Canada’s Debate

Just a quick hit for now.

I’ve frequently lamented the way that modern political thinking has somehow become dominated by this idea that taxes are regressive and wrong-headed; and the elimination thereof represents the cure to all of our social ills. The white-wash of history and economics continues… You’d have a hard time convincing Mike Harris that Adam Smith decried large-scale corporations,

Dan Sawyer wrote an editorial in the Star reminding us that taxes are used to create the decent, humane and prosperous society we all value and benefit from.

Well leave it to the knuckle-draggers to chime in… in this case a gentleman by the name of Mayur Shah.

Don Sawyer’s article implies that if we didn’t have national heath care, people would still be dying from sanitation-related diseases. He ignores the technological changes and medical discoveries that took place over the last 100 years. Does any reasonable person assume that without taxes, penicillin and other medicines would not have been discovered? And sanitary water systems would not have been developed?

Anyone else see the massive, gaping, BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS hole in this person’s argument? Research may be tied to innovation, but I don’t recall reading about private companies lining up to build sewers in the early 20th century, or citizens banding together to encourage private health-care organizations. Taxes have ALWAYS been the source for public infrastructure financing. The Romans used taxes to build roads, and so has every successive government in the following 2000 years… at least until the last twenty years. That people would actually not appreciate this change as a fundamental one boggles the mind.