THE RECORD
June 06, 2001

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Our Alliance MP, Philip Mayfield, sent out a questionnaire some time ago. One of the questions went something like: "Are you concerned about the widening income gap between the USA and Canada?" The allusion was, of course, that with their low taxation Americans are so much better off than Canadians and unless we follow their example of competitiveness, we'll be left farther and farther behind.

The one thing that comes out of the teachings of neoclassical economics is that the figures can be twisted around to prove anything a customer pays for, while calling it the science of economics. Of course, the customers are always some big corporations that can write off their financing these fraudulent theories and figures as legitimate business expenses and of course, once again, the figures published are always in favour of their great cause of wealth creation..

Then there are the cold, hard facts, collected by people all over the world, who still maintain their human dignity and can not be bought. The real figures show that the so called economic boom of the Clinton years and before, has been a smoke screen to hide that the USA is a lousy place to live for ordinary people who are not investors and speculators, but simple wage earners.
One in six children in the USA, or about 16 percent, lives in poverty and most middle-class families are finding it harder and harder to get by. This number is about the double of the poverty rates in Canada and Germany and six times higher than in France, Belgium and Austria. As the number of the relatively few billionaires rises, so do the numbers of people pushed into poverty by the millions, because wealth can not be created, but has to be taken from others.

While corporations are demanding tax cuts and even the highest level of officials confess that the intention of the Bush administration is the total elimination of corporate taxes, New York City hospital administrators have just announced the closure of 27 child health clinics, where poor children could receive inoculations, asthma treatment and first aid and their parents advice on how to look after them. The City can no longer afford to keep these open and maintained.

Approximately 5.9 million US mothers with children under 19 years of age have no health insurance because they simply can not afford any. At the same time they earn too much to make them eligible for Medicaid. Many of them are single mothers, often holding two or more part time jobs. Full time jobs and any kind of job security are no longer fashionable in the home of the free and the brave. It wouldn't be competitive.

Something like 40 percent of Wal Mart employees, or shall we say "associates", are also on welfare as their jobs don't pay enough to survive on. Millions of wage earners with families must rely on food banks to survive on.

Over the last few months we heard a lot about the collapse of the BC health system and how our nurses are tempted to leave Canada to go into high paying US jobs. No wonder. US governments have been cutting back on the funds for the training of nurses for years and the Dubya gang just announced another major cut. The result is that the USA also has a great shortage of nurses and the forced overtimes are no better than here.

It is expected that America will need another 450,000 nurses by 2008 with nowhere the capacity or the money to train them. So they are stripping the necessary numbers from other countries, especially from Canada, as it is cheaper for them to pay high wages, than to train new professionals. This is usually called parasitism, but then, the whole of North America including Canada has survived for a hundred years on the immigration of trained professionals in all fields.

The US nursing shortage is so acute that over a dozen States are now considering anti and limited overtime legislation to prevent major accidents on account of worn out staffs, who often work 18 hour shifts.

Then we come to Canada, where the nurses are not only forced to work incredible hours, but are not even paid well for their services and the hospital boards are propagandizing against their demands as impossible to fulfill.

What people should realize once and for all is that when one segment of the population is controlling and taking extremely high earnings, somebody has to pay for them, because the division of wealth is based on the cutting up of a pie: If some get bigger slices, others will get less, or nothing.

Even the National Post had to admit that the average salaries of the CEOs of the top 60 companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange increased by 43 percent last year. Nortel's John Roth received $70,754,000. while he fired thousands and used more thousands of part timers. Alcan's Jacques Bougie received $32.9 million, while putting pressure on the workers of Kitimat et al for major concessions. It was three times of his own 1999 earnings.

The reason? Competitiveness with the USA, where executive salaries are reaching to the heavens, while 44 million can not afford medical coverage and many millions more are homeless, sleeping on park benches and under bridges.

Copyright (c) 2001, West's International