The 1% are detached from reality

It is no wonder Canadians cannot retire. Both the federal and provincial budgets adhered to the tried-and-true formula of the past 50 years – austerity, low corporate taxes and reducing the deficit. Since the 1970s during the oil crisis and subsequent recession, governments around the world have been cutting corporate taxes in an effort to stimulate their economies.

Fast-forward 50 years later with corporate taxes at all-time lows and it has become apparent throwing money at the private sector hasn’t worked and does not work – except to enrich big multinationals. This is the consensus of the vast majority of economists and political scientists other than those attached to the corporate teat.

Reducing corporate taxes has come at a steep price of perpetual austerity making retirement a modern luxury. Cuts to pension entitlements, social programs, infrastructure spending, public transit, wages, benefits and full-time work have all been born by the working public to pay for the reductions in corporate social responsibility.

Every cut in corporate or small business taxes comes directly out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians to make up the difference or through cuts to government spending.

For more than 50 years governments have been consistently downloading the costs of corporate tax cuts on to consumers and working people. The introduction of the HST off-loaded 15 per cent of corporate taxation on to the working public. This while the richest sectors like the investment industry that make billions of dollars each year escape taxation, trillions of dollars of personal and corporate wealth are parked in offshore tax havens, corporate balance sheets are bursting with cash and CEOs salaries like that of Barrick Gold go up 35 per cent while the company share price declines by a similar amount.

Still the private sector cries poor. The minister of finance describes the economy as fragile. Let them eat cake. It is truly an Orwellian world we live in where the 1 per cent are completely detached from reality.

It is time the Canadian public cried “enough” and began demanding a reversal of the failed economic policy of lowering corporate taxes at the price of dismantling our entire civil society. We have an opportunity to do so in the federal election in the fall.

Someone needs to have the courage to lead this push-back against corporate robbery. If one country took a stand – perhaps others would follow until greedy and ruthless businesses and the people who run them and profit from them had nowhere to hide. We – that includes our governments as well – need to stop pretending the private sector has our best interests in mind and take a stand. We need to start looking after our own collective public interests once again and require our politicians do that for us.

We can do no better than to demand higher social compensation through taxation from the businesses that ply their trade in our country and that we work so hard to make profitable with so little recompense. The rabble needs to get a spine.

-Robert Bahlieda