Another of my posts at the Western Standard blog.

Saturday, June 14 is the Fraser Institute’s Tax Freedom Day (http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/newsrelease.aspx?nID=5368). This is the day average Canadians have finished working to pay all forms of tax.

Niels Veldhuis of the Fraser Institute (http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2008/06/13/tax-freedom-day-comes-early-this-year.aspx) says, "the point of Tax Freedom Day is to give people a comprehensive and easy-to- understand indicator of the total amount of taxes paid to all three levels of government."

"The taxes used to compute Tax Freedom Day include income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, profit taxes, health, social security and employment taxes, import duties, license fees, taxes on the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, natural resource fees, fuel taxes, hospital taxes and a host of other levies."

"…In 2008, the average Canadian family (with two or more individuals) will earn $90,678 and pay a total of $40,667 in taxes, for a total tax bill amounting to 44.8 per cent of its income."

In 1961, Tax Freedom Day was 40 days earlier. Wow. However, in June 1917, there was not even a federal personal income tax!

According to Lloyd Duhaime’s “Canadian Legal History” (http://www.duhaime.org/LegalResources/CanadianLegalHistory/tabid/1553/articleType/ArticleView/articleID/168/The-Birth-of-Income-Tax-%281917%29.aspx), on July 25, 1917, Sir Thomas White, the finance minister appointed by Conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden,

"tabled a resolution which called for income tax: 4% on all income of single men over $2,000. For others, the personal exemption was $3,000. For those Canadians with annual incomes of more than $6,000, the tax rate ranged from 2 to 25 per cent."

Sir Thomas White’s statement:

"Mr. Chairman, I desire today to lay before this committee proposals for a national measure of income taxation. Hitherto we have relied upon duties of customs and of excise, postal rates and other miscellaneous sources of revenue. Canada has been, and will continue during the lifetime of those present today, to be a country inviting immigration. I have, therefore, thought it desirable that we should not be known to the outside world as a country of heavy individual taxation.

"We are, however, confronted with grave conditions arising out of the war. The time has arrived when we must resort to direct taxation. I am confident, Mr. Chairman, that the people of Canada, whose patriotism during this war has been so often and so nobly proven, will, in light of present conditions, which call for it, cheerfully accept the burden and the sacrifice of this additional taxation…"

So global warfare, loyalty to King and Empire, and the "bourgeois" Conservative Party were instrumental in fulfilling plank #2 of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, that is, a "heavy progressive or graduated income tax". In other words, "capitalists" or pseudo-capitalists or whatever you want to call them have been implementing and maintaining the Communist Manifesto for a long time now.

What does it mean that Western "capitalist" governments, some of which are explicitly "conservative", are still pursuing or holding on to the various planks of the Communist Manifesto through income tax, "smart growth" planning, financial surveillance, nationalization of land through "green belt" legislation, asset foreiture, "free" education and centralized control of banking and interest rates?

Not all of these planks can be implemented without totally destroying our society, and a few might sound like positive goals, but here is Karl Marx’s list so you can check off how "successful" the Canadian and U.S. "capitalist" establishments have been at maintaining his goals:

"1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

"2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

"3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

"4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

"5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

"6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

"7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

"8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

"9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

"10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc."

June 15th, 2008

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