Governments creating high debt, low revenue
Re: “No good excuse”, (Citizen, Nov. 22)
Guaranteed annual income and affordable child care are great goals to have. Problem is, how are you going to pay for those two expense items in an environment where:
1. Household debt is at record levels and the 99 per centers are taxed out and finding making ends meet difficult.
2. Senior levels of government are running budget deficits and finding it hard to get new revenue.
3. Local governments regard taxes going to entertaining us as more important than social issues.
4. The federal government aids and enables the one per centers to avoid paying taxes.
5. The government’s only means of growing the economy is not by innovation and productivity but by immigration so that we can consume more instead of export more.
6. The government perpetuates the low income and poverty by acquiescing to the demands of low paying business by bringing in low cost workers from poorer nations, thereby distorting our labour markets and thereby not allowing the natural economic forces of supply and demand for labour to drive up the the wages for Canadian workers.
7. Free trade and globalization have made Canada a net importer. Prior to that Canada enjoyed huge trade surpluses and a better off working and middle classes.
8. The government, in order to protect the capital of the one per centers, and in the process of showing disdain for the rest of us, has kept interest rates artificially low, thus driving up asset prices, like housing, to levels no longer affordable by Canadians.
Our leadership, since the 1980s, has gotten us to this point and given us all of the above. Affordability will be their excuse. There will have to be a lot of current government programs and staffing eliminated to make this work.
Don Swiatlowski
North Cowichan