Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re:Money coming from Ottawa not sufficient, Tory says. June 2, 2020.

During the COVID-19 pandemic every area of society and the economy has been hammered with the exception of corporations. It has exposed the gig economy as a fraud made up of millions of low-paid contract and essential workers living from cheque to cheque – many of them women. The federal government has been pouring billions of taxpayers’ dollars to support the economy while running up an historic deficit to keep everything afloat. These are unprecedented times.

Recently, when discussions have started to turn to how to pay for this avoidable disaster the mayors of cities, businesses and the premiers have been seeking even more money from the federal government to avoid massive property tax increases or even worse – cuts to essential services – exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.  Historic under-funding of society by the private sector is the real problem. The government has already put us all in the hole for generations. We repeatedly hear ad nauseum that we are in this together. Not quite.

During all this time and before there has been one area that has had nothing but big tax cuts over the past fifty years and stratospheric profits with little social responsibility – corporations. It is astounding how transparent the corporate sector can become in times of crisis. Corporate taxes have dropped precipitously from around 90% after World War II (another worldwide crisis comparable to the pandemic) to around 14% in 2020. It is high time that corporations started kicking in some serious cash.  The Feds need to raise corporate taxes by 10% immediately while cutting the interest rates on credit cards by the same amount. A Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) must also be implemented because it would cost the government less than all the combined programs expenditures thus far. A GAI would also make corporations honest in what they pay their employees because the common threat of starvation and poverty would not be part of their calculus ever again. These three simple measures would cost less than all the other money already committed. are needed now to begin to restore the social balance and to ensure this does not happen again. Individual taxpayers cannot and should not be expected to continue to carry the burden of society while corporations carry nothing – except money.  Its time for corporations to put their money where their mouth is.

Because we’re all in this together – aren’t we?

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Class action alleges care homes failed in virus response. April 27, 2020.

While the pandemic has exposed serious weaknesses in our public and private care homes from staffing, the type of care patients receive and PPE, the problem is much, mch larger than this. From our hospital infrastructure and the required integration of staffing and resources required to keep people well from doctors and nurses to laundry workers and the cleaning staff to our city infrastructure of roads, sewers, sanitation services and everything related to it to retail grocery clerks risking their lives for minimum wage these are all symptoms of a much larger problem – the ongoing damage that capitalism is doing to our societies around the world. Every problem that exists in the world can be traced back to capitalism in one form or another. In the drive for profits and cost-cutting capitalist private sector owners of long-term care homes have slashed the staffing and the protective equipment to the bone while telling us they know what they are doing – the private sector knows best leading to the horrendous damage and death that is occurring presently. In the drive to lower costs it has driven governments to cut the funding to hospitals and long-term care public facilities leading to the disaster we are now experiencing. All through society jobs have been cut back and their wages cut to the quick by a greed and profit mentality that knows no limits. As long as this philosophy is dominant in our society we will get sharply reduced quality and service in every aspect of our lives while paying ann increasingly premium price for it.  Profits should be taken after all the things that they have not done are covered – god wages with benefits, full-time work, pensions and well-funded infrastructure and equipment – similar to the kind of society we had before globalization. If we do not come to our senses and see where the root causes are for this pandemic’s impact on our society we will continue to pay more and get less. The answer is to get more and pay less for a quality society that we deserve. Only then should the private sector allowed to take a small profit.

Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Business groups pushing for higher wage subsidies, March 26, 2020

Both the Federal and the Provincial governments should not be subsidizing the private sector during the COVID-19 crisis or at any other time. This is the group that constantly asserts the independence of the private sector from government when times are good and the entrepreneurial spirit that takes on all crises in making their businesses a success. This is one of those crises that is part of the free enterprise system. They can’t have it both ways – taking all the profits when times are good and then running to the government (taxpayers) when times are bad. Government is for the people – not for the private sector.

This is the group that has laid off millions without wages during a health crisis that is beyond their control. This is the group that under normal circumstances advocates for ‘voluntary’ compliance and recoils at government regulation. This results in tsunami of problems which they disavow from industry dumping toxic waste into our watersheds to plastic pollution to poisoning bees with noenicitinoids and on and on all in the name of profit. This is the group that during the good times is always trumpeting for the government to stay out of their way and asserting that the private sector knows best and does things better than the public sector whom they constantly demean. This is the group that whines constantly about being over-taxed despite corporate and business taxes being at an all time low and corporate profits being at an all time high. This is the group that has made ‘contract’ work the new standard; meaning low paid, part-time minimum wage ‘precarious’ employment has now become the standard among workers around the world. This is the group that has not increased the minimum wage or real incomes a cent in thirty years. This is the group that has made trillions in profits during this same time that they have salted away in banks and offshore tax havens as their cushion for bad times like this. This is the group that has been sympathetic but has spent token amounts of their precious profits to help workers by at least paying their wages during this crisis instead of taxpayers subsidizing them once again. And yet this is the group that lines up without shame to ask for more money from government as though they were deserving and in need.

When profits get shared equally with the people who create them and the private sector starts pitching in directly in the COVID-19 crisis with their profits only then should governments consider subsidizing t the private sector. Until then say no to business.

Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Ontario reduces electricity rates during daytime hours, March 25, 2020

I the pandemonium of the COVID-19 pandemic the silence from the corporate sector and the staggeringly wealthy is not surprising. These two groups always slink into their luxurious backgrounds when disaster hits to protect their money and get out of the public eye. Corporations spend like drunken sailors in the good times and then cry in their beer when the pandemic hits hoping for some free bailout money from taxpayers. Maybe they should have saved up for this rainy day like everyone else has then they would have money to carry them through this crisis. The government should mandate a rainy day fund for all businesses going forward. Other than paying some of the salaries of shut-in employees in selected cases the majority of big corporations and the rich have been big on hand-holding and platitudes but short on real help.

