The global stage is going through a major recession, unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. Every day, we are hearing about how thousands upon thousands of jobs are being shed by company after company. We hear stories about people walking away from their houses in the States, tent cities being set up after people lose their jobs and the sudden need for billions of dollars in corporate bailouts to save what few jobs are left.
On the street, people are getting cranky. Public servants, frustrated by an increase in their respective workloads, are talking back to their customers in ways that provoke, instead of provide insight. People are butting into lines everywhere, worried that the last scrap of whatever folks are after will be gone by the time they get there. Pensions, investments and other trusts we once believed were safe are rapidly disappearing, leaving many pensioners the choice of living their "golden" years in poverty or returning to work.
We hear more about school shootings, rampages where gunmen go crazy shooting up everybody in their home and then move on to random people on the street, or work rage, where the same thing can happen at the place of a former employer. Last Christmas, we heard about a man who dressed up as Santa Claus, drove up to the home of his former in-laws and began to throw pipe bombs and tried to torch the home, as well as shoot anybody else who got in his way. In the end, he blew himself up, when one of his home-made weapons set itself off too soon. We learned the shooter in this case was laid off from a well-paying job as an engineer, then his wife sought and won a court order against him for more money ... He planned to come to Canada. God only knows what he had planned for us up here.
In Germany, a 15-year old suddenly takes a gun and goes to his former high school and begins shooting. His targets were mostly female students and teachers. Though reportedly treated for depression two years earlier, one would question how relevant that is to this mass explosion. Another man in Alabama came home, took the lives of most of his family, as well as took down a few random people on his street, before ending his life at a metal plant (possibly where he might have been recently laid off). Two parents in Quebec had a suicide pact, whereby they were to kill their children, then one another, after leaving a detailed note as to why the economy was hurting them. This goes on and on and on ...
People are more likely to sue or get sued in these rough times, or fall behind in their debt payments, subjecting more folks to the ire of collection agencies. Family law disputes are taking on a more bitter tone, leaving many to the courts in what are known as the "high conflict" family files. Government agencies undergoing cutbacks experience an increased rate of error and declining rate of empathy, as payers of support payments end up with less than 50% of their income and often, end up in dire straits themselves. One man called me from his car, which is where he is living these days after he lost his job and then his home.
Many times, the only thing we can do is make appropriate referrals, or provide encouragement and moral support. Many of these people do not have money for legal services, nor do they fall under the purview of Legal Aid Ontario. On paper, their income is too high, but after the garnishment, they cannot even meet basic needs. Their only choice these days is to approach Family Law Advice Counsel at the court house, or to phone Lawyer Referral Service, with respect to how to best represent themselves in what will likely become a battle of a lifetime. They need to vary the court orders, amend visitation or even seek custody of children, or reduce or eliminate spousal support payments. Unless they can pay a lawyer, most of them end up representing themselves.
This has always been part of the problem, even before the chaos of the present recession began. The present recession is just wearing people down more. People talk to me more about how much they hate, as opposed to how upset they are. I lost someone to suicide in January 2009, and then somebody else to so-called 'natural causes' in his forties in February 2009. If the second one had access to a family doctor, medications and transportation, I am sure he would have survived (which is all I can say publicly). Poor people die, while rich people thrive.
Policy makers know the poor are worst off. They know that poverty is costing us more than $30 billion annually. They know that poverty is a good part of the reason our health care costs are skyrocketing. The growth of poverty seems to coincide with the growth of methadone clinics in urban areas; unfortunately, they too are responding to demand. I hear stories about how a few have sold their weekend carries on the street, or prostitute themselves to get the "real" thing ... or turn to booze or another drug of choice. Tenants get evicted more now for illegal drug use or for dealing from their units.
My work is to evict them. There have been cases when I met the same tenant time and time again, through different buildings, after a repeat performance of the first time they were evicted. The public and private interest is to get these people housed and protected, but at the same time, one must ask where ... living on the street can only exacerbate whatever problems they created when they started with my buildings. The problem only leaves one building, only to land on the doorstep of another. One thing my mother was right about was that things started to go really bad when drugs were introduced in society. Trying to remain impersonal and objective throughout this chaos is difficult to do, but one of my responsibilities.
I know there is a huge increase in addictions and drug dealing in general, as I see it in the streets, hear about it through various people I speak to, and learn of it from the coffee shops. But it is not just the low income people on Ontario Works or even ODSP that are using; many of the people who are using get no formal income, as well - many are fully employed. There are also wealthy professionals who also find themselves entangled. They just go to better places and are able to hide their habit better. People cry for a war on drugs, they cry for prohibition, when we know this will never work ... esp. when the world is falling apart at its seams.
