Prisons and Taxes

I'm just catching up on old e-mail, and a petition came by asking me to oppose the Conservative's "Cruel Crime Bill". I signed. Prisons are an unfortunate necessity, but more prisons do not a safer society make. I am sure that there is a minimum number of people who do need to be restrained. Perhaps they are pathological cases. I don't know.

What I do know is that from one society to another the number of people in prisons differs. Is that because some societies are just made up of 'worse' people? Not likely. What is more likely, I think, is that different societies define crime differently, and deal with it differently. Many have reflected on this question.

Now back to prisons and taxes. On the right side of the political spectrum (read that as you will), the burden tax payers must bear seems to be a recurring theme. If only we could get the lazy and irresponsible to work and pay their share of taxes everything would be just fine, and we could all get our swimming pools, decks, enormous garages, etc. etc. etc.

Then, instead of investing in education, health and support for families so that children grow up to be full and productive members of society, ergo, taxpayers, we leave people on the street and we build prisons.

Forget the gratuitous cruelty of this way of doing things (and gratuitously cruel it is). Think of it this way: every man or woman not working is one more person whose share of the tax burden I must bear. More prisons don't even make sense for the most selfish of motives. If 10% of the population is not working, I must pay 10% more taxes to cover what they don't pay. If I put them in prison as well, then I'm also paying their room and board and the whole dreary infrastructure needed to keep them there.

Look at this example: one dollar spent on mental health for a child translates into $11 dollars in mental health costs alone saved for every year of that child's future adult life. Prevention is not just more effective that punishment. It's rather less expensive as well.

Which forces me to conclude that our government is not only gratuitously cruel, but likes to waste money as well.

E plus 1: The Price of a Seat

It's going to be a long four years. As promised, here are some charts illustrating the strangeness of our electoral system.

Chart 1 shows the percent of the popular vote that went to each party.

Chart 2 shows the seat distribution in the House of Commons.

Chart 3 shows the number of votes each party needed to get one seat in Parliament. You will notice that Elizabeth May represents over a half million Canadians, while each Conservative MP represents just under 35,000 voters. This is not quite the same disparity as the 1993 Federal Election I mentioned earlier, but it doesn't seem quite fair to me.

Methinks we're long overdue for electoral reform. I'm not holding my breath, though. It seems that the parties in power see quite clearly that they have the number of seats they do because our system is so perverse, which blinds them, not just to how unrepresentative this system is, but also to the fact that next time around they might be the ones paying a half million votes for a single seat, while the other guys get theirs in for 30,000 a head.

E minus 1: Issues

I must begin by apologizing for having over-promised and under-delivered. I did not post every day as I had promised, barring brain death, etc. etc. I did post four short essays, plus this one, which is not an essay, and learned a bit about blogging: I suppose I could have delivered each day if I had broken the essays up into shorter bites.

Thank heavens for Newfoundland. Where would we be without you? Where would we be without Rex Murphy and Rick Mercer? Whether you agree with them or not (I do not often agree with Mr. Murphy, and I’m sure he doesn’t care), at least they are thinking and they are eloquent.

The other night Rex Murphy suggested that all our political parties had tacitly agreed not to talk about Afghanistan and Libya, about what Canada is still doing in a ten-year old war, and in a new one before we even know what we want from the first. Good for him.

I did hear very briefly about Afghanistan during the English-language leaders’ debate, but it didn’t stick. Like Mr. Murphy, I did not hear anything about Libya. Nor have I heard (enough) about a great many other things I believe should concern us. Here are just a few, in no particular order:

Item 1: Child poverty

Remember when we were going to eradicate child poverty in this country by the year 2000? Millions of children wake up and go to bed hungry in Canada. This is not just shameful, it is stupid and shortsighted.

If you don’t care about these children, at least care about yourself. Your pension depends on these children. If you feed them and school them and show them that they matter, they may well look after you when you’ll need it. If you teach them that they have no value because you cannot pull an immediate benefit out of them, how do you think they’ll feel about your pension?

Item 2: Global warming

Yes, I insist on calling it what it is and not “climate change”, which is what the deniers want it called. All the experts agree. And in this country we’ve done as much about global warming as we’ve done about child poverty.

