In my view, the reason the "other leadership candidates have shied away" isn't because they don't think the rich need to pay more taxes, it's because they'd like the debate to start with what we're trying to accomplish. Instead of starting every discussion with "we need the rich to pay more taxes" and "we need to nationalize a bunch of industries", we need to start with outcome language: fair and just society, equality of opportunity, appropriate distribution of resources, efficient provision of public services.
And I have heard all of those things from the other candidates.
"outcome language: fair and just society, equality of opportunity, appropriate distribution of resources, efficient provision of public services."
You mean those rosy rhetorical nostrums you always get from the NDP?
You can fit ANYTHING into those pretty words. Including, nothing- which is often what it is.
Draw dotted line to "conscience of the country".
My point is that we needn't always jump straight to "tax those rich bastards more" if there are other ways to achieve our outcome. If all we ever do is talk about the means to the end, we sound like fixated ideologues.
I'm also not suggesting that Topp has ignored the outcome language - in fact, I think he's probably spoken about what is to be achieved by tax increases better than most of the candidates - I just think that there are good solid reasons that the other candidates haven't been pushing the tax increase language as hard. Start with the why, then talk about the how, and have all the hows on the table, is all I'm saying.
