Stimulate the economy? Pay off public debt? Okay.

A letter to the popular, long-running CBC Radio show As It Happens, February 26, 2012:

Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This came to my mind when I listened to the segment of your show on Friday, Feb 24 in which you interviewed an economist about applying the federal Goods and Services Tax to all sorts of transactions currently exempt from the GST, particularly food.

The man you interviewed, a University of Toronto professor of Economics, had evidently been educated in the same economic paradigm that has dominated for the past century. His proposal to apply the GST to everything struck me as clearly reflecting the same corrupt economic thinking that permeates the global economic crisis now underway for about four years.

For Canada's federal and provincial governments to get us out of this mess, we do indeed need economic stimuli, debt reduction, and job creation. However, this does not make it necessary that we consent to everything we do or eat being taxed; nor does it necessitate exploiting the Alberta tar sands to the max, for example. Rather, we need a new and altogether different kind of economic solution - one that comes from an altogether different kind of economic thinking.

According to University of California Riverside Economics Professor Mason Gaffney, author of The Corruption of Economics, Henry George not only prescribed a clear, logical, and hugely popular solution to such pervasive, systemic economic problems as we currently face but also triggered a massive effort to deny his logic and permanently change the paradigm of economic thinking to exclude the solution that George proposed now 133 years ago.

In his best-selling book Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy, George proposes the elimination of all taxes, tariffs, and duties to be replaced by a single tax on the unimproved value of land and natural resources. If implemented as prescribed, George's proposal would stimulate the economy, create jobs, allow governments to pay off debts, and relieve poverty.

This brings to mind another quotation of Albert Einstein: "Men like Henry George are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice."

Let's abolish sales taxes, payroll taxes, et cetera, and instead implement George's single tax now.

- Glenn R Harrington, Victoria BC