In my building where I work, I often have to chase people out, feeling bad at the same time as many of these people have nowhere to go, except the streets. Many of these people do not have any income, as they were kicked off Ontario Works a long time for some misunderstood transgression. Perhaps, they lost their identification and did not have the funds to renew it, or they happen to be living rough and their OW worker can't really communicate with them, nor can any employer for that matter.
As an advocate, I am a lightning rod for people that feel strongly about things, from both the right and the left. The right wants to believe in the existence of the welfare queens, that continue to procreate with impunity to increase their income. Of course, they have no evidence of this except from "a friend of a friend who knew somebody that had fourteen children so she can make a mint off the 'system'". I have worked with low-income people as well as middle and upper income folks for years, and I have yet to meet anybody that would even want to have more and more children, particularly when they could not even feed themselves. There were a few teen mothers who never heard of birth control, as some might add, but they were referred to programs where they learned how to become successful parents, as well as finish high school.
From the left, they want governments to spend, spend and then spend some more to get us out of this global crisis. Spending more in a recession is not a sin, but indiscriminate spending can make the problem worse than when it started. While building "affordable housing" will create some construction jobs in the immediate term, money is still going to be needed in the future to maintain these units. The City of Toronto has a half a billion dollar backlog in repairs to its own housing stock, let alone thinking of building new stock. At the same time, poverty groups are pressuring the City to fix their units, which are more than just a mere "leaky tap" ... many have ceilings falling down, bad foundation, vermin, mould, as well as other problems that make their unit uninhabitable. We have to decide if we want to spend billions and billions of dollar propping up these buildings, many of which should be razed and rebuilt anyways, or whether the money can go somewhere else that might increase the incomes of all of the poor to encourage greater local investment, and thus, more capital to invest in the private market.
Today, an interested observer noted that "half the region is on Ontario Works or ODSP" and now more people are trying to get Employment Insurance. He suspects a secret government conspiracy that the powers that be simply want to put everybody on welfare, where they can control them. Others say they are attempting to make people so desperate that they will take any job, even jobs that do not pay minimum wage or follow health and safety standards, just to keep oneself one step ahead of starvation. Other theories are more foreboding; one has shared with me the idea that there is a policy of "slow genocide", whereby the weakest of society will be forced to slow starve to death or die of many of the diseases the poor are more likely to get, just so we can save a few tax dollars. Well, we all know they cannot directly put us all in the gas chambers anymore, or put us all against a wall and shoot us. That is too humane.
But billions of dollars have been handed to large companies ... people are becoming wary of how the executives are getting paid, even union workers in such industries as the auto sector. People are rightfully concerned that the majority of taxpayers that earn much less than these people collectively should continue to fork over money to keep these relatively wealthy classes alive. In the Toronto Star today, there was a story over "pension envy" where people in the private sector get no defined benefit plan (as these are slowly moving to the status of the dodo bird) are continuing to be forced to pay into secure, relatively high pensions of those in the public sector or even GM workers. Pension reform certainly needs to be on the table. I wouldn't want to be old right now; I would not be able to retire, as what is given to those without a private pension plan is peanuts. Again, we will be forcing our seniors to choose between housing and eating.
People are wanting greater controls over CEO salaries and perks, as well as some control over certain sectors, whereby it seems that wage hikes beyond inflation, plus retention pay, seem to be the order of the day, even when times are tough for everybody else. President Barack Obama has taken a great interest in a story of AIG executives receiving bonuses all of a sudden, right after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts ... I say, fire them all and make them pay it all back. Never going to happen, of course. But if somebody on welfare got a little more than what they were entitled to, you could bet your life that this individual will be hauled before the courts, charged with fraud and then thrown to the wolves. To me, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Maybe Barack Obama represents a change in direction. We can hope.
As for seeing our way out of this chaos, I am not sure. Some economists, such as Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, see this as being a short, sharp dip, whereby Canada will be less scathed than the many. Others are not so optimistic; Don Drummond from the TD Canada Trust, is saying about 500,000 jobs may still be lost ... it is going to get a LOT worse before it gets better.
In the meantime, some communities are getting together and holding rallies. I wish there'd be more of them in Niagara Region, but nevertheless there are more rallies ... politicians need to stop playing Chicken Little, as the sky is truly falling, but they can't simply run, scream and point their fingers at everybody else. They need to take action.
