Timothy, the answer to your question is yes. According to the OECD, the US has the most progressive tax system in the world, Canada ranks seventh. Obama's promise was to raise the top marginal rate marginally to finance more cuts for the middle class. Canada redistributes income with an equalization system where the richer provinces transfer billions of dollars annually to the poorer provinces to maintain a national standard of education, health, social welfare services.
Ontario, Canada's industrial heartland with its auto and other manufacturing centres, has become a have-not province with the meltdown; Newfoundland, a have-not province for decades dependant on the fisheries and now booming as a have-province with offshore oil, is ecstatic that it may contribute its millions to needier parts of the country. It's the Canadian way. Legislated. "Have" provinces spread it around.
It's the American way, too. No country on earth has been more generous to other countries of need regardless of race, religion or colour, its defeated included. It was in its interests to do so, as is ours, nationally and internationally. Redistribution is rooted in western civilization, in its Christian ethic, and, not wanting to make too fine a point of it, the top 1 per cent of US income earners, by itself, pays 40 per cent of all income tax revenue. That should be appealing to average Americans, too.
