Five Are

Conservatives and Environmentalism

Why aren’t more conservatives also environmentalist? If you were to suggest to a conservative in this country that Canadians should just give away their oil or lumber, the level of disagreement you’d receive would be somewhere between vehement and violent, but that’s exactly what we do with our air and water quality. Our fresh air and fresh water are extremely valuable natural resources, but nobody is profiting from them and everybody is losing from their unimpeded exploitation.

There are plenty of conservative-friendly solutions to these problems — Pigovian taxes (especially over corporate and income taxes), reformed property and tort laws, cap and trade — but there seems to be very little will from conservatives to implement or even discuss them.

This Isn’t the Tax Fight You’re Looking For

One of the main arguments from HST opponents in British Columbia is that it unduly affects poorer, lower income families. Sales taxes are both a larger percentage of total tax burden and a larger percentage of total income for lower income households. This is a bad thing, right?

The problem with this argument is that nobody is arguing otherwise. It’s a straw-man. We all know sales taxes are, technically, regressive; it’s well accepted. You won’t find an economist in the world who would argue otherwise (although he may grouse and grumble about the terms regressive and progressive themselves).

What HST opponents don’t seem willing to accept or admit is that the PST is no less “regressive”. Going back to it isn’t going to magically make consumption taxes any less unfair to the poor. The only reason PST was less of a tax burden for (some) people was its bloated list of exceptions: restaurants, hair cuts, bicycles, shoe repair, movie tickets, golf club memberships, estheticians, used adult clothing purchases under $100, camp sites, interior designers, junk food, and on, and on. Without these exemptions consumers face the exact same tax burden under the PST and the HST, except under PST businesses have an incentive to embed their tax costs into their sticker price; whereas, HST removes this incentive.

If you want to fight for fairer taxes for the poor, the HST isn’t the fight you want. We accept consumption taxes because, despite their unfair appearance, they are less harmful than other forms of taxation, including income tax and corporate income tax. We lessen the burden of consumption tax on the poor through very careful exemptions for essentials and rebate programs.

If you want to fight against sales tax in general, by all means, go ahead. HST still isn’t the fight you’re looking for. There is no reason to believe that a newly established PST would include the same ridiculous, bloated list of exemptions. It could very well end up being the exact same burden on consumers as well as an additional burden on businesses.

What Twitter Needs

Twitter really needs a way to read or visualize arguments between two or more people. Twitter debates are useless noise on my timeline as it stands.

An Unnecessary Election

Stephen Harper has been kind enough to remind us throughout his campaign that this is an unnecessary election, triggered by an “opportunistic coalition”. I should be thankful to have someone like Mr. Harper around to tell me which of our elections are necessary because I must have misunderstood the longstanding constitutional convention which says that when a confidence motion fails either a general election is called or another party is given the opportunity to form the government. Apparently this isn’t the case.

Harper still does not understand how a minority government works despite leading one for five years now. His party had 143 seats at the dissolution of parliament; the opposition parties combined had 160. Those opposition members all voted yea on a non-confidence motion which generally, in Westminster style parliaments, leads to the dissolution of parliament. Which part of that is unnecessary?