Tuesday Morning Links

This and that (with a B.C. flavour) for your Tuesday reading.

- Yes, the CCPA's report showing that taxes in British Columbia are downright regressive is stunning enough on its face. But the real story may lie in the response of the province's finance minister:

Finance Minister Kevin Falcon said he didn't put much stock in the study's numbers, and suggested his staff would find problems with the report.

"They keep coming out with these reports, and I rarely agree," said Falcon.

In other words, Falcon is determined to keep on making the tax system ever more regressive - and will pre-emptively ignore any study showing that doing so will only make for even more unfair treatment of most of the province in order to justify continued steps to favour the wealthy over the rest of the population. And it's not hard to see how that attitude can lead to exactly the outcome that Falcon refuses to consider possible.

- Meanwhile, Falcon's declaration that any study showing an unfair tax system should also thoroughly undermine can be ignored based on nothing but his ideological leanings should also call into doubt other politically-motivated spin from the B.C. Libs - such as, say, their government's attempt to shut down any discussion of poverty in the province by quibbling over the definition of the poverty line.

- But then, Rafe Mair notes that there's plenty more reason for concern about the B.C. Libs' lack of integrity:

Campbell and Hansen supported the 2009 budget in that year's election almost certainly knowing it was false, and then added well over a billion dollars to it after they won. If they did not know, the entire finance ministry ought to be fired, because they knew trouble was coming because of falling sales tax and stumpage receipts.

They had to know. The stock market failures were another sign and were sufficient for two fiscal ignoramuses, my wife and me, who cleared out of the market before the crash.

If Hansen, and through him Campbell, didn't know what was happening in the world when they went to the polls based on a phoney budget, they were bungling incompetents. As one who was in cabinet prior to the 1981 recession and saw the finance minister predict it by assessing diminishing receipts, I can tell you that Campbell and Hansen knew. These sorts of deals don't come together overnight, and if you believe that the government wasn't negotiating with Ottawa long before the '09 election, I have a bridge for sale you might want to have a look at.

Campbell and Hansen denied during the '09 election that the HST was even on the radar screen, and then safely elected, implemented it. Hansen had a full and damning finance ministry report on his desk two months prior to the election.
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We will be asked, in an election...likely to be called in advance of the set day, to support a premier who was there for most of the Campbell scandals, and now wants us to save the province from the NDP!

If we don't give a damn about corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy and falsehoods, we will approve that conduct and let the Liberals go at it again for another four years.

- Finally, I'll echo those pointing to Ryan McGreal's post as the definitive commentary on what the Cons' attack on CUPW means not only for Canada Post, but also for the wider economy:

I also want to comment on what I've come to regard as revenge egalitarianism among those people who are incensed that the decent wages and benefits letter carriers enjoy haven't yet been stripped away.

There was once a time when public sentiment on wages and benefits turned around the idea that they should trend upwards. You know, for everyone - not just a thin crust of the deserving rich.
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(Since 1980), (o)ur economy has generated strong growth in overall wealth, but most of that wealth has accrued to the very wealthy, while the wealth of Canadians below the median has actually fallen in real terms.

It's no coincidence that this trend coincides with two major changes:

* A steady flattening of our income tax structure that lowered tax rates for the wealthy and extended exemptions and tax shelters for the wealthy, while actually increasing tax rates on the poor.

* The rate of unionized workers fell from 34.6 percent in 1997 to 29.3 percent in 2009. Unionized workers tend to earn more than non-unionized workers, so a falling unionization rate is a drag on overall median incomes.
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The bottom line is that every time a corporation (or government) breaks the back of another union, we all lose out. The median income further stagnates, and the workers whose wages and benefits have been cut have less money to inject into the economy.

Finally, the labour market in general shifts more bargaining power from employees to employers, resulting in downward pressure on wages right across the broad middle class.

- And Andrew Jackson notes that the link between the attack on unionization and increased income inequality is backed by solid evidence.