How positive action would certainly help me ... I would stop feeling so much in chaos. It is so bad that our building got its water cut off, then it was followed by a flood and now the plumbing on the second floor washroom (the only "public" washroom in our building) has no water and we can't even flush the toilets ... and we go downtown, walk down the street on my side and then we see construction job after construction job, whereby holes are dug up and filled up again ... I am pleased somebody gets to do the digging and the filling, but they are ensuring people's essentials are getting cut off, people are commuting in chaos and it has become rapidly known there really is no definite street I can walk through in my own neighbourhood ... too many holes, too many tractors, too many excavators, too many shovels ...
Now, if we would only get that shovel in the ground for that hospital we are supposed to build in west St. Catharines. To me, this chaos and crisis was orchestrated; it was certainly not something that would come out in the end to harm the elite ... just put us old runts through yet another rough patch. I just look forward to the day that this is finally over and I can actually talk to people about something else once again, instead of the havoc this world is wrecking on our little world.
Your thoughts?
Showing posts with label energy poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy poverty. Show all posts
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, November 30, 2008
BAIL OUT FOR THE AUTO SECTOR -- WHAT ABOUT THE POOR?
There is a very controversial crisis going on right now with the economy.
The U.S. just approved $700 billion in bailout money for the financial sector to back up mortgages and credit card debts. They are now ready again to approve a further $800 billion.
The three automaker CEO's then come flying to Washington in their private jets to pressure Washington to bail them out as well to the tune of $25 billion. The Canadian government is exploring doing the same at both the provincial and federal level.
As a taxpayer that does not make anywhere near what an average autoworker makes, nor do I have any hope of retiring with a pension ... likely, I -- like many other people -- will be working until the day I am in the ground, I vehemently disagree with all these bailouts.
On one website, I read how the governments in Ontario and Canada pissed away $1 billion in the auto sector already and the writer posted the number of jobs lost at respective plants in the past year or so. The question the writer asked afterwards, is for us all to do the math, how many job losses will $5 billion buy? Do the math!
First, before bailing out the auto sector or any other business, it should be noted WHY these big firms are finding themselves in trouble. If people are not buying the over-priced cars that the Big Three are making, how is $5 billion here and $25 billion in the U.S. going to create these markets? This bailout will not make the average family better off to the effect they will now be able to buy a new car ...
The issue is jobs, jobs, and more jobs. If I am not working, nor are my neighbours down my street working, are we going to be able to go out and buy a GM or Chrysler product, just because they are now being bailed out so they can make more product that nobody can afford?
If you want to help the car companies, or anybody else for that matter, help should be delivered to families and small businesses, so they can purchase more ... people with no disposable income, such as people on Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program, are not going to be buying new clothes, eating in restaurants, seeing movies, etc. let alone buying a car. People who work for low wages are also not in a position to buy a new car.
However, when people ARE working and EARNING good money, they have the confidence to go out and buy more things, including new cars.
The only people this bailout is helping is well-paid unionized autoworkers, as well as highly paid executives, the very same group only months before, were crying to the government to cut their taxes ... and it is so interesting that when the first sign of trouble comes, they come running back to the taxpayer ...
In their world, governments are supposed to get out of the way with respect to taxation, regulation, health and safety, product safety, etc., but come back into the fray with huge sums of money on demand, just because ... if our governments say no, which they should for the most part to the extent of their legal capacity to do so, these same companies also threaten us all that if we don't pay the untold billions that virtually ALL the plants will shut down and leave this country, and leave more than a million jobless in its wake.
You, nor anybody in the government, should be paying heed to this. We have already paid and paid into this sector through so-called economic development initiatives, only to see several plants close or cut major shifts on their assembly lines anyways, despite the aid and tax cuts we've already given them.
The unfortunate thing, however, is we may be stuck backing part of the GM workers' pension plans. They say the average worker gets $1,600 per month from GM, but what they don't tell you is that they likely get the maximum amount for CPP, which is just over $1,000 a month, plus the OAS of approximately $500 per month, in addition to whatever funds they saved on their own. This is a far cry from the $1,100 a month most people will be getting, so why should we care?
If the government foolishly made a promise that they will cover some of these costs, likely under the Bob Rae government during the 1990's, then we probably will be stuck paying and paying for this. If you ask me, we should be giving them nothing more.
Until I see the government handing out money to small businesses like me, or housing help to homeowners seeking to make repairs to their homes in a less convoluted bureaucracy that already exists, then I say what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I walk down the main streets of my city and see many businesses closed down for good, as well as meet people who are losing their homes ... because they injured themselves at work or got sick and the insurance company or WSIB is giving them an incredibly hard time.
I don't know about you, but I sense when these small businesses fail (and of course, their owners have to immediately resort to welfare as there is no Employment Insurance for them), or people either get denied or lose benefits to which they are otherwise entitled, these people, which seem to be growing in number year after year, are NOT shopping in the stores, eating at restaurants and least of all, not buying cars.
