To the Editor:
Be careful what you wish for is a wise adage. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) wishes that Premier Brad Wall would root out inefficiencies before raising taxes. The CTF praises "efficiencies" like the privatization of hospital linens.
Let's follow a dollar. If the government pays an employee a dollar it gets the employee's income tax ranging from 11 per cent to 15 per cent. If the employee spends it in the province, the government gets another five per cent. If a tax payer spends his or her "saved" dollar in the province, the government gets five per cent and the profit goes to a corporation.
While some large corporations, perhaps the one cleaning our linens, do use the profit to expand and create jobs, more and more corporations are sitting on vast sums of money, spending it on advertising to manufacture demand, or investing in it in potential bubbles.
Let's now consider the "genie", well, the GINI coefficient. The GINI index is a measure of equality used by economists. Health and social problems are known to be worse in unequal countries. While public unions appear to be anathema to the CTF, there is a strong correlation between union density and equality; or conversely, union scarcity and inequality. Private "efficiency" means the government is out income tax and it may pay for the health and social problems created by the numerous ways corporations externalize costs.
So while I do not wish the government to be inefficient, the CTF's "efficiency" may be more of a curse than a blessing.
Nancy Carswell, Shellbrook, SK.
