Austerity coming to Ontario

A situation like this could really force the LIberals to pick one side to lean on, left or right, to keep the government afloat. One single misstep and it's a 2012 election.

I asked my kids if they wanted to pay for Ontario's current deficits in the future, and they said "No way dad!" How ungrateful of them!

'

I'm with Michelle and most socialists on the matter. Health care and education costs what it costs and should not, and can not, be run like a business or be thrown to "market forces" wolves. Wolves tend to leave nothing behind after theyre done feasting.

However, I said most socialists. In the USA,  for example, there is private sector delivery of health services to the greater extent than most other developed countries. And they, too, know and understand that health care costs what it costs, and I think the privateers tend to push this idea to extremes. Private enterprisers and I imagine hospital boards might not be all that efficient when it comes to paying themselves or cutting corners when they have a blank cheque signed by taxpayers. So I think it's possible that there are two types of "it costs what it costs." They spend a lot more on health care in the US than any other developed country and yet have the crappiest national health statistics. I think a lot of money is wasted on health care fraud in addition to the duplication of health care admin.

Ah, okay, I see where you're coming from.  My sarcasm was perhaps unjustified. :)

So you're thinking we run balanced budgets, and the community pays for what needs paying for as we spend it, right?  But by "community" I'm assuming you mean society as a whole, including corporations, which, as the price for operating in our midst and selling their goods and services to us, must pay taxes for the betterment of our society (not to mention so that they don't get an educated and healthy workforce for free), so that we don't leave debt to the next generation to pay.

I can get on board with that.

I think it's that Ottawa simply chooses not to raise overall taxes in order to pay for them. This is what neoliberalism looks like in a country still using an obsolete and uncompetitive electoral system. Our corrupt stooges in Ottawa with about 24% of eligible voter support under them don't have to do what the large majority of Canadians want them to. Ottawa's overall program spending is billions less than it is for the rest of Canada. It's a top-down system that pits smaller provincial economies against larger ones typically governed by Liberal and Tory governments setting the pace for everything from provincial corporate tax rates to minimum wage.

Total tax revenues as a percentage of GDP: OECD

The article starts with:

but it doesn't say what the policies are. Anyone know?

Yeah I have to agree McGuinty's health tax levy is particularly nasty based on ability to pay. Ironically, even Harris' was less regressive than this!

So "adopt policies that could be used to fund sustainable public services" is bafflegab for "raise taxes"? Who knew?

I agree that if you take, say, Sweden as a reference point, there's lots of room to raise the top marginal income tax rate on employment income (by 10% or so) and the GST (again by 10% or so) for Canada to be comparable. The Swedes pay a lot more consumption and income taxes on labour than we do. On the other hand, they only pay 30% income tax on investment income, and that only at the Federal level, so Canadians actually pay more on that piece. See:

http://www.taxrates.cc/html/sweden-tax-rates.html

However, my point was that testimony to the Commission (which is really just the Public Services Foundation of Canada dressed up) used such a careful euphemism rather than just saying "raise taxes".

I don't see a lot of Canadians pointing at themselves and saying "raise taxes on me", but I wouldn't be surprised to see Canadians pointing at other Canadians and saying "raise taxes on him". It's how it usually goes.

Compare tiny Sweden's economy with Canada's. Canada is, as the American military once said about it, a northern icebox of natural resource wealth to be raided at corporate America's convenience. We are exporting massive, simply massive amounts of oil and natural gas and hydroelectric power to the northern states. 

We would not have to lower corporate taxes or taxes on natural resource exports if there wasn't this race to the bottom mentality engrained in Ottawa. And it's been a case that none of the larger, more influential provincial economies are willing to challenge capital at the same time, like Dalton Hoover's government in Toronto spending us into a bottomless hole in setting us up for austerity in the process.

In Ontario the Liberals are basically copying taxation models of the 30 some-odd bankrupt US states in refusing to tax the wealthy and profitable corporations. That was Herbert Hoover's approach to taxation during the depression era, and that gov't actually did raise taxes while claiming to be practicing Keynesianism. It wasn't true, though. 

