The solution to the government’s debt problem is not over-spending; it is under-collecting. The government needs to govern effectively and efficiently, but it does not need to harm people through health-care cuts, make us less educated and less skilled through education cuts or depopulate the province with employment cuts.
While the capitalistic bosses offer cuts as the only solution, they are merely trying to camouflage themselves from having any possible part in the solution. This is, of course, foolish talk.
We have just recently seen the capitalistic bosses beat back an attempt by the capitalistic Liberal party to make the use of the tax system’s loopholes more ethical. In a campaign that seethed with hysteria, these bosses defended their partner bosses from having to stop using the tax system’s loopholes in an unethical and, sometimes, an illegal manner. Their take-no-prisoners defense drove the easily convinced Finance Minister Bill Morneau — who could not even bring himself to put his business shares into a blind trust to prevent being in a conflict of interest — to back away from closing the flagrant misuse of these loopholes and, even more so, to bring the tax rate of the bosses’ businesses down by 1.5 per cent.
While the capitalistic bosses offer cuts as the only solution, they are merely trying to camouflage themselves from having any possible part in the solution.
Surely the use of these tax loopholes, ethical or not, and the tax reduction of 1.5 per cent provides room for a provincial government that is in dire straits to find the solution for our large deficit in the lowly taxed status of the capitalistic bosses group. It surely is the duty of those who get more out of our society than those of us not blessed by loophole advantages and reduced tax rates, to come to the aid of our province. It is the duty of those favoured by these special treatments to pony up the money to defeat our deficit.
On another hand, I see no rationality to these bosses’ arguments that they cannot afford to raise the employees’ rate of pay to at least $15 an hour. After all, they’re not paying out the money. When they price their goods they take into account the costs of labour, freight, business, energy and all other factors and they put their rate of profit on top of that and pass that price on to us as the cost of the product. Consumers pay that price, including labour. Nothing comes out of the pockets of the bosses for the increased wages, because if they are running their businesses properly, only the profit goes to the bosses, while all the expenses are internal to the company.
With the increase from $11 to $15 — paid for by the consumer — we would be increasing the amount of money circulating in our economy by 26.7 per cent if all people were starting from $11. But, of course, only the minimum wage group are, so figure maybe an increase of 15 per cent.
This demographic of wage earners will not be putting this money into fine wines, exotic cars or convoluted business plans. They are going to spend this money on basic, everyday items and this should allow the bosses to make even greater profits to enable them to put their shoulders to the wheel and cover off the deficit for the good of the whole population.
P.F. Murphy
St. John’s
