Corporate tax-cut mantra is not echoed by most Canadians

By Dalton Camp

Tax cuts. Tax cuts (yawn) "across the board."

The corporate press is producing yards of columns on the corporate mantra, quoting lobbyists for tax cuts, forums for tax cuts, polls for tax cuts, MPs for tax cuts.

One Liberal MP is saying, "We've dealt with the problem of the debt, deficit, health care...the next thing on the list is more tax relief." In his riding, he says, folks speak of little else.

Trotting behind the tax cut bandwagon, Reform MP Monte Solberg complains that the government has failed to address the real issues, one of which is "high taxation," an impediment to productivity of which, we are told, we do not have nearly enough.

So critical is this matter that former Liberal cabinet minister Doug Young organized a productivity forum and invited the Liberal government's pollster, the Black press, along with Sherry Cooper, an economist at the brokerage firm of Nesbitt Burns, to confront the problem in tandem.

The pollster, Michael Marzolini, confirmed that the U.S, economy is growing faster than our own. He thinks Canadians are too relaxed about this sort of thing and need to worry more about it, which would make them want to cut taxes. Speaking like a veteran pollster, Marzolini said, "They must buy into the problem before they buy into the solution."

Economist Cooper says that what the country needs are "substantial personal and corporate income tax cuts." Also, Canadians have "negative cultural attitudes toward enterprise, profit and individual success." Following that argument as best I can, this appears to be because Canadians aren't clamoring for tax cuts, but want better education for their kids, better care for the sick, and better support for the poor.

I'm unhappy Young didn't invite me to his productivity forum. There are other ways to increase productivity than by cutting taxes.

I am a strong believer in improving productivity by raising wages. After all, that's how corporations improve the productivity of their senior management-_stimulating stock option deals, creative cash bonuses--so why can't working people get a taste of that kind of productivity money? Why can't more of us enjoy being capitalists?

In fact, many CEOs are now paid millions just for leaving the company--a sort of non--productivity bonus. Cooper says Canadians have negative attitudes toward "individual success"--some of us feel the same about individual corporate failure.

Of course, the trouble with raising wages is that the corporation can't afford it because it would reduce profits. Instead, this argument goes, the government should raise wages by cutting taxes, which will increase profits It is going to take more than one productivity forum, however, to convince people that cutting taxes to raise profits is any bargain, when what the rest of us get is less for Medicare, education, highways, environmental protection, and social services.

The pale ghost of Reaganomics hovered over the Doug Young symposium on tax cuts for more productivity. The Nesbitt Burns economist's plea for tax cuts for all would do the trick, citing Alberta, Ontario and Ireland.

In the original example, Ronald Reagan cut taxes and increased the U.S. deficit from $195 billion which was his inheritance from the Carter administration_- to $8oo billion, then the largest deficit in history. Revenues, meanwhile, fell by $377 billion.

As for the designated beneficiaries, 80% of the corporate tax cut was targeted to go to the top one-tenth of corporations or businesses with assets of $250 billion or more. "Across the board" income tax cuts proposed lowering the top rates from 70% to 50% over three years.

"Reaganomics" wasn't new--the very rich have always been with us--but began with Calvin

Coolidge, who said, "The proper business of government is business." He should be living at this hour.

The Coolidge administration cut taxes during its time in office and revenues steadily declined. Meanwhile, a question: If Alberta and Ontario are doing so well - cutting taxes, thus growing the economy without revenue loss--how come they have this productivity problem? Do they work harder in Toronto and Calgary than in Montreal and Regina? Really?

God in His perfect wisdom has seen fit to give us two national (English) daily newspapers, both dutiful purveyors of one of the major misconceptions of our time: that Canadians want be like the Americans, think like the Americans, and share their values, appetites and ambitions. But Canadians don't.

Many, if Sherry Cooper will permit, do not envy success, but pity those driven to achieve it at such exorbitant cost to others.

Sure, we might all do better, make more, borrow more, buy more, and create more litter and clutter in our lives. Presumably those who aspire to, will.

Those who don't will manage to survive some- how, even at the risk of being patronized nigh onto death in productivity forums from here to Joe Batt's Arm. 

Information from Ont. Coalition for Social Justice.