July 27, 2023
Democracies are based on the idea of sharing, of a certain degree of fairness. There is an agreed-upon minimality, where those better-off will enable and help the less fortunate. Any rational observer can see that our society and many other democracies are starting to unravel. The growing disparity between the rich and poor will eventually destroy us.
Case-in-point. In Ontario, the ‘disability’ program was established in the 1980’s. The ‘housing’ portion of that was about $480 per month. That was enough, back then. In the last year, over fourty years later, it was raised to $532. Where can you live for that? And we wonder why there are more ‘street people’ every year. Fifty years ago you could see a doctor within a day. Why do we allow this to happen?
Those in power, no matter the form of government, benefit the most. Always. The fact is, we continue to elect the wealthy to power. (If an electrician and a corporate lawyer were running for the same office, who would you vote for?) It should be no surprise, then, that the wealthy get more than their share. Example: fifty years ago, the more wealthy a person was, the more income tax they paid. Today, there are many cases where CEOs pay less income tax than their secretaries. How does this happen? There are so many ways to incorporate today that very little is in the name of the wealthy. Due to the laws enacted over the last fifty years, corporations have so many write-offs, they pay little or no taxes. This results in much less money in the common funds: less for health care, roads, schools, etc. A new way to raise funds is needed, one that attempts to balance things a bit.
In some countries, (Judy and I wintered in the Bahama’s a while.) there is a sliding tax on all goods. There might be no tax on the necessities, but taxes increase on everything, as it becomes less necessary and more luxurious. For instance, a twenty-year-old Junker of a car might have a two-percent tax. A new Lincoln, 80%. In the Bahama’s, a house worth under a certain amount wasn’t taxed at all. Land taxes went up as did the luxury of the home, that is, the percentage of the value tax went up. All weren’t taxed at the same rate, as is the assumption here.
If the wealthy managed, as they always do, to get around one system, there was another way to ‘encourage’ them to participate in supporting the common good.
If we want a better future for our society as a whole, we’d better start looking at the big picture and have the nerve to elect people who will change it to bring back the necessary sharing. In our culture that, on paper, is getting wealthier, there is simply something basically very wrong when we have less and less funds to help people. Let’s get back to the basics and revamp with the necessary sharing in mind. But we can’t depend on the wealthy, or their minions, to take us there. A new, over-all approach is needed. Who will enable it? We’d better figure it out soon.
Anthony
