AllTheConsumptionThat
FitsVille
Interesting perspective in FABula's Globe piece and her blogpost from Los Angeles where an increase in the sales tax is already being used to pay for transit improvements:
...(While in Los Angeles I) had a chance to interview one of the architects of the coalition that helped get 67-per-cent approval for a half-per-cent sales tax in LA in 2008 to pay for $36 billion in transit improvements.
Denny Zane is one of those great old-fashioned American leftists, still fighting for the people. In his downtown office building, complete with a giant photo of a young Cesar Chavez, he talked for an hour about how to win the transit fight and why it’s important. Interestingly, there was a lot more focus, when he talked, about how important transit is to working-class people than I hear in debates around Vancouver (where the left and the NIMBY right seem to view it currently as some evil developer plot)...
All of that sounds good and is hard to argue with on a number of levels.
But one has to realize that in California, and especially SoCal, all pretence of a progressive tax system is long gone.
Have we really been pushed that far down the Prop 13 rabbit hole by the longtail of the Golden Era?
And, as someone who crosses Cambie, twice, everyday in the high '20's, even if it is not an evil developer plot, why shouldn't they pay too?
The developers I mean.
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The International Criminal Court Ruling
1 hour ago
13 comments:
My concern about adding a 1/2% to the pst in order to fund transit is what guarantee is there that the 1/2% will be used exclusively for transit? Back in the 1990s the NDP imposed PST on lawyers' fees (and no other professionals) supposedly to fund legal aid. That didn't happen. The collected tax went into general revenue.
I heard for years, after the BCL were elected in 2001, that getting rid of the PST on legal fees "was on the radar". Yeah, right.
Lawyers still have to collect PST from their clients while other professionals, some of whom are capable of competing with lawyers, don't. I guess the issue of PST on legal fees is "off the radar" now.
It is interesting/depressing how those with power co-opt language. It is not 'fair' to use property tax because only property owners pay. Nor is a gas tax 'fair' because it 'penalises' drivers. It is 'fair' to use the sales tax because everyone pays. As sympathetic as I am to progressive municipal politicians who are trying to improve transit services it bugs me no end to see them cloak this in the language of 'fairness'.
(I don't wish to provoke a fight with the previous comment, but I brought in the legal services tax and is still like it :).
GC--
Don't think it's a provocation - more like a discussion.
_____
EG--
If it had gone to fund legal aid, would you feel differently?
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If the money had gone to fund legal aid I would have been delighted.
The legal aid budget was far larger than the legal service tax revenue at the time. As successive liberal governments restrained the growth in legal aid the revenue surpassed the expenditure. But it is true that the tax was never strictly linked to spending. It's an interesting philosophical debate. Taxes are definitely more palatable when one can see directly where the dollars go. But, ultimately, it could skew priorities in ways that done make sense. A well funded legal aid system and cuts to welfare, education and health care for example. To be honest I didn't worry much about it because I never envisioned that legal aid would be cut so much. And it's a pretty progressive t=ax anyway :)
Sorry for typos etc. In a bar.
The pst on legal services was introduced in 1992 when Mike Harcourt was Premier.
Yep. I was Finance Minister. My idea. You can blame me.
Thanks folks--
Dare I suggest it...
That was a more entertaining and enlightening discussion than the great majority of those that occur in most sessions today's ledge.
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SH
Meanwhile... St. Christy's travelling to India to teach her son "empathy":
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/12/christy-clark-son-going-india-boxing-day-build-school-rural-village/
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