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COMMENTARY
April 20, 2011
Reaching
Self-interest is a beautiful thing. Or at least, it can take beautiful forms. Sanctity, for instance, could be presented as self-interest in its highest form. But let's not go there just yet.We seem to have been born with crude self-interest, fully installed. The smallest babe has a wonderfully acute, if very narrow sense of it. (Have you heard one crying lately?) As he grows older, his self-interest matures. It is no longer simply the teat he cries for; his wants in life broaden and flower; his methods for obtaining what he wants unfold in a rich variety of behaviour. He learns to distinguish enemies from friends; real gains from illusory ones; to make sacrifices today, for tomorrow. Or that is the theory. It applies to politics. It is not my business to tell gentle reader how to vote. My business is only to bring to his attention things he may have overlooked. Has he, for instance, remembered to consult his self-interest? In my arguably humble opinion, a great deal of bad politics comes from voters who fail to do so, thoughtfully. They take a politician's simplifying claims at face value. They do not do the necessary homework -- the few minutes of careful thinking that will reveal where their own interests lie. They are too trusting. Demagogues prey upon trusting people. Let us for example take Jack Layton's promise to raise corporate taxes. He insinuates that Stephen Harper and company are protecting the rich. True, anyone may look about and see evidence of corporations that own more than he does. (And those banks, hoo! Do they make profits!) The average "middle class" person (meaningless term in current political rhetoric) is poorer than a corporate boss. Let's take some from those fat cats. Less for them, and more for me. Jack is looking out for my interests! Now consider for a moment. The Canadian economy, though somewhat battered in the recent international recession, is doing better than most, and attracting investors from places like the United States. It is odd, we pay higher personal taxes than our American cousins. Why would they want to put their money here? Is it mere paranoid fear of Barack Obama? Or could it be because we have lower corporate taxes? Could it be that lower corporate taxes provide us with a competitive edge? I am not an economist, nor even an investor, but from what I've heard from real, live, clever, and moneyed Americans, that is exactly why they're looking north. It is because we have a government regime, at present, that is not quite as stupid as the one in Washington, D.C. If we really want to stick it to the rich, we should get them where they live. Intelligent self-interest requires that we stick it to them not before they have re-invested their profits (which incidentally creates jobs, jobs, jobs), but after. Go for the money they take home: get them with personal taxation. That's our national strategy, and it works. Close loopholes in the income taxes, make them more transparent, less complicated, and lower across the board. Make it harder and harder to game the system -which only the rich can afford to do, thanks to highpriced tax advice. These are among the things Jim Flaherty has been doing (remember income trusts?) and which the Harper government proposes to continue doing. Close loopholes, while lowering taxes, so people -including especially the rich -will actually pay the taxes. Moreover, keep tilting the system, beyond taxing income, to taxing consumption, so even the less wealthy will save and invest. These are among the ambitions of a sane tax strategy, and I am sorry to say, only the Conservative Party is enunciating anything like them. Money is just money at some level, the ultimate fungible, and all taxes are economically destructive. But some taxes are more destructive than others, and corporate taxes are among the most destructive known to man. Big as it may be, a company that is unprofitable will sooner or later close down, or be taken over by the government and maintained as a museum at our expense. Meanwhile it will be shrinking: and that means fewer jobs, jobs, jobs. Enlightened self-interest progresses through stages, to the highest wherein we withdraw from the world, and turn our full attention to futurity, or so my Church teaches. But here in the secular "below," where we are merely choosing between wealth and poverty, between economic security and insecurity, between whether our children will inherit a functioning economy or inherit the wind, we must discern whom our friends are. Our enemies are Jack Layton, and other jack-politicians of that ilk, preying upon our ignorance of how things work, and speaking as if there were no "down side" to the advanced, nanny-state policies they propose. As if everybody's self-interest had remained at the baby level, where everything reduces to reaching for the teat. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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