Saturday Afternoon Links

The links, they never stop...

- More interesting than the Cons' lead on "family issues" in Postmedia's poll is the relative position of the NDP and Libs - with the NDP reversing the usual vote intention numbers by ranking well ahead of the Libs on family issues. Of course that raises the question of what New Democrats can do to make perceived family issues into voting issues - but it seems to suggest there's a strong policy brand the NDP can use to build its level of popular support.

- Travis highlights one important point as to the lessons of Canada's growth in the 1990s which deserve more attention as we set our economic policies today:

The Canadian austerians, from the Federal government (and members of the loyal opposition), to the provincial governments, down to the op-ed pages of the Globe and mail are busy clamouring for both tax cuts and fiscal austerity. And it looks like the corporate tax cuts are a done deal.

And this brings me to the one thing Henderson got right in his paper (pp17-19) but Stephen and Paul failed to note. Namely, Martin RAISED taxes including corporate and capital gains taxes but not personal income taxes. On the latter, he did not need to because PITs were not indexed to inflation. So I guess you can raise taxes on capital and not retard private sector employment growth. Who knew?

- But as thwap notes, we can instead expect further financialization rather than policy based on what's actually best for our economy because...well, that's where the easy money is:

Very simply, the declining rate of profit at the end of the capitalist "golden age" from 1945-73 was met with a trio of policy responses: liberalization, globalization, and financialization. All three were meant to lower the operating costs of capitalism, but all three simultaneously demolish the foundations of the wealth of the society from which capitalism (like a parasite) feeds.
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Financialization has been the capitalists' attempts to sever their bonds from all this messy bothersome business entirely and to create fortunes out of thin air called derivatives made up of esoteric products designed by complex mathematical equations. Alas, for them, these derivatives have to be based on something in the real world and since there's really nothing going on to satisfy the needs of this increasingly huge pool of liquid capital, this leads to speculative bubbles that inevitably explode. These bubbles have been getting increasingly large and increasingly unstable.

The point though, is that this response is RATIONAL from a capitalist's point of view. There's no other option for them. That's why there needs to be a revolution so that the wealth of society is not controlled by profit-maximizing elites but by the whole of society itself. How to run this society is in dispute but it MUST be as democratic as imaginable.

- And finally, Linda McQuaig notes one policy option which should make for a relatively means of favouring social justice over wealth accumulation:

Few Canadians even knew about the tax. Those who did mostly belonged to a small number of wealthy families who were rich enough to pay it. With its cancellation in 1972, this tiny crowd was suddenly a lot richer.

University of Toronto economist John Bossons calculated that ending the tax amounted to a windfall of about $12 billion ($62 billion in today's dollars) for Canada's wealthiest families.

The removal of the estate tax, which remains an obscure event in Canadian history, had momentous implications, depriving Ottawa of revenue and putting Canada on a path toward greater inequality.
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Some will protest that an inheritance tax picks on the wealthy. But the current situation could be characterized as picking on the non-wealthy. Regular income — money earned on the job — is taxed.

But there's no tax on money received through large inheritances. These windfalls aren't earned, but just dropped into the laps of a lucky few, requiring no effort or talent on their part, beyond choosing appropriate parents.
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Suffice to say...there would...be resistance.

But then, nobody said taking on some of the most powerful people in the country — in order to improve the education prospects of every young Canadian — would be easy. Just that it would be worth doing.