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I guess you've summed it up better than I was able to, Tommy. But it's tough to have these discussions without it becoming a "for or vs. the NDP" diversion.
By arguing that we need to slowly lower it and replace it with a fair tax system, instead of increasing it, as the HST does.
As I pointed out before. Just saying.
We'll I've said repeatedly on this thread that I think the way to handle it is to talk about 'fair taxes' and replacing sales taxes with more progressive forms of taxation. It was a mantra of Ed Broadbent when he was leader and I believe it is still NDP policy. I appear to be talking to myself. Much easier unionist to debate a hypothetical bogey man instead of listening to what people are actually saying.
This thread was started because the CAW President said fighting the HST wasn't worth the time of the left. Unionist said he agreed with that. Once he didn't get the answers he liked, he went on to try to turn this into a parsing of NDP policy. But on the broad issue, Lewenza is dead wrong.
Unionist, that is exactly what you are doing. You started by stating you agree with Lewenza for arguing that the HST is not worth the time of progressives, but when that didn't go well, you have tried to switch the goal posts into a fight about the NDP.
Jeez that's the first time that has ever happened
Because the idea of taxes in itself isn't bad, is no reason for the left to the support a bad tax. The HST is a bad tax. I don't care how you present it. A tax that costs someone on a fixed income the same amount as a billionaire is a bad tax. And tax credits in April do not replace dollars out of your pocket for heating, electricity, telephone, transportation, and basic utilities today. This, once more, represents a shift of the tax burden from corporations to the people who were once citizens and voters and who are now only ever passive consumers.
It is disturbing that unions and various other so-called "progressive" organizations are supporting this tax. A VAT is a tax for an economy that doesn't produce anything but only consumes. It is a tax for a retail/service economy which is an economy marked by low wages, insufficient hours, few rights, but high debt.
Lou, you're supposed to be a moderator - so please, start at the top of the thread, and see where I said anything against the NDP, or even who raised it first. Please show me how I tried to switch those goal posts. You may want to refer to Ken's posts, by the way. I'm serious, Lou. I agree with Lewenza that this is not the right campaign to be waging - unless (my take) we clearly make it about progressive taxation and deal with fundamentals.
Moderators get to play in the thick of it too. Not like michelle didn't on a regular basis. Its hard to do both, but if people want to put in the work, they can.
I don't see any need for moderation at the moment, so why shouldn't Lou get in there?
I am a moderator, and I've been reading this thread very carefully before posting, something I've already caught you very much not doing. I guess I have to do this again.
For starters, I've never claimed that you made any statements against the NDP, only that you keep trying to move the discussion onto the NDP after it was about the importance or not of the left/labour movement/progressives taking on the HST.
In post #3, you posed the following question:
A good question, BA addressed it in post #5, and I addressed it in post #7.
In post #8, you claimed to not hear me calling on the NDP to address sales taxes more broadly, even though I did just that in post #7. In other words unionist, I agreed with you.
In post #16, Ken agreed with me that the NDP should broaden the frame in which it talks about these issues.
No one, including the NDP partisans on this board, is claiming the NDP should oppose the HST in isolation. I don't disagree with you on that point, and I don't think anyone else in this thread does either.
However, I do disagree with you when you say:
And that's what I've been trying to debate with you.
The NDP stuff is a sideshow you keep raising.
It's distracting, and it damages your credibility.
You should drop it.
Lou TORCHED Unionist's ass. He Torched it!
Tamaran, you are jumping into the middle of a very vigourous discussion among a group of people with no small amount of creds in the field with this? You comment is unhelpful, a unthought out, unneccesarily provacative, and a distraction. Please refrain.
Moderators are allowed to mix it up in debates too.
Maybe you have some inside information, but I don't see where Lewenza generally stands on that divide... if he identifies it at all.
He's saying its THIS policy diff with the NDP, and I do not yet see sufficient reason to read more into than that.
You must live in a different Ontario than I do. For the most part a Hudak governmen scares me no more or less than a continued McGuinty government. Enough with the theory have a look what the Liberals have actually done in Ontario over the last number of years. Sure the rhetoric is kindler and gentler, but on issue after issues the McGuinty Liberals have been a caretaker government of the Harris agenda.
Time will eventually tell if Ontario's labour movement shares your opinion, or if significant elements adopt a strategic voting stand in 2011.
As a person who watches closely any hard studies or pollings that break down wh votes for whom, I think its safe to say that we'll never really know how union members vote. Which wont stop anyone from making pronouncements.
And even if its pretty clear that union members vote for the Liberals, there are a number of more compelling pushes towards that than observers perceptions of what they consider to be strategic voting. Because you know [or may in the future know] lots of people who are highly motivated by fear of the reurn of the PCs, does not make it a a broadly operative trend.
Until the ONDP gets a lot more credible, a lot more of everybody- union members included- is going to simply say "I'd rather have the Liberals than the NDP." Period.
Where?
