Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- If there's a more accurate description of the Cons' entire political strategy than "taking advantage of the prejudice that’s already there", I haven't heard it yet. And Chris Lawson is rightly frustrated that Canadian politics are being dominated by such cynical and destructive motives - though I'd argue that we should be less concerned with the Gerry Nicholls of the world who are willing to call it by name than the Harper Cons who try to pretend their minority-bashing is somehow based on the national interest.

- No, we shouldn't be surprised to see a National Post discussion on pensions devolve into a debate as to whether seniors in general or public employees in particular should be attacked first in the name of tax slashing. But it's worth pointing out that we've had plenty of opportunity to test whether throwing the federal government's fiscal capacity into tax cuts and investment incentives for the wealthy would produce the virtuous cycle of magical retirement freedom that all the Post's pundits seem to take as a given - and the fact that Canadians are less secure now than they were a decade ago would seem like rather compelling evidence to the contrary for anybody willing to look at such a thing.

- Which suggests that maybe it's time to take some advice from Seth Klein in dealing with inequality for all age groups:

(R)ising inequality hasn’t been driven by low incomes. Rather, as the Occupy movement rightly highlighted, the growing gap has been driven by the runaway-rich; the wealthiest 10% of households, and especially the wealthiest 1%, have been breaking away from the rest of us (as outlined in this CCPA report a year ago).

So if we are going to reduce inequality, we need to revisit our top tax brackets.
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I’d argue that the BC government should not restrict itself to adjustments to the top rate alone. I think there is room to modestly increase the 3rd and 4th brackets as well (which kick in at incomes of about $73K and $84K respectively; again only impacting a small minority of taxpayers). As I noted in a blog post a couple years ago, I find my personal income tax rate to be remarkably low, given what we receive in public services, and the scope of unmet social and environmental needs.

If you too think that our upper tax brackets should be increased, may I recommend that you let our political leaders know. Too often our leaders are overly cautious, and presume we will not abide such increases. If we really want action on inequality, we need to tell them otherwise.

- Meanwhile, Emily Dee worries that the Cons have set up a ticking time bomb with their giveaways to Canadian banks.

- And finally, Jason Warick highlights how First Nations students are being shortchanged in Saskatchewan.