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 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?