Death and …

Russell Pangborn

Benjamin Franklin after participating in the formulation of the U.S. constitution had great hope for its permanency. But he worried about times like the 2020 and now the 2024 American election where the document was in danger of being dislodged by an autocrat. Reflecting on the survival of these codified fundamental principals through the ages he opined, “The only thing we can be sure of in this life is death and taxes.”

This wasn’t a new phrase. Citizens have been complaining about those two inevitabilities we all face well before this statesman was born. 

Some CFIC readers may prefer a root canal to any extended discussion of taxes, but hopefully they will bear with me. We will look at who is out there convincing us that taxes are bad and any examples where taxes have been good. Also, how does the negative message get packaged with fake academia and seemingly unrelated ideas like Christian nationalism. Finally, let’s close off this discussion with a tie to CFIC core beliefs.  

If you are passionate about doing something regarding climate change, you may have noticed the right wing has convinced too many people of the nefarious nature of a carbon tax. Ironically this was originally a conservative idea of a fair marketplace strategy. But, like the dog who chases their tail, they couldn’t resist demonizing it when utilized by a non-conservative government.

The billionaires amongst us in North America cannot resist using loopholes, off-shore shenanigans, and lobbyists to reduce their taxes. Most importantly they need to convince the rest of us to despise taxes. One way is to fund pseudo-educational organizations with a tilted agenda. Somehow climate change, Christian nationalism, anti-LGBT and other far-Right ideas are also intertwined with many of these suspect educational outfits. In the U.S. there is the billionaire-funded Prager University Foundation (PragerU). It doesn’t actually confer degrees, but you get to listen to videos that disprove accepted knowledge on climate change and pretend you are on your way to a real degree as you watch. If you are a student, you are encouraged to join over 6,500 college and high school students to promote an ideology that embraces keeping the minimum wage low, Christian nationalism, and the right to bear arms.

In Canada there is a rightwing version of this. 

Yes, I’m looking at you, Fraser Institute. 

This institute, funded by the Koch brothers amongst others, publishes papers that suggest, for example, that there has been no compelling evidence of the dangers of climate change. The Koch family, with an estimated $127.3 billion, have spread money around to deny climate change and to influence tax legislation. Fraser Institute also has opposed Canadian gun control laws. To get a better picture of this organization, you can refer to its Wikipedia page. Fraser Institute may not be a carbon copy of PragerU, but there are a lot of similarities.    

Linda McQuaig recently pointed to Fraser and its stance on taxes in a Toronto Star article. The Fraser Institute has used its considerable clout to convince Canadians that they are paying too much in taxes. Yet Canadians are paying less in taxes than the very happy Nordic and European Union countries. The rich in North America are happy to fund Fraser’s propaganda that Canadian taxes are a burden and need to be reduced. Do they? Maybe a proportionate fair increase is better for all of us.

If we look at the middle ages, we see taxes paid for wars, the comfort of the king, and some public works. They did not grant a serf admittance to higher education or the best doctors to stitch up a wound. No one needed a special institute to convince the peons to hate taxation. 

For those modern countries overseas that have a higher tax rate, the peasants can now attend university free of charge, they have little- or no-cost surgery and dental care and the transportation infrastructure is generally good. Maybe it is time to retire the word tax with all of its pejorative connotations because tax funds are spent differently now. We should be paying a universal healthcare contribution or a complementary post-secondary education supplement. The government should be able to rephrase the vernacular and place ads with my tax dollars to counter the billionaire class funding a message that saves them from paying their fair share.

In CFIC’s mission, vision, and values it is stated that we “support people, organizations and governments to make evidence-based decisions that improve lives in Canada and around the world.” CFIC also states “Answers to questions are best found by looking at sound evidence, critical thinking, and robust dialogue.”

I like the evidence we get from Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. They are apparently the five happiest countries in the world despite carrying a heavier tax than we pay in North America. Contentment comes from having a safer, more enriched environment.

Remember, the idea is not to just raise your taxes and have the same safety nets and services. It is to raise everyone’s taxes with a result similar to the happiest countries in the world. My vacation time this summer was spent visiting Reykjavik, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, and Copenhagen … happy places. I was impressed by transportation systems, the science centre in Copenhagen, and so much more. Actually, all the people I met did not appear to be any happier than Canadians or Americans. But any time I asked about the services available to them, they were proud of them and aware their higher taxes were a good trade-off for their contentment.

Raising taxes and providing more services is a good idea. Removing some of the loopholes available to the wealthiest and making them pay a fair share has always been a chore because their billions provides the power to thwart us with complexity-laden loopholes and expensive accountants and lawyers to thread those needles. Convincing us that fairly taxing them is a bad idea is part of the playbook. There will always be a tug of war between the ultra rich and governments wanting them to pair fair taxes on the money they made off of the country’s citizens. In North America, the billionaires are winning … less so in the Nordic countries. 

At minimum, we need to take a hard look at the death of our healthcare by a thousand cuts versus a higher tax rate on the mega rich. If our taxes go up marginally and we get a better life for all, then it is worth it.