Businesses need to start providing for themselves
By Lethbridge Herald on August 22, 2023.
Editor:
Albertans need to pay attention to the needs of people, like food and shelter.
Economists are all about paper, money, and debt. Economists are interested in money making more money, rich people’s fantasies. Working people, like worker bees, make honey and keep the hive warm. Economist bees would be counting the pedals on the flowers. They produce nothing and focus on irrelevancies. Feed the people first!
What good is an economy that starves half the population to make the rich richer? If we must subsidize, subsidize people first. A good economy must feed and house all the people, provide health care, good education for everyone. Robots and digital machines that substitute for people are fantasies of the rich for slavery. Real people need living wage work. A healthy economy feeds healthy people and all children before the fantasies of economists and games for the rich. Canadian business, corporations, and foreign investors are the biggest sucks on our society.
The “business community” has an amazing hoard of lobbiests to governments of all levels, constantly whining and crying for more subsidies.
Our elected representatives waste too much time entertaining these lobbiests, and not enough studying legislation. Billions of worker taxes are going to business subsidies rather than services for the public. Then the governments claim there is no money for health care, daycare, dental or professional services for the tax-payers. It is time governments tell business to grow up and provide for themselves. American business subsidies are destroying the world economy by not allowing country locals to run their own economies. American corn subsidies pumped up production of corn so much, that subsidized corn exports to Mexico has destroyed Mexico’s indigenous corn farming.
Don Ryane
Lethbridge
9-8
Funny, the former rant was about subsidies to the fossil fuel industry which in reality were tax incentives legally provided through the codes. However, no one is crying about the real hand outs to the parasites in the the wind and solar businesses who at best provide a large amount of temporary construction jobs and higher energy costs to the peons. Then we have the handouts to those who purchase electric cars, The handouts given to auto makers and dealers to proliferate the nonsense. You have your eye on the wrong ball Don. The real problem is the climate cult.
The 1950’s called for you buck, they want you back.
And knock it off with the ‘everyone is wrong but you’ crap.
Embrace facts instead of constantly whining!
Mr. Ryane is right that the economy is to provide food, water, energy and materials to sustain people in a civilized society. And do this while maintaining a healthy environment. All else is illusion.
Our economy is failing to do this, today. All the while governments pander to a powerful minority and assist in the accumulation of capital into their hands: Robbing people and plundering the earth for a fiction.
As Mr. Ryane is suggesting, it’s time to pull back the veil of neoliberalism.
excellent points from the writer, and sophie. i have lost all confidence in every “party” as each has their crew that they grease with massive doses of public monies…always with big corp getting lined to the max when either the cons or the libs are in. as for our fed libs, they have managed to double our debt load in their time in office. yes, we had the covid, but even then, the brunt of the handouts went to the corporate body. the libs lined the kinder morgan body – a company put together by the very same sleaze ball that was behind enron – by overpaying for a dead weight…and we just keep on paying for that one. they lined algoma steel with 420 million dollars; they are giving away multi-billions to car companies…and they still love to line big oil, despite all of their green bluster: “Despite repeated promises to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, Canada’s federal government dedicated $18 billion in 2020 to assist the country’s oil and gas sector….” https://thenarwhal.ca/canada-oil-gas-pandemic-subsidies-report/
these are just some snippets of the how the big sleaze works for the well heeled; and, let us be real, the promise of jobs is a lark. it is also a lark that so very many billions are being handed over to private groups comprised of the wealthiest folks on the planet who purport to be greening our energy grid. again, why not a fair stake investment in return for the public capital input? this game has been played and replayed…and people, somehow, still have faith in one party or the other. kind of whacked, no?
a question: why, when govt puts money into the hands of the corp, do we not get a fair value investment in those companies? why is it just a giveaway?
meanwhile, the party keeps going, at the expense of public services such as health. we have gone, in a few short years, from a 600 billion debt to 1.3 trillion…and it is growing, as the feds dig ever deeper to line big corp, including the industrial military complex, now most apparent via the russia/ukraine fiasco – which seems most about not ending a war but sustaining one.
Hey now – the O&G companies paid good money for our politicians, and they just want a good honest return on their investment.
So what do you call a 5000.00 handout to buy an electric car. A parasite bonus
in·cen·tive
/inˈsen(t)iv/
noun
a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something.
well then, the same can be said of the multi-billion dollar “incentives” given over to big corp, such as mining/oil cos, and car cos. i cannot be on side with that.
i agree with your concern on this. if we are being forced to electric anyway, why the financial rebate?
haha!
There should be an ETF for politicians. I could use a little payola in my portfolio.
an amazing thought – one can be rewarded for investing in the most corrupted holders of the public trust. hail dougie ford and the greenbelt bs, as well as trudeau and the kinder-morgan robbery…nothing like getting rich on the race to the bottom, which it seems is what things are too often all about.