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I have in past columns proposed various methods of self-reducing taxes on high-wealth people and corporations to alleviate poverty in schemes that the taxpayers would design and administer themselves, as they do with bona fide charities. The tax rate would fall as the level of defined poverty in the country fell. The interests of the rich and the poor would be exactly aligned and the greatest commercial talents in society would be giving some of their attention to our most intractable problem — poverty.

I do not accept the Biblical edict that “Ye have the poor always with you.” (Matthew 26; 11). But I think we have gone as far as we usefully can with well-worn methods of the public sector using tax-paid funds to employ large numbers of people to dollop out money in pursuit of an ever-shrinking return on society’s social investment. I’m not imputing discreditable motives or incompetence to any one or group; I just don’t think we can milk any more objective progress out of the system we have and we are long past the point of diminishing returns. The fetishistic official Canadian opposition to private medicine and insistence on the fraud of equal treatment for everyone regardless of means, and the reflex to tax more and spend more on socialized medicine on the theory that the national health service will improve thereby, is bunk.

Returning to the most immediate related question, tax policy, Canada is swimming against the international trend. Canada does have good unemployment numbers, though not as astonishing as those in the United States, where there are now 1.6 million more positions to fill than unemployed people, and closing off the influx of unskilled workers illegally entering the country will assure brisk income increases for relatively low-income jobs and continued full employment. To a large extent, though it is difficult to quantify exactly, our low unemployment numbers are caused by American economic growth because almost 40 per cent of Canadian economic activity is in the commercial relationship with the United States. But the long-term consequences of Canada having higher tax rates in almost every bracket than the United States are easily predicted and potentially very damaging to this country. The departure of international companies from Canada (i.e. Barrick Gold) and the decline in foreign investment in Canada are already evident and unless they are reversed, the results will be grievous and we won’t have long to wait for them.