Canada has much more room for raising overall taxes than tiny Nordic country economies do. Their corporations raided resource wealth long ago and left them with little room for taxing timber and mineral and profits that were looted from their countries by marauding capital long ago. Today they have the most efficient taxation models in the world. It doesn't mean we have  to follow them to a tee on the consumption side, although that is one more possibility among several. Bags of room on taxation in Ontario and the rest of Canada. We should not have to be gutting public services Herbert Hoover style. We've lost somewhere more than $6 billion in wages from circulating in Ontario's economy since the loss of so many full-time, unionized manufacturing and related sector jobs since 2003 in order to prop-up a higher dollar and the fossil fuel industry in the prairies. Smaller government and pulling even more money out of Ontario's economy is not going to raise our standard of living or contribute to a more competitive economy Nordic style. The results are in - and more generous social spending is now thought to contribute to economic competitiveness not subtract from. There is a valid alternative to Margaret Thatcher's TINA.

I would support removing HST from necessities and leaving unrestricted ITC's alone. If I was looking for votes in the conservative bastion of Ontario among voters still voting and during what is sure to be neoliberal economic meltdown part III or IV or whatever in the next year or two, I would support what the ONDP is promising to, which is to spend more in health care and public services while costing less than the other two parties' platforms overall.

Federally, I think the NDP could raise overall tax revs in general and replace what was removed from social transfers since 1995. I think that would be a good place to start for our first NDP government in Ottawa.

They have cut services and raised taxes and user fees since 2003, no question about it. And they plan on freezing spending and reducing the deficit. The Liberals are panicking over the deficit which they themselves created with help from Ottawa no less.

The Liberal Government's problem, ygtbk, is that they have expenditures of around $124 billion and revenues of almost $109 billion. That's an annual budget deficit of about $16 billion. Do you see a problem with this and the fact that they are talking abour further public sector job cuts as well as reduced services? 

The ONDP's platform is to increase provincial spending more than they would reduce taxes while, at the same time, costing anywhere from quarter-billion less than the Liberals plan to $2.6B less than the Tories' plan for cradle to grave socialism for profitable corporations and rich people.

That's right, there is no need to lower corporate taxes in Ontario, either. Non-financial corporations in Ontario are awash in cash to the tune of somewhere more than $450 billion. They are sitting on stacks and stacks of cash with no indication that they intend to invest in or create jobs in Ontario. Why would we want to give them even more money? Would it be so they can sit on an even larger pile of cash while the government in Toronto slashes public services and full-time jobs? Did sucking billions of dollars more out of the economy during an economic depression work for Herbert Hoover and Americans in the 1930s?

Mine too.

Star Exclusive: Ontario To Face Sweeping Cost Cutting - by Linda Diebel

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1119065--don-drummon...

"It's as if Premier Dalton McGuint gave economist Don Drummond the province of Ontario tied up in a nice big bow. In a careers brimming with plum positions, Drummond calls this one his 'dream job': McGuinty put him in charge of a commission on the public service with the power to effect all our lives in Ontario...

His nickname is Premier Drummond, but Darth [Vader] Drummond might soon fit the bill - His report -already in the premier's office waiting for Drummond's final sign off in a few days - goes far beyond expected cuts and covers sweeping recommendations that would consolidate ministeries, overhaul others and change the health care system as we know it...

'I was always very clear at TD [Senior VP and Chief Economist] about what I was trying to do and what they expected of me,' he continues. 'Here was the cost of my group and I knew that if you wanted to survive, I had to make more money for the bank than was the cost of my group...There wasn't a bit of ambiguity about my value to the bank.'

And he wants to bring that discipline to how the province does its business. After full evaluation of each program,

'if it's not going well, it's gone."

Welcome to Bankster-Rule in Ontario...

I agree that Ontario is a province and not a country. Having said that, how are your comments in posts #11 and #13 in this thread to be interpreted?

@ Fidel: I think most people would agree with you that low marginal tax rates alone are not enough to ensure prosperity. But unless I'm mistaken no-one in the thread so far has made that assertion. So I'm thinking that your current point is that Ontario cannot on its own improve economic growth, and that that will have to wait for a Federal NDP government. Is that more or less your point, or have I misunderstood it?

We've seen 'austerity' routine before TorStar comments

A Torontonian on selective pain otherwise known as 'austerity.'

Austerity Czar should follow his own recommendations on poverty reduction Federal and Ontario governments are losing $13 billion a year due to inaction on poverty - a loss equal to 15 per cent of the provincial budge

Ontario's spending increases have covered the Bank of Canada's inflation targets of 2% but not population growth. It's like wearing a jock strap your mother bought you when you were twelve and never buying a new one to accommodate for "expansion." Ontario has seen a greater net exodus of young people to other provinces than any other since the neoliberal Harris-Pinocchio regimes in Toronto.