Item 3: Education

Twelve years of schooling is no longer sufficient. Our children need 16 or more years of schooling to be able to enter the workforce doing anything but the most menial jobs. And, if this country wants to compete in the world, we need an educated workforce. So, why is post-secondary education not free? Michael Ignatieff talked about some education passport.

How about starting afresh with truly free and accessible education, from start to finish?

Item 4: Energy

English is the lingua franca of the world today because some time in the 17^th century the English had used up their forests and turned to coal for energy. As luck would have it, fossil fuel turned out to be much more efficient than wood, and the rest of the world was left playing catch-up to coal-burning England.

The future belongs to the nation that first moves from fossil fuels to the next energy source. What is our plan?

Item 5: Transportation

Belgium gave up its national airline. But you can bicycle across Belgium in a day. Why does it cost more to fly from Ottawa to Vancouver than from Ottawa to Paris?

If any country needs a transportation policy, we do. Why do we subsidize highways in cities, where just about any other method of transportation would be better? Remember, the point is to move people and goods, not to move cars. Why do we build high-speed trains here only for export? If Turkey can build high-speed rail connections across its mountains, what are we missing?

Item 6: Bankruptcy protection — for the employees

Remember Nortel? There are countless others. Workers left with nothing after their companies spent their pensions. Ask just about anyone in Hamilton.

Other countries, such as France, have laws protecting employees’ wages and pensions if a company goes bankrupt. It’s good for the employees, and it's good for the company. Employees don’t abandon ship at the first sign of trouble, afraid that they’ll discover they’ve been working for nothing.

In this country, go to the back of the line and hope there’ll be something left for you. There won’t be.

Item 7: Senate reform

Senate stuffing is more like it. It takes a man or woman of uncommon integrity to resist the temptation once in power.  That person was not Jean Chrétien or Paul Martin or, despite the ardent promises, Stephen Harper.

 
Item 8: Electoral reform

In view of what vote splitting might get us on Monday,  the pollsters and pundits are on this one. I’ll put money on their forgetting it within a week.

Here’s a quick exercise that illustrates well the perversity of our first past the post electoral system. Monday, after the votes are counted and seats allocated, calculate how many votes each party had to pay for each one of its seats.

I’ve done this for quite a few other elections, federal and provincial. Here is the 1993 federal election, as an example.

If you don’t feel like doing the arithmetic, then please be patient. I won’t be able to resist doing it myself, and I’ll post the results here.

E minus 4: Predictions

When the polls started coming out a few days ago out with predictions of the NDP pulling ahead of the Liberals and even having a chance at forming a government, I was going to make a prediction of my own:

Canada’s banking industry and friends will immediately begin fear mongering. An NDP government will be fatal to the Canadian economy, they will say, because the NDP are not pro-business. Investors will head for the lifeboats.

Point 1: There’s nothing to predict. It’s already started.

The braying on Bay Street has already begun. See, for example, the following from an article in the Globe and Mail and on the CTV web site: “BMO Nesbitt Burns’ No. 2 economist Doug Porter caused a stir when he wrote that the poll numbers hint at a result that would be ‘not exactly market-friendly.’” 

Now why, I ask, would Mr. Porter be making such a comment, or would the venerable Globe be running a long article on the subject if they did not want to turn it into news — and instil the fear of (economic) damnation in us?

Point 2: It wasn’t their fault.

Bay Street has certainly done better than Wall Street of late. But that, I would venture, is not because our bankers and brokers were not salivating to follow their brethren in New York, but because being cautious Canadians and rather slow off the mark, we did not deregulate our banking industry in time for the Great Crash. Canadian financial institutions did lose big; they just didn’t lose our shirts for us, as did Iceland’s banks for Icelanders and a few others.

Point 3: George Soros probably wouldn’t agree.

About eight years ago, coming back from my grandmother’s funeral I came across some comments George Soros made to Le Monde, which was running a series called something like “Three Questions for Someone Really Important”. You will remember that, as well as being a great philanthropist, George Soros is a rather successful financier, “the man who broke the Bank of England”.

