From CBC.ca:Tax cuts could diminish the standard of living for the vast majority of Canadians who enjoy the public services that they fund, according to a study (pdf HERE) by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released on Wednesday.It's not hard to predict the kind of reaction that this report is going to get from the conservative movement in the US. Reports based on provable facts and confirm-able statistics are not to their liking anyway. They much prefer to rely on ideologically-based theory drawn out of thin air (or worse) - thin air that evidently gets compressed and heated, then spewed out of bloviators' blowholes at FOX "news" in support of this tea-bagging movement. Which, by the way, is an excellent example of astroturfing as defined by Wikipedia, "formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf."
The majority of Canadian households enjoy a higher quality of life because of the public services their taxes fund, the study argues.
[...]
"What passes for a tax cut debate in Canada is really only half the debate," said study co-author Hugh Mackenzie, an economist. ..."The suggestion we often hear, that taxes are a burden, hides the reality that our taxes fund public services that make Canada's standard of living among the very best," he said.
The study uses Statistics Canada data on government revenues and expenditures to compare public spending in categories including health care, education, social services, old-age security benefits and employment insurance. ...Using the statistics, the report finds that the average per capita benefit from public services in Canada in 2006 was about $16,952.
[...]
"The overall impact of tax cuts — and the cuts in public services that accompany them — has not been addressed in any substantive way," the study states. "Tax cuts are always made to sound like they're free money to middle income Canadians. They are anything but," Mackenzie said. "We're far better off with the public services our taxes fund than we are with tax cuts." Any reduction in income tax results in an equivalent constraint on public spending, the study says, and about three in four Canadians suffer from cuts to public spending.
Overall, the tax cuts implemented in Canada in the last 15 years have had the net effect of reducing the living standards of most Canadians, the reports says.
The study also finds that the number of public services used by Canadians appears to increase as household income and size increase. This is particularly true for households that have children who are accessing publicly funded elementary and secondary schools and seniors who are more likely to use the public health-care system. "Families with young children will tend to benefit relatively more from the health-care system, whereas families with older children will tend to benefit from the public education system to a greater extent than other types of families," the study states.
Nor should the motive behind this campaign escape anyone but the morans (sic, see photo) it is directed towards. (or should that be against?) The conservative movement has been pretty successful in the past at getting the poorly educated to vote against their own interests based on simplistic slogans. "Read my lips, just say no, drill baby drill" etcetera. My guess is that they're trying to bring back the glory days of monosyllabic right-tard propaganda -- in spite of being utterly discredited by the spectacular economic disaster wrought from their trickle-down 'free market' policies. My hope is that they're wrong, and that even the worst of the low-information voters will wake up once they've lost their jobs and their homes, and are living in cardboard boxes and depending on food stamps. But then, past experience has been that really poor people don't vote at all, and the GOP has made it nearly impossible for the homeless to even register to vote, so that hope might be a bit optimistic.
The Economist just hosted a debate on whether it's time that the rich be required to pay more in taxes. Just reading some of the closing remarks by Chris Edwards of the Cato institute, arguing against the motion, reveals the paucity of the conservative argument. Unable to attack the logic of his opponent, he mounts a personal, ad hominem attack. "[Parisian economist Thomas] Piketty's understanding of the nature of income is very European, " he whinges. Name calling is rightly regarded as the lowest rung on the scale of debating technique, (see triangular diagram near the bottom) and is characteristic of someone who can't base their argument on facts or logic. So I would say the pro-tax side won the argument.
(Parenthetically, it could, should and must be said that this debate is just one battle being fought in an ongoing and increasingly bitter war between the classes. Because this whole unfortunately named teabagging movement is nothing more than a propaganda effort to perpetuate the Reagan tax cuts. The rich would prefer that you pay for the jackboot that presses against your own neck. If you don't mind, there's a good boy.)
One of the comments at The Economist succinctly expresses why certain functions should not and can not be left to the marketplace.
Of course, the free market doesn't provide universal quality education: thus we must rely on governments to provide this service, and others like it that also serve the greater good but generate no profit. Isn't that the point of taxes in the first place?You'll often hear Thom Hartmann make the same point in a slightly different way on his radio show. "Don't we already have socialist fire services, socialist police forces, socialist roadways, and a socialist armed forces?"
I would add an observation of my own to that argument. When governments contract out to private enterprise to provide necessary services, they almost invariably do so under a system that is more crony capitalism than healthy competitive free enterprise. Can you say 'cost-plus, no-bid?' It is far better for the public that the money be spent within a government department where it can be more carefully controlled, and where there is recourse for diversion, mis-spending and waste. The whole 'privatization is more efficient' argument falls apart under any close examination.
