Choice Is Important
(Cross posted to the CTV Election Blog)
Apparently, the Conservatives just can't catch a break. Having followed the advice of their detractors to "moderate" themselves, it now seems as though that wasn't quite enough: what they really need to do is take the final step. That's right: they need to run on exactly the same policies as their opponents.
I am not exaggerating. Try as I might, I can't think of any other way to interpret the latest criticisms of the Tories' proposed tax cuts. Allegedly, they are "bribes" - conjuring up images – ironically – of envelopes of cash in Italian restaurants.
Characterizing a tax cut as a bribe requires some interesting premises. A tax cut is a reduction in money that's being taken from you, not a transfer of money from some independent source. The two are very distinct phenomenon. To suggest that it is an inherently controversial idea to cut taxes, is to imply that the normal state of affairs is governmental confiscation of private property, and the onus lies on the individual to give a compelling reason why they deserve it back.
This is not to say there isn’t room for policy debate about taxes as a tradeoff to putting the money towards something else, i.e. the government spending it. Nor does it mean we should always cut taxes, all the time. But my point is that a tax cut is in fact the opposite of a bribe; it is only the return of something that was already yours. It is the opposite of saying “we will direct money collected from some people towards programs that will benefit other people”.
Of course, you’ll find few critics of tax cuts willing to characterize government spending as bribery, even though it would be a much closer approximation. To do so would destroy a key reason for preferring one over the other. After all, if they’re both ways of bribing, well, what’s the difference?
Broadly speaking, there are two approaches a government may take in formulating a policy. In pursuit of a particular objective, it can spend collected revenues directly on programs, or it can return that money to individual people. Obviously, there is a wide spectrum within each approach – for example, both government programs and tax cuts can be universal or targeted, temporary or permanent – but the underlying philosophy of each approach is starkly different. Indeed, belief in one or the other is part of what determines whether ones views are "liberal" or "conservative" in the first place.
Which brings me back to my original point: the insistence that the Conservative Party become more ‘moderate’ is nothing more than a request that it succumb to the liberal vision of government: that if something needs to be done, only the state can do it, or at the very least, that the state can do it best. It’s a suggestion that the debate shouldn’t be about whether the government needs to be involved in the funding and delivery of a this or that program, but an automatic acceptance that it does. Then, presumably, the debate can shift to the really important question: how much should it be funded? And away the parties can go, tripping over themselves to try and out-promise each other in terms of funding.
Take the Conservative platform on child care, for example. Rather than offer, as both the Liberals and NDP have, to have the government itself deliver child care, the Conservatives propose to give a partial subsidy directly to parents.
Foul! Cry their opponents. That's out of bounds! Which begs the question: what sort of policy choice are they supposed to offer? The only other alternative is to yield to the Liberal/NDP orthodoxy – i.e. of course the government should be delivering child care! – and then let the bidding war commence. The Liberals promise $5 billion? We promise 10! NDP says 15? Raise you to 20! And so on. (Also note that in this case, the subsidy isn’t even a tax cut; can you imagine the outrage if the Tories had instead promised that?)
None of this is to say that everyone should like the Conservative policy and spare it from criticism. Far from it; politics works best when people are presented with a diverse array of policy options from which to choose one they fancy most. But it does say a great deal about people whose best advice to the Conservatives is that they abandon any attempt at being different, and simply adopt the worldview of their opponents. That’s not promoting better political options. It’s promoting an unhealthy curb on debate.
Apparently, the Conservatives just can't catch a break. Having followed the advice of their detractors to "moderate" themselves, it now seems as though that wasn't quite enough: what they really need to do is take the final step. That's right: they need to run on exactly the same policies as their opponents.
I am not exaggerating. Try as I might, I can't think of any other way to interpret the latest criticisms of the Tories' proposed tax cuts. Allegedly, they are "bribes" - conjuring up images – ironically – of envelopes of cash in Italian restaurants.