The questions Le Monde had for Soros were about the appropriate roles of private enterprise and of government in the economy. Soros’s answer was simple, and I paraphrase from memory: Private enterprise is very adept at creating wealth, and should be allowed to do so. It is not very good at creating or maintaining the infrastructures it needs to create wealth. Governments are the best at doing this. Private enterprise should therefore support strong governments that invest in these infrastructures.

From what I’ve read and seen over the years, it’s the Social Democrats (the NDP here) who understand this truth, and who recognize the lie that a strong economy requires continuous tax cuts.  Red Tories understood this as well, but they are all but extinct in this country, eaten by the far more voracious New Conservatives.

If you had to choose — and you do, there’s an election on — would you go with the suits who brought you the Great Crash of 2008, or with George Soros?

E minus 6: Coalitions

Just over two years ago, Canada slipped to within a hair of being run by a coalition government. Only Stephen Harper’s extraordinarily adept use of prorogation saved us from going the way of such failed democracies as France, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, and, since 2010, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Thanks to prorogation, and some (temporary) support from the Liberals, the new Conservative’s minority government survived, and Canadian’s learned that coalitions are a) undemocratic, b) un-Canadian, c) probably unholy, and, d) to be embraced as one would embrace a glowing lump of nuclear fuel.

Point 1: Getting 40% percent of the votes means that 60% of voters didn’t want you to form the government.

I would venture that to most Canadians democracy implies, at worst, a government that represents the majority of the population and, at best, represents them without trampling on the rights, interests and aspirations of the others.

Thanks to our archaic and perverse electoral system, however, this accounting does not tally well with reality. Our governments rarely represent so much as an even 50% of the electorate. And the key question for many in this election seems to be if Stephen Harper can get his majority in the House of Commons; polling at somewhere just under 40%, he is mouth-wateringly close.

If Harper succeeds, he may well form a majority government, but he will still be a very long way from representing the majority of Canadians. Six out of 10 voters will have expressly voted not to be ruled by Stephen Harper.

Point 2: Majority governments are dictatorships with expiration dates.

I will not belabour the point. Majority governments differ from dictatorships only on two fine — though very important — points

• They must obey the law (though, admittedly, they have been known to fail on this point).
• They have an expiration date.

Otherwise, between the time they get elected and the time they must run again for re-election, they do pretty much as they please.

Other parties, those out of government, may decry the government’s partisan policies, lament its short-sightedness, stall legislation in committees, and otherwise attempt to maintain a semblance of usefulness and self-respect, but essentially they are decorative — until the next election.

Point 3: A coalition government is more democratic than a majority government.

Coalition governments are for more democratic than majority governments. For starters, in this country at least, they are far more likely to represent a majority of voters. An unlikely coalition of the Conservatives and NDP, for instance, with, say 48% and 21% of votes respectively would be a government representing more than two-thirds of Canadians. This is indeed something we haven’t seen in a long time.

The short-lived coalition of 2008, for example, represented 54% of the vote, rather more than the Conservatives’ 36.6%. If democracy has anything to do with governments representing the majority, this coalition was far more democratic than any majority government our current election might produce.

To this add the fact that by definition a coalition government represents diverse and, quite likely, divergent interests, and is, therefore, far less likely than a majority government to promote the interests of any single sector of the population, ignoring others. Quite to the contrary, in order to govern, a coalition government must continuously seek compromise and consensus, an admittedly un-Canadian approach to government in the new millennium, but perhaps worth a try. 

Point 4: Hold your nose.

In this election there are no coalitions, though Stephen Harper’s party does continue to imply that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc have some sort of secret and anti-democratic compact to seize power, even if they lose the election.

Their arithmetic is as poor as their understanding of democracy. If the Conservatives manage 40% of the vote and the Greens and others 8%, that leaves 52% of votes for the secret compact. I submit that if this be the case on May 2nd, then a government with the confidence of more than half the voters would be a better choice than one that has the confidence of only four out of 10 citizens.

Unfortunately, however, as we have seen, the vicious logic of our electoral system may split the vote in enough ridings to hand us a Harper majority. Since the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens have thus far played by Harper’s rules and not formed a coalition or compact, it is up to us to force them into it.