Certainly the argument against paying taxes for government corruption is a valid one, but just as certainly the remedy is to attack the corruption, not the taxation. Ironically the same type of people who want to spare their buddies the burden of paying their fair share tend to be the type who want to pay off those same buddies through graft. A kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which if you think of it is hardly surprising considering that they want the government to fail. Or at least they claim to; really what they want is a government under their control - maximizing and guaranteeing their profits, socializing their losses, and calling out the guard should the hoi-polloi ever get fed up with the arrangement. In a word, fascism.
Going back to the comment made in The Economist, I think the author chose the perfect example. There is no better investment that a government can make than providing the public with free quality education. A better-educated citizen will earn much more during his lifetime, eventually paying back all the taxes gone into his schooling with interest. Which a wise government will then re-invest on educating his kids.
Maybe it's high time that the wise taxpayer learned that simple lesson. It would certainly be preferred to being conned into participating in some phony protest against your own interests.
ADDENDUM: Just as one example of the COST of LOWER taxes, here's a study of what it cost Americans to NOT have universal health care. (From the National Coalition on Health Care.) Just one fact from this piece forms a conclusive argument. The US spends 17% of GDP on health care and 40% of people are either not covered or not sufficiently covered. Canada covers EVERYBODY for 9.7% of GDP.
TAGS: Tax Day, Public Policy
Conservative "Ideology", vs. Common Sense
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8 comments:
I just noticed another dubious debating technique used by Chris Edwards at The Economist and quite common among the intellectually challenged right.
"The Economist has chosen a provocative advocate for tax increases. But Thomas Piketty's policies are far out of the mainstream, and I don't think policymakers will take him seriously."
OK, I'll give a pass to 'provocative,' and pretend that Mr. Edwards isn't trying to substitute it as a dog-whistle version of 'leftist radical,' which would be more name calling. But by portraying his opponent as 'far out of the mainstream' Edwards is trying to beg the assumption that he himself is in the mainstream, AND that the mainstream is always right. This reduces the logic of his argument to, "my opponent is wrong because he doesn't agree with me." Take away that arrogant assumption and what remains is - - nil.
One would do well to be alert to such 'arguments' being made by the right in support of their cause. Even a superficial analysis exposes them as meaningless.
Don't forget who started the tea parties, the Ron Paul supporters (and people of all political persuasions) after the bailout, before 9/12 and the neocons hijacked them.
http://kevinsword.com/2009/04/hijack-back-the-tea-parties/
If government is corrupt to the core (and I would say it is), it's common sense to recommend cutting the funding with which they can be corrupt. It's the best thing to do; I believe it holds true that "a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
And that's just what's happening now. Bush increased the size of the government, as Obama is doing. With the bailouts, it has been confirmed to the people that the government is run by the bankers. Because what was the $12.8 trn used for other than offshore accounts? (We don't really know of course, because of the lack of transparency.)
"When governments contract out to private enterprise to provide necessary services, they almost invariably do so under a system that is more crony capitalism than healthy competitive free enterprise."
Socialism seems better than corporatism or 'crony capitalism'. But real capitalism is better than both. To restore this, whole government branches need to be removed, so that there is as little state funding as possible to companies; it invites corruption.
I also support 'starving the beast' by cutting taxes; the only way to ensure that tax cuts lead to spending cuts, however, is to fix the monetary system by removing the central bank. Then, Andrew Jackson style, the National Debt can be paid off.
AdamS said...
Bush increased the size of the government, as Obama is doing. With the bailouts, it has been confirmed to the people that the government is run by the bankers.Lies and hypocrisy define the right wing. Ronald Reagan blasted the GOP boogie man du jour: BIG GOVERNMENT. What did Reagan do? He made the gubbmint bigger. He doubled the size of the federal bureaucracy and TRIPLED the national deficit. All the while, he cut taxes for his ELITE BASE kicking off a trend in which the rich get much, much richer and everyone else is impoverished.
That trend --in fact --reversed briefly under Clinton but resumed apace under Bush Jr. Bush Jr seems to have completed what was begun under Reagan i.e, an increasingly tiny elite of just ONE PERCENT of the population owns more than 90 percent of us combined.
Socialism seems better than corporatism or 'crony capitalism'. But real capitalism is better than both. Capitalism is inherently flawed, premised upon dubious principles. Karl Marx was, in fact, correct about the source of 'value' and the exploitation of labor by 'capital'. 'Real' capitalism has never worked as it was described by Adam Smith. Even in practice, capitalism seems always to ASSUME that 'investment' creates wealth. The fact that it DOES NOT explains why EVERY GOP tax cut has been followed by declines in both productivity and GDP. The GOP/Right wing thinks 'trickle down'. But 'tax cuts' have resulted in wealth FLOWING UPWARD (not 'trickling down) concurrent with DECLINES in investment.
