My Response To Those Offended By My Article On Student Entitlement

I’ve received quite a bit of commentary about my article on the demands by students that taxpayers should give them more support.  Not all of the comments were posted on my blog, many came in the form of direct messages on Twitter and some were public tweets. I can’t address them properly in 140 characters so I will address them here.

The comments can be broken down into three categories. The majority were quite supportive of what I wrote which tends to illustrate just how tired taxpayers are becoming at always having to cough up more cash for one group or another.


The second group were actually venting their frustration about how ineffective their education has proven to be in finding a meaningful job after spending all that money and I can empathize with that but it is not the responsibility of taxpayers.

The third group were exactly who I wrote about; "It’s expensive therefore someone else should pay for it."

One conversation started with this comment from a student.

“Hissy fits? You are aware that tuition alone now would have paid for an entire year at university 30 years ago right?”

I am more than aware of it. I worked as a senior exxecutive for a large post-secondary institution for a number of years and have seen first-hand what drives the cost.

I have paid tuition for myself more than 40 years ago and again for my daughter 18 years ago. My wife and I now have her daughter in university and are well-versed in the current cost of a college education. I’ve experienced the increase in the cost of post-secondary over forty years, not as an impartial observer but as a participant.

Thirty years ago, the cost of university was considerably lower when measured against today’s dollars but that is an absurd measurement. Average incomes were about 30% of what they are today. A new Toyota Corolla cost less than $4,000 and a new single family home cost less than $60,000 in most Canadian cities. Condominiums were selling in the $35,000  or less range. Mortgage interest rates hovered between 10 and 12%. Government debt was starting to rise and along with it taxes.

Up to that poiint, about 25% of the average taxpayer’s real income was chewed up in taxes. Now, fully 50% of the average income goes to taxes for one level of government or another in one form of taxes or another.

it is true that tuition was cheaper back then but it is equally true that there was a lot less personal income as well.

It wasn’t any easier back then than it is now and the reason it hasn’t improved is because nobody ever addresses the root causes.

The cost of education is ridiculously high but that doesn’t mean that the solution is demanding taxpayers pay even more than they are currently paying. The problem has nothing to do with taxpayers and attacking people who are tired of watching their....let me repeat that....their hard earned income being whittled away to pay for what others want is wearing thin.. Students aren't asking for help to sort out the problem, they are demanding money that was earned by others to pay for them.

The simple fact is that the high cost of education is found in the six-figure salaries being paid to professors and administrators including seven figure salaries to some American University football coaches.

It’s found in the absurd text book publishing rip offs that as far as I am concerned border on criminal. Academic text books are sold far above normal market values for books and are amended every year, usually insignificantly, in order to cut down on students selling their books to the next year’s crop of students.

Publishers are aided in this by professors and institutions that sometimes get inducements to require specific texts or one publisher or another. Some professors write their own textbook which they then have printed cheaply and sell to students.

University meal plans, parking, locker rentals and a wide range of other costs are implemented to generate income for the institution without much regard for cheaper ways to provide those services.

The cost of maintaining bricks and mortar institutions is expensive and the post-secondary industry, and for all its fancy rhetoric it is an industry, was slow to take advantage of the cost savings to be found in digital online education.

In the end, it drives the cost of attending university through the roof and it is a serious problem but it is not the taxpayer’s problem!

Demanding that taxpayers cough up more cash does two things. First it simply transfers the expense to someone else and that is unfair. Secondly, it does nothing to address the real problem, it merely perpetuates it and that won’t work for anybody.

In Canada, taxpayers are already picking up the tab for 75% of the cost of post-secondary education including tuition, facilities maintenance, academic and administrative staff salaries. In other words, taxpayers are paying the lion's share of what a university education actually costs.

I appreciate that the cost of education is difficult and frustrating. I understand why it makes people angry but that doesn’t excuse the same tired old demand that somebody else needs to pay because the costs are too high. Nor does it excuse the even more tired protests in the streets that disrupt our cities, induce unnecessary conflict with the police and endanger the safety of people on all sides of this issue.

That has become the preferred method of dealing with problems now. Get a mob together, go out into the street and stir things up. What has it accomplished lately?

