Cancel the corporate tax cuts: Cutting Corporate Taxes has a perverse Effect
Brockville Recorder and Times Letter to the Editor
Dave Lundy
Thus far the Federal Liberals and Conservatives have worked together to irresponsibly slash the Corporate Federal taxes by an astounding $180 billion. The Provincial Liberals are dutifully following along with a further $2.4 billion in tax cuts to already profitable corporations. This fiscal recklessness is predictably taking Canada and Ontario, down the same path to financial ruin the United States is so far ahead us on and to the same state that England and Ireland currently find themselves in.
For this our social programs have been ravaged, our children’s education has been priced out of reach for too many families, our Health Care had been left chronically underfunded and in crisis. Canadian families now work longer hours than any other in the industrialized world outside of the United States.
Children now roam the streets of our big cities homeless, our family members now die on route to ever more distant Hospital emergency rooms. Suicidal Teens experiencing a mental crisis, are put on hold for 3 months. Adults with severe Mental Health challenges more often end up in jail than in treatment.
Meanwhile foreign multinationals control more of our economy than ever before and continue to record ever greater yearly profits, while cavalierly disposing of Canadian workers and their pensions without penalty; all the while demanding and getting ever greater tax cuts and concessions from besieged Canadian families. Families who have seen their incomes increase by only $54 dollars in real terms in the last twenty years.
Corporations and their spokespeople would have you believe that lowering corporate taxes leads to the creation of good jobs, lower costs to consumers, and increased wealth for all. Well we have been cutting corporate taxes for over 2 decades now and look where we are at. How many new plants that pay good wages and provide reasonable benefits like defined pension plans have opened in Leeds Grenville? How many have closed?
What Federal and Provincial politicians have done over the past two decades is to train Corporations to do nothing and yet expect ever greater returns through ever increasing tax cuts. We all know the tale told by the Right wing that when you pay a person to do nothing that person will do exactly that.
Well two decades of irresponsible corporate tax cuts that reward corporations for not creating jobs, for not investing in Canada has done exactly that. Now reasonability you would think they would invest if their costs are lower but the governments own statistics let alone the experience of the people of Leeds and Grenville has proven this wrong. Cutting corporate taxes has lead to the perverse effect of less investment and massively fewer good jobs; while proving the most expensive way for a government to attempt to create jobs.
It’s past time that we learned from the Irish disaster and the unfolding meltdown in the United States, that everyone including corporations and the wealthy have to contribute to ensure a sustainable future. Let’s once again institute some tax fairness, because at the end of the day if the rich paid their fair share of taxes they’d still be rich!
Dave Lundy
Thus far the Federal Liberals and Conservatives have worked together to irresponsibly slash the Corporate Federal taxes by an astounding $180 billion. The Provincial Liberals are dutifully following along with a further $2.4 billion in tax cuts to already profitable corporations. This fiscal recklessness is predictably taking Canada and Ontario, down the same path to financial ruin the United States is so far ahead us on and to the same state that England and Ireland currently find themselves in.
For this our social programs have been ravaged, our children’s education has been priced out of reach for too many families, our Health Care had been left chronically underfunded and in crisis. Canadian families now work longer hours than any other in the industrialized world outside of the United States.
Children now roam the streets of our big cities homeless, our family members now die on route to ever more distant Hospital emergency rooms. Suicidal Teens experiencing a mental crisis, are put on hold for 3 months. Adults with severe Mental Health challenges more often end up in jail than in treatment.
Meanwhile foreign multinationals control more of our economy than ever before and continue to record ever greater yearly profits, while cavalierly disposing of Canadian workers and their pensions without penalty; all the while demanding and getting ever greater tax cuts and concessions from besieged Canadian families. Families who have seen their incomes increase by only $54 dollars in real terms in the last twenty years.
Corporations and their spokespeople would have you believe that lowering corporate taxes leads to the creation of good jobs, lower costs to consumers, and increased wealth for all. Well we have been cutting corporate taxes for over 2 decades now and look where we are at. How many new plants that pay good wages and provide reasonable benefits like defined pension plans have opened in Leeds Grenville? How many have closed?
What Federal and Provincial politicians have done over the past two decades is to train Corporations to do nothing and yet expect ever greater returns through ever increasing tax cuts. We all know the tale told by the Right wing that when you pay a person to do nothing that person will do exactly that.
Well two decades of irresponsible corporate tax cuts that reward corporations for not creating jobs, for not investing in Canada has done exactly that. Now reasonability you would think they would invest if their costs are lower but the governments own statistics let alone the experience of the people of Leeds and Grenville has proven this wrong. Cutting corporate taxes has lead to the perverse effect of less investment and massively fewer good jobs; while proving the most expensive way for a government to attempt to create jobs.
It’s past time that we learned from the Irish disaster and the unfolding meltdown in the United States, that everyone including corporations and the wealthy have to contribute to ensure a sustainable future. Let’s once again institute some tax fairness, because at the end of the day if the rich paid their fair share of taxes they’d still be rich!
– See more at: https://opseu.org/campaign/cancelcorporatetaxcuts/mar-10-2011-letter-to-editor.htm#sthash.gNThoqU1.dpuf