Austerity: Making the Same Mistake Again? CJE

You're including deficit payments on debt, which is money not invested in programs spending, infrastructure, or improving the quality of life for Ontarians in general. But still...

I should have said their austerity budgets from here to 2015-16 expand by a bit above 2%. That rate covers the BoC targets but not population growth.

And there is no need to be in the debt situation they are in had they not dropped taxes on the rich and corporations since Harris' time. We went in the hole to the tune of $35 billion then to pay for tax cuts to rich friends of that party. The Liberals have been the same with refusing to tax those most able to pay. McGuinty's speech to the Canadian Club is basically begging them to create some jobs after years and years of corporate welfare donations in the form of tax cuts. They are sitting on piles of cash while the government slides further into debt for the sake of maintaining a conservative nanny state.

Drummond report recommends wage freezes and increased class sizes amid ‘harsh reality’ for Ontario

quote:

Recommendations from the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services include:

• Departments should not budget for any wage increases

• a zero wage budget for all public employees

• Wage freeze for doctors

• Give Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) more responsibility over funding and integration

• Divert patients who do not need acute care in hospitals to family doctors, clinics and nursing homes

• Increase university nursing programs and use nurse practitioners more effectively

• Expand role of pharmacists to permit them to give routine injections, inhalations and immunizations

• Create online system for prescription refills, test results and appointment scheduling

• Link Ontario Drug Benefit program, currently for seniors and social assistance recipients, directly to income

• Cancel full-day kindergarten

• Cap elementary classes from 20 to 23; junior school classes from 24.5 to 26 and secondary school classes from 22 to 24

• Phase out 70% of 13,800 non-teaching staff by 2017-18

• Charge students for school transportation costs

• Encourage secondary schools with low attendance to expand to a Grade 7-12 model

• Consider raising the retirement age for teachers. Currently, the average teacher retires at 59 after 26 years of service and collects a pension for 30 years

• Encourage colleges and universities to specialize so they’re not all offering the same type of programs

• Keep current tuition annual increases to a maximum of 5%

• Negotiate with federal government to designate inmates serving more than six months to penitentiaries. Currently, inmates must be sentenced to two years or more to be a federal responsibility.....

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/15/ontario-must-act-swiftly-and-bol...

Confined to cuts

Drummond Commission's mandate did not permit tax increases.

Thousands of Ontarians will likely sleep fitfully tonight, knowing their fate is in the hands of Don Drummond. Others will sleep like babies, knowing the powerful ex-banker can do them no harm.

Drummond's long-awaited report, unveiled February 15 at Queen's Park, lays out a deficit-shrinking program of austerity that is expected to have harsh implications for public employees — from hospital cleaners to day care workers — as well as delivering service cuts with devastating impacts on the poor, the sick, women in shelters and the disabled.

But if Don Drummond looms large in the nightmares of some of Ontario's most vulnerable citizens, he presents a friendly banker's face to the affluent, who are to be spared paying any additional taxes as their contribution to the province's deficit fight....

http://www.straightgoods.ca/2012/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=147&Cookies=yes

Drummond Proposes Harris Style Cuts - by Bill Bradley

http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/drummond-proposes-harris-style-cuts/9936

"To meet its own goal of a balanced budget in seven years, the government will have to cut program spending more deeply on a real capita basis, and over a much longer period of time, than the Harris government did in the 1990s,' Drummond wrote on page 10 of his executive summary.."

Banker Occupied [Canada] Europe and America  -  by Stephen Lendman

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2012/02/banker-occupied-europe-and-america...

"Money power rules. Across [Canada], Europe and America, governments follow banker diktats. They demand economies and people suffer to assure they're paid.."

We've been cutting corporate and income taxes for fifteen years and now we're surprised that the cupboard is bare and we need to pay a guy 1500$ a day to tell us that?  Give me a break.  McGuinty's going to have a caucus revolt on his hands if he goes forward with this - we all know that Liberals don't run as candidates to deliver any sort of bad news to anyone.

I think my posts at #23 and #37 are relevant here. Dalton McGuinty has been an incredibly poor fiscal manager. If he had increased spending in line with population and inflation (hardly the definition of draconian cuts) Ontario would not be in deficit today. This problem is entirely self-inflicted by the Liberal government, and they're going to try to use the Drummond report as a reason to cut, rather than say "you know, we're completely incompetent, and here's the problem that we caused..."