Well, if you look at Occupy, it resulted in eight people dead, countless criminal charges for rape, assault, criminal trespass, an incredible number of injuries and more than $50 million in property damage across North America. What did all of that accomplish? Nothing! The problems remain and have only been exacerbated by ludicrous bills for repairs and ancillary services now being paid out of tax dollars.

How often do we have to keep reliving the failed mistakes of the past before somebody finally stands up and says, “Hey, this doesn’t work! We need to find a way to fix our problem rather than throw a hissy-fit over it and demand others pay for it!”

Canada and the United States are already living beyond their means. There isn’t enough tax revenue to pay for the programs already in place let alone add new ones. Both countries have borrowed significantly just to meet the bills and guess what? Programs are being cut because of it.

Canada\s richest province, Ontario, has gone from being a have to a have-not province in less than eight years and the draconian service cuts are already starting just to try and balance the books.

Suggesting that borrowed money can be moved from one entitlement to another in an attempt to justify support for a particular entitlement is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It won’t matter how nicely those chairs were arranged, the ship is going down. Greece is the perfect metaphor for what happens when you lie to yourself like that.

Greece is the poster nation for where a country living beyond its ability to pay leads. If you thought trying to struggle through the high cost of post secondary education in Canada was a challenge, try to imagine what it will be under the conditions that now exist in Greece.

The simple reality is that there are thousands of students across North America who are dealing with the exorbitant cost of going to college and I don’t dismiss that challenge lightly. But I find it insulting that students who live in a province that has the lowest tuition in North America by thousands of dollars annually feel hard done by because they are facing what amounts to $175 per semester increase.

It offends me to see those students marching in the streets demanding more from taxpayers, the same streets where the homeless try to find shelter. Their demands are not for a better society, the demands are for more for themselves at the expense of others. It is selfish and nothing less than an unwarranted sense of entitlement by those who have not earned that right.

It especially offends me that those students demand more while we have children going to bed hungry at night and can't successfully deal with poverty because we don’t have the tax money to properly address the issue, Too much money is being paid out in entitlements to too many who think life is unfair and who continue to demand more.

It’s a big world and it isn’t always easy. It's just the way life is and it doesn’t mean someone else is suddenly responsible for paying your way because things are difficult. That merely leads to where we are now, stupidly trying to build a successful society on borrowed money. That is nothing less than the road to perdition.  If students who are demanding more haven’t figured that out by now, they’re in for a rude awakening when they graduate and discover how little their degrees are really worth in the workplace.

   

Even taxpayer dollars won’t help them then.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Up To Our Necks In Dinosaur Poop!

"Doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting a different result each time is the surest way to guarantee that sooner or later a dinosaur is going to bite your ass."  

- Gorak Einstein, one of Albert's ancient ancestors

One of the few things I like about having a problem is that it does provide an opportunity to rise to the challenge. At first, that may sound a little perverse to some but it really isn’t. How many of us don’t feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for having met and overcome a challenge that was otherwise a problem we first thought insurmountable?

Sometimes we don’t succeed and I personally am less fond of those problems.

Nonetheless, problems exist and we have only three real options for dealing with them: do nothing, meet them head on or……………pretend to meet them head on by fixing something related that isn’t actually part of the problem.

We see a lot of that third option these days.

Some problems are like T-Rex, big and scary

Back in the days when the problem might have been that a Tyrannosaurus Rex had moved into the cave’s neighbourhood and was eating the livestock along with a few of your neighbours, you really only had a couple of options.

You could move the tribe to another area and hope the big guy didn’t follow you or you could gird up your loins, get the lads together and go out and kill Big Rex. Killing a couple of smaller dinosaurs or imposing new rules on the other folks in the cave really wouldn’t do much to keep the T-Rex from treating your clan like an all you could eat buffet.

Unfortunately, that fuzzy thinking is too often the thinking that goes into problem resolution these days.

You see it all the time and it doesn’t matter how often those quasi-solutions fail, people are right back in there pitching them again even though they accomplished nothing the first, second or third time around.

Examples? Oh great. Now you want examples but fortunately I anticipated that and I happen to have a couple handy.

Former Canadian  Prime Minister
Paul Martin

In Canada, our government is in the process of dismantling the Longun Registry which was a database of every legally owned rifle and shotgun in the country. It was established under the Paul Martin Liberal government a few years back in response to a shooting. Many think it was the response to a terrible shooting rampage at a college in Montreal but it wasn’t.