That would be: if it turns out there is evidence that union members vote more for the Liberals, then ..... [the likely suspects, generally speaking, are/aren't _______]
Then they will have been giving an anti-working person government a free ride, because McGuinty has done almost nothing different than Harris and Eves did except have nicer rhetoric, where it counts, on real things, not nice speeches, this government has been nothing but a caretaker government for the Harris agenda, so they will be fighting against a boogey man that is already in their house.
The Libs, BA, took over from the Cons because enough people could see the province was bankrupting itself with lower tax offerings to all. Just as we now see Steve has been doing up Ottawa way. The GST would bring in another $12 B annually if he has not used it as a come-on to those who are now going to pay more than the $250 a year saved (average income) just in interest on the debt.
McGuinty is not implementing HST out of some masochistic drive, his back is to the fiscal wall. If he can't show a way out of this mess in two years time, he's gone.
What New Democrats must ask is, where in hell is the loot coming from for our book balancing?
I put it this way because I have not seen much discussion about the collapsing medical care and long term care for the aged in this province....let alone the probably $40 B needed just to catch up with infrastructure collapse. And what is needed to extend aid for education at both ends of the age spectrum, etc. etc.
Concerns for "appearances" out there on the hustings should perhaps involve balancing of books. Lewenza is clearly concerned with that because his membership is concerned with it. You know, the unionized worker!!!! He has kids to educate and a pension fund to build, and municipal taxes, besides all the others. He is not looking at this except as one who does the math in his head when there is a play from pure theory.
This isn't about balancing the Ontario budget. The HST will actually leave the Ontario government with less money in its coffers (since the tax cuts for business outweigh the additional revenue). That's why the feds needed to kick in their $4.3 billion in "incentives".
And under McGuinty there will be a loss of $2.3 billion in public spending between 2010 and 2012. It's their only alternative under the neoliberalorama.
George, there isn't a single tax change that the Liberals reversed. They brought in their health tax, but that was just put to general revenues. As Scott points out above the HST package will actually cost the Ontario treasury. Some estimates I have seen, and they can only be estimates at this point, suggest for every new dollar in taxation through the HST, the entire package will actually shortchange the budget by $1.05.
This is why I have said repeatedly that anyone who supports social spending, even just remaining constant, let alone seeing some increases in needed areas should be loudly and publicly opposing this plan.
And besides I will take no progressive values lessons from a government that fritter's away a billion dollars on nothing beside enriching their cronies at eHealth. A scandal that should have caused the Liberals to be driven from the language of progressives for a generation and is likely only the very tippy-top of the iceberg.
Is it possible that Lewenza and the CAW isn't opposing the HST because they know the organizations that employ CAW workers are probably for adopting the HST? This seems rational, to me. Lewenza is not a political leader - he is the spokesperson for an organization with a specific agenda.
Lewenza is certainly privy to more information on industry matters than any of us. If a piece of business taxation is favourable to his organization's direct employers, then does he not have an obligation to do what's best for CAW workers?
That's not an unfair take on it, Farmpunk. And who could blame anyone in manufacturing, let alone the leader of the CAW trying to scrape and claw any advantage that they can these days?
But, if that's the best light we can put on it, it's still rather short sighted. Giving the employer a tax break by taking it out of our pockets is a roundy bout way of taking yet another concession.
Carl Sagan warned that the "slippery slope" or "thin edge of the wedge" argument is a falacious one: taken to logical conclusion, any direction taken can be said to be the "slippery slope" or "thin edge of the wedge".
Be that as it may, I have to point out that the people of Canada have been granting concessions to corporations in terms of taxation, of law, and, substantially in wages and benifits, all to the cause of employment.
What, I ask, is today's unemployment rate?
It seems a flawed strategy-- from a worker's perspective. These concessions aren't getting the desired result.
I don't really think there are more than marginal advantages in the HST to a manufacturer that does not sell much of production in Ontario. And all businesses get a saving out of the simpler administration of the HST.
I have never understood the argument of simpler administration. Administration, so to speak, is a computer program that aids retailers and businesses. The numbers are just changed and the invoices are filed as always. It's simple math that even a pen and paper book-keeper - if one still exists - could add in the roughly the same time as the dual taxes.
None of which really matters to Lewenza, unless the CAW books are in need of simplification.
The next three elections, municipal, provincial and federal, will be about balancing budgets. It is going to get hard as hell for progressives not to work social group against social group. Lewenza sees this as a potential wedge issue to be avoided. I think we should run with the public pension issue and incorporate this one as a source of funding... make it everyone's bloody goal, and work out the details of how to make it pay as we go. And suddenly social democrats will be "responsible economists."
BTW I know Sam Gindin. He does not support the anti-HST campaign at all.
I think you're right about the political implications - this is building the Right.
I've been absent from here for a while. Frankly I've been frustrated that I haven't been able to get my point across. I'm currently doing research on taxation and can't deal with stuff right now - but I blame myself for this. I see where BA is coming from but a lot of people on this board seem to be totally unaware of how social democracies fund things. That doesn't mean McGuinty is some sort of Swedish-style socialist, but the issue is the business and personal tax cuts - not this sideshow about an "unfair tax grab." The idea that ordinary people are "overtaxed" is a myth of the populist right.