The Fraser Institute -- which receives funding from the Koch Brothers -- released a report this week with the headline, “The average Canadian family paid $39,299 in taxes last year, more than housing, food and clothing combined.” But, Alan Freeman writes, intelligent folks should be able to spot baloney when they see it:
According to the institute, the average family spent 44.2 per cent of its income on taxes compared to 36.3 per cent on “basic necessities.” And it says that the tax bill has gone up by 2,246 per cent since 1961.
It’s quite clever, talking about taxes rather than detailing the things that taxes actually pay for. Can I give you a list? Universal free medical care, free public education, heavily subsidized universities, policing, highways, roads, parks, old age pensions, garbage collection, national defence, and the list goes on. I don’t know about you but every one of those things is a necessity as basic as clothing and rent in a modern society, though not in the institute’s eyes.
And what about that huge tax hike over time?
In fact, Canadian tax rates overall have been pretty stable over the decades and compared to other advanced countries, our tax burden is on the low side. According to the latest statistics from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the tax to GDP ratio in Canada actually decreased to 32.2 per cent in 2017 from 32.7 per cent in 2018, while the average of OECD countries rose to 34.2 per cent.
Canada is 24th out of 36 OECD in terms of tax to GDP ratio in 2017. Our tax take is higher than in the U.S. and Australia but I’m not sure that low tax ratios are something we want to blindly emulate. The lowest tax to GDP ratio is recorded by Mexico, at 16.2 per cent, the sign of a developing country with poor public services and a very weak education system. And our taxes are much lower than in places like France, Denmark and Belgium.
We'll hear a lot about taxes in the upcoming election. But what matters most is the source of the information. And how those who work for the source do the math.
Image: Fraser Valley News
6 comments:
I don't know how we are to maintain democracy when elections are blanketed with specious logic and manipulated numbers. I've always thought of democracy as governance by the informed consent of the populace. Informed consent depends on the existence of a truly free press spanning the broadest spectrum of information and political thought. The rise of the corporate media cartel is inherently undemocratic. The Fraser Institute is no more non-partisan than FOX news. It is the thumb on the butcher's scale. We should be appalled at this but we're not. We have been groomed to a state of complacency that leaves many of us utterly defenceless to these sorts of manipulation. I had thought a Liberal government would have made the restoration of a free press a top priority. I was wrong.
What does the Fraser Institute have to say about our governments subsidizing the oil industry? Nothing? Nothing about the oil industry saddling taxpayers with cleanup costs or a pipeline?
What infuriates me, Owen is that our various media give crap from the Fraser Institute and similar ilk like the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation such publicity.
Noam Chomsky noted long ago, Mound, that modern politics is all about "manufacturing consent." The Fraser Institute provides a vivid example of how it's done.
Good journalism can only function with the help of good sources, Toby. Unfortunately, there's a lot of lies being proliferated these days by untrustworthy sources.
It's been years since I last looked at the Fraser Institution(sic) annual tax burden report. It's such a dishonest document - including things like CPP payments and double-counting GST collected and paid to the government that it made me laugh. The claim that all corporate tax is ultimately passed on to the consumer shows a desperate need for a refresher course in basic economics and certainly tests the alternative claims that corporate taxes have to be reduced, everywhere and at all times.
b_nichol
Fraser's reports, b_nichol, underscore Twain's warning that "there are lies, damned lies and there are statistics."
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