The Employment Help Centre here in Niagara found that out of a thousand people they interviewed that use their services, only seventy of them had both a valid license and a vehicle. Yet, what do 99.9% of all employers in Niagara demand? A license and a vehicle!
Would it not be better to help people access better paying jobs, so that eventually they develop the disposable income and/or credit rating necessary to buy cars, as opposed to just pouring more money into a black hole, while people continue to suffer?
I have nothing against autoworkers, and I am sure the loss of a job is just as hard for many of them as it is for anybody else, but I absolutely resent our government playing favourites with what industry it will support and which industries it will not.
Some members of the Canadian Auto Workers Union, although I am not sure if this is union-inspired or just brought about by a few radical members ... are trying to get their members to support only businesses that have owners that drive GM products, for example.
What about those of us that do not drive, because it has been determined by somebody else that our medical conditions don't permit it? How about those that don't drive because they simply cannot afford to do so? Are these autoworkers going to penalize them, just because they do not have a $50,000 GM product in their driveway?
It is time that taxpayers speak up. It is time that small business owners speak up, as well as Canadians who are going through long-term unemployment for reasons that have nothing to do with this economic restructuring ... perhaps, ageism, abelism, classism, etc. have a lot to do with it, which is the silent partner in this crisis, though nobody will admit it.
To me, if anybody should bail out the auto industry, it should be the big oil companies, as for the past five or so years, they've profited immensely by keeping people in their cars (and blocking people from using alternative transportation options).
Let the Big Three go through the Chapter 11 in the U.S. and the Companies Creditors' Arrangement Act here in Canada (similar to a Chapter 11 in the U.S.), and let them all restructure. Air Canada been through it. Stelco been through it. Many other companies have been through it and re-emerged stronger, more streamlined and responsive.
If these CEOs are as smart as they say they are and the union leaders feel they are in for more than just the ride, then perhaps they should be contributing to the solution, as opposed to coming back to taxpayers cup in hand, begging for handouts. Shame on them!
Yet these are the very same people that demonize and attack the poor in our society for ending up in the positions that they are in. They get told to get a job, any job. At the same time, these same executives are begging for major billions of dollars of taxpayers dollars. Why is nobody demonizing them?
Your thoughts?
The U.S. just approved $700 billion in bailout money for the financial sector to back up mortgages and credit card debts. They are now ready again to approve a further $800 billion.
The three automaker CEO's then come flying to Washington in their private jets to pressure Washington to bail them out as well to the tune of $25 billion. The Canadian government is exploring doing the same at both the provincial and federal level.
As a taxpayer that does not make anywhere near what an average autoworker makes, nor do I have any hope of retiring with a pension ... likely, I -- like many other people -- will be working until the day I am in the ground, I vehemently disagree with all these bailouts.
On one website, I read how the governments in Ontario and Canada pissed away $1 billion in the auto sector already and the writer posted the number of jobs lost at respective plants in the past year or so. The question the writer asked afterwards, is for us all to do the math, how many job losses will $5 billion buy? Do the math!
First, before bailing out the auto sector or any other business, it should be noted WHY these big firms are finding themselves in trouble. If people are not buying the over-priced cars that the Big Three are making, how is $5 billion here and $25 billion in the U.S. going to create these markets? This bailout will not make the average family better off to the effect they will now be able to buy a new car ...
The issue is jobs, jobs, and more jobs. If I am not working, nor are my neighbours down my street working, are we going to be able to go out and buy a GM or Chrysler product, just because they are now being bailed out so they can make more product that nobody can afford?
If you want to help the car companies, or anybody else for that matter, help should be delivered to families and small businesses, so they can purchase more ... people with no disposable income, such as people on Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program, are not going to be buying new clothes, eating in restaurants, seeing movies, etc. let alone buying a car. People who work for low wages are also not in a position to buy a new car.
However, when people ARE working and EARNING good money, they have the confidence to go out and buy more things, including new cars.
The only people this bailout is helping is well-paid unionized autoworkers, as well as highly paid executives, the very same group only months before, were crying to the government to cut their taxes ... and it is so interesting that when the first sign of trouble comes, they come running back to the taxpayer ...
In their world, governments are supposed to get out of the way with respect to taxation, regulation, health and safety, product safety, etc., but come back into the fray with huge sums of money on demand, just because ... if our governments say no, which they should for the most part to the extent of their legal capacity to do so, these same companies also threaten us all that if we don't pay the untold billions that virtually ALL the plants will shut down and leave this country, and leave more than a million jobless in its wake.
