The Oshawa Express - Tax cuts prohibit growth
   
Tax cuts prohibit growth


Dear Editor:

I agree with your editorial"Cities Pass the Buck", Nov. 21, which characterizes the mayors
as whining, and not exercising responsible stewardship of public funds.

But that is not the whole story.

What your editorial fails to address is the very real imbalance in the tax base available to city governments versus the provincial and federal.

Your letters contributor, Don Noseworthy, makes excellent points about the inequitable tax burden between cities, but neglects to mention that, overall, that the municipal tax burden is excessive.
At one time real property was taxed to provide urban infrastructure, utilities and minimal policing services to the cities. It was an indicator of civil wealth as compared to rural wealth.

However, following the political science maxim that "wealth flees taxation", highly mortgaged residential urban property is no longer an indicator of wealth as equity. The real wealth has fled to the largely tax exempt, untouchable, financial instruments, beyond the reach of governments.

The editorial also fails to point out the extent to which past federal and provincial administrations have downloaded costs to the municipalities.

The downloading can be ascribed to include all the federal and provincial governing administrations since about 198 4.

Those eras include all the administrations of Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin federally and Rae, Harris, Eves and McGuinty provincially.

It is obvious that the cutting of taxes, (which by the way demonstrably favour the wealthy) reduces a government's ability to invest in the maintaining and growth of essential urban infrastructure.

By cutting taxes we prohibit the growth and renewal of that public infrastructure, and it is that infrastructure which allows us to be a civilization and is what attracts immigrants from around the world.

My perception is that the Neo-liberal and Neo- Conservative strategy is to increase the burden of taxation on residential property taxpayers to the point that they will willingly allow the cities to sell, and rent back, what is now publicly owned infrastructure.

Should we really sell school buildings, so we can rent them back?

Selling essential public assets is already happening, unpublicized, at the federal and provincial levels.

By turning over (privatizing, P3 & P4) our existing and new infrastructure to the private and purportedly competitive sector, we would be giving mega-corporations a direct pipeline to the taxpayers’ pockets.

It should be noted that, in the main, municipal services are monopolies and do not lend themselves to true competition.

 

It has happened in other countries and there is no reason why it cannot happen here, if we let it.

Ed Goertzen
Oshawa

  
     
     

 
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