I have come across an organisation that calls itself “Non aux hausses! (No to the increase of public funds)” and have looked through its website. It seems that its members seek to improve the well-being of the poor and middle class by ensuring that the public services they use are not made more expensive. “The government’s greed can be satisfied through other means “, one would expect to hear. Yet, is the issue quite as simple as they present it: as a choice between hurting the poor or helping the rich?

Hoping to answer this, I did look through their website and have found their specific demands, but I have not found that which I deem the most important: the supporting ideas behind these demands. I am not one to attack conclusions directly; rather, I attack the way in which they are justified. Policy changes have a major impact on society and it is important that we do not implement them unless the arguments behind them are solid. So if an organisation wishes to advocate change, it must show us how its most thoughtful members were convinced that these changes were indeed for the best. This is not what I found on their website.

Now, to quote some of their suggestions:

# Adopt a more progressive tax system.
# Add at least one more tax bracket for the highest incomes.

I must ask: what basis do they have in claiming that this is right? It is nice to make suggestions, but I suspect that they have not tried to look at how our economy would be affected — because when the economy hurts, it is the poor and not the rich who suffer the most.

When the costs of a business increase — because of extra taxes, higher minimum wage, greater regulation and so forth — some businesses that were profitable will no longer be so, creating a loss in the economy for certain activities — activities for which there is not enough demand to justify the effort, with only meager profits to support the owners. When the owners shut down, the employees go home and start looking for a new job or, if it is the whole sector that is struggling, they go back to school so as to satisfy a labour shortage in another sector of the economy.

It is amusing that “Non aux hausses!” proposes changes which will lead some businesses to close, ultimately hurting those they wish to protect.

# Reduce or even abolish tax exemptions (that only benefit the rich)

When it comes to certain sectors of the economy that cannot survive because of the extra burden imposed by taxes, the government can create tax exemptions so that the activity still exists. Though this is open to the influence of lobbies and corruption, if the government organisation that decides this is objective, then it is quite clearly for the best: the basic idea is that it is better for the activity to exist and the government not be able to tax it than for the activity to simply not exist because the government taxes are too much for that particular business. Again, this is about more jobs and a more interesting economy, with a greater variety of activities.

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