You, nor anybody in the government, should be paying heed to this. We have already paid and paid into this sector through so-called economic development initiatives, only to see several plants close or cut major shifts on their assembly lines anyways, despite the aid and tax cuts we've already given them.
The unfortunate thing, however, is we may be stuck backing part of the GM workers' pension plans. They say the average worker gets $1,600 per month from GM, but what they don't tell you is that they likely get the maximum amount for CPP, which is just over $1,000 a month, plus the OAS of approximately $500 per month, in addition to whatever funds they saved on their own. This is a far cry from the $1,100 a month most people will be getting, so why should we care?
If the government foolishly made a promise that they will cover some of these costs, likely under the Bob Rae government during the 1990's, then we probably will be stuck paying and paying for this. If you ask me, we should be giving them nothing more.
Until I see the government handing out money to small businesses like me, or housing help to homeowners seeking to make repairs to their homes in a less convoluted bureaucracy that already exists, then I say what is good for the goose is good for the gander. I walk down the main streets of my city and see many businesses closed down for good, as well as meet people who are losing their homes ... because they injured themselves at work or got sick and the insurance company or WSIB is giving them an incredibly hard time.
I don't know about you, but I sense when these small businesses fail (and of course, their owners have to immediately resort to welfare as there is no Employment Insurance for them), or people either get denied or lose benefits to which they are otherwise entitled, these people, which seem to be growing in number year after year, are NOT shopping in the stores, eating at restaurants and least of all, not buying cars.
The Employment Help Centre here in Niagara found that out of a thousand people they interviewed that use their services, only seventy of them had both a valid license and a vehicle. Yet, what do 99.9% of all employers in Niagara demand? A license and a vehicle!
Would it not be better to help people access better paying jobs, so that eventually they develop the disposable income and/or credit rating necessary to buy cars, as opposed to just pouring more money into a black hole, while people continue to suffer?
I have nothing against autoworkers, and I am sure the loss of a job is just as hard for many of them as it is for anybody else, but I absolutely resent our government playing favourites with what industry it will support and which industries it will not.
Some members of the Canadian Auto Workers Union, although I am not sure if this is union-inspired or just brought about by a few radical members ... are trying to get their members to support only businesses that have owners that drive GM products, for example.
What about those of us that do not drive, because it has been determined by somebody else that our medical conditions don't permit it? How about those that don't drive because they simply cannot afford to do so? Are these autoworkers going to penalize them, just because they do not have a $50,000 GM product in their driveway?
It is time that taxpayers speak up. It is time that small business owners speak up, as well as Canadians who are going through long-term unemployment for reasons that have nothing to do with this economic restructuring ... perhaps, ageism, abelism, classism, etc. have a lot to do with it, which is the silent partner in this crisis, though nobody will admit it.
To me, if anybody should bail out the auto industry, it should be the big oil companies, as for the past five or so years, they've profited immensely by keeping people in their cars (and blocking people from using alternative transportation options).
Let the Big Three go through the Chapter 11 in the U.S. and the Companies Creditors' Arrangement Act here in Canada (similar to a Chapter 11 in the U.S.), and let them all restructure. Air Canada been through it. Stelco been through it. Many other companies have been through it and re-emerged stronger, more streamlined and responsive.
If these CEOs are as smart as they say they are and the union leaders feel they are in for more than just the ride, then perhaps they should be contributing to the solution, as opposed to coming back to taxpayers cup in hand, begging for handouts. Shame on them!
Yet these are the very same people that demonize and attack the poor in our society for ending up in the positions that they are in. They get told to get a job, any job. At the same time, these same executives are begging for major billions of dollars of taxpayers dollars. Why is nobody demonizing them?
Your thoughts?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
IS THE CARBON TAX THE WAY TO GO?
Everybody wants to save the environment these days. People are going out in droves to purchase "environmentally friendly" products, just because they are labeled "green" or even decorated with pretty green packaging. A marketing ploy, if you ask me ... as at least one environmental research group determined that many of these "environmentally friendly" products are in fact no better than the products they are replacing.
Nevertheless, politicians are picking up from the "green" movement in waves. We even have a Green Party, in addition to all the other Parliamentary noise that some people call political parties. All of them in some sense are now jumping on the environmental bandwagon. In return for the Conservative's repudiation of Kyoto, they want to promise different incentives for people who go "green": tax breaks for people that use the bus, rebates for people who buy a hybrid car, refunds for people that do "green" renovations to their homes, etc.
