AN OPEN LETTER TO THOSE WANTING TAX HIKES IN ALBERTA

You first.

And when I say you first, I mean you pay your taxes. And you pay mine. Yes, you personally. In fact, I want your provincial taxes doubled. Tripled. 90% of your income. Every single day I want you to wake up, go to work, and labour away as a slave to Jim Prentice. He owns your body, the creativity and hard work that you put into your job every day.

Don't scoff. This is exactly your idea. You want to raise my taxes. You want more of my time and effort to be stolen away by the provincial government in order to fund things that you think should exist. Your sick worldview requires this belief, that money earned by free peoples exchanging their labours -- be it mental or physical -- actually belongs to "society" (in theory) or the guy elected to be head of government this week (in practice). In other words, you think that my working life actually belongs to Prentice, and it's up to you (through him) how much of it I get to keep.

I reject that utterly, along with your ridiculous attempt to justify your tax increases by trying to define some "other" who you think should pay because you don't want to pay it yourself. You want "the rich" or "corporations" to pay it.

Besides the fact that "the rich" or "corporations" are the exact same groups who -- when being told by inferior louts that they need to "pay more" -- tend to instead spend slightly less than the tax bill you send them to figure out how to get out of paying any in the first place, "the rich" or "corporations" don't deserve to pay any more than they already do. In fact, they deserve to pay far far far less.

Your plan won't work.

You do realize that your tax rate hikes don't result in an actual tax revenue hike, don't you? Remember, Burger King reincorporated as a Canadian company last year in order to escape a punitive corporate tax regime. They're the same company, doing the same thing in the same market, but they just duck out on sending Uncle Sam (or Uncle Jim, or the Queen Rachel you pro-tax idiots desire) the cash. They'll do the exact same thing if you dare spike their taxes out of your petty jealousy. They may use differing schemes, some more visible than others, but the results will show up on the balance sheet. Tax cuts increase revenue while tax hikes reduce it. Which means that the money you think Prentice or Notley are going to raise to pay for social services isn't coming. Instead, they'll have to hike the taxes on people who are easier to collect from: namely, you. As Mark Steyn said, eventually you run out of rich people to stick the bill to. That comes sooner than you think.

So once there's no money, the only thing left is your pathetic jealousy. You just want to stick "the rich" and "corporations" with a higher tax bill because they're more successful than you and you want to punish them for it. That's your own failures manifesting themselves. Don't blame Enbridge and Stantec for them. Definitely don't punish them, their stockholders, their customers, their employees, and the economic system that rewards them for it. And that's the real reason that I'm anxious for you, yes you, to pay more personally long before taxes for the rest of us get raised. It strikes to the lie at the very notion of "fairness" you apply by thinking that "progressive" tax rates are a positive. They aren't.

Only a flat tax is fair

We've covered this before, of course, but only a flat tax is a fair tax system. You should be working x% of your day for the government, the same x% as anybody making more than you or less than you or the same as you or working an extra half hour a day or whatever and what have you. By demanding that somebody else not you work extra for the government while you get off scot-free is sickening. You're the first to talk about "paying your fair share" so why makes 10% of your hour of work so more fair than the 10% of his hour of work? Both of you spend the same proportion of your working lives under the government heel. That fact: that you're so keen for some nebulous "other" to have to work harder for less just so that you can feel like a big man and feel like you're getting what's "owed" to you by some guy who you probably never met and has absolutely nothing to do with you. That's what makes you intrinsically unfair. You don't believe in fairness. You never have, so stop lying to yourself and stop lying to the rest of us when you claim that taking the money that other people have worked for while you get to keep yours is in any way "fair". The previous flat tax wasn't fully fair either: there was a personal exemption that shouldn't have been there. If you make $5 an hour (and no there shouldn't be a minimum wage but that's a story for another day), then you should have to give up $0.50 to the great sucking maw of the government. If you want to keep more of that $5, do what the rest of us are doing: demand significant tax cuts so you can keep the fifty cents that you worked for and Rachel Notley didn't.

You want free services

It's especially important that you, the idiot who wants to raise my taxes, should suffer the pains of losing all your money to taxes first because you always followup with saying how you love the idea of it paying for more services. If you like these services so much, then pay for them. Pay what you want me to pay, plus what you'd pay. Because I sure as shit don't want to pay for this pathetic bucket of second rate socialist services. If they're so wonderful that total strangers you've never met should be blasted with a ridiculous bill every April, then set a positive example and pay up. Of course, if these services were as great as you're claiming, we shouldn't even need taxes to pay for them. Let's make them strictly a user-pay system. Even if you decide to block any privatization of, say, healthcare, the status quo is surely so often that you'd love the chance to pay the bargain basement rates they surely are charging. You, uh, do know how much specific medical procedures and events are billed to the government, right? Wait, you don't? Then how are you going around claiming how great they are, and how you're convinced more tax dollars are the missing link to make them any good? (Okay, while we're at it how are you reconciling the "it's a great investment we need more of" and "the system is broken and desperately needing extra money"?)

You're a hypocrite

Look, I think we know full well why you don't want to voluntarily send more of your money to the provincial government. You've got this wacky opinion that you deserve to spend your money the way you want. But you're only apply this to you, and that makes you a hypocrite. It's no different than you wanting the speed limit on Highway 2 to be dropped to 75 km/hr when you're cruising around doing a buck-twenty. You're sucking back cigs in a public park and grumbling that we need a smoking ban. You think it's great that money flows from the productive members of society employed by the private sector and to the unproductive leeches of society employed by or otherwise provided for by the public sector. But not if it's your money...then you'd really like to keep it. Better to raise "corporate" taxes or "taxes on the rich". Anybody other than you.

You should suffer

I reject that utterly. You want tax hikes, you can pay for it. If you don't do it voluntarily, don't be surprised to find me in your garage making off with things of value. Or if you wake up and I've kidnapped you and put you into slave labour. I'm just raising your taxes. You did it to me, you have no possible objection when I do it do you. For wanting tax hikes, you've shown yourself to be a sick individual who deserves no less fate. You should be in chains and on your knees, broken and beaten and worked like a rented mule until you die, with every cent of value from your labours extracted for the good of people who didn't have to suffer like you have.

That's what taxes are. If you don't like that idea, welcome to the first step in becoming an independent self-reliant citizen. If you do, put your home address in the comments. We're coming for you either way, we may be lenient if you help us out.

Recommended additional reading: Steve Landsburg, Stephen Moore, and the The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.