Dear Editor,
The constant battering by elements of our society about our taxes and trying to ‘find efficiencies’ is becoming very boring. Efficiencies?….we have spend the past 30 years grinding down government-provided services. Meanwhile, our infrastructure needs fixing; our environment matters; education is under attack again; things need building;….and it goes on and on. And, we should to be a caring society ensuring that, as a whole, Canada moves ahead. We all have to pay taxes and the constant whinging is just like a cracked record. Canada is stable, friendly, organized, safe (and that matters) and it is a good place to live. It is transparent; the law is upheld; it is free; and things work. Why? Because we pay taxes.
Having spent many years working in less-stable countries we should all be extremely thankful for what we have. We have a democracy; we have a society; the police do not beat us up; the courts are independent of politics; we do not have civil strife; we have roads; we have a constant supply of running water and electricity; we have checks and balances; we have a civil society; we have freedoms; we have an open press; and the choice of supplies in the supermarket is, quite frankly, overwhelming. It all looks pretty good. And baby boomers have benefitted well from all of this, haven’t we? Perhaps we should be paying more tax to fix things?! (I can hear the moans already.) Why should our children be on-the-hook in the future for our very good lifestyle? If we want what we have, we have to pay for it.
I would ask anyone who thinks that they pay too much tax to spend some time in Liberia, or Nigeria, or rural Ethiopia, or any sub-Saharan African nation, and then see how difficult life is. Choices, freedoms and good standards of living for citizens of those countries are just not there. Why? Because they pay little to no taxes! There is a DIRECT link between what we have and what others don’t: taxes.
Be ever so, ever so thankful for what you have, stop whinging and realize that all of what we have comes at a cost. Not paying taxes means we would lose what we all benefit from. And that would be a crying shame.
Andrew M. Thriscutt