Tax cuts benefiting ONLY the increasingly small base have the effect of contracting the supply of 'money'. Such a contraction is called a 'recession' because 'recession' sounds less alarming than 'depression'. Both are defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.
Tax cuts don't have to trickle anywhere, just give then same cut to everyone...
And as for capitalism being inherently flawed, I rather disagree. It isn't so much an ideology as a lack of one; the natural state which humans form for themselves in the absence of government. All else is 'ideology'; grand ideas about changing the natural order, whether that be Keynesianism, Monetarism, Socialism, Corporatism, all are attempts to make centralised authority 'work' for the people. They don't even bother to acknowledge the possibility that a powerful centralised authority doesn't have to exist and that freedom works better and is more moral than any of the above concepts.
(That's why I am personally in support of gold and silver money as legal tender; it's money that is not controlled by central authority. Dare I say it's real money, since its value comes from the market rather than by fiat.)
To restore capitalism, whole departments of government need to go. Education, Health, Homeland Security, Energy, and so on. They are the cause of crony capitalism or economic fascism, and they serve the interests of the corporations rather than the people.
Also, I'm not sure what you're saying about tax cuts and recession...are you saying the cuts caused the recession? 'Cause there I am looking at a $1.4 Quadrillion derivatives Ponzi scheme, but hey maybe it was the tax cuts after all.
AdamS sez...
Tax cuts don't have to trickle anywhere, just give then same cut to everyone...
That's simplistic. That will only make the rich even richer. Anyone NOT a member of the tiny elite spends MOST of their money just staying alive. The very rich need spend ONLY tiny percentage of his/her income 'staying alive'. See the "L-Curve". Google it! It may be counter-intuitive, but, in fact, a FLAT tax is an INEQUITABLE tax.
A final point on that topic --it is NO coincidence that the US was MOST PRODUCTIVE when it it was MOST EGALITARIAN and it was MOST egalitarian when the PROGRESSIVE TAX RATES were the highest, very nearly 90 percent for the highest income earners.
That was during the Presidency of FDR and it is one of the many reasons the right wing HATES FDR --not because he raised their taxes (they could afford it) but because HE SUCCEEDED while EVERY GOP regime since 1900 has been a dismal fuckin failure.
Secondly, a flat tax, by ENRICHING the upper one percent even more so, will --in effect --result in a contraction of the total money supply just as GOP tax cuts have always 'contracted' the money supply. It is no accident that EVERY MAJOR recession since WWII has occurred during and as a result of a GOP regime.
Check the Bureau of Labor Stats, the Census Bureau and the US Department of Commerce-BEA. That rows of tables, charts, graphs will prove my assertions and confirm my conclusions.
Bottom line --'investment' does NOT create wealth. Only labor creates wealth. Unless there is a 'market' for a new service or product, NO AMOUNT of incentives will create new jobs. It is, rather, just another WINDFALL which elites squirrel away offshore. Result: contraction and, thus, recession/depression.
I have often cited Keynes, but you might also read Paul Krugman. The 'labor theory of value', by the way, is most often associated with David Ricardo and considerably later, Karl Marx. However, both Adam Smith (free market conservative) and other 'classicists' agreed.
It would appear that it was only the idiots enthrall to R. Reagan who thought they might rewrite economic history. They failed.
And as for capitalism being inherently flawed, I rather disagree. It isn't so much an ideology as a lack of one; the natural state which humans form for themselves in the absence of government. The "natural state" - argument is itself ideological as there is no such thing. It´s however quite a marvelous accomplishment that Marxism - an evolving scientific theory with impressive predictive power - is viewed as an ideology while capitalism - an interest driven ideology posing as a scientific theory (while its predictions are about as good as Bill Kristols) - is considered as describing "natural law" of social organization. I don´t mean to say that Socialism is "the truth" - but as a theory it is far less ideological than capitalism.
Any child should realize that a theory that talks about infinite exponential economic growth organized by an "invisible hand"/"the market" as a plausible reality has nothing to do with nature as we know it.
entacto sez...
...but as a theory it is far less ideological than capitalism.
Any child should realize that a theory that talks about infinite exponential economic growth organized by an "invisible hand"/"the market" as a plausible reality has nothing to do with nature as we know it.Free market ideology suffers from unquestioned and unexamined assumptions about the efficiency of 'free markets' which are themselves defined upon a bias.
Even Adam Smith espoused the 'labor theory of value'. Latter day 'free market' proponents, however, now believe that capital creates wealth and value. That's bullshit, of course! But it results from the right wing's fallacious attempt, indeed, its NEED to justify their utterly unproved and unprovable assumptions. Briefly --the right wing is wrong and full of shit.
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