Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Days of whine and $15 billion in bonuses for our bankers, December 19, 2019.

Linda McQuaig’s article paints a bleak picture. In these dystopian media times with wealth and opportunity apparently everywhere vast inequities, ridiculous unfairness and scurrilous behaviour have become the accepted norm. As banks give out $15 billion in bonuses making a staggering $46.6 billion in profits, 2600 GM workers are idled by the multi-billion dollar gargantuan General Motors brought back from the dead by a $650 million bailout from Ontario and SNC Lavalin pleads guilty to what amounts to a financial slap on the wrist of $280 million dollars for bribery the bitter and bitingly arrogant realities of capitalism are on full display. And no one seems to care. 2019 looks more like 1819.

In sharp contrast, the contemporary working poor (and I include the middle and even the upper class given the ballooning relativity of corporate profits) are saddled with an 8% tax increase by Toronto Council to pay for critically needed infrastructure updates, affordable housing and transit to name only a few at a cost of a mere $10-15 billion. This is chump change for the banks who take no responsibility for the society they live in. The banks’ bonuses could fund the full cost without batting an eye. And that’s only the banks. But capitalism doesn’t allow this.  Clearly we need profit controls.

Corporate Canada daily cozies up to government and makes billions in profits and benefits while paying miniscule taxes. Amazon pays negative tax in the U.S. The working poor  on the other hand get a languishing standard of living, unstable work, wage stagnation, crushing taxes relatively and a snarly response from government when they ask like Oliver Twist ‘Please sir, can I have some more.’  Corporate taxes have plummeted over the past fifty years while profits skyrocketed and work was stripped to the bone. Corporations also divested pensions, healthcare, full-time work and benefits. The losses and degradation of middle and lower class incomes is staggering as are the continually rising enormous profits. Taxes pay for the civil society that we live in but everyone is not taxed equally. The private sector takes all the profits, the public bears all the costs. The 99% support the 1%.

What is most concerning about this is how willingly society at all levels passively accepts this corrupt system of capitalism and free markets, the private sector, government and society without question. This is the real tragedy of modern society. Like the indigenous people long ago we’re being tricked with a few techno baubles.

The corruption of corporate Canada, Canadian politics and Canadian society is complete. Beware of bigots in suits with smiles on their faces.

Unpublished letter submitted to The Toronto Star

Re: The Goldilocks MAYOR, December 7, 2019.

Mayor John Tory’s realization that the conservative pipe dream of low taxes while the population grows, inflation eats away at our value and transit, affordable housing costs, infrastructure and social costs are beckoning constantly is only that. His tax proposal makes sense but it does not go far enough to create equity between the private sector and the tax-paying public with the corporate sector getting off Scot-free. It is an ongoing source of frustration for taxpayers that they are the  only target of tax increases and service cuts by eager government and municipal employees while corporations like BMO that recently made just over a billion dollars in their recent quarter and cut 300 jobs are allowed a free pass. The anger is not about paying taxes, it is the blatant inequity between the private sector taxation rate and the tax-paying public’s. The former are responsible for collecting huge profits while leaving the social costs for the public to deal with.

This revelation by Mayor Tory should be accompanied by a similar one on the need to re-inflate corporate taxes. Corporate tax cuts are a dismal failure. The real wealth is in the private sector and Tory should tax it. There should be a 10% Social Safety Surtax placed on all corporations annually for the building of infrastructure, affordable housing, transit, healthcare and policing all of which they benefit from greatly. For most large corporations this is a pittance compared to their after-tax profits per year. We should all remember that corporations depend on all these public services to get their employees to and from their jobs safely and easily and they should be expected to share the cost with the tax-paying public whom they serve.

The public is sick and tired of hearing that the wolves are at the door for corporations and the wealthy when the banks alone all make billions each year in after-tax profits while paying negligible property taxes on their glass and steel towers. Faceless shareholders hidden in obscurity do not build social wealth or social welfare. Big corporations create their minimum wage McJobs and nothing more. Taxation is the only way to balance the scale.

In this dystopian one-way universe we of capitalist democracy everything is wonderful but in a terms of a real democracy there is little evidence that this is actually true. Governments have become the handmaidens of the private sector not the servants of the people. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.