Raising taxes in a recession

What is now happening in the city of Toronto is a good indication of what will happen in the U.S. when Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled congress really gets going. Toronto serves as a good example of how socialists run things during an economic turndown. To give you a hint, it’s pretty much the same way as government business is conducted during good times, with ever increasing taxes and spending.

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Mayor David Miller announced last week that property taxes will be increase by 4% this year. As his critics point out, with the increase in water rates and new taxes and user fees such as the vehicle registration tax, the effective tax jump is closer to 10%. The people who pay the bulk of these taxes are, of course the ordinary middle class people who contribute the most to society. These are also the same people who are worried about losing their jobs or are watching their savings dwindle as the economy sinks deeper and deeper into recession. David Miller and his fellow travelers couldn’t care less about the ordinary hard working person.           The mayor is a dyed in the wool socialist and, to his credit, has never pretended to be anything else. He is not Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who promised not to raise taxes and then imposed the largest tax increase in the province’s history. Nor is David Miller Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the sense that he has never belonged to a political party with the word “conservative” in its name.  Despite the fact that municipalities are not legally entitled to run deficits, many people seem shocked that the socialist council would raise taxes in the current economic climate.           Since becoming mayor in 2003, taxes have been raised in each and every year. Before this year, the mayor had promised to limit tax increases to the rate of inflation and if by some chance the increase was greater than the actual inflation rate, the mayor would rationalize that “it was close”.           The reality is that Miller cares more about ideology than he does about the ordinary hard working residents of the city of Toronto. He is completely indifferent to their problems. When other governments were devising stimulus packages in an attempt to spend their way out of difficult economic times, Miller was bragging about his vision of Toronto’s waterfront. He cares more about global warming than he does about whether or not city residents will be able to afford his tax increases. As an example, the city recently decided to spend a quarter of a million dollars to study weather and the effect that climate change will have on the city. Nonsense at the best of times, it is a perfect illustration of how far down the list the concerns of the ordinary taxpayer really is.           Miller and the council simply lack the will to rein in spending. It is too difficult to make significant budget cuts so they rationalize that all the expenditures are necessary. They of course are to the extent that the majority of council is beholden to special interest groups. They care about the homeless; they care about immigrants; they care about trees; they care about the environment. They care about everything except the plight of ordinary individuals, the ones whose money is confiscated to attempt to make this city work.           Most of all, David Miller is in the pocket of the city’s underworked and overpaid union workers. This is where the real cost to the taxpayer comes in and where the ideology is the strongest. If the analysts are correct and we are into a long economic slump, “the worst since the Great Depression”, labour contracts that the city has with its workers will be the main factor that will lead to the complete decline of the city.           Americans would do well to watch Toronto in order to understand what is in store for them under the current administration. As Newsweek put it so well – we’re all socialists now.

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