Characterizing a tax cut as a bribe requires some interesting premises. A tax cut is a reduction in money that's being taken from you, not a transfer of money from some independent source. The two are very distinct phenomenon. To suggest that it is an inherently controversial idea to cut taxes, is to imply that the normal state of affairs is governmental confiscation of private property, and the onus lies on the individual to give a compelling reason why they deserve it back.
This is not to say there isn’t room for policy debate about taxes as a tradeoff to putting the money towards something else, i.e. the government spending it. Nor does it mean we should always cut taxes, all the time. But my point is that a tax cut is in fact the opposite of a bribe; it is only the return of something that was already yours. It is the opposite of saying “we will direct money collected from some people towards programs that will benefit other people”.
Of course, you’ll find few critics of tax cuts willing to characterize government spending as bribery, even though it would be a much closer approximation. To do so would destroy a key reason for preferring one over the other. After all, if they’re both ways of bribing, well, what’s the difference?
Broadly speaking, there are two approaches a government may take in formulating a policy. In pursuit of a particular objective, it can spend collected revenues directly on programs, or it can return that money to individual people. Obviously, there is a wide spectrum within each approach – for example, both government programs and tax cuts can be universal or targeted, temporary or permanent – but the underlying philosophy of each approach is starkly different. Indeed, belief in one or the other is part of what determines whether ones views are "liberal" or "conservative" in the first place.
Which brings me back to my original point: the insistence that the Conservative Party become more ‘moderate’ is nothing more than a request that it succumb to the liberal vision of government: that if something needs to be done, only the state can do it, or at the very least, that the state can do it best. It’s a suggestion that the debate shouldn’t be about whether the government needs to be involved in the funding and delivery of a this or that program, but an automatic acceptance that it does. Then, presumably, the debate can shift to the really important question: how much should it be funded? And away the parties can go, tripping over themselves to try and out-promise each other in terms of funding.
Take the Conservative platform on child care, for example. Rather than offer, as both the Liberals and NDP have, to have the government itself deliver child care, the Conservatives propose to give a partial subsidy directly to parents.
Foul! Cry their opponents. That's out of bounds! Which begs the question: what sort of policy choice are they supposed to offer? The only other alternative is to yield to the Liberal/NDP orthodoxy – i.e. of course the government should be delivering child care! – and then let the bidding war commence. The Liberals promise $5 billion? We promise 10! NDP says 15? Raise you to 20! And so on. (Also note that in this case, the subsidy isn’t even a tax cut; can you imagine the outrage if the Tories had instead promised that?)
None of this is to say that everyone should like the Conservative policy and spare it from criticism. Far from it; politics works best when people are presented with a diverse array of policy options from which to choose one they fancy most. But it does say a great deal about people whose best advice to the Conservatives is that they abandon any attempt at being different, and simply adopt the worldview of their opponents. That’s not promoting better political options. It’s promoting an unhealthy curb on debate.
8 Comments:
Aaron, on the income trust leak story, did you see this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=a12SRmVFENoo&refer=canada
Kinsella points out that not only was the news leaked, the details were ON BLOOMBERG at 2 PM (the press conference was after market close). It's appearing Goodale's people broadcast the announcement far & wide. How do I get on their call list?
Re Choice: Of course if you are a liberal supporter you will trash everything the tories say or do!
Just admit to yourself the truth...that Most of Canadian Media is biased! Most of the time when it comes to politics anyway.........
Once you accept that it becomes irrelevent except that you and I really need get the word out the wider audience!
Arguing that tax cuts are bribes when at the same time proposing to fund new programs or prop up old ones with taxpayers $$ as just good policy is ludicrous!
Why do conservatives seem to think liberals are dumber than posts? Because they seem to believe all the BS they are handed! I guess!
Hell just go read my BLOG: http://ommag.blogspot.com/
No, the media is not biased. (Responding here to pgp.) Conservatives have to stop engaging in conspiracy theories and take responsibility for the fact that Canadians are not attracted to their leader or their party.
Canadians deeply want a change; they are fed up with the Liberals. But they don't like the alternatives on offer. That is not the fault of the media.
Wudrick: I agree with you, I think the childcare policy is a good one, and it presents Canadians with an alternative to the Liberal (relatively big government) approach.
