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POLITICIANS, THE ECONOMY AND REAL PEOPLE
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by
Daniel Bois
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The Montreal Review, October, 2010
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Ok, we have a real disconnect here, politicians seem to be telling us that things are beginning to recover with the Economy and we are telling politicians that things are getting worse. Who is correct and why are we having a deaf dialogue? We are speaking but we aren't listening. Since politicians seem to have publicists and communications experts telling us what the politicians want us to hear, I will allow them to figure out on their own how to make the citizens understand the message, they are paid for this, so good luck with that. I, on the other hand, will attempt to provide a voice to this growing anger within the citizenry. My understanding may be flawed, but my attempt to communicate to the politician can't be worse than what has happened so far.
During the Economic Crisis we lost metaphorically 10 thousand careers at a salary of 50k per worker. Business owners were about to go bankrupt and the government gave them enough money to keep them afloat. Today we have gained 9 thousand jobs at a salary of 25k per worker. Business owners have avoided bankruptcy and have given themselves bonuses to celebrate their ingenuity of being saved by an external force: the taxpayers (who are ironically also the workers). Business statistics show that they are making a profit (of course they are, they are paying half the original salary). Politicians look at the raw numbers of 10 thousand people losing jobs and 9 thousand recuperating them and profits being maintained and interpret this as a recovery, not the best recovery, but a slow but sure one.
To the lucky worker who had a 50k salary yesterday and a 25k salary today, and he is lucky because there are a few who didn't get anything, well this lucky worker has the same living expenses today as he did yesterday so he is unable to keep up with the payments. So from the perspective of these workers, the economy has not improved in the slightest but has actually worsened. So when a politician says that the economy is slowly recuperating, the worker believes that the politician is out to lunch. "The economy is not getting better, I have half the money I had yesterday and it aint looking any better tomorrow."
Canada has one of the highest underemployment rates in the world. Imagine, we have roads that are disintegrating in front of our own eyes and our traffic situation is becoming so untenable that we demand civil engineers to be produced in our universities and what do we do with them when they graduate? We hire them as car salespeople so that we can have more cars to worsen the traffic problems and drive over the disintegrated roads. Is this the sign of an economy that is improving? Governments want to save money to spend on the deficit so instead of paying a million dollars to repair the roads today, they prefer to pay a billion dollars tomorrow to rebuild the roads from scratch.
The citizen then watches as the government takes the money that was going to be used to reduce the deficit to pay the very people who mismanaged their previous money which created this economic crisis in the first place. To add insult to injury, the corporate owners take this new money and reward themselves for having avoided the bankruptcy as if they had solved the problem on their own.. and they are still in charge. Had any employee of any corporation done the same sort of mistake in his job, he would have been fired on the spot and possibly been criminally charged for negligence.
The economy is getting better? For the majority it's not getting any better and I am pretty confident in assuming that had this same money used to bail out these incompetent corporate leaders been given to the people who lost their careers, they would have been able to recreate new careers receiving 75k of salary a year which could then be taxed to pay for our civil engineer graduates to fix our roads. But for this to happen, the governments have to stop paying thieves who own corporations and start paying citizens who elect them so that these citizens can receive a better education, better health care. so that the citizens can receive the same treatment justifiably as the corporate thieves have received unjustifiably.
This is the perspective of the citizen who has lost out in this economic crisis and if this perspective is wrong, then the politicians need to provide evidence and then we can begin a two way conversation instead of hearing the politician being the corporate mouthpiece again and again. Otherwise, citizens will become more and more cynical and the trust in the political process will erode even more.. Intelligent people would know what would happen if trust in our institutions erodes completely and I hope there are intelligent people in the political arena to do what must be done instead of listening to the same people who created this Economic Crisis in the first place.
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Daniel Bois is a writer living in Montreal. You can read more of his articles in his blog "Think About Issues." You may contact Daniel Bois at
thinkissues@gmail.com
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