On selective benefits

We'll find out before too long whether the B.C. Libs' latest attempt to survive the imposition of the HST will be any more successful than what they've tried for the last two years. But the more interesting effect of today's announcement may be its impact on the other province which harmonized its taxes at the same time.

Here's the message which I'm sure will be repeated plenty more as the HST referendum progresses:

In order to head off that fiscal reckoning, the B.C. Liberals propose to raise corporate taxes by two points effective Jan 1 of next year and to postpone a scheduled reduction in the small business tax.

The moves constitute a reversal of longstanding tax policy under the B.C. Liberals, who've systematically reduced taxes on the business sector. When the New Democrats proposed similar increases, the Liberals denounced them, saying it would negatively impact the investment climate.'

But Finance Minister Kevin Falcon justified the increases by saying that the corporate sector had enjoyed most of the benefits of the tax shift under the HST.

Of course, in Ontario that benefit to the corporate sector from the HST was packaged with...more benefits to the corporate sector in the form of income tax cuts. And all this just before the McGuinty government declared that it had to start cutting back on public services due to the deficit which ballooned as a result of those giveaways.

Now, with B.C.'s government publicly acknowledging the real consequences of the HST and at least trying to paper over its effects, the Ontario Libs figure to have an even tougher time defending their choices. And it shouldn't come as much surprise if it's the party which has offered the more accurate critique of the HST all along that benefits as a result.

Saturday Afternoon Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- About the only caveat I'll add to Jesse McLaren's election analysis is that the NDP's almost universally-improved position benefitted at least somewhat from the party starting behind the Cons who turned out to be the ultimate competition. But it's otherwise hard to disagree with McLaren's take:

The electoral map represents Parliamentary elections, but the main source of change happens between elections, driven by what happens outside Parliament. So to truly understand what has happened to people's consciousness between the past two elections we need to look at the shift in vote. From 2008-2011 the NDP gained votes in 293 of 308 ridings, had the same vote in 10 ridings, and only lost votes in five ridings (one in Newfoundland & Labrador, three in Nova Scotia and one in Ontario). This is better than any other party, and shows that the "orange wave" was truly pan-Canadian.
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(T)he Harper majority is not based on a surge to the right, but a Liberal collapse. The corporate vote became concentrated in the Tories (who were endorsed by nearly every mainstream newspaper), while the real surge across the country was towards the NDP. This is an important step forward in quality as well as quantity. The aspirations of Quebec previously rooted in the corporate Bloc Quebecois, the "strategic voting" for the corporate Liberals to stop the corporate Tories, and the isolated "neither left nor right" politics of the Green Party have shifted to a pan-Canadian labour party with links to the antiwar and other social movements.

- Niki Ashton offers some good advice to the NDP MPs who have taken her place as the youngest representatives in Parliament:

Ashton said the NDP caucus is a welcoming place for young people, with colleagues often asking her what she thinks on a given issue — if she has not already told them. That is not always the case for the broader political sphere, especially Question Period, so Ashton advises her new caucus colleagues to stand their ground. “Absolutely you’re going to come up against a wall of discrimination or condescension or paternalism and you’ve got to push back,” said Ashton, who hopes the influx of youth to politics changes the tone. “You’ve got to call it for what it is and you’ve got to raise your voice a little louder and make sure they don’t silence you.”

- It shouldn't come as much surprise that the B.C. Liberals are once again looking to pull a fast one on their province when it comes to the HST. But it's much more shocking that this time they gave some advance warning - and I'd fully expect the latest bait and switch to ensure that an issue which has animated B.C. voters for the past two years remains live whenever the next provincial election takes place.

- Finally, Matt Taibbi has a must-read article on how the complete lack of accountability for Goldman Sachs' financial manipulations looks to be a test case as to whether or not the U.S. can be said to be even slightly governed by the rule of law as opposed to the rule of the wealthy.