After many vain attempts the plucky interviewer succeeded in meeting the head of the great oil trust face to face.
“I understand, sir, that you are opposed to government ownership?” ventured the interviewer.
“Not at all, my boy,” chuckled John, stroking his wig. “On the contrary I would like to see government ownership.”
“When?”
“Why, when I own the government.”
And then genial John poked the interviewer in the ribs and invited him out to play a game of golf.
This bit of whimsy was published in the May 17, 1907 Edmonton Bulletin.
It gives us a bit to think about.
Government ownership if pursued for the wrong reasons can mean only that the public purse inherits unprofitable businesses, relieving the private sector of its burdens.
Government ownership pursued for the right reasons will put profitable businesses under public control, thus relieving taxpayers of some of their burden*. it will also put under democratic control (if very indirect democratic control) businesses that may otherwise engage in anti-union or anti-worker activity, polluting, rampant short-sighted exploitation of our resources.
*Note: the provincially-owned Alberta Liquor Control Board stores were very profitable, contributing large amounts of money to government coffers, helping the taxpayer in this way. Klein privatized them in fact because they were profitable - he wanted that money-making enterprise in the hands of his friends. Today's provincial debt is in part due to this privatization. So blame Conservative Premier Klein!
As William Irvine observed, government ownership of business enterprises means little without people’s control of government.
The powers that be, as the 1907 story tells us, seek and are successful at getting personal rewards of wealth, power, privilege. They want to be called sir. They want to have great wealth without working hard - with lots of leisure to play golf for example.
Power they get from controlling the government - and controlling it for their own interests. Once having the reins of power they seek increased power. And having control of businesses is one way to do this. Interlocking boards of directors of corporations, with some plutocrats serving on multiple boards may not directly give them greater income, but it gives them power and privilege. This for those whose vanity needs it is great comfort.
Anyways, if you have more than enough for your physical comfort, then money is not an issue. Having a great corporate box at the new (taxpayer-paid) hockey arena may be as important as an additional $100,000 when you can’t seem to spend what you have anyway.
And that is what political power means to some - the power to mould society and the economy to serve you and your friends.
While struggling working families, widowed seniors have to pay steadily-increasing property tax, inflated by the education tax, which really should come out of provincial government coffers, the rich pay relatively little. A two thousand dollar annual property tax for a working family means a lot more hardship than a $10,000 property tax for a person with an income of $500,000.
A relatively flat sales tax or property tax is not as efficient at collecting wealth in a progressive way than a progressive income tax. A minimum tax of one or two percent of the gross income, before all the tax deductions are calculated (most only available to those with wealth) is a step in the right direction.
As well, we should make it a true income tax - including all large sources of income. This would include capital gains - if you buy a house for $400,000 and sell it for $450,000 currently, you don’t pay capital gains tax on the $50,000 -- you count only half the gain as income - $25,000.
But if you work your thingee off making $50,000 a year you pay income tax on the whole.
This type of unfairness is result of those who profit from capital gains being in control of the government.
You may worry that under a new tax regime the family house that you or your senior parents rely on for retirement savings may be taxable if you sell it and have to pay tax on it. But no capital gains covers only investment homes, not a house you live in yourself. So money raised from sale of family houses would not be taxable under capital gains.
Of course those who oppose full application of capital gains tax will pretend that that is not the case. Also privately-owned media, and probably some publicly owned as well (out of ignorance or self-interest), will propagate this lie.
All I can hope is that you think for yourself. The one percent, or ten percent, or handful of well-heeled have their own interests in mind. Seldom do their interests coincide with those of the bulk of the people.
Mention of the use of family home for retirement costs points out the need for reform of the pensions. There seems uncertainty why the Canadian Pension plan does not pay out what it used to. The reason is simple - Conservative PM Mulroney de-indexed it to inflation (except for the first two percent). Thus every year when inflation grows by more than two percent (which it usually does in our healthy economy) the pension pay-outs fell. After 30 years this created quite a drop.
Meanwhile asking worker and employers to pay deductions for CPP is a tax on employment. Despite the government’s avowed aim of reducing unemployment, it taxes employment, while at the same time establishing tax-free savings account to relieve those who save money from taxes. The latter may serve a purpose but merely demonstrates cuts to workers’ programs, past, present of future, are not result of lack of cash but wrong priorities.
How much better it would be to have pensions (set at the pre-1984 level and fully indexed) paid out of general government revenue. Working stiffs pay taxes -- why should they not expect their pensions to be paid out of those taxes?
Private employers pension plans are hardly the answer - when a corporation can take them over and tear the guts out of them, leaving the workforce with little or no benefits after years or decades of hard work. A meatpacker factory employee I knew got little of the expected pension after the corporate pension fund was ransacked.
So it is difficult or wrong-headed to prevent employers from setting up these funds or workers paying into them - but with a solid well-paying federal pension plan a worker left high and dry from an employers’ pension plan collapse would not feel the bite as much.
And that should be goal of government -- to help workers endure the crunch of blows wielded by the system, the jolts of economic recession in an unplanned economy, to succour the sick or lame, young or old, widowed or widowered, for which the private sector has no incentive to aid.
And that is why the people need to have control of the government - and whatever business enterprises the government controls. The government is not going to serve the purposes of the people if the people don’t make it - and it is easier to make it do that if people not only control the government but are the government.
We need working-class people to run for office, and working-class people - the mass bulk of Canadians - to vote for them. Only them will the Canadian government serve the interests of Canadians.
The NDP is the most popular of the working class parties. It has always been under-represented proportionally in the House of Commons and wholly excluded from the Senate. The need for electoral reform is discussed in other blogs....
keywords: taxes, pension, reform, electoral reform, government ownership
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