The federal government has cut back GST from 7% to 5% since 2006, so HST (let's just pretend it's been in place in Ontario the whole time, which is not quite true) has reduced from 15% to 13%. The Harper cuts in GST were widely criticized as regressive at the time. Maybe Dalton should boldly increase the Ontario portion of HST from 8% to 10%?

Easier said than done, epaulo

I'm not suggesting that it's a wrong strategy, just that it's difficult to do.

It requires that people shut down the province - ie, most of us go without pay, buy no goods, everybody suffers, so it's hard to motivate people to that with unknowns on the other side, particularly those with kids.

Just sayin ...

..i agree, i was too quick to throw that shutting down the province thing out there. in my mind if the austerity goes to plan both federally and provincially there will be more shrinking of an economy that has already begun to shrink. in turn this will require more unemployment and then even more austerity, more squeezing. surviving this is difficult as well on a whole lot of levels. i just can't see people putting up with it.

Yes, I'm well aware of the failings of the CCPA on this issue. As you said, "If their numbers are correct an increase in HST (same base as GST) would hit higher-income families harder than lower income families." That's so patently not the case that it proves they were wrong. 

Are you saying Table 1 on page 4 of the CCPA report linked to above is wrong? If so, do you have proof? Asserting that they're wrong is not the same as proving that they're wrong.

Apparently Jim Stanford (considered by many to be a progressive economist) didn't get the memo, since in the link above he argued that cutting GST (a la Harper) was regressive. Pity. Perhaps he knows that basic items like groceries are exempt, and is aware of the following programs?

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/bnfts/gsthst/fq_qlfyng-eng.html

http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/en/credit/stc/

And your example is not very convincing: 129 / 25000 is so close to 500 / 100000 that no-one would notice the difference.

I also disagree entirely with your relevance assessment. The current Ontario deficit is about $16 billion per year. If we could cut that by say $5 billion per year (a rough estimate - is there an economist in the house?) by taking one single step, then we've reduced the austerity problem considerably, wouldn't you say?

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

True

In Canada I would think this is true of consumption taxes. The neoliberal ideology here says that cutting taxes in general will enhance business activities and job creationm, even though there is no proof of that. Their HST does little to improve the situation for manufacturing in Ontario. Big business leaders in Canada are all for raising consumption taxes when the feds say they need money to fund program spending, just so long as corporate taxes and taxes for high income earners remain low. NIMBY is their attitude on taxes.

Nordic countries, otoh, have made good use of consumption taxes while maintaining low corporate taxes and low tax rates on capital in general. Social democrat governments in Sweden and Denmark have been committed to fully funding social spending through consumption taxes and at higher rates than here.

Here is what economist Erin Weir said in 2010 about raising GST:

Raise My Taxes

In Weir's opinion the issue of raising taxes should not be limited to consumption taxes. We should be looking at more progressive options, like raising income taxes for the wealthy and profitable corporations.

Please consider posts #23 and #37. Ontario has specific problems that could have been averted if the McGuinty Liberals had had a clue about what they were doing. It's not a virtuous workers vs. greedy bosses problem - otherwise, you'd expect to see all the provinces with the same level of deficit as Ontario - it's a fiscal mismanagement problem. In particular, spending expanded too fast - if it had grown in line with population and inflation we'd have no problem to discuss here, because Ontario would be in surplus.

So, given that we don't have a time machine to send a very serious letter from 2012 Dalton back to 2003 Dalton, what should we do? I think returning to the status quo ante of 2005 on sales tax is a reasonable suggestion: more reasonable than believing that we're going to close the whole gap purely through spending restraint over multiple terms of government.

In contrast to the understanding that the general public has of taxes, this discussion of HST is very nuanced.

I suggest that regardless of whether HST is progressive or regressive, most people hear proposals to decrease HST as confirmation of the conservative premise that, in general, lower taxes are better taxes and that "there is no such thing as a good tax."

If families with incomes of $25,000 pay the same rate of tax as families with incomes of $100,000, that is by definition proportional, not regressive. A per-capita tax (poll tax) would be regressive. I think you probably knew that. And I notice that when I mention income tax credits for GST/HST and exemptions for basics like groceries you tend to ignore the valid point that I've made. However...

To address your main point, I never said that increasing HST was the only possible action: just that (given that Ontarians were paying 15% combined PST/GST as recently as 2005) it might be a (relatively) painless starting point for fixing Dalton's mess.

But I'm interested: what would the top marginal income tax rate in Ontario have to be to close the $16 billion annual deficit?

This comment today on Rabble from Michael Laxer:

"McGuinty, sensing perhaps that the [Drummond report] would be nasty, tried to do the usual preparation for its impact in January, by telling everyone that they would all have to "share the pain" when the austerity regime started. But never has this rhetoric been less true. There is no 'sharing' that will occur. Millions of people will have their lives impacted in ways that will range from the severe, in the case of the poor, to the serious, in the case of much of the middle class. . . . For austerity to have an impact on the lives of the wealthy like it will on the rest of us, taxes would have to be massively increased and laws put in place to remind corporations of their social responsibility to the society that created them and that they could not have existed without."

Laxer castigates the NDP for not exposing McGuinty's narrative for what it is, namely, a cover story for the 1%.

Is there a, "Yes, but . . ." reply to Laxer's criticism?

I am now certain that we'll see some tax increases in the next provincial budget:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/21/mcguinty-tax-promise-no-hike_n_1...

More from Laxer's article:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/gary_mason...

This is a comment on a forum. since the link doesn't take one directly to this message I am quoting the whole comment: 

10:51 PM on February 25, 2012

I really wish that media pay more attention to the size of Ontario Public Service and whether it is producing value for the money that it spends on wages and if not why not. 
If Ontario had spent its resources adequately, many problems that we have right now wouldn’t have existed and we wouldn’t have needed to spend as much money now to resolve problems in Ontario. 

Most of the cost of services is wages however the Ontario Public Service has not been producing value for the wages that it has been paying. 
Most of their management do not have training for management and there is also this culture of hiring their friends. 

The are supposed to be hiring employees with right skills to deliver services to Ontarians however instead ,a lot of hiring is about who they want to hire and not about what skills needed to provide the right services to the Ontario public. Result of hiring employees for their closeness to management and not for their qualifications is that these employees won’t have the skills to serve the public instead resources of Ontario public is used to provide jobs for the friends of SOMEBODY. 

Ontario Public service is full of unqualified employees. If they start hiring qualified employees and replace the unqualified management then they can produce much more than what they are producing presently with the current resources and they wouldn’t need as much resources for what they are producing currently. There have been extensive focus on EHealth and Ornge and how a group of people have misused the public fund in these organizations. Isn’t using public fund to give your friends jobs that they are not qualified for a form of misuse of public fund? If in average the wages and other cost of each employee who is hired this way add up to 130K a year/employee and then multiply that with number of people hired without qualifications then what would this add up to each year, it would be a big chunk of public money each year. I wonder why media is not paying attention to hiring at OPS. There are big stories to bring to the attention of Ontarians. 

I think changes are needed but most of current management are not equipped to plan and implement changes. Ontario Pubic Service would need to replace a large number of its management."

Amen!  Though for your word rich, I would substitute the word richer.  For example, I mistrusted working-class stiffs who voted for Mike Harris' Common Sense Revolution, which targetted welfare moms.  Those richer folk didn't realize that their own ox was being gored.  What's to be done about that, eh?!

I disagree. All you need to do is look at the history of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (as just one example) to see that's not the case. Marginalized groups become targets and scapegoats, not because they won't fight back, but because the rich know that, by and large, people outside of those targetted groups won't join that fight in any meaningful way.

I understood your comment, I just disagreed with it. If someone has fought harder against the austerity regimes of Harris/Eves/McGuinty than First Nations groups, the poor, and disabled, I'm not sure who that would be. And it's not about being 'weak'. It's about being marginalized by the rest of society.

Quoted for truth.

I'm quoting RI again.  His comment didn't focus on who was or wasn't weak or who did or didn't fight.  It focused on whom we ought trust.

This is what strikes me:  If all of us commenting on this thread (and some other threads that I have been reading) trusted one another, we wouldn't be dealing with each other abusively.  So, in my mind, these questions arise:  Why don't we trust one another?  How and when did this mistrust come about?  Who gains from our mistrust?  What can we do about it?

As Bay St. profits from Western energy plays, Eastern manufacturing positions have become increasingly untenable, so we're told. As Ontario attempts to hold expenditures to less than 3%, revenues are contracting while health care costs (which account for more than 40% of the budget, and increasing as a percentage) expand by more than double that rate. Basic math dictates that revenues need to increase, or program spending needs to be reduced. So, what are the priorities in terms of program spending? Will Ontario now have to compete with other 'have not' Provinces for revenue transfers, in order to maintain services at current levels? Ontario needs a plan to address this fiscal imbalance.

In a column here, Nicholas Kristof had this to say about the (somewhat) sorry state of journalism in USA:

Look, as a journalist, I'm proud of my profession. Yet it's also clear that commercial pressures are driving some news organizations, television in particular, to drop the ball. Instead of covering Congo, it's cheaper and easier to put a Democrat and a Republican in a studio and have them yell at each other.

My real motive: a safer site for injecting progressive comments in discussions.

Why is there any need for abuse in these threads?  Beats me!

There are people of different political persuasions here? Talk about the narcissism of small differences...

Did you think my disagreements with you were purely personal?

You make it sound as if we all sit around here agreeing with each other.

This is an interesting conversation--and amusing, too, as in narcissism of small differences!

In a recent column "The trouble with the 99 per cent," Michael Laxer states the theory of the 99 percent slogan as follows:

"We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent."

Laxer then lays out what he says is (or ought to be) the party line here inside the garden wall about the Occupy Wall Street movement:

"With a variety of small or minor variations, this became the [Occupy Wall Street] movement's primary ideological message.

"But the message is largely false. And this matters, especially in the long run.

"There is no question about the grotesque growth of social inequality in the West. That this obvious fact has been ignored and even reinforced by the austerity agendas of all governments, regardless of political stripe, plays into an overall sense of hopelessness and reinforces reductionist and absolutist, totalizing ideologies and political views. The inherent danger when democracy becomes seemingly impotent.

"The trouble, however, lies in understanding that undue corporate power and the rise of a new "Gilded Age" ultra-rich power elite does not mean that all of society, the media, politicians, governments, the courts, etc ... are beholden to this elite. More importantly, nor does it mean that the "99 per cent" share common interests and that they can work together, in any meaningful sense, to rectify the problems as raised. (emphasis GB)

"It also does not take into account the basically dangerous aspect to a worldview like this, which is both disingenuous and bourgeois in its desire to eclipse real issues of class, management, Social Mandarins, and the true underpinning of inequality with a slogan that appears to embrace "everyone," in the classic American way. By doing so it in fact embraces and lets off the hook many, if not most, of the basic enemies of working-class and socialist or anti-capitalist politics."

As I read it, Laxer's message to us is Purge and Purify.  He, for one, thinks there is not quite enough orthodoxy inside the garden.

this continues to be a critical developmental task for many Canadians - especially 'who they aren't'..

I appreciate your response and will say, at the outset, that what I wrote may well be nonsense.  Let me, however, say what I know, beginning with an acknowledgment that my comment is not as clear as it might be.

Seems to me that Laxer is doing several things, two of which you point out:

(1)  giving us his understanding of the class nature of society;

(2)  telling us who our allies are and who they aren't.

Further, I believe that he is quite clearly cautioning us not to have anything to do . . . them!  What follows is the sentence in Laxer's column that I highlighted for emphasis:

More importantly, nor does it mean that the "99 per cent" share common interests and that they can work together, in any meaningful sense, to rectify the problems as raised. (emphasis GB)

I heard a similar caution 40 years ago on a warm summer evening in a Toronto apartment at a social event of the North York Waffle. The words "Purge and Purify" were spoken as part of that caution.  They were said (and you will I hope accept my opinion on this matter) with the intent of enforcing orthodoxy.

The intent of Michael Laxer's caution is the same as that caution given those many years ago:  Don't have anything to do with them.  It is enlightening to learn that people take that caution seriously even today.  There is nothing inappropriate with his giving such a caution; nor is there anything inappropriate in my rejecting it, which I happily do.

So, YES, we speak in a walled garden.  And though some of us are not entirely thrilled with the presence of (to say nothing of the remarks of) others of us, we can shoulder on together, if we choose to do so.  Those of us who choose otherwise resort, on occasion, to abuse, which was the subject of my previous comment.  A pity.

Some historians put their numbers at anywhere from a few thousand to a few million who will remain rabidly loyal to the regime even after their overthrow by the majority. They are the next group in the hierarchical power structure who benefit by the autocracy and will defend it at all cost and to the bitter end.