That tragic moment came and went with no government action. It was actually in response to the shooting of a young woman in Toronto who got caught in the crossfire between rival street gangs, none of whom were using either a rifle or a shotgun.

While progressives, who like to believe that serious crime is decreasing, are very upset with the current government for its omnibus crime bill which cracks down hard on convicted criminals, it was many of those same progressives who demanded action against firearms because they believed crime was on the increase.

Don’t try to figure that out, just pretend the logic makes sense to you and let’s move on.

The simple truth is that while they correctly identified that gun crime was on the increase, they incorrectly determined it was legal firearms and not illegal weapons that were at the heart of the problem. They demanded and got, not a crackdown on illegal gun crime but rather another layer of bureaucracy against legally owned and used hunting rifles and shotguns. 

Criminals were trembling more from laughter than anything else. 

The registry was supposed to cost $200 million, it ended up costing more than $2 billion and did not actually address the real problem. What was the real problem you ask? Too many illegal weapons were being smuggled into the country across a significant number of Canadian border crossings that were unstaffed between midnight and 6:00 am. 

Instead of spending a few million to close those holes in the country’s border security, the solution to the problem was to spend a couple of billion to clamp down on legal firearms.

Those who supported the gun  registry believe that it controlled the acquisition of firearms and thereby reduced gun crime. They are wrong. The registry was a database, not a licensing mechanism. There already existed an acquisition process before the gun registry was enacted and some firearms like automatic weapons and handguns were already restricted.

Believing that the gun registry prevented gun crime is like believing that registering and plating your car or truck reduces  accidents.

I am not a proponent of having lots of guns around and in fact think there are too many but if you're going to fix that problem, having bureaucrats maintain a database isn't much of a solution nor is it gun control. It's the illusion of fixing a real and serious problem masquerading as problem resolution and we have too many illusions in our lives these days .

It is the same fuzzy thinking behind the tax the rich crowd. The problem is pretty clear. The tax system is unfair and places a higher and disproportionate burden on the  middle class and lower income wage earners than on the affluent and the stupidly rich.

I agree. I am about as middle class as you can get and would love to see a more equitable distribution of the tax burden.

The solution for many, however, is simply to tax the rich and life will be better for all of us. Terrorists will no longer hate the west, Anonymous will use its technological skills to fix all of our computers for free and integrity will magically appear in politics. Most significantly, our budget deficits will disappear and there will be free tuition and coffee for all.

The issue is that the tax system in most democracies is the real problem and dumping a surtax on the rich doesn’t even come close to fixing that. It just makes us feel better because we have someone to blame and take it out on. But here’s the thing, the rich are merely paying what the tax act tells them they must. Even President Obama, that great progressive and visionary, ended up paying a lower tax rate than his secretary who makes significantly less income. 

Then too, there are some among us who are not rich but who do OK and pay no tax at all. They would be groups like unions  whose income is tax exempt and who are leading the charge to tax the rich at a higher rate.

How about this instead? How about everyone pays the same tax rate with no deductions and the poor pay no tax at all? Wouldn’t that be more equitable, more efficient and less divisive? It certainly would provide government with more money, not that this would be a particularly good thing considering what they did with the last stack of cash we gave them. But still, it seems to me that the solution to a complex, unfair tax system does not lie in picking one group and trying to treat them differently but rather lies in simplifying the system and taxing everyone exactly the same percentage and closing all of those ridiculous, impossible to figure out loopholes.

Everyone, including corporations, unions, NGOs and non-profit organizations pays 10-12%, no exemptions, no deductions, no monkey business and with absolutely no exceptions, no loopholes and no deductions for special groups or organnizations.

Progressives don’t like that idea, of course, because it doesn’t fit the narrative that all of the world’s problems can be traced back to the rich who they consider to be capitalist parasites. Conservatives don’t like that solution because it doesn’t fit their narrative that all of the world’s problems can be traced back to progressives who they consider to be socialist parasites.

It's the same kind of thinking that leads some to promote safe-injection sites in a city's downtown core. The thinking is that by providing a safe place for addicts to use illegal drugs, diseases like HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis will be contained. They are wrong, In cities that have safe-injection sites, the incidents of these diseases has increased along with violent crime and addiction. Successful harm reduction won't be found in enabling bad or dangerous behaviour nor will it result from keeping addicts addicted.

