KIBITZER
Rod Kapunan
5/2-7/2011
The followers of that criminally inspired neo-liberal ideology failed to sort out that the reason that justify governments to collect taxes is not just anchored on the duty to provide security for the people, but to provide them public service.
While we concede that people must pay taxes to raise the money needed to protect them, we know that it could equally work the other way; to be used as an instrument to oppress them.
The neo-liberals would argue that only the private sector could provide public service; could bring down the cost of goods and services, and reduce the amount of taxes, thereby eliminating graft and corruption.
Indeed, these were the assumptions that reached its peak during the Ramos government when it sold left and right government-owned corporations, like the privatization of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), the North and South Expressways, the National Steel Corporation, Philippine Airlines, etc.
‘Taboo’
To begin with, in a privatized society “public service” is a taboo for accordingly everything that one would like to enjoy and own must be paid for by him.
This explains why the elite are able to live longer because they could afford to pay all that would help extend their life, like buying organs from donors or getting them from cadavers.
If only they could buy immortality they would do so.
On the other hand, public service is designed to temper the harshness of inequality, not really by establishing a regimented society, but to enhance their chances of survival to reduce the incidence of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, disease, ignorance, unemployment, etc.
Beyond Public Works
In fact, modern interpretation of public service now goes beyond constructing roads, bridges, public markets, airports, wharves, but includes the overseeing of the people’s welfare.
Thus, humane societies have kept on widening the horizons of public welfare to include the giving of free universal education, health service, including hospitalization and the giving
of medicines for free or at a discounted price; protecting labor by guaranteeing employment, and most important of regulating the profit so that the prices of goods and services could be maintained at affordable level.
The paradox is, when all the channels that produce wealth are in private hands, the government parenthetically losses much of its income that as a result it will have to impose more taxes to support itself.
Everything Privatized
The question is when the government limits its role to just collecting taxes, would that justify its existence? Such is asked because criminal organizations, like the Mafia, have been collecting protection rackets from people without them giving anything in return.
The problem with this criminally- inspired ideology is that they want everything privatized, but wants to use the government to oppress the people.
For instance, when people are deprived of water by way of higher cost per cubic meter, then why are they paying taxes when supposedly water is a God-given element that the government should take care to ensure that it will be available to all, including the farmers that produce the food we eat.
Similarly, what good is there in paying taxes when, in addition to the road-users tax, vehicle and transport owners pay the toll fees just to pass the highway to get to their job that should they fail could spell a much serious problem for them?
Encouraging Mendicancy
What good is the giving of franchise to public utility operators, like that of electricity, to protect their investments, when owners now could conveniently pass them on to their consumers in violation of PD No. 551, thus assuring protection of their privilege without paying a centavo despite the high cost of electricity.
The local disciples of the neoliberal ideology would argue that we should increase the VAT to 15 percent from the current rate of 12 percent. They say in other countries, like China, the VAT there is already at 17 percent.
But the amount is not the problem for even if they will increase that to 50 percent or raise the income tax to 60 to 65 percent, as in the Scandinavian countries, the people there are getting much of what they pay.
Here, our taxes aside from being looted are used to encourage mendicancy and to promote cosmetic programs for political imaging and mileage.
Less Corruption
Another argument raised by the neo-liberals is that less government presence and intervention means less corruption.
Maybe corruption in its classic sense has been minimized if we follow the theory that corruption only takes place in government service.
But Korean economist Ha- Joon Chang in his book “Bad Samaritan”, categorically admitted capitalism as a defective system.
Inescapably, when certain businesses are engaged in hoarding to artificially keep high the price of their commodities, resort to smuggling to avoid the payment of customs duties, undervalue their sales to reduce their taxes, engaged in dollar salting, buy-out other businesses to achieve a monopoly, engage in cartel to bar other players, etc., could we not classify them as corruption done by the private sector?
Systematic Graft
Yes, we have drastically reduced the bureaucracy which has been blamed as the source of corruption. But in lieu we allowed politicians to bloat their number of sinecure employees.
As one would say, the sinecure employees of politicians are not only lazy, but are more greedy and corrupt than those career employees they fired.
It is this incidence and magnitude of corruption that placed us the second most corrupt country in Asia to debunk the supposition of that criminally-inspired neo-liberal ideology that privatization could reduce corruption.
Today, corruption has become vicious because people are not only burdened with high taxes, and get nothing in return, but realize the money they pay is being systematically looted through graft.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