The Liberals under the leadership of Stephane Dion now want to introduce a carbon tax, copying their right wing cousins in British Columbia who also jumped on a similar bandwagon about a year ago. The NDP has a foggy plan to "make polluters pay"; however that gets implemented, I supposed that will all come out in the wash. However, because Dion seems to be dragging people over to the Liberals' side with his proposed carbon tax, all the other parties decided to oppose it. To me, I am uncertain because there are too many unanswered questions about it ... henceforth, virtually all of these policies have unanswered questions until the party in question gets elected and does even more to screw things up than they already are. I feel the carbon tax might just fit that bill, if there ever was one.
A carbon tax is supposed to tax consumption, as opposed to income. The more one consumes, the more one will have to pay. Henceforth, this is not some vague 'pie in the sky' promise to tax people who are doing the pollution, but a way of making consumers pay MORE to use almost anything, eat most foods, heat their homes, drive their cars, etc. Those crazy people that protest gas price hikes will really be in a frenzy with the proposed carbon tax, as the cost of fuel will be increased even more and as such, any goods that are transported this way.
Hey, Dion, have you ever heard of this term called "energy poverty"? Obviously not, or he would have thought this through before pushing for the same. His only answer to this concern is to provide a deep income tax cut in return for raising the prices on almost anything we use and the food that we eat. The key issue here is that low-income and poor people do not pay a lot of income taxes, so an income tax cut for this group is useless to them as they get hit with higher and higher prices.
Since the provincial Liberals got into power in Ontario, the price of heating fuels and electricity more than doubled for the average consumer, while we all had to listen to endless platitudes about how we can buy "energy efficient" appliances, insulate our home, use less, etc. to cut our costs ... but, of course, Dalton McGuinty and his gang also forgot one thing: low-income people do not have the capital to purchase "energy efficient" appliances, re-insulate their homes or do other "green" changes to their homes to save money -- and this is just for the homeowners. At the same time, nobody gets any assistance in paying their skyrocketing bills either, as energy costs eat up more and more of our meagre incomes.
Many tenants are forced to pay their own utilities, yet they cannot force their landlords to do the above changes and are in turn, stuck paying higher and higher costs just to keep a roof over their heads. If they don't pay their own utilities, the Landlord and Tenant Board will only be too pleased to grant an above guideline increase to landlords stuck with paying higher costs just the same. It has already gotten bad here in Ontario WITHOUT a carbon tax to go with it, so why do we want to pay higher prices for the same thing? Is the government going to give low-income people a substantial increase in wages and social assistance? I doubt it.
For example, my utilities and bills are more than my monthly mortgage and property taxes combined. By the time I finish paying for my mortgage, taxes, utilities and other related housing bills, I am broke. This is the same Premier who promises to help small businesses and to turn around this bad economy. Yeah, right. When I am busy paying more and more for utilities, I have even less left to cover "discretionary" expenses. So, people like me and many thousands more alike, have to apologize to the small business community because we don't have any "discretionary" income left. I suppose that is okay, as this government wants everybody on welfare anyways.
Income taxes don't interest most low-income, poor and even most middle class people ... taxes have been cut and cut and cut over the past couple of decades and all we have seen are cuts to public services in return. In return for the last round of income tax cuts, people have found themselves out of pocket more at the doctor's, at the pharmacy, at the optometrist and even paying for more municipal services that used to be provided for free. The last I checked, our educational system is also paid for through taxes, but due to the 'death by a thousand cuts' over the past decade and a half, parents are expected to pay for more and more for their children's education, including basic items such as textbooks and class supplies. If you can't afford them, you are supposed to go crying poor to the school so some damned charity can look after you ... something that is supposed to be confidential, but we all know how confidential these things are when your children's peers begin to notice things, regardless of how much "help" they get.
So, now the air we breathe is going to be taxed as well? I suppose the low-income families can "cut back" by not turning on their heat in the middle of January or walking across town back and forth each day because they could no longer afford the bus and certainly cannot afford a car! In the summer, the poor and low-income are supposed to swelter in the heat, regardless of how it makes them feel. Only the rich deserve any comfort.
So, will this carbon tax work? Absolutely not! Think of it yourself. If you are presently in a financially comfortable position -- maybe not rich, but at least middle class -- you may grumble about the price of gas, or the increased cost of hydro, but you still pay it, right? You can still pay these bills without having to forgo some other luxury like food, for example. Therefore, you probably do not feel a great need to cut back or get "energy efficient" appliances (unless you can be convinced of finding a deal or getting enough of a rebate to 'pull' you in that direction). You will just keep right on using your dishwasher, your washer and dryer and drive your SUV to the corner store, as long as the costs don't go too high ...