In this time of extreme need with millions of short-term contract workers idled without pensions, healthcare or any other kind of supports to assist them there are many tangible things that corporations and the wealthy could be doing that would really help, like the banks who make billions every quarter rather than magnanimously deferring mortgage payments giving everyone a free mortgage payment or corporate landlords giving renters a free month’s rent? Why don’t car makers give people a free car payment or grocery stores like Loblaws allowing free shopping for seniors and healthcare workers in addition to opening the stores early for an hour which costs them nothing,. Public transit should be free for a month and the oil companies could give people a free gas for a month  without blinking an eye. With the trillions in profits the oil companies have earned this would be a small way to give back for once. The Beer Store could give out a complimentary six-pack of beer with any purchase or the LCBO a complimentary bottle of wine. Hydro 1 could give people reducd electricity at their cost rather than the taxpayers paying for it. And most particularly, banks could and should reduce credit card rates to 10%. The banks have been profit gouging for 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. It’s about time that stopped. A cut in credit card interest would immediately assist every Canadian. All these measures and more would be a way of saying thank you to the millions of people who run our society and for once thanking them in a tangible way rather than meaningless public gestures that amount to nothing. People are getting tired of being patronized by the “take-all-the-money-and-run” capitalism that never thinks of the people who deliver that money to corporations and the rich each and every day. We need to rethink our entire profit based economic motivational system and revise it to incentivize the working stiffs first not shareholders and to stop demonizing public sector

 Unpublished letter sent to the Toronto Star

Re: Ottawa unveils $1B fund to battle pandemic. March 12, 2020.

While the COVID-19 pandemic spreads worldwide causing irreparable damage to the economy and society there have been no reports in the media about the cause or assigning blame  for this global disaster. This pandemic was not an accident, it was entirely avoidable and preventable.

Chinese authorities are the perpetrators in this case not the victims. While China has a long and glorious history of advancement and innovation, the fault rests directly on China’s slow contemporary modernization of their ancient cultural practices in their rush to advance technologically in the shift from communism to capitalism.

This general attitude has led to a society that appears modern and highly advanced militarily but where most of the country is still destitute and possessing limited education. This has led to slow cultural advancement that still allows cruel, unregulated live animal street markets that will slaughter any animal you request on the spot mixing blood and human food together. These barbaric practices were the source of the COVID-19 outbreak that has placed the world in a serious dilemma. This is not about racism or cultural discrimination, it is about acknowledging that certain cultural practices are out of step with the modern world and should be banned. Every society has these cultural deficits that require their attention. While China has made huge advances as a nation there are still many areas of their country’s practices that need to be abandoned. The controlling Chinese leadership and their restrictive and authoritarian socialist culture that wants to manage every aspect of people’s lives to the point of shutting down the revelation of this new disease exacerbated the problem. China’s leadership should invest more time and money into developing modern cultural practices and educating their people instead of simply building a bigger military and better cities.

This pandemic is actually rooted in authoritarian narrow-mindedness and cultural deficits, not in some random accident of nature. We are all paying the price.

China needs to be held to account. Everyone affected needs to send the bill to China.

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Days of whine and $15 billion in bonuses for our bankers, December 19, 2019.

Linda McQuaig’s article paints a bleak picture. In these dystopian media times with wealth and opportunity apparently everywhere vast inequities, ridiculous unfairness and scurrilous behaviour have become the accepted norm. As banks give out $15 billion in bonuses making a staggering $46.6 billion in profits, 2600 GM workers are idled by the multi-billion dollar gargantuan General Motors brought back from the dead by a $650 million bailout from Ontario and SNC Lavalin pleads guilty to what amounts to a financial slap on the wrist of $280 million dollars for bribery the bitter and bitingly arrogant realities of capitalism are on full display. And no one seems to care. 2019 looks more like 1819.

In sharp contrast, the contemporary working poor (and I include the middle and even the upper class given the ballooning relativity of corporate profits) are saddled with an 8% tax increase by Toronto Council to pay for critically needed infrastructure updates, affordable housing and transit to name only a few at a cost of a mere $10-15 billion. This is chump change for the banks who take no responsibility for the society they live in. The banks’ bonuses could fund the full cost without batting an eye. And that’s only the banks. But capitalism doesn’t allow this.  Clearly we need profit controls.

Corporate Canada daily cozies up to government and makes billions in profits and benefits while paying miniscule taxes. Amazon pays negative tax in the U.S. The working poor  on the other hand get a languishing standard of living, unstable work, wage stagnation, crushing taxes relatively and a snarly response from government when they ask like Oliver Twist ‘Please sir, can I have some more.’  Corporate taxes have plummeted over the past fifty years while profits skyrocketed and work was stripped to the bone. Corporations also divested pensions, healthcare, full-time work and benefits. The losses and degradation of middle and lower class incomes is staggering as are the continually rising enormous profits. Taxes pay for the civil society that we live in but everyone is not taxed equally. The private sector takes all the profits, the public bears all the costs. The 99% support the 1%.

What is most concerning about this is how willingly society at all levels passively accepts this corrupt system of capitalism and free markets, the private sector, government and society without question. This is the real tragedy of modern society. Like the indigenous people long ago we’re being tricked with a few techno baubles.

The corruption of corporate Canada, Canadian politics and Canadian society is complete. Beware of bigots in suits with smiles on their faces.