Angry in the Great White North

Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff is going to raise our taxes!

Federal taxes must go up to pay off Canada's increasing debt, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said today.
The challenge, he said, is to ensure the economic recovery is not hurt by raising the taxes, Ignatieff told about 100 people at a Cambridge Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting.

"We will have to raise taxes," but not at the expense of hurting the recovery from this recession. He added that "an honest politician" cannot exclude a tax hike as an option.

"I am not going to load a deficit onto your children or mine," Ignatieff said.

Who actually falls for that line?

OK, we incur a deficit because of stimulus spending during this recession.  The Liberals lusted after this sort of budget, so they can't complain about it now.

How do we pay it back?

Michael Ignatieff says we raise taxes now, so that our children don't suffer.

I thought this guy was smart.  I guess I was wrong.

If the government raises my taxes, then I have less money to use to raise my children, and so my children suffer.

Duh!

On the other hand, I have four kids.  In about twenty years, they'll all be working.  Right now, with my wife taking care of them, I'm the only one bringing in a paycheque.

So doesn't it make sense to wait on paying down the deficit?  If I wait a while, two things happen.  First, the recession ends and economic activity picks up and government revenues recover, without raising taxes themselves.  Second, as time goes by, more people are entering the workforce (like my wife once the kids are in school full time, or my kids themselves in the fullness of time), increasing government revenues again, and again without raising taxes.

And if taxes have to be raised, why not share the burden among many more people over time?  Indeed, by keeping taxes lower, many people will be encouraged to have larger families since they can afford them, ensuring a healthy-sized tax-paying workforce for the future.

That's the key, of course.  This only works if the population grows, and in particular, the working population.  The working population shrinks if people don't have kids and simply grow old.  Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper are both family men, with two kids each.  They both understand that it is the nature of things that we take on some of the burdens accrued by our parents, and that in turn, our children will have to bear the weight of some of the decisions we've been forced to make.

That's ok.  That's one of the reason to have children.  They're young and strong and if you raise them right, they'll be ready and willing to accept responsibilities (as we did), solve old lingering problems (as we did), and face down new problems (as we did), finally to hand off the long term issues to their kids, in turn.

The bottom line is that our kids our going to be paying for this deficit spending that the Liberals so desperately wanted, whether they do it now or later.  Suggesting that he can shield them from the effects of Liberal-style deficit spending is just a load of crap.  Tax me now and my kids suffer.  Tax later, and they'll still pay.  If Michael Ignatieff was being honest, he would recognize that the challenge is how to best share the burden of the deficit over the next few years.

Maybe he's suggesting that a period of high taxation is better than spreading out repayment over many years, or even decades.

I think you can make a persuasive case for that.  I'd like to hear what that case is.  But I certainly know that framing that approach as one that will somehow shield my kids from the effects of high taxes is nonsense.

It's the worst type of emotionally manipulative fear-mongering aimed at parents who, understandably, are worried about their children's wellbeing.  People say Michael Ignatieff is some sort of public policy genius.  He's no genius. He's disingenuous.

Maybe the Liberals should have spent a little more time looking for Stephane Dion's replacement, instead of settling for this faux intellectual.

But then...: Of course, Liberals don't like kids.  They also assume most Canadians don't like kids.  That's why they're so eager to help us get out from under the onerous task of raising those little monsters by giving us an ultra-expensive nationalized government-run daycare system.  But then paying for such a system is also a burden we'd have to bear...unless we stopped having so many kids.