Yes, affordability is a big problem, but a civil society is important too.
Since the 1990s in provincial and municipal elections, there has been an endless line of politicians promising tax cuts.
They promised to pay for tax cuts by eliminating government waste with the mythical “increased efficiencies.”
At the same time they promised to get rid of regulations that once protected us, deriding them as “red tape” and barriers to prosperity.
Then they have the gall to say competition and increased efficiencies from private ownership will lead to “lower rates.”
Since 1995 the total accumulated inflation rate has reached about 47 per cent in Toronto. Revenue has fallen far behind that.
Big tax cuts for corporations have been given under the cover of small tax cuts for the public.
Since 1980 tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations have totaled more than 50 per cent.
Public services did not cause the cash crisis. The tax cutters did. And so did those who voted them in.
Now, we have record homelessness because of evictions.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s legislated empowerment of landlords has led to private investors buying up all the affordable rental stock.
Food bank use is at record levels and ever increasing.
In the wealthiest city and province in Canada there is something seriously wrong when governments depend on charity to keep food banks supplied so people don’t starve.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, in her first term in office, showed incredible courage to try to fix the tax cut damage with a reasonable tax hike.
Now Brad Bradford is promising a populist one-year property tax freeze when inflation is running at over three per cent. Essentially Bradford is promising a tax cut. Like Ford, Bradford is also using fear as an organizing tool.
Stoking fear Brad is promising to hire 1,000 more police. How is he going to pay for that?
Bradford would have been right at home in both Ford’s and Mike Harris cabinet.
Bradford’s biggest mistake is promising to turn Toronto’s non-profit public water works into a for profit corporation, while promising “lower rates.”
Mike Harris made the same promise of “lower rates” when he changed all hydro utilities in the province into for-profit corporations. Rates went through the roof and continue to climb.
Toronto Hydro has some of the highest rates in the country.
Like the packaging up of Hydro One into a for-profit corporation, Toronto’s water system would eventually be sold to private investors and rates would go through the roof.
Mike Harris also promised prosperity from his tax cuts, deregulation and privatization. Harris said: “that all boats will be lifted by the rising tide.”
We have had so many tax cuts since the 1990’s we should be overflowing with good jobs. Instead, the unemployment rate for young people is over 14 per cent.
I don’t like paying taxes. But I want my schools, hospitals and libraries to be there.
While not perfect, Olivia Chow has shown that she is a courageous forward-looking mayor Bradford’s Toronto would be only for the wealthy and people with good jobs.
Brad’s privatization and cutting public services to pay for tax cuts is nothing more than social cannibalism, one group feeding off another.
Brad Bradford is just the latest politician to extol the virtues of trickle-down theory, that tax cuts, deregulation (cutting red tape) and privatization will bring prosperity for all.
Since the 1980s, trickle-down economics has repeatedly been proven a false doctrine only ever-increasing wealth for the wealthy. If trickle-down tax cuts had worked somewhere, anywhere, we would know about it by now.
Are we going to continue creating a huge underclass of people, so we can solve our cash crisis? Now, only the luxury liners are rising and everyone else is sinking in their wake.
The post Tax cuts have never delivered on promised prosperity appeared first on rabble.ca.