Our nation’s wealth is taken by corporate oligarchs

It has been difficult, if not impossible, to rise above the partisan noise of our 5-week Ontario election ending on June 12.

There is an incessant noise about provincial debt, balanced budgets, taxes, killing jobs to create jobs.

Why have these economic issues become so central? The causes of them are ignored and buried in the stream of media coverage.

What we need to acknowledge is that over the last 30 years our Conservative and Liberal federal and provincial governments have redirected most of our nation’s wealth into private individual and corporate hands.

We have not yet fully recognized the profound implications of this transfer.

Governments today are starved for funds. It used to be that governments raised enough money to meet public needs through various forms of taxes, tariffs and charges. Our lives were enhanced through programs like universal health insurance, unemployment insurance, old age security, guaranteed pensions.

No more. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s declared government was the problem, private enterprise the solution. An accelerating process of enriching the private sector and the privileged few began with lower taxes and less regulation.

It all culminated in the disastrous worldwide 2008 financial meltdown created by irresponsible and greedy capitalist cowboys still riding high. To avoid a repeat of the devastating Great Depression of the 1930s, governments were forced to bail out private financial institutions and companies with vast amounts of borrowed money.

The resulting huge government debts have eagerly been taken advantage of by ideologically blinded conservative politicians. They insist resulting budget deficits must be not just reduced but actually eliminated, even within an election cycle. This is not for economic reasons but for maximum partisan advantage. To achieve it, they slash government spending. Economic stimulus for job creation be damned.

Debt is not a bad 4-letter word. Our public and private economies operate on debt. As individuals we borrow money to buy big-ticket items like houses and cars. Smaller items are often bought on credit. Businesses borrow to operate and expand. Debt oils the economy.

Debt can obviously get out of hand if there is not enough cash to pay its carrying charges. But conservative politicians have intentionally aggravated this problem by slashing public revenues through persistent personal and corporate tax cuts. It is part of their over-all plan to weaken government.

They claim their actions will stimulate economic activity.

But instead of helping today’s suffering unemployed, part-time and insecure workers, the end result has been record corporate profits, particularly for banks. Corporations now are hoarding an unbelievable pile of half a trillion dollars (that is $500 billion or $500,000 million!) not used to create jobs.

The worldwide citizen Occupy Movement following 2008 effectively drew attention to the increasing inequality of the distribution of newly created national wealth. The effect on individuals has been to concentrate wealth at the top, squeeze and shrink the middle class and wreak havoc on the growing number of poor. The expressions “the 1% and the 99%” have become part of our language.

The Canadian figures are shocking (see: www.policyalternatives.ca). For every new $1 of wealth generated in Canada for the last 14 years, 66¢ have gone to the to the wealthiest 20% of families, 23¢ to the 20% middle class and only 10¢ to the remaining 60% of all families.

The 86 wealthiest individuals or families now control $178 billion equal to the wealth of the poorest 11.4 million Canadians combined! They generate their wealth not by saving and investing in the usual sense. They create and trade financial assets, mostly companies. They do not invest to create jobs. They are not the much-vaunted ”engines of the economy.”

Elections should be times for in-depth public debate. But as former short-lived Tory Prime Minister Kim Campbell,   regretfully said in the 1993 federal election: “Elections are not a time for discussion of important issues.”

Elections instead become campaigns of noise and simple-minded sloganeering. People are busy with their own lives. If they pay some attention, many are either turned off or base their votes on their feelings, not brains.

The sad part is that all of us have to live with the result.