It isn’t all the fault of liberal thinking, the right is in there working overtime to try and ensure that no problem ever gets a real solution either. There is a looming foreclosure crisis coming again in the United States and some pretty serious credit card debt issues in Canada. You don't hear the current conservative government offering up solutions to address that and you never hear any of the GOP candidates offering any concrete solutions to prevent people from being thrown out of their homes. On issues like these, the right is like a deer caught standing in the middle of the highway, mesmorized by  the headlights of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.

 Instead of working to find a real solution, they will do what they always do; blame the people who are in trouble or about to lose their homes.

But why not put together a program that allows banks to protect their mortgage loan by applying the arrears to the mortgage and then negotiate a rental agreement with the current owner. That agreement would allow the bank to protect its investment while allowing the home-owner to continue to live in the home rather than being evicted. It could even include a mechanism for the current owner to reclaim ownership of the home by repaying the mortgage arrears within a certain specified time frame.

Ah, but that’s too simple and we are a society that prefers our solutions to be even more complex and draconian than the original problem. We don’t kill our dinosaurs, we pretend that by renaming them to something more politically correct and less offensive they will go away. We delude ourselves into thinking that  by demonizing some within the village, the dinosaurs will only eat those we demonize and the rest of the clan will be safe.

Sadly, that doesn’t work and we’ve had ample examples of  that for a very long time.

We can continue to play the game of almost solutions that we have played for so long or we can stop letting special interest groups on the left, the right and in government offer up card tricks and slight of hand illusions to the very real problems we face in our societies instead of real solutions these issues actually demand.

President Barack Obama

Even as he took full advantage of paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, the President was calling on a surtax on the rich and if that isn’t one of the best bits of sleight of hand I’ve seen in a long time, I don’t know what is.

Politicians love pretend solutions. It gives them the appearance of doing something without actually having to do much that's effective at all, particularly if they get to blame someone else (in this case the wealthy) for the original problem rather than their own failed policies.

The simple fact is that we are facing real and serious challenges in our societies these days. Some of them are like huge dinosaurs with big gnarly teeth and a taste for their favourite prey....people. As a result, we are up to our necks in dinosaur poop.

If we don’t soon start doing something about them we’re going to get eaten alive - either by those dinosaurs or by those among us who keep coming up with the illusion of solutions to very real problems. 

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

What Ever Happened To Integrity?

(photo: defense.pk)

In Canada, there is a furor unleashing over the recent Auditor General’s report on the purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been exposed for misrepresenting the true costs of the purchase while bureaucrats and military leaders have been exposed for outright misrepresentation and manipulation of ,and during, the procurement process.

This is nothing new. The previous Liberal government under Jean Chretien lied to get elected and worked overtime to hide the true facts of Adscam which saw millions stolen from taxpayers to line the pockets of Liberal bag men and supporters. People went to prison for that one.

It isn’t any different in the United States. The costs of President Obama’s healthcare plan have been exposed as seriously misrepresented while the previous Republican government started a war in Iraq based on a lie about weapons of mass destruction.

President Obama
(photo topnews.in)

There are countless more examples and it is clear that a lack of integrity is not a monopoly of the right or the left. It has become a part of how politicians and government now operate. But if it is acceptable to them as the normal course of business, it is not acceptable to most of us.

Even the media lies to us now. That isn’t a paranoid conspiracy theory, just a simple fact. There has been an egregious and deliberate misrepresentation of some facts in the Trayvon Martin shooting as the mainstream media manipulated and altered tapes and evidence to fit a narrative rather than letting the facts and the evidence establish their own narrative as they became known.

That isn’t acceptable to us anymore either.

Now more than ever, there is an attitude in our societies that the ends justify the means and organizations, groups, causes, unions are all part of the great obfuscation.  But it remains government that is the worst offender primarily because they are the sworn protectors of our constitutions and our rights.

They have forgotten that as they manipulate the truth in the contradictory belief that it is possible to arrive at a just place through unethical and dishonest behaviour.

The Bush administration justified its lie about weapons of mass destruction because it believed that there was an urgent need to remove Sadam Hussein in the war against terrorism. 

President Obama and his supporters did not reveal the truth about the true cost of healthcare in order to get it passed because they believed that the value of healthcare justified the misrepresentation.

