Star-Cross

Call me a masochist: I still pick up the Toronto Star every Sunday. Their "Ideas" section is precisely the sort of thing I look for and rarely find in a newspaper: in-depth articles on interesting topics. Unfortunately, before I get there I always detour through the front section, specifically the editorials and letters to the editor. The Star generally treats the two things as being one and the same: that is, it cherry-picks its letters to support its editorial stance. (It's also abandoned a column that used to elevate its op-ed page slightly, one in which a left-wing and a right-wing columnist argued a given topic. I suspect that somewhere in the bowels of Star headquarters it was decided that featuring even one right-wing columnist exposes its readers to alien, un-Canadian--or at least un-Torontonian--ideas. Can't have that!)

Today: not one, not two, but three letters to the editor that raised my blood pressure. I will reproduce them in toto here and respond to each in turn...because somebody's got to, and I'd bet the farm the only letters referencing these to be seen in future issues of the Star will be congratulatory.

First, a letter from Damir Karaturovic from Burnaby, B.C. Please take special note of his location as you read the following:

While the federal government's reduction of the GST may not have been sound economics, the greater yet more unheralded tragedy is the fact that many provinces did not take the gift granted to them and raise their own consumption taxes. Ontario alone could likely have directly collected at least $3 billion a year--surely enough to provide the economic stimulus Ontario so desperately seeks.

Okay, I'm back now with my response.

NNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to argue rationally? Yes? Okay. Just let me calm down a little, first, here.

No quibble with the first bit of this letter: many, if not most, economists agree that consumption taxes are better than taxes on income. The GST is sound economics: give Mulroney and Mazankowski credit. I'll even give the Liberals their due for breaking a promise and not scrapping the thing.
That doesn't mean the GST needs to be 6% or 7%.
Mr. Karaturovic dramatically parts ways with my reality when he calls it a "tragedy" that the provinces didn't take this "gift" and raise their own taxes to compensate. Has he been into some of that fine Burnaby bud, or what?
To be perfectly honest, I had forgotten that Harper had cut the GST a point until I noticed a slight reduction in the cost of food for Tux and Georgia the day after New Year's. When I realized the source of my extra ninety cents, I cheered a little. It wasn't that I was ecstatic about a tiny reduction in my daily tax load (although when you add up all the GST you pay in a year, one percentage point is still a tidy chunk of change). No, I was just happy that taxes didn't go up. Because that's what taxes do, don't they? Municipalities frighten their voters with threats of tax hikes totalling five times the rate of inflation to make their eventual tax hikes of two or three times the rate of inflation look good. And the sort of shell game Mr. Karaturovic is proposing is standard government behaviour most years: the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away. To quote an important (and oft-forgotten) maxim: THERE IS ONLY ONE TAXPAYER.

I still have this attitude (disgraceful, I know) that money I earn is my money. It seems Stephen Harper agrees with me: unusual. In past years I've had to be shipped off to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau National Reprogramming Centre in Ottawa for extensive lobotomization: of course, it's all government money. They just let us have some of it. I' come out thinking of taxes as "gifts", or even better, "entitlements". If they overdo the dose at all I'll even suggest that a tax is an "economic stimulus"--whereupon right-thinking people such as my wife will bop me on the head and restore common sense.
Taxes do not stimulate the economy. Taxes kill the economy. For proof, look no further than the places corporations (you know, those things whence come all the jobs) choose to set up shop. Check out the mass exodus of head offices out of Toronto, where they've never met a tax they didn't want to marry.
Allowing people to keep more of their money is what stimulates the economy. Because they turn around and spend that money...which spins off into more jobs.

Should Stephen Harper have cut income taxes instead? Probably. Am I going to quibble because he cut something else instead? Don't think so. Am I going to suggest that Mr. McGuinty would do a better job managing my tax dollars? Not a chance in hell.

Moving right along (and if this blog entry stops halfway through this next letter, it's because I exploded and little Ken-gobbets are raining everywhere):

The Conservative government's GST cut is nothing short of a joke and shames us as Canadians. While nearly two-thirds of the people on this planet live on less than $2 a day, here's Stephen Harper smiling while announcing a tax cut that will save the average Canadian a couple of bucks purchasing what most likely will be more junk we don't need. All the while his government quietly decreases its contribution to foreign aid.
This GST cut could effectively save thousands of lives in countries not as fortunate as ours. Our country's wealth is unprecedented. It's time we woke up and proved to the world that we see the lives of distant others as valuable as our own. Shame on Harper and his government.
Bob Salveda, Toronto

Whew, that was close.
So, Bob--may I call you Bob? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you seem to be saying here is that in the best Canadian tradition, our government shouldn't be limited to running our lives from cradle to grave...it should also be saving the lives of thousands of people worldwide?
Hmmm. I must be due for some more reprogramming: I'd forgotten that was in the Constitution someplace. Seems to me--silly, I know!--that there exist these things called "charities" that serve that function already. In fact, I'm pretty sure these "charity" things exist, because they're all over my television and telephone looking for money. Hey! I've got an idea, Bob! Why don't you give them some of your money and cut out the government middleman? If most of us did the same, I'm sure we could prove to the world "that we see the lives of distant others as valuable as our own". And our government could stick to, uh, governing.

Finally, a letter from Norm Beach, also of Toronto, and I'm going to let someone else type this because if I do it, I will blow up.

Mike Mays asks, "Who will trust our word on the world stage if we don't honour our commitments?"
He applies this to Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper so often does, but I can't see how moving troops out of Kandahar at the end of our scheduled rotation next year violates any promises. Yet there is a much more significant commitment our government has turned its back on, in the form of an international treaty that Canada signed and ratified, but our Prime Minister has repeatedly said he will not honour. When Harper says Canada can't afford to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, but can afford to spend billions of dollars to fight Afghan insurgents, he is really signalling that only certain international commitments matter--the ones made to George W. Bush. Can't he see that our children and grandchildren will pay the price for this shameful toadying, as a rapidly deteriorating climate provokes the biggest wave of species extinctions in history?
Yet he persists in the delusion that being a dependable U.S. ally is more important than passing on a liveable planet to our kids.

Thanks, Tux.

Look, I'm STILL not sure how I feel about the war in Afghanistan. I do know our soldiers are accomplishing a lot of good, to steal somebody's phrase, "in the lives of distant others". I also know we're not in Kandahar at the behest of the United States, let alone George W. Bush. Nor has Harper anything to do with it. We're in Afghanistan honouring an obligation as a member of NATO.
I do know how I feel about Kyoto: it's dead. And rightly so. As I have argued seemingly every other week for about four years, the Kyoto Protocol wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, not as long as the United States didn't sign it and, more importantly, China and India were exempt from it.
And then, of course, there's the inconvenient truth that Kyoto's a drop in the bucket compared to what really needs to be done...if you believe the computer models, which I, frankly, don't. (Any computer model's output is automatically suspect on the "garbage in, garbage out" principle...and have you noticed that by the time these predictions are verified or debunked, those who made them will be safely dead?)
I also know Canada has taken a leading role in getting the U.S. on board with some kind of agreement with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. And last I looked, something is usually better than nothing. So I say it's demonstrably incorrect to suggest Harper is "toadying" to the United States, and irresponsible to print and propagate such nonsense.

But I've learned to expect no better from the Toronto Star.