I Don't Care Who Thinks Otherwise. Corporate Tax Cuts Are WRONG!

David Akin has an interesting and somewhat misguided column in the Sun, focusing on corporate tax cuts.

His implication is that Michael Ignatieff is only posturing over corporate tax cuts, because they already went into effect on January 1, so the only way to reverse them is to raise them. I love that idea.

Akin also quotes the Ontario provincial finance minister who is in favour of lowering them. I don't care if a little green man has said we need to lower them. He would be just as wrong as Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper.

This is not a partisan issue, it is a Canadian one and a human one.

Given the greed, the idea of more tax cuts for our wealthiest citizens, has now become the eighth deadly sin, though I suppose it would also fall under "gluttony". It's become obscene and any politician singing their praises should include a warning before their speeches. 'This is not intended for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.' If there are young people in the room, shield their eyes and ears.

I would ask Akin though, that if the tax cuts have already gone through, why is Flaherty and other Corporate Party cabinet ministers, wasting our money travelling across the country in support of them? Do they have more in the offing?

This government has raised taxes on workers with an increase in payroll taxes and the HST. But they have further widened the gap between rich and poor, by pandering to the wealthy. There's something not right.

I might have sympathized with the corporate sector if they hadn't lined up with their hands out during the economic crisis, laying off workers, and then call those workers lazy because they had no jobs.

125 billion to our banks and they give their executives 18 billion in bonuses? It's a slap in the face to the rest of us.

In the video at the bottom of this page, you'll hear Paul Krugman discuss the income disparity that is threatening the health of the United States. This was in 2007, and he suggests that this is a phenomenon unique to the United States. But as we know, with our first federal neoconservative government, Canada now has the same dangerous income disparity.

We need to reclaim this country for the middle, and a healthy middle class was created by raising taxes on the wealthy, raising corporate taxes and strengthening our labour unions. It's that simple.

This is not about pulling up your socks and getting an education, and you'll do better. As Krugman reminds us, most school teachers have the same education as hedge fund managers. And yet the highest paid hedge fund manager in 2007, earned the same as all 80,000 New York school teachers put together ... for three years!!!!!

Still not convinced?

Well how about this one. Because Flaherty and Harper have lowered our corporate tax cuts to unheard of levels, now lower than the United States, the American corporations operating here, must make up the difference to their government.

So any money that they are robbing from you and I, is going to the U.S. treasury.

In a bizarre twist of fate, some of the money saved by American companies operating in Canada simply gets transferred to the U.S. Treasury. Their rules require that foreign operations pay taxes at no less than the U.S. rate, or make up the difference to Uncle Sam. Studies by economist Erin Weir show that money not collected by Ottawa is instead taxed by Washington for the benefit of Americans. Instead of helping to solve the massive infrastructure backlog in communities across the country, Flaherty is giving away billions to his U.S. counterpart.

Mad yet?

So the next time you hear any one say that corporate tax cuts will create jobs, they could be right. Just not for Canadians.