In Canada, the Liberals lied to hide criminal wrong doing that had been undertaken in what they considered to be necessary to fight Quebec separatism and who knows what the current Conservative government was thinking when they lied about the cost of the F-35.

Prime Minister Harper
(photo Toronto Star)

Of all of the lies, that is the one that strikes me as the most absurd and, quite frankly, just down right stupid.

The procurement process for the F-35 was initiated by the former Liberal government in 1997. The Conservatives, who inherited the file in 2006 when they took office, could have easily walked away from this with all of the blame attached to their political opponents. Instead, they defended the purchase, took ownership of the file and are now in crash and burn mode as a result.

I can only surmise that lying and hiding the truth have become so second nature to politicians and governments that the Conservatives lied automatically and without thinking.

Whatever the reason, that lie and thousands of others like them do more than misrepresent the true facts of the issue at hand; they have the cumulative effect of undermining trust in government and ultimately in each other. We lose our ability to trust and without trust, our society is gravely weakened.

The lack of accountability leaves the electorate feeling powerless. The lies and deliberate misrepresentations demean the ability of the electorate to believe in the political process and that is evidenced by the declining number of voters at every election.

Government and politicians may lie to us, mislead us and hide the truth from us but in the end, we are the ones who are most responsible.

Election after election, we choose sides and condemn one side while embracing the other as honest and decent. We are fools and those that mislead us count on our simple-minded foolishness. Instead of bickering among ourselves about which is the better candidate, we should be uniting together regardless of our political leanings to demand a higher standard from all politicians and their parties.

We should demand accountability and refuse to support any political party that isn’t prepared to legislate or support tough integrity standards. The media should be subject to the same basic standards of integrity as everyone else and when they are caught in deliberate misrepresentation, there should be real and serious consequences which for television and radio networks should include the possibility of losing their broadcast license.

I don’t care what democratic country you live in, your country belongs to you. Government is there to serve not to rule. It is there to manage your common resources to the benefit of all, not just a privileged few or those who have enough influence to earn special entitlements. Media feed off the freedom your democracy affords and they should be fully accountable to treat that with the utmost respect.

Instead of arguing among ourselves over which candidate is a fascist or a crook or just plain stupid, we need to stand together and force our politicians to be open, to be transparent and above all else to meet the highest possible standard of integrity.

In Canada, the new omnibus crime bill will see more serious crimes treated with more serious punishment. It may well be time for an omnibus political crime bill that sees dishonest politicians go to prison for misrepresentation, fraud and mismanagement.

Conrad Black went to prison over millions of mismanaged shareholder investments. Governments have squandered billions, even trillions and lied about it. I fail to see how they are any better than people like Mr. Black or others like him.

One thing, however, remains clear. If we ever stop squabbling among ourselves long enough to force government to impose stricter accountability on politicians up to and including possible criminal prosecution……we’re going to need more prisons.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Entitlement Addiction

Greece is in meltdown. It’s no secret and their economic devastation is complete. Riots have replaced a once stable society and even common sense. The government has been forced to implement a draconian austerity program just to borrow enough money to keep the country functional. Those measures have led to economic ruin for many and even suicides.

Greece is not unique; it is merely the end result of entitlement addiction.

Democratic societies have become addicted to the concept of government handouts which politicians have cynically used in order to get themselves elected. Initially, it starts with the idea that government is the best means for equalizing disadvantage, an idea that eventually leads to an unwarranted sense of entitlement by too many and the ridiculous belief that entitlements are free and come with no cost.

They come with a devastating cost as Greece is now learning but too many in other countries refuse to acknowledge.

In Montreal, students rioted last week over proposed increases in tuition over the next five years. The amount of the increase is $325 per year.

In the United States, students and the Occupy movement have demanded that education be considered a human right. Not content with that, Occupy has also decided that public transportation is now a right as well.

As absurd as these ideas and demands are, they are not attitudes that are unique to the tragically uninformed or the lunatic fringe.

In Canada, there is outrage that the national broadcaster (CBC) is facing a 10% cut in its $1 billion/year budget. Some are furious that this will mean that the CBC may now have to increase the amount of advertising it permits in order to make up its budget shortfall. They feel entitled to commercial-free radio and expect the government to provide it.

