SFL: Featured on Canada.com.. Again!

Little brother Brad and I on our

Grandfather's Oppulent "Estate"

Well.

Again, I'm flattered to be asked by Canada.com for another page of my thoughts on the election, printed here.

And, as one might expect in Canada as the Harper government flirts with numbers that might bring them a majority, the responses to the article from non-conservatives are, more and more, shrill and off-point, and less and less responsive to the issue I raised - namely, when the top 10% of tax filers in Canada are paying 52.6% of the tax, and where the bottom half are paying 4.4%.. is it about time that the Liberals and NDP shut up about the need to increase taxes so that they pay even more?

Some samplings from the 168 comments:

anonymous

8:47 AM on April 26, 2011

A completely inaccurate analogy because it values all the apples equally. The top 9 pickers are getting all the premium apples and received top prices from day 1

Think about that reasoning for a moment. In my analogy I suggest 10 people are picking 52 baskets of apples to only 4 baskets being picked by 50 people. And then the 50 are paid MORE for their work than the 10. That's a fact. A StatsCan fact. And as happens, when the facts get in the way of ideology, well, just ignore or change them.


Anonymous.  The top 10% of income earners almost by definition take less from the government than do the bottom half.  IE) their apples apples aren't premium and they don' t get more return on their investment in the government through taxes.  Just the opposite actually.

But my favorite, from another "Anonymous" poster:

anonymous

8:35 AM on April 26, 2011

This guy is a little too much like Harper, a little too removed from the common person trying to make a living on the scraps from Harper's table......

Yes. No cogent argument, just an attack on me as being one of those "out-of-touch rich guys".  You know me Mr. Anonymous don't you?

Let me tell you a little about how "removed" from common people I am.

My parents were the children of immigrants from Hungary, Scotland and Ireland who struggled to support 5 children in each family.  Neither of my parents could afford University and worked hard for very modest salaries as I grew up.  While we never went hungry, I remember many nights of creamed peas on toast for supper, I recall second-hand hockey equipment for Christmas - I recall my parents giving us all the love and guidance we needed, but never having the luxuries that other kids at school enjoyed like name-brand running shoes - my generic runners often making me the butt of jokes at school.  At public schools that is - my parents were, if you can believe it, even less affluent that the Ignatieff family who "had nothing" but sent Michael and his brother to private school.

My grandparents on my mother's side were hard-working Hungarian immigrants, running a small orchard farm in Osoyoos, B.C.  During our "holidays" to visit them I recall waking at 5:00am to help my grandfather move sprinkler and, when I was 12, picking cherries with the Portuguese family next door for spending money.

At 15 I started working, first at a garden centre, then as a busboy in a restaurant and, at the same time, cleaning tallow tanks for a slaughter house (climbing inside a railway tank car heated with steam to about 120 degrees F., and then sucking out the waist-high, solid fat of slaughtered cattle into a vacuum truck.)

I worked part-time at various jobs to pay my own way through University, lucking out when I got a job with Canada Safeway - earning $13.63 per hour for stocking shelves.  While attending UBC I recall eating nothing but Mr. Noodles and wieners for several weeks after getting a "deal" on a case of stale-dated wieners and buying cases of generic ramen noodles. The news wasn't all bad - I did manage to lose about 20 lbs while attending law school.  I graduated in the midst of the fall-out from the National Energy Program and was earning $1,650.00 per month as an articling student - raised to a whopping $1,800.00 when I became a lawyer.  After years of struggling through University I and a year of articling, working 16 hour days - I was earning less than I did at Canada Safeway.  A lawyer earning less than the 18 year old stock-boy down the street.

6 years later, I opened my own office - and after business was difficult and actually flirting with bankruptcy, I refused to give up on paying my obligations - I stripped down my life, bare-bones - taking my kids on tenting camping trips for holidays, eating more ramen noodles and generic KD, feeling embarrassed because here I was a lawyer, and I had no money to buy my kid a ball and bat for his birthday so he wouldn't be looked down up by other players on his all-star team.  I recall that weekend trying to take a firm cheque into a Cheque-cashing business, but because it was MY business, they wouldn't take the cheque.  I swallowed my pride and borrowed a hundred bucks from my parents.

Yeah..  I'm too far removed from the "common man".

And, now, at this point in my life, it is true I am blessed.  I want for nothing, I am able to pay my children's way through University, and, actually, have no complaint about the level of tax I pay (which is significant, by the way) - but, the complete lack of appreciation and arrogance that my income somehow came to me without effort or sacrifice - off a tree if you will - the suggestion that I am not "doing my share" is most insulting.  Not only do I pay a gob of income tax, but with my three partners, we have created some 20 full-time jobs for others who are paying tax as well.  Yeah, I think I'm doing my share.

So.

Anonymous, and other frantic, anti-conservative posters out there..  don't tell me and others like me are too "removed from the common person". 

Just say "thank-you" and go on your way.