Reality Not In Leftist Dictionary

Remember Bob Rae. Has Layton ever held a real job.

Jack Layton's plan would kill Canadian productivity

There are many reasons why NDP Leader Jack Layton's suite of policy preferences is less a platform, than a trap door in the floor of a scaffold. MORE...

Jack Layton and the real world

By SUN MEDIA

Life would be perfect if the world operated the way NDP Leader Jack Layton says it does.

That is, if you could solve all problems by increasing taxes on big business and using the cash to fund more social programs at no cost to taxpayers.

That's pretty much Layton's election platform, which he vigorously defended before Sun Media's editorial board yesterday.

Layton says he'd raise $50 billion by cancelling corporate tax cuts promised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives and redistribute it to working families, led by a tax-free baby bonus of up to $5,000 annually, per child.

He'd also charge corporations billions of dollars for emitting carbon dioxide in order to fight global warming and use that money to pay for such things as making homes more energy efficient.

There's only one problem with all this -- reality.

In the real world, if you increase the costs of doing business, businesses pass along those costs to consumers. If you make businesses uncompetitive by raising taxes too much, they'll lay off employees, move offshore, or go bankrupt.

In the real world, Layton can't force them to stay open, just as he can't "eliminate" poverty by 2020 by passing the Poverty Elimination Act, as he's also promising.

While Layton predictably says he's running to be prime minister, in reality, he's trying to unseat Stephane Dion as official opposition leader.

It could happen.

One poll has the NDP and Liberals tied.

That said, some NDP support has gone back to the Liberals in the last two elections whenever it looked like Harper was close to winning a majority government, which some polls are also indicating.

That's Layton's real worry. If he can't replace the Liberals as official opposition this time, given the perfect storm of an unpopular leader, Stephane Dion, and a virtual civil war going on inside the Liberal party -- he may never be able to do it.

That's why, while Layton says he's running for PM, the job he really wants is opposition leader.