current crop of politics really is wasting your money. If the president of your University is wasting money ... he or she should be canned right now if not sooner. The problem is that they aren't wasting money, by and large. We might have disagreements about how money should be spent but local governments do due diligence (as required by law, btw). They track down the most efficient price for whatever it is they are buying, be it stationary or fire protection. They never intentionally pay more than they have to. You are, already, then, getting the best price you can get for these products or labour.

What does this mean? It means that if you cut  taxes or don't pay people what they want (and most people want a cost of living -- inflation rate -- increase in their pay) ... your quality of service will decrease. It really will. Why? Because you are paying less for it. If an apple costs $1.00 ... how much of an apple do you get for 50 cents? See what I am saying. Even if what you are interested in is speedy and efficient service at Service NB .... you get what you pay for. (Service not fast enough for you ... it could be faster if you hire more staff but that might take a tax increase!) If you lose experienced workers and hire inexperienced workers because they cost  less there will be a service hit.

Public figures particularly don't usually make these arguments. Instead, they talk vaguely about efficiencies and hard choices and privatization (which, btw, does not save money either and cannot, but -- again -- that is a story for another day). This is a problem because it obscures a debate that we really should be having about the proper level of public service, what those services cost, and the degree to which we seriously respect the people who provide us with potentially endangering public services (like police and firefighters). If we don't have this discussion, misconceptions multiple and, sooner or later, the "we don't have enough money" argument wins the day, services contract, and people are left wondering how bad thing X or Y "could have happened." There is, of course, much room to discuss the character and nature of a tax regime. I know a lot less about these things. But, that might be beside the point. The first thing we need to discuss is how misconceptions create bad policies, as the "we don't have enough money" argument is doomed to do.

Taxes

What good are taxes? The general view is this: not much. There are more nuanced and sophisticated views, to be sure. The problem with the general view is that it feeds into an anti-tax politics that really does little to provide education into the character and nature of taxes. Because those people -- perhaps like me -- who feel taxes can serve a useful function have been silent in Canada's on-going consideration of taxes, only one side really gets any "air time." The result is that the more sophisticated and nuanced anti-tax perspective links up with the general anti-tax feelings of ordinary folks to create a huge bias against taxes, making it impossible to have a concerted discussion of this issue. I know not many people read this blog and so I'm not about to change the character of public discourse by myself. But, I thought I'd give it a go any way. What good are taxes?

To answer this question, we need to bear in mind several points that I have made over the years in this blog. One point I've tried to make (perhaps ineffectively) is to demonstrate that tax cuts do not necessarily help the economy. I'll not go at this issue again since it is a point I have already made, except to say this. The argument we often here "economists say  tax cuts will help the economy" is wrong. I have a number of friends who are economists and they do not say this. They say that the issue of cutting taxes needs to be studied and one cannot assume in advance that a tax cut will either help or hurt the economy. It is a matter to study; not about which to make assumptions.

The second point we need to make to address this question is that we need to try to approach it in a non-ideological way. This point follows from what I said in my previous paragraph. Tax cuts are often associated with right wing politics and with good reason. Conservatives often talk about tax cuts (their historical record is, of course, mixed, but currently tax cuts are associated primarily with the right wing. It gets easy, then, to see a discussion of tax cuts as a left v right debate. I think that we need to put this debate on hold and consider what taxes can and cannot do if we are to have a serious discussion of tax rates.

The third point is that we need to think about what the problems with taxes might be. Several years ago we ran a conference on regional development here at Mount A. As part of this conference, there was a discussion of tax rates and the results of that discussion surprised me. I found that capitalists were not arguing for tax cuts. They liked them (particularly corporate tax cuts) but did not see them as necessary to economic development. Capitalist thinkers (often associated with universities and think tanks) argued for tax cuts but business people did not. Instead, what business people asked for was consistency. In effect, they said this: stop changing the tax system every year. Stop messing around with this deduction and that deduction. Instead, keep things the same for a number of years. We are confident, they said, in our ability to do our job. But, if tax rates, etc., change every year, this adds new expenses  to what we do. We'd like tax cuts but what we really want is consistency year after year in the way taxes are done. If we could have that, we can lay our plans and do our jobs. This suggests that the real problem with taxes is not their rate but government tinkering. I'd be willing to accept this point.