Others are outraged that the current government has announced an increase in the Old Age Security qualifying age from 65 to 67 beginning in 2020. The government has recognized that Canadians are living and working longer and that this small change reflects that simple reality. Those addicted to entitlement consider it an attack on what they are entitled to. The current government was so afraid of a backlash from those with an entitlement mentality, they delayed implementation of the change for ten years.

In every democracy in the world, entitlements are as deadly and as addictive as crack cocaine.

The simple reality is that entitlements contribute nothing and eventually destroy the very society most seem to want. It undermines the motivation to provide for yourself, the drive to create and produce. The addiction to entitlements is its own form of greed and rivals anything found on Wall Street. It is money for nothing, money for simply being alive and it is money that belongs to others.

More than 50% of the average Canadian’s salary is taken by various levels of government in taxes just to pay for the operation of bureaucracies whose primary role now is to juggle entitlement programs. That means that the average taxpayer now works until July just to fund government who are funding all of the entitlements.

University and College tuition is subsidized by Canadian tax payers to the tune of 75% but the students in Montreal are demanding more.

In the U.S. and Canada, social assistance and welfare gobbles up a disproportionate amount of tax revenue yet increasing numbers of people still live on the streets and children go to bed hungry at night while others demand more free stuff.

Regulations and bureaucratic red tape interfere with the development, operation and success of small businesses which are the economic driver for job creation. They charge for licenses and other fees to help fund government's need for more money.

Environmentalists demand support for every cause they dream up, regardless of the economic consequences. This has led, in Ontario, to the implementation of the Green Energy Program, which has seen the provincial government implement sustainable energy programs that have raised the cost of electricity to levels that threaten to bankrupt some individuals and small companies.  The program is so absurd, it sees the province actually selling its surplus electricity at a loss to other provinces and states which only adds to the economic cost.

Those who are addicted to entitlement have no understanding that wealth is finite. If you take 100% of the income of all companies and individuals, that’s all there is. There is no more money to be had and once you have taken all of that, how do you pay for your entitlements?

The left thinks it’s as easy as simply taxing the rich or adding surtax on large corporations. That doesn’t work. The rich merely move to other jurisdictions and companies take their business….and their jobs….elsewhere.

Others think it is as easy as adding a tax on energy consumption or the sin products like booze, cigarettes or gambling but that only result in creating an underground economy as does increases in sales and consumption taxes.

Greece, where tax evasion had been elevated to an art form, discovered that reality too late.

When all else fails, those who feel entitled to their entitlements encourage governments to borrow the money to fund them and politicians desperate to be elected are only too happy to comply. But you can’t live on borrowed money forever. At some point the bill comes due and just as Greece has learned, that bill can be devastating.

And that is the other dichotomy of entitlements. In the end, they not only hurt those who pay taxes, they hurt everyone, including those who thought free entitlements were actually free.

The poor are not better off. We have less money for the poor. The number of food banks have increased and the working poor now frequent them as much as those who are unemployed or living in shelters.

Healthcare is not improved; too much money is funding other entitlements to properly fund the healthcare system. Wait times have increased to insane levels and almost 2 million Canadians don’t have access to a family doctor. Hospitals are being closed and some healthcare services are being delisted.

In the United States there is controversy over which healthcare services can and cannot be afforded and the original cost estimates of the President’s healthcare system are now being seriously questioned.

Because of this unwarranted expectation to entitlements, basic services are compromised, self-responsibility is undermined and a distorted view of what is and is not possible is created.

Nothing is free. In the end, somebody pays and in societies with entitlement mentalities, typically those who pay are you and I. Interestingly, in Canada, unions are tax exempt on the income they earn and political parties hand out higher tax exemptions than charities for the money they rake in from donors. It is just one more example of how a sense of entitlement only undermines any real idea of equality.

The idea that government pays is absurd. Governments don't have any money. There are no magic money trees growing out behind the bureaucracy. Governments get their money by taxing the affluent, the  middle class and the working poor. They tax consumer sales, environmental products, private property, gasoline and charge user fees to the public for use of the very services and facilities for which their taxes have already paid.

Government even taxes death and it is still not enough money to meet the growing greed for entitlements. Democracies around the world continue to borrow money in order to maintain the expected entitlements that keep politicians in power and the greedy out of the streets.

It isