Transnational finance, the corporate media, and rightwing political parties are using high government deficits as pretexts for cuts to public employment and social programs.
tax increase
Andrea Horwath's bold call for higher taxes on the rich
It's hard to fight a class war without a billionaire onside. Hence Andrea Horwath's dilemma.
The Ontario NDP leader has thrown down a gauntlet of sorts -- demanding, or at least politely requesting, that Dalton McGuinty's Liberal minority impose a new slightly higher tax rate on Ontarians making more than $500,000 a year.
The move is a small toe-in-the-water toward restoring the progressivity that's been stripped out of the Canadian tax system. But it's also a bold unlacing of the stays on the political bodice that has confined mainstream Canadian politicians for the past few decades.
Of course, U.S. President Barack Obama is paving the way.
Deficit hysteria: Poor suffer most in deficit wars
One of the few iconic tales of Canadian politics revolves around how Paul Martin, as Liberal finance minister in the 1990s, wrestled the deficit to the ground with his bare hands.
While there's some truth to it, the legend sidesteps an important question: was Martin's ruthless "hell-or-high-water" deficit-slashing really the only thing that would have worked? Could a defter touch have solved the deficit problem without laying waste to much of our social infrastructure in the process?
All this is worth raising now that we've entered into another era of deficit hysteria, with governments and the business community making deficit elimination their top priority and shunting aside almost every other goal.
