Dear Editor
A lot of folks in British Columbia are mad as hell about their government's proposed new HST (Harmonized Sales Tax), and it appears they don't plan to take it anymore. Hundereds of thousands have signed petitions, and it looks like the Campbell government may have to back down, or possibly face a referendum in the next election.
But what's so surprising about any governments' planning to add more onto the sales taxes we are already paying? For at least four decades, led by the neo-conservative movement in the United States, taxes have been increasingly shifting from incomes to spending, from corporations to households, from investments to wages, and from the very rich to the middle class.
Along with the shifting of the tax burden, there has been a corresponding shift away from government responsibility, with a resultant cutting or reducing of government services, especially those that help the poor and the weak. The theory has been that if the very rich and powerful are allowed to operate as they wish, with minimal (or no) regulation or taxation, the wealth they pile up will eventually trickle down to us ordinary folk, and we'll all be better off.
Well, all indications point to the fact that it isn't necessarily so. It is true that a lot of wealth seems to have piled up. The rich have become a lot richer. But the trickle-down part doesn't seem to have worked as well - or maybe not at all.
Economists agree that, relative to the cost of living, median wages have not gone up for 30 years although there has been a big increase in gross national product. The result has been an ever-widening gap between the few at the top and the rest of us. Many of the well-paying jobs that have kept workers in the middle class seem to be melting away, and many workers are under pressure to voluntarily reduce their wages and benefits.
The political tactic of "divide and conquer" has been working well for the neo-conservatives so far. In the United States, the ultra-right has made a science of turning people's anger against each other, rather than at the real causes of such things as the decline of the middle class. Our own neo-conservatives have been learning from them.
Maybe the public outrage against a new sales tax in British Columbia could be a sign that public anger could be starting to turn in the right direction.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
