THE RECORD
July 10, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Fans of the old Peanuts cartoon series will remember the yearly agony of Charlie Brown as he was taunted and cajoled by Lucy to punt the football she was holding, until he gave in and went for it. Charlie knew that Lucy will yank the ball away in the last second, but he fell in the same trap year after year and ended up on his back, staring at the sky, cursing his own stupidity.

The same misfortune, caused by chronic gullibility, is happening to humanity year after year, age after age, falling for the sugar coated promises of professional mind benders and ending up skinned. As I explained in my last column the methodology is always the same, regardless of age, race, colour or creed. Commonly used words are twisted out of context and people are persuaded that they still mean the same as before.

Economics are supposed to be the science for the distribution of scarce resources, but no economic theory in history has aver come close to this idea. The reason is simple. All wealth comes out of the control and conversion of resources into other forms. There's no other way to gain wealth. The physical costs of this conversion process are always the same, but the monetary costs can be twisted and distorted to give the illusion either of waste, or of savings.
The only way costs can be cut is through the reduction of physical inputs while still performing the same service, or making the same product. This means that throughout history economists were never concerned with the distribution of resources, but with the distribution of the costs incurred so that certain special interests could benefit and control others with the resulting wealth. In other words, economics have always been the science of the distortion of paradigms.

The biggest lie is when politicians promise tax cuts to gain popularity, knowing that everybody hates to pay taxes. Much of the propaganda campaign of the Alliance and their BC Liberal branch has been built around the promise of tax cuts, claiming that it will put more spending money in people's pockets. Spending on what?

As I predicted it in my first column after the last BC elections, the tax cuts handed out to the vast majority of people have by now cost them many times the alleged benefits in the loss of services, loss of human rights and in a number of cases their lives.

The privatized services that follow these phony tax cuts always cost far more than those provided by government from taxes. Therefore, the monies received from tax cuts have not benefited the average person, only big business who now can soak the public for the services we used to take for granted.

This is only the beginning. With the sale of Hydro's distribution services to a US company the economy of BC will be totally ruined and under NAFTA rules no government will never be able to rebuild it again.

There are large scale scandals bursting out around the world over privatized electricity, water, health and education services that used to be public properties. The costs are rising, people are deprived of water for their children, there have been cholera epidemics in Africa, while the multinational companies are raking in the profits.

Under public control the delivery and costs of the services could be questioned and accountability demanded. The minute they are privatized, or put under this new idea of public/private control, the public loses the right to demand answers and accountability as the new owners are under business secrecy and confidentiality protection and can do, or soak the public, as they like.

The politicians who promise tax cuts and better and cheaper services under privatization are simply lying. This can not be delivered.

Under the propaganda curtain distorting facts what no politician ever dares to admit is that corporate profits are also forms of taxation, and while they are condemning governmental taxes, they are praising unlimited profits, regardless of the damage they may cause to the public.

The word "cuts", when used in the present context of so called "downsizings" is in itself a propaganda falsehood. I am surprised to see that BC unions and their leaders are demonstrating, carrying signs against the so called "cuts" around their necks. By doing so they are legitimizing cost increases and cost transfers on the public under the lie of cuts. The Campbell government hasn't cut anything. They increased and transferred costs on other sectors. The jobs and services they eliminated now cost far more to the economy and the resulting corporate profits are taken out of the country, without any benefits to Canadians.

The same consequences also apply to the other lies under the headings of "downsizing", "restructuring" and "efficiencies." When used from the monetary angle, all of these words are blatant lies. The main purpose of so called downsizing is to deprive some people of the benefits of resource conversion and transfer these benefits into the pockets of special interests in the form of profits.

Downsizings and restructurings would be realities only if the resource conversion would also be reduced while the benefits to human beings would remain the same. This is never the case. The purpose of these falsehoods is always the diversion of benefits while increasing demands on resources.

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International