Tax cuts have never delivered promised prosperity

Yes, affordability is a big problem, but a civil society is also important.

Since the 1990s in provincial and municipal elections, there has been an endless line of politicians promising tax cuts.

They promised to pay for tax cuts by eliminating government waste with the mythical “increased efficiency”.

At the same time, they promised to get rid of the regulations that once protected us, deriding them as “routes” and barriers to prosperity.

Then they have the gall to say that competition and increased efficiency of private ownership lead to “lower rates”.

Since 1995, the total accumulated inflation rate in Toronto has reached about 47 percent. Revenues have fallen far behind.

Big tax breaks for businesses were made under the cover of small tax cuts for the public.

Since 1980, the tax cuts for the rich and their companies have totaled over 50 percent.

Public services did not cause the crisis. The tax cutters did that. And also those who voted for them.

Now we have record homelessness due to evictions.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s legal empowerment of landlords has led to private investors buying up all affordable rental stock.

Food bank use is at record levels and increasing.

In Canada’s richest city and province, something is seriously wrong when governments depend on charity to keep food banks supplied so people don’t go hungry.  

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, in her first term in office, showed incredible courage to try to fix the tax relief damage with a reasonable tax increase.

Now Brad Bradford is promising a populist one-year property tax freeze if inflation runs above three percent. Essentially, Bradford is promising a tax cut. Like Ford, Bradford also uses fear as an organizing tool.

Stoke fear Brad promises to hire 1,000 more police. How will he pay for it?

Bradford would have been right at home in both Ford’s and Mike Harris’ cabinets.

Bradford’s biggest mistake is promising to turn Toronto’s non-profit public waterworks into a for-profit corporation while promising “lower rates.”

Mike Harris made the same promise of “lower rates” when he changed all hydro utilities in the province to for-profit companies. Rates went through the roof and continue to rise.

Toronto Hydro has some of the highest rates in the country.

Like the packaging of Hydro One into a for-profit corporation, the Toronto water system would eventually be sold to private investors and rates would go through the roof.

Mike Harris also promised prosperity from his tax cuts, deregulation and privatization. Harris said, “that all boats will be lifted by the tide.”

We have had so many tax cuts since the 1990s that we should be overflowing with good jobs. Instead, the unemployment rate for young people is over 14 percent.

I don’t like paying taxes. But I want my schools, hospitals and libraries to be there.

Although she is not perfect, Olivia Chow has shown that she is a brave forward-thinking mayor of Bradford Toronto was only for the rich and people with good jobs.

Brad’s privatization and cutting of public services to pay for tax cuts is nothing but social cannibalism, one group feeding another.

Brad Bradford is just the latest politician to extol the virtues of the trickle-down theory that tax cuts, deregulation (cutting red tape) and privatization bring prosperity to everyone.

Since the 1980s, trickle-down economics has proven time and time again that a false doctrine is only increasing wealth for the rich. If trickle-down tax cuts work somewhere, anywhere, we know now.

Are we going to continue to create a huge underclass of people so that we can solve our cash crisis? Now only the luxury lines are rising and all the others are sinking.

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