... and that's exactly what will happen. People will pay this carbon tax as the cost of doing business. Wealthy people that have bigger homes, bigger cars and bigger bank accounts wouldn't care less if they had to pay a little more for heating their twelve mansions and their summer cottage by Algonquin Park. Even the middle class will continue to pay ... Some may cut back some, but not in a substantial way as to reduce their overall carbon footprint. For example, they may opt for a "staycation" as opposed to going to the cottage for three weeks in the summer. Low-income people have NOWHERE ELSE TO CUT BACK. More and more of them will have to choose to feed the family or pay their heating bills. Like, when are these well-intentioned politicians going to learn that what they propose does not work for the poor?
My guess is as good as any. First, the poor are rarely consulted about anything. Programs and services are created by people who will never need them. People paid to run these programs and services are well compensated and certainly will not want to see their programs cut for lack of effectiveness, so the incentive here is to "create" results, as opposed to producing them. These same people are the same folks clamouring for more tax cuts, thinking that only if they paid several thousands of dollars less a year in taxes, they can always give more to the food bank, the homeless shelter and soon, the charity hospitals once our health care is privatized enough to satisfy some of these right wingers.
One of my previous posts shows how the charitable sector is not created by and for the poor. Eighty percent of monies allocated to the poor benefit the "middle class" and the crumbs left over hardly help those intended to be served by the same. Those operating charities hardly ever ask those they serve what they need; they just impose ... and assume that what they do is "doing good" when in fact they are just perpetuating the poverty the person is in. I assume more people upon learning about the energy poverty that will be succumbing more and more families as a result of this carbon tax will assume more donations to the food bank will help ...
No, the poor want to be given a hand UP and then be left alone. It is so interesting when one or more of these right wingers ever have to go to the other side of tracks through "no fault of their own", they will finally discover the true effect of their earlier good intentions and why and how they went wrong. Before it is too late, Stephane Dion, talk to a few of us who can see through your sudden interest in the "environment" and challenge you to reduce poverty too ...
I want this issue to be one of the key election issues if there is a federal election held this fall, which it seems there will be because Stephen Harper appears to want to give up the ghost early instead of waiting until next year for the election date he originally promised. Oh well, life goes on.
Nevertheless, politicians are picking up from the "green" movement in waves. We even have a Green Party, in addition to all the other Parliamentary noise that some people call political parties. All of them in some sense are now jumping on the environmental bandwagon. In return for the Conservative's repudiation of Kyoto, they want to promise different incentives for people who go "green": tax breaks for people that use the bus, rebates for people who buy a hybrid car, refunds for people that do "green" renovations to their homes, etc.
The Liberals under the leadership of Stephane Dion now want to introduce a carbon tax, copying their right wing cousins in British Columbia who also jumped on a similar bandwagon about a year ago. The NDP has a foggy plan to "make polluters pay"; however that gets implemented, I supposed that will all come out in the wash. However, because Dion seems to be dragging people over to the Liberals' side with his proposed carbon tax, all the other parties decided to oppose it. To me, I am uncertain because there are too many unanswered questions about it ... henceforth, virtually all of these policies have unanswered questions until the party in question gets elected and does even more to screw things up than they already are. I feel the carbon tax might just fit that bill, if there ever was one.
A carbon tax is supposed to tax consumption, as opposed to income. The more one consumes, the more one will have to pay. Henceforth, this is not some vague 'pie in the sky' promise to tax people who are doing the pollution, but a way of making consumers pay MORE to use almost anything, eat most foods, heat their homes, drive their cars, etc. Those crazy people that protest gas price hikes will really be in a frenzy with the proposed carbon tax, as the cost of fuel will be increased even more and as such, any goods that are transported this way.
Hey, Dion, have you ever heard of this term called "energy poverty"? Obviously not, or he would have thought this through before pushing for the same. His only answer to this concern is to provide a deep income tax cut in return for raising the prices on almost anything we use and the food that we eat. The key issue here is that low-income and poor people do not pay a lot of income taxes, so an income tax cut for this group is useless to them as they get hit with higher and higher prices.
Since the provincial Liberals got into power in Ontario, the price of heating fuels and electricity more than doubled for the average consumer, while we all had to listen to endless platitudes about how we can buy "energy efficient" appliances, insulate our home, use less, etc. to cut our costs ... but, of course, Dalton McGuinty and his gang also forgot one thing: low-income people do not have the capital to purchase "energy efficient" appliances, re-insulate their homes or do other "green" changes to their homes to save money -- and this is just for the homeowners. At the same time, nobody gets any assistance in paying their skyrocketing bills either, as energy costs eat up more and more of our meagre incomes.
