To the Editor,
Canada’s combined tax burden has become one of the largest in the world because it provides services through manipulation of deficits, deferred payments and service reductions all requiring increasing taxation, which is creating a failing economic structure.
Set aside all the self-serving rhetoric surrounding the harmonized sales tax and we all intuitively know it will inevitably load an annual $2 billion burden of tax carriage onto our middle class backs in order to provide special interest corporations tax relief and subsidies.
The tax is a classic case of “corporate welfare” and any economics freshman understands this type of subvention distorts markets and comes with huge economic costs.
The HST model fit well into a Conservative federal propensity to crony capitalism and a like-minded B.C. Liberal trait of corporate pandering, but it required careful political insertion to make it palatable to the mules that would carry the load.
Drunk with power, the Liberals imposed it without any consultation and then were surprised the mules started to buck and heave.
Denial separated personal knowledge from that of ministerial bureaucrats alleged to have been exploring HST without direction. Deflection came in the form of capitulatory redirection to the dismal selling of the HST. The mules got madder.
Corporations united and told the mules if we carry their load, they will feed us more, ultimately reducing our burden. Some hungry mules became believers.
Dear mules, if you believe our future economic sufferance will translate into efficient corporations and well-paid jobs, then you really do not understand the economic ramifications of taxation thresholds and corporate reinvestment.
Ron Heusen
Nanaim