With these three points made, we also need to consider what taxes do. Taxes are a way of collecting revenue for public spending. I have found it interesting over the years that the same people who argue against taxes will also be quick to argue that the government should do X or Y. It could be anything: fix up the local ball park, buy a new fire engine for the local volunteer fire department, fix the pot holes in the streets, etc. Yet, all these things cost money. In other words, we (citizens) make demands on our governments (federal, provincial, municipal) and then ask our governments to fulfill these demands at the same time we say "but we don't want to give you any money to complete these tasks." Some things can be put off for a year or should be the subject of longer range phased in planning. I have no problems with that view. I own a home and that is precisely the type of calculation I do with regard to repairs (how much money do I have and what are my priorities? What can I do part of this year part of next year?). This is fair enough. But, it still does not miss the point that governments need revenue because of demands from citizens and these demands are not coming from "special interests." They are coming from ordinary people. Nor are they coming from "welfare bums." They involve things like education, road repair, health care, national defense, environmental protection, policing, amateur sports, libraries, etc. In other words, things that ordinary people use and like and about which there is no debate of their merits (except on the fringes of public life).

Taxes can also be efficient. This is one of those need to study things because it is counter intuitive. The more sophisticated anti-tax perspective is predicated on the idea that the state (collective action) is inherently inefficient compared to individual private market undertaking. Yet, as I said, this is an issue to be studied not assumed. In some instances that state may indeed be less efficient. In other instances -- health care springs to mind -- it tends not to be. Canadians get a relatively good quality health care for their tax dollars. We don't have perfect system people don't like waiting for health care. I don't, at least. But, compared to other actually existing health care systems, Canada's is not bad. Indeed, most of the countries that have better health care systems then Canada actually have more (not less) state involvement. The US health care system is not the disaster most Canadians think it is. It is has some serious problems but so does Canada's. We can debate whose problems are worse, but the point I want to make is that Canadians actually pay less for health care then do Americans on average even when you include what Canadians pay in taxes toward health care. Here, then, is a counter intuitive situation: taxes can save money.

My final point for now: there may be some areas of the economy where the state should not be involved. These will be culturally determined but that does make them less real. Let me continue with my previous example. Let us assume that Americans are an intelligent bunch. Why, then, do Americans pay more for health care? That does not seem like a smart thing to do, does it (to pay more then you have to for something). The answer is that Americans want to maintain a largely private sector mode of health care delivery. And, that is worth something to them and so they are willing to pay more  for it. This is a value (and, hence, cultural) and it has an effect on the population. Canadians -- as I've pointed out before -- look at the world differently then Americans. They viewed fully privatized health care as inefficient: it was not providing people with the health care they needed as a reasonable price. Hence, they changed it.

Now, Canadians will have other values -- there will be other spheres of the economy -- on which they do not want tax dollars spent. We have seen, for instance, that Canadians are remarkably skeptical about using tax dollars to fund professional sports (say, to build arenas). Oddly. Americans appear to be less sensitive to this point then Canadians. The Dallas Cowboys got a whole bunch of public money put into their huge new stadium. In thinking about taxes, then, we also need to think about spheres of the economy where we don't want tax dollars spent. This may end up costing us more on average or collectively then if we had the state involved. Tickets to hockey games, for instance, may cost more if the state does not contribute to the costs of arenas. But, we might say "gee, that is OK and we can live with that because we don't believe in spending public money on professional sports teams."

As a first salve in a different discussion of taxes, then, these are the points I would "put on the table": that we should try to be non-ideological, that we should study the issue and not make assumptions about the merits or demerits of state spending; that we need to consider where the problems with taxes lie (for instances in a lack of consistency over time as opposed to the specific rate), that public spending is not inherently inefficient, and that there are value-based spheres of society to which we might not want to see public spending (the direction of tax dollars) directed. These will differ from society to society and so comparison with other countries might in terms of taxes might not be instructive whereas a consideration of Canadian values might be.

What Good Are Taxes?

What good are taxes? The general view is this: not much. There are more nuanced and sophisticated views, to be sure. The problem with the general view is that it feeds into an anti-tax politics that really does little to provide education into the character and nature of taxes. Because those people -- perhaps like me -- who feel taxes can serve a useful function have been silent in Canada's on-going consideration of taxes, only one side really gets any "air time." The result is that the more sophisticated and nuanced anti-tax perspective links up with the general anti-tax feelings of ordinary folks to create a huge bias against taxes, making it impossible to have a concerted discussion of this issue. I know not many people read this blog and so I'm not about to change the character of public discourse by myself. But, I thought I'd give it a go any way. What good are taxes?

To answer this question, we need to bear in mind several points that I have made over the years in this blog. One point I've tried to make (perhaps ineffectively) is to demonstrate that tax cuts do not necessarily help the economy. I'll not go at this issue again since it is a point I have already made, except to say this. The argument we often here "economists say  tax cuts will help the economy" is wrong. I have a number of friends who are economists and they do not say this. They say that the issue of cutting taxes needs to be studied and one cannot assume in advance that a tax cut will either help or hurt the economy. It is a matter to study; not about which to make assumptions.