Many tenants are forced to pay their own utilities, yet they cannot force their landlords to do the above changes and are in turn, stuck paying higher and higher costs just to keep a roof over their heads. If they don't pay their own utilities, the Landlord and Tenant Board will only be too pleased to grant an above guideline increase to landlords stuck with paying higher costs just the same. It has already gotten bad here in Ontario WITHOUT a carbon tax to go with it, so why do we want to pay higher prices for the same thing? Is the government going to give low-income people a substantial increase in wages and social assistance? I doubt it.
For example, my utilities and bills are more than my monthly mortgage and property taxes combined. By the time I finish paying for my mortgage, taxes, utilities and other related housing bills, I am broke. This is the same Premier who promises to help small businesses and to turn around this bad economy. Yeah, right. When I am busy paying more and more for utilities, I have even less left to cover "discretionary" expenses. So, people like me and many thousands more alike, have to apologize to the small business community because we don't have any "discretionary" income left. I suppose that is okay, as this government wants everybody on welfare anyways.
Income taxes don't interest most low-income, poor and even most middle class people ... taxes have been cut and cut and cut over the past couple of decades and all we have seen are cuts to public services in return. In return for the last round of income tax cuts, people have found themselves out of pocket more at the doctor's, at the pharmacy, at the optometrist and even paying for more municipal services that used to be provided for free. The last I checked, our educational system is also paid for through taxes, but due to the 'death by a thousand cuts' over the past decade and a half, parents are expected to pay for more and more for their children's education, including basic items such as textbooks and class supplies. If you can't afford them, you are supposed to go crying poor to the school so some damned charity can look after you ... something that is supposed to be confidential, but we all know how confidential these things are when your children's peers begin to notice things, regardless of how much "help" they get.
So, now the air we breathe is going to be taxed as well? I suppose the low-income families can "cut back" by not turning on their heat in the middle of January or walking across town back and forth each day because they could no longer afford the bus and certainly cannot afford a car! In the summer, the poor and low-income are supposed to swelter in the heat, regardless of how it makes them feel. Only the rich deserve any comfort.
So, will this carbon tax work? Absolutely not! Think of it yourself. If you are presently in a financially comfortable position -- maybe not rich, but at least middle class -- you may grumble about the price of gas, or the increased cost of hydro, but you still pay it, right? You can still pay these bills without having to forgo some other luxury like food, for example. Therefore, you probably do not feel a great need to cut back or get "energy efficient" appliances (unless you can be convinced of finding a deal or getting enough of a rebate to 'pull' you in that direction). You will just keep right on using your dishwasher, your washer and dryer and drive your SUV to the corner store, as long as the costs don't go too high ...
... and that's exactly what will happen. People will pay this carbon tax as the cost of doing business. Wealthy people that have bigger homes, bigger cars and bigger bank accounts wouldn't care less if they had to pay a little more for heating their twelve mansions and their summer cottage by Algonquin Park. Even the middle class will continue to pay ... Some may cut back some, but not in a substantial way as to reduce their overall carbon footprint. For example, they may opt for a "staycation" as opposed to going to the cottage for three weeks in the summer. Low-income people have NOWHERE ELSE TO CUT BACK. More and more of them will have to choose to feed the family or pay their heating bills. Like, when are these well-intentioned politicians going to learn that what they propose does not work for the poor?
My guess is as good as any. First, the poor are rarely consulted about anything. Programs and services are created by people who will never need them. People paid to run these programs and services are well compensated and certainly will not want to see their programs cut for lack of effectiveness, so the incentive here is to "create" results, as opposed to producing them. These same people are the same folks clamouring for more tax cuts, thinking that only if they paid several thousands of dollars less a year in taxes, they can always give more to the food bank, the homeless shelter and soon, the charity hospitals once our health care is privatized enough to satisfy some of these right wingers.
One of my previous posts shows how the charitable sector is not created by and for the poor. Eighty percent of monies allocated to the poor benefit the "middle class" and the crumbs left over hardly help those intended to be served by the same. Those operating charities hardly ever ask those they serve what they need; they just impose ... and assume that what they do is "doing good" when in fact they are just perpetuating the poverty the person is in. I assume more people upon learning about the energy poverty that will be succumbing more and more families as a result of this carbon tax will assume more donations to the food bank will help ...
No, the poor want to be given a hand UP and then be left alone. It is so interesting when one or more of these right wingers ever have to go to the other side of tracks through "no fault of their own", they will finally discover the true effect of their earlier good intentions and why and how they went wrong. Before it is too late, Stephane Dion, talk to a few of us who can see through your sudden interest in the "environment" and challenge you to reduce poverty too ...
I want this issue to be one of the key election issues if there is a federal election held this fall, which it seems there will be because Stephen Harper appears to want to give up the ghost early instead of waiting until next year for the election date he originally promised. Oh well, life goes on.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
