A group of doctors wants the federal and provincial governments to tax the rich more, with a misleading slogan of ‘Tax us. Canada’s worth it’
One might ask how this is misleading when they are asking for themselves to be taxed more, but they are really asking for ALL the rich to be taxed more. They make it sound like since they are rich and want to be taxed more, that it is the right thing to do, and that the rich in general agree.
All this really shows is that they don’t have a good understanding of economics. Anyone who has studied Austrian Economics knows that much of the money spent by the government is wasted and not spent efficiently. The article from which I got this information states that the federal government would get 3.5 billion from the plan, with Ontario making 1.7 billion itself. With the way governments spend money, the country would not get 3.5 billion in value, and since we don’t choose how the government spends the money it extracts, it might not even go to the programs the doctors want funded
These doctors are stating that they have extra money to spare, and this means it is alright for ALL rich people to be taxed more. But who is to say that all of the rich have this extra money? Maybe some rich people are earning a high revenue due to a business they started from money they originally borrowed, and are struggling to make the payments as it is. Why should they be punished for starting a business and helping grow the economy? There are also wealthy Canadians that use their extra money to invest in new businesses, or to expand a business already in place in the hopes of earning profits. If these people are taxed more, it means less jobs are created, and less growth in the economy (or a greater decline).
In my interpretation of what they are saying, they want to give more money to the government to help fund its programs. I would like to see this put to the test. Have the government set up a branch of Revenue Canada that is financed by money donated voluntarily. It’s objective will be to take in all donations, like a charity, from people who want to donate more of their money towards taxes. I’m willing to bet that most of these doctors would not be on the list of contributors, even if we were able to stipulate what programs we wanted to fund with this donated money
This would especially be true if these doctors have ulterior motives. Since the programs they see needing this extra tax money includes health care, it’s very possible some of them want the government to have more money from taxes so they can negotiate higher salaries through their unions.
Effectively doctors within the Canadian Government monopoly health care system known as “single payer” are employees of the government. How credible do you think a group of highly paid bureaucrats with gold plated pensions and benefits would be if they put out a statement saying “raise taxes”?
Of course these doctors should be careful what they wish for, people might begin to wonder how doctors, through the monopoly licensing system that the government enforces, have become so rich. Hey, they might find that Canadians might actually want a little competition to drive costs down and force the doctors to provide services at a free market price as opposed to the one set by the government, that enables doctors to be in of the the highest paid sectors in the Canadian Economy.
It reminds me of when the CEO of Wal-Mart said minimum wages should be increased, and everyone thinking that he was saying this out of the desire to see workers better off, and that Wal-Mart was on the side of it’s employees. The real motive was to stifle competition so that Wal-Mart keeps more of the market share. See this article by Lew Rockwell for more information on the matter.
Regardless of whether they want to give money out of the goodness of their heart or want higher salaries, the point is that government spending does not help the economy. Private spending does. Remember that for every dollar the government spends, it’s a minimum of a dollar that the people no longer spend; it’s more than a dollar if the government first borrows the money.
Leadership to Freedom 