The second point we need to make to address this question is that we need to try to approach it in a non-ideological way. This point follows from what I said in my previous paragraph. Tax cuts are often associated with right wing politics and with good reason. Conservatives often talk about tax cuts (their historical record is, of course, mixed, but currently tax cuts are associated primarily with the right wing. It gets easy, then, to see a discussion of tax cuts as a left v right debate. I think that we need to put this debate on hold and consider what taxes can and cannot do if we are to have a serious discussion of tax rates.

The third point is that we need to think about what the problems with taxes might be. Several years ago we ran a conference on regional development here at Mount A. As part of this conference, there was a discussion of tax rates and the results of that discussion surprised me. I found that capitalists were not arguing for tax cuts. They liked them (particularly corporate tax cuts) but did not see them as necessary to economic development. Capitalist thinkers (often associated with universities and think tanks) argued for tax cuts but business people did not. Instead, what business people asked for was consistency. In effect, they said this: stop changing the tax system every year. Stop messing around with this deduction and that deduction. Instead, keep things the same for a number of years. We are confident, they said, in our ability to do our job. But, if tax rates, etc., change every year, this adds new expenses  to what we do. We'd like tax cuts but what we really want is consistency year after year in the way taxes are done. If we could have that, we can lay our plans and do our jobs. This suggests that the real problem with taxes is not their rate but government tinkering. I'd be willing to accept this point.

With these three points made, we also need to consider what taxes do. Taxes are a way of collecting revenue for public spending. I have found it interesting over the years that the same people who argue against taxes will also be quick to argue that the government should do X or Y. It could be anything: fix up the local ball park, buy a new fire engine for the local volunteer fire department, fix the pot holes in the streets, etc. Yet, all these things cost money. In other words, we (citizens) make demands on our governments (federal, provincial, municipal) and then ask our governments to fulfill these demands at the same time we say "but we don't want to give you any money to complete these tasks." Some things can be put off for a year or should be the subject of longer range phased in planning. I have no problems with that view. I own a home and that is precisely the type of calculation I do with regard to repairs (how much money do I have and what are my priorities? What can I do part of this year part of next year?). This is fair enough. But, it still does not miss the point that governments need revenue because of demands from citizens and these demands are not coming from "special interests." They are coming from ordinary people. Nor are they coming from "welfare bums." They involve things like education, road repair, health care, national defense, environmental protection, policing, amateur sports, libraries, etc. In other words, things that ordinary people use and like and about which there is no debate of their merits (except on the fringes of public life).

Taxes can also be efficient. This is one of those need to study things because it is counter intuitive. The more sophisticated anti-tax perspective is predicated on the idea that the state (collective action) is inherently inefficient compared to individual private market undertaking. Yet, as I said, this is an issue to be studied not assumed. In some instances that state may indeed be less efficient. In other instances -- health care springs to mind -- it tends not to be. Canadians get a relatively good quality health care for their tax dollars. We don't have perfect system people don't like waiting for health care. I don't, at least. But, compared to other actually existing health care systems, Canada's is not bad. Indeed, most of the countries that have better health care systems then Canada actually have more (not less) state involvement. The US health care system is not the disaster most Canadians think it is. It is has some serious problems but so does Canada's. We can debate whose problems are worse, but the point I want to make is that Canadians actually pay less for health care then do Americans on average even when you include what Canadians pay in taxes toward health care. Here, then, is a counter intuitive situation: taxes can save money.

My final point for now: there may be some areas of the economy where the state should not be involved. These will be culturally determined but that does make them less real. Let me continue with my previous example. Let us assume that Americans are an intelligent bunch. Why, then, do Americans pay more for health care? That does not seem like a smart thing to do, does it (to pay more then you have to for something). The answer is that Americans want to maintain a largely private sector mode of health care delivery. And, that is worth something to them and so they are willing to pay more  for it. This is a value (and, hence, cultural) and it has an effect on the population. Canadians -- as I've pointed out before -- look at the world differently then Americans. They viewed fully privatized health care as inefficient: it was not providing people with the health care they needed as a reasonable price. Hence, they changed it.

Now, Canadians will have other values -- there will be other spheres of the economy -- on which they do not want tax dollars spent. We have seen, for instance, that Canadians are remarkably skeptical about using tax dollars to fund professional sports (say, to build arenas). Oddly. Americans appear to be less sensitive to this point then Canadians. The Dallas Cowboys got a whole bunch of public money put into their huge new stadium. In thinking about taxes, then, we also need to think about spheres of the economy where we don't want tax dollars spent. This may end up costing us more on average or collectively then if we had the state involved. Tickets to hockey games, for instance, may cost more if the state does not contribute to the costs of arenas. But, we might say "gee, that is OK and we can live with that because we don't believe in spending public money on professional sports teams."

