What You Buy With Your Taxes

I attended a local all-candidates meeting the other evening where the Conservative candidate, the disgraced Bev Oda, trumpeted her government's record of cutting taxes. After another round of tax cuts to corporations already earning record profits, she predicted a bright, shiny future for the nation, when the federal government would be further starved of revenue and even deeper in debt. Of course, she didn't put it quite that way.

Tax cutting has become an article of faith for the right, despite its disastrous effects on public services, infrastructure, and finances. I've explored the roots of this virulent political pathology before, here and here, arguing that taxes are not merely a necessary evil, but help create a healthy and prosperous society and economy.

Last week, I forwarded a link to David Olive's blog to some friends about an idea gaining ground in the U.S.: the tax receipt calculator. The idea is to enable people to plug in the amount of tax they pay and allow them to see what their taxes are getting them. It's one potential antidote to anti-tax hysteria.

Heather Mallick, writing in the Toronto Star recently, made the point that most of our social and economic problems stem from the fact we don't pay enough taxes. Underfunding caused by decades of tax cuts has resulted in lengthy medical wait times; sky-high tuition and student debt; crumbling schools, roads, bridges, and water pipes; one million Canadian children living in poverty; a lack of nursing home beds and child care spaces; ubiquitous user fees; the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us.

She enumerated the many things our taxes provide us. Here is a partial list from her article, as well as some items of my own. Which ones would you be willing to forfeit in order to get another tax cut (or to give one to a big corporation)?

• Roads, traffic lights, street signs, guard rails, railway signals, line painting, snow plowing, salting and sanding
  
• Armed forces, Coast Guard search and rescue, veterans' pensions, military cemeteries, repatriation ceremonies, war memorials, Remembrance Day observances
  
• Restaurant inspectors, drug testing and approval, auditors-general
  
• Schools, teachers, school bus drivers, crossing guards, universities, colleges, apprenticeship programs
  
• Bridges, tunnels, ferries, ports, locks, docks
  
• Flags on public buildings, embassies
  
• Public libraries, librarians, books, commercial-free CBC radio
  
• Water mains, sewers, sidewalks, streetlights
  
• Police, fire, paramedics
  
• Hospitals, doctors, nurses, immunization, MRI's, chemotherapy, autopsies
  
• Courts, judges, bailiffs, prisons and guards, customs and immigration officers, CSIS
  
• National, provincial, and municipal parks, historic sites, museums
  
• Weather forecasting, mapping, money minting and printing
  
• Pensions, unemployment insurance, interest on national and provincial debt
  
• Hockey rinks, baseball diamonds, tennis courts, swimming pools, soccer fields
  

It's perhaps ironic that some of the strongest defenders of taxation have been American. "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society," said Associate Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 1904. And just last week in a speech at The George Washington University in Washington , D.C., U.S. President Obama paraphrased Abraham Lincoln when he stated, "…through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves."

For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we'd be wise to listen to them.