On election day, if we live in a riding with any chance of a Conservative candidate winning, we’ll have to hold our noses and vote, not for the candidate or party we prefer, but for the one most likely to defeat the Conservative. 

With a bit of luck, Messieurs Layton, Ignatieff and Duceppe, and Ms May will find enough common ground to give us something better than the bombast and bullying with which we are now, sadly, all too familiar.

E minus 11: Leadership

We elect men and women, not to lead us, but to serve us. 

Somewhere in the lead-up to this election there was talk that it would be about “leadership”. And indeed, polling specialist such as Nanos Research regularly report on each party leader’s “Leadership Index”, ensuring that this question remains on the election agenda, much, I think, like gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.

Point 1: What on earth is  “leadership”?

My first problem with “leadership” is that I can’t for the life of me figure out what it means, at least insofar as this election goes. Nanos Research states that to establish its leadership ratings it interviews 1,200 people over three days, asking those interviewed to rate leaders on the “issues of trust, competence, and vision for Canada”.

Of these three, only the first, the issue of trust makes any sense to me. Presumably, it is very basic: I trust (or do not trust) the leader to not cheat me when making change, and to not lie to me about anything important. If I were married to this leader, I would not expect to come home and find another woman (or man) in our bed.

The other two, “competence” and “vision for Canada”, are more difficult. They are the sort of terms familiar to anyone who has ever suffered through a performance review at work. They are usually accompanied by lists of supporting evidence; under “competence” we might find something like “Understands the respective responsibilities of Government and Parliament”, while under “vision for Canada”, we might have “Presents a clear, consistent and well-articulated description of what s/he wants this country to be like”.

As I have never been polled for my views on leadership, I do not know if pollsters do ask these sorts of questions. What I do know is that I can’t seem to find answers to these questions when I hear and watch our party leaders, to say nothing of when they are presented in the media.

It is quite possible, of course, that I’m missing something in the fine print somewhere.

Point 2: The world is too full of leaders.

A friend who came to Canada from England about a decade ago recently remarked that, as he recalls, “leadership” as an election issue began with Margaret Thatcher. Before that, he noted, we elected men and women, not to lead us, but to serve us.

I have no trouble with leadership in business or sports, for instance, which are not democratic institutions. I admire and cheer Daniel Alfredsson when he alone stays in the game, skates down the ice and pots one, long after his team has abandoned the fight. I may or may not agree with how or where my boss leads his company, but it is his company and not mine. I am free to leave.

In politics, however, this business of “leadership” always makes me more than a little uncomfortable. Every time I hear the word in this context or see a party leader posturing to appear leader-like, I can’t but think of Kim Jong-il, Supreme Leader of his happy people, Muammar Gaddafi, Leader and Guide of his happy people, and various other individuals who in this and the last century were or are known to their happy people simply as the “Leader”, or some variation thereof.

Point 3: Democracy is and should remain messy.

Democracy is a cumbersome and messy way to run a country. It is, to recall Winston Churchill, “the worst sort of government except for all the others”. It is so cumbersome and messy because it attempts to use the experience, knowledge and wisdom of everyone in a society to articulate our often contradictory wishes and implement laws for our mutual and common good.

Democracy requires exceptional men and women: men and women who can lead, certainly, but who can also listen, reflect, negotiate, compromise, admit error, and learn.

“Leadership” implies none of these qualities. It implies a leader and followers. It implies dominance and obedience. And if recent history is to be believed, it implies failure. For no matter how decisive, intelligent and insightful a leader, he or she is only one person, frail and flawed and limited in understanding.

If we care about our country and our future, we may do well to think and talk less about leadership, and more about the concrete issues our country faces — and there are many.

E minus 14: Taxes

The internet is a great thing. It is a great leveller. It enables anyone, even a  Luddite like me, to post opinions and imagine that someone will read them and care. It allows us to imagine that we can make a difference — and perhaps indeed we can.

Which is why, with an election just 15 days away I’ve decided to jump in with all the other hacks, seers, soothsayers, necromancers and would-be pundits, and have my say.  Every day between now and election day that I am not bone-tired and brain-dead after my day job, I’ll pick a topic which I believe is worth more than a sound bite, I’ll ask a few questions, and I'll offer a few opinions — yes, I admit it, opinions!

