Dear Editor:

Letter writer Norman Ostonal (Human selfishness lies behind fight against HST, Letters to the editor, The Record, Sept. 1) calls opponents of the HST gullible, naive and selfish for fighting a tax increase that's needed for health and social programs.

The trouble is that there is no guarantee whatever that the extra money extracted from the public will be spent on such things as medical care, education and housing for the poor. On the contrary, we have a provincial government locked into spending hundreds of millions on Olympic Games, a football stadium's new roof and the bottomless financial pit of expanding roads and bridges for cars and trucks.

You need only look at those battling over the HST issue to see that government and big business have teamed up to grab the increase, while ordinary British Columbians - 700,000 on one petition - resent the idea of taxation without representation and the lies of their premier.

Yet Mr. Ostonal would have us believe that only cash cows like the HST can assure a rosy future for our children and we are irresponsible to "indulge" ourselves by demanding a say in the matter. The suggestion is that we should simply shut up, smile and believe that Mr. Campbell and the caring CEOs of major corporations know what's good for us whether we like it or not.

It is true that governments always need more taxes, especially when they are faced with buying re-election votes. There is a very simple answer: Drop the loopholes and special rates and make the wealthy and the relatively wealthy pay an appropriate amount of tax, and we'd be rolling in the green stuff. The problem, of course, is that the current tax rules are made up and imposed by the wealthy and the relatively wealthy, politicians and industry mandarins.

And that, apparently, is none of our business.

Tony Eberts,

New Westminster