As a first salve in a different discussion of taxes, then, these are the points I would "put on the table": that we should try to be non-ideological, that we should study the issue and not make assumptions about the merits or demerits of state spending; that we need to consider where the problems with taxes lie (for instances in a lack of consistency over time as opposed to the specific rate), that public spending is not inherently inefficient, and that there are value-based spheres of society to which we might not want to see public spending (the direction of tax dollars) directed. These will differ from society to society and so comparison with other countries might in terms of taxes might not be instructive whereas a consideration of Canadian values might be.

Democrats, Republicans, Rob Ford and Idiots

Rob Ford became mayor of Toronto, in part, by promising to end the "gravy train." His election represented a bit of a populist grass roots revolt against what was seen as overpaid out of touch municipal civil servants and -- for some -- unions. I even think Rob Ford believed what he was saying: that the problems with municipal finances were the result of a relatively small number of fat cats who were using tax dollars as their gravy train. There are -- to be sure -- some serious problems with "fat cats" and "gravy." I'll address those in another post. Right now, what I would like to point out is that what is evident is that Toronto is in a financial mess and that that mess cannot be solved by cutting back on a few people who are doing things in an untoward way. Instead, it will involve deep cuts to services for seniors, to daycare spots, the layoff of up to one third of the firefighters in the city and cuts to the police department as well. In other words, essential services will need to be cut to balance the books. Or, if not essential services, then services the merits of which are not in doubt (no one, to the best of my knowledge, believes seniors or children should be without proper care).

Now, it might be easy to gloat at Ford, particularly in the wake of his failure to appear at Pride events. He is still saying that labour costs are "four time too high", but one might notice that that begs questions: four times too high as compared to what? Does that mean workers in Toronto are paid 400% the national average? (So, if the national average for a civil servant were $50 000, according to Ford, Toronto bureaucrats make $200 000.) Or, that Toronto has 400% more workers then other cities the same size? Who determined the wage rate anyway? Ford is willing to argue that wages are 400% too high but he will not show his math. I suspect even a lot of those people who supported him are starting to think that this is a figure he pulled out of the air with little or nothing to substantiate it.

What should we learn from this? Should we learn that Rob Ford is an idiot. There are people -- particular some people who support Pride -- who seem to feel this way and fair enough. The quick math I just did above suggests that Ford must have failed grade six math. But, this is not the lesson that is important to learn. There are those who will believe what Ford says because they want to believe. They want to believe that municipal finances are in mess because of a small group of lazy gravy trainers. Heck, I want to believe this. If it were true, it would mean that we could solve our financial problems relatively easily. We could solve those problems without losing fire and police protection. We could solve our problems while ensuring that children had safe care and seniors weren't left to their own devices in run-down flats. What we need to learn from Rob Ford's financial problems are that this is not true and we need to learn it soon. We need to learn that solving our financial problems will require a mature approach. We need to learn that there will always be Rob Fords: people who will rail against unions and wage rates and gravy trains but we then need to ask them to "show their math" rather than voting for them.

Is this -- my comment -- biased? No, not in the least. This is not an anti-right wing statement. Everyone should be asked to show their math. The fact that Rob Ford was not and the fact that he is not will only create serious human problems for Toronto. I lived in Ontario during the Mike Harris cuts. I saw the legacies of homelessness, violence against women, health problems, loss of municipal services, conflicts with Original Peoples, and the like that went on. That is what we need to avoid and we can avoid it only by asking to see the math and behaving in a mature way.

In politics, there will always be those who say "vote for me, the answer is easy." Or, "vote for me and you'll be rich." Rob Ford is one of those. He said "vote for me because some fat cats on the gravy train are costing you money." Instead of believing him we need to be responsible and mature and use our own minds.  What is a mature approach? Two things strike me as important:

First, we need to investigate issues so that we can make informed decisions. It is possible that some fat cat gravy trainers are ruining the system. In Toronto, of course, this turned out not to be the case. If voters had investigated this before hand, they would have found this out. Just like those who look into his claims about labour costs and municipal government will have serious questions about his math.

Second, we need to consider what taxes are used for. There is a long-standing anti-tax position in our society that has gotten worse over the years but … taxes are not all bad. Indeed, and perhaps I will post on this later, they can serve very useful purposes. Until we come to grip with this point -- taxes are not just empty -- we will not be able to have serious and meaningful discussion of this issue.