I’ll write about subjects such as taxes, oil and gas, polar bears (beautiful and noble animals, unless you're a seal), distinct societies, free education, Nortel, and senate reform — remember that? If I’m lucky, you, dear reader will think about what I’ve said, take up the discussion with others, reflect, and maybe, just maybe, on May 2nd, you will vote for your own best interests.

Taxes

In the interests of full disclosure, I must begin by confessing that, like the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., I like paying taxes; they buy me civilization.

Point 1: In this election, there is no serious debate about taxation.

No election goes by in this country without talk of taxes. Unfortunately, however, this talk is usually not much more than just that: talk. Politicians across the political spectrum get up in front of the cameras and repeat the same mantra: “I will not raise taxes”, often followed by “But the other guy will”.  See, for example, the Conservative’s current completely unfounded claim that the Liberal’s will impose a $75 tax on every iPod.

Point 2: Once elected, politicians of all political stripes have a good record of raising taxes, by hook or by crook.

Larry O’Brien, for instance, became mayor of Ottawa on the “Zero means zero” ticket. Ask anyone in Ottawa what happened after he became mayor.

Ontario’s Mike Harris was another big talker when it came to taxes. Did he raise taxes? Of course he did!

Look at it this way: the price of buns is $6 a baker’s dozen, that is, $6 for 13 buns. One morning, you walk in to the baker’s and she tells you that from now on buns cost $6 for a dozen, for 12 buns. Has the price of buns gone up? 

This is exactly what the Mike Harris government did in Ontario. Free education used to go to the end of Grade 13. Then it only went to the end of Grade 12. Taxes remained unchanged, which meant a 7.7% increase in education taxes, if you count Grade 1 to Grade 13.

(By the way, can you count how many Harris ministers became Harper ministers?)

Point 3: Naheed Nenshi said it first

I do not know a great deal about Calgary’s recently-elected mayor, but I believe I know this:

• He appeared on the Rick Mercer show and was very, very brave.
• He is the first Muslim elected to be the mayor of a major Canadian city.
• As far as I am concerned, Mr. Nenshi’s being or not being a Muslim is far less important than how he (again, bravely) took up talk of taxes and turned it into a meaningful debate.

Mr. Nenshi challenged Calgarians to stop talking about whether taxes should go up or down, and to start debating, first: what kind of city they want to live in, and, second, how they were going to pay for it. In other words, put the horse back before the cart.

We need to do the same in this country. We have a very rich country, and we can do just about anything we want with it. We can make it more like Norway, or we can make it more like Russia.

Whatever path we choose, we need to decide this path. Our greatest tragedy as a nation would be to wake up one morning in five or twenty years and find that we had become something we did not want to become, because instead of debating what we wanted our country to be, we had wasted our time with pointless rhetoric about who’s going to raise or lower taxes.

Point 4: Given the chance, most people vote for higher taxes

Contrary to what we keep hearing from pollsters and the politicians, given the chance most people vote for higher taxes. In fact, people the world over consistently risk great hardship, prison and even death to vote for higher taxes.

There is no more eloquent way to express your views than to vote with your feet. There is no harsher condemnation of a government, a political system or a society than when people get up and leave.

This is precisely what tens of thousands of people do every year, and what millions more would like to do. They emigrate. They leave their homes and their families, they leave everything familiar and loved to brave the unknown and try to make new lives in another country.

There is a common thread in all their stories: they leave countries where taxes are low or non-existent for countries where taxes are higher: the United States, France, Norway, Canada. They may know very little about these countries, but they do know this: in the countries with higher taxes, people are happier.

These people who emigrate are not fools. If they think about taxes at all, they do not imagine that high taxes in themselves make a country happy. But they see happy countries, countries where they can hope to find work and dignity, and a future for their children.

Which brings us back to my original point about taxes: they buy me civilization.

In this election, what are the candidates saying? Are they repeating worn mantras about lowering taxes, or are they discussing, like Naheed Nenshi, first, the sort of country we want and, second, how we propose to pay for this country?