I'm not so impressed with the GST policy. Economists universally pan it and, since Harper is an economist himself, I have to think he knows it's bad policy. It's just politics — it will appeal to voters even if it is bad policy because the GST is a tax that everyone loves to hate.
But, at the very least, it again presents Canadians with two starkly different alternatives. And that's good for democracy.
So far, I think the Conservatives are running a smart campaign. If they can maintain it through the whole eight-week campaign, they ought to be rewarded with more seats … maybe even a plurality.
Q
Ah hem Choice like the right to choose when it comes to abortion or the right to choose your marriage partner like SSM, or the right to choose which drugs you take with or without aprescription. Boy if the Tory's actually were as Libertarian as Harper says he is, well they would be consistant and actually support individual rights and free choice and not just in Day Care.
I gotta disagree with you ALW, and as you probably know, (since we had this discussion a while back) and I'll side with the wonderdog - $1200 per year is a dandy tax cut but it sure isn't a child care program. It does nothing to increase the quality, quantity and availablity of childcare for working parents who need it.
$1200 per year for parents works out to $5 per day - round trip bus fair. The average per diem for daycare in Ontario is $38, fom Ottawa to rural South Western Ontario.
If you work (and people who need daycare usually need it because it they work) you get taxed on it, so you don't even get that much. of course if you don't work (and thus don't need daycare) you keep the whole thing. Hmm, sound like a middle class tax cut to me...
The $250 million in tax cuts seems like a good idea until you realize that in order to get the tax cut, you have to have money to build the daycare in the first place. So unlike what the CPC is saying, churches, community groups, synogogues and other non-profit groups won;t get it - if they had the money, they'd be building the daycare's now. But Gymboree and other large corporate chain-store style for-profit daycares will. so this is a corporate tax cut.
All that for the low price of $10.5 billion - a 1/2 billion more expensive than the Liberals.
Now, I'm not the only one who realizes this. I talked one of my neighbours who runs a daycare out of her home while waiting for my kids and hers (both her own and the ones she takes care of) to get off the bus. She laughed at it. She said it was no where near enough to cover her costs and that she would likely never see it, because it wouldn't actually be spent on childcare.
So everyone see through it. The issue is not getting the money back. Everyone sees giving a tax cut is a good idea - even the NDP announced a $23 billion cut last week with its tax policy. But instead of the CPC stating they don't beleive that the Federal government should be supporting childcare, they've taken a tax cut and dressed it up as a "child care plan" because a child care plan is one of the main platforms of the Liberals. People see through it and it looks duplicitous, slimely and tricky at best. At worst it looks like thinly vieled social engineering inteneded to encourage mothers to stay home.
So when people see something like that, they see through it. And that's why the numbers aren't going up.
Consider the possibilities that people don't agree with the policy before stampeading to the 'liberal media' meme.
I think you totally miss the point Mike. Your entire argument is premised on the assumption that the government should be providing child care!
To which the Tories simply say: says who? The reason it isn't a "child care plan" per se is because it's not a government program.
The primary objection might be that the subsidy is too little. That I could understand. But the fact that it's being offered as cash rather than a program? So what? We would indeed call it a tax break full stop if doing so didn't result in the other parties accusing the CPC of "not having a child care plan". It's the rhetoric that has forced us to characterize it this way!
Sometimes not having a *government* plan is the best plan.
Oh, I also find it mighty rich that citing the average cost of daycare as being $38 is proof that the Tory plan is insufficient also implies that the government could deliver care for substantially less.
And how, pray tell? Perhaps the same way they're delivering health care? Which means: space shortages, waiting lists, etc, etc?
Or are you going to tell me that child care is another one on the list of special industries where market mechanisms lead to inefficiencies and waste, while governments will be paragons of efficiency and management?
$1200 per year for parents works out to $5 per day - round trip bus fair.
OK, Mike, but you can also dissect the numbers this way.
• daycare costs $38/day;
• Harper is offering $25/week;
• that works out to a 13% discount on my weekly childcare expenditures.
Any time I can get a 13% discount on a service I need, I'm a happy camper.
Q
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