Tax cut interestingness

Saw this report on the cbc.ca website today and I was intrigued.  I'm kinda torn between both aspects of this report.  The first point is the origin of the report - "The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives".  It's a left-leaning institute, which gives with the summary of the report.  The summary being that cutting taxes hurts more people than it helps because of all the government programs that get cut along with the taxes.

I'm torn because I understand the conclusion of the report, but I'm not sure that I agree with what it represents.  I think that more people lose benefits when taxes are cut, but I'm not sure that is such a bad thing in the first place.  The whole left-vs-right internal division causes me political stomach cramps.  Wow, that's an awkward analogy, but let's move on.  I believe that we, as a country, need to have programs that we collectively pay for to benefit society as a whole.  One of those is health care, and another is education.  Collecting money from everyone's pay to help people that have lost their job is a good thing as well.  Plus there are some situations where money needs to be given out so that people can survive.  Then there is infrastructure, the military and policing.  After that... I'm not so sure.  I'd like to see less bureaucracy and less reliance on the government for day-to-day survival.  However that's what the report talks about - cutting taxes reduces programs that people rely on every day.

I think the "every day" part gets to me.  I have no problem paying taxes so that we (as a country) can do bigger things than me, my town or county etc could do alone.  Cutting the GST was always a bad idea - taxing things as they're consumed is pretty fair.  You have a bigger car, you pay more taxes on gas and upkeep.  You like to eat at fancy restaurants, you pay more tax.  It's pretty fair.  Cutting that tax was a bad idea.  It looks even worse now that we hit an economic downturn - people spend less so the GST collected will be less than ever.

In conclusion, I've complained and I don't know what my point was.  I guess I need to go find more chocolate eggs to fuel a potential response... But I'm not really going to do that now.