Tax cuts reduce services

Toronto Star Feb 13, 2008   re: What's so scary about the right?   Comment, Feb. 12

I'll tell Tony Gizzie what's so scary about the right. Its policies don't work in the long run and it uses poisonous tactics to dupe a gullible public into supporting them. Gizzie asks, "Since when are fiscal responsibility, lower taxes and less government in our lives bad things?" They are bad when these oft-repeated phrases are code for the starvation of public services, tax cuts for the wealthy and support of creeping corporate dominance.

Right-wing politicians lack any awareness of how to build a healthy society, much less a great nation. They base success entirely on the rate of economic growth, which is a faulty measure of progress and virtually assures the continued destruction of the environment.

Yes, the right is scary, but what is more scary is its success in convincing voters that a couple of hundred dollars in tax cuts that can be spent at the local big-box store is the way to achieve a better life.
John Gulland, Killaloe, Ont.

Simply stated, those on the right put profits ahead of people. The "lower taxes and less government" that Tony Gizzie attributes to the right disproportionately benefit corporations and well-off individuals, while the cost of tax cuts is the reduction of services that benefit and protect everyone – services like food inspection, education, health care and policing. And, as the Walkerton tragedy so clearly illustrated, service cuts can kill.

Why do we fear the right? Because the society it envisions would be less equal, less just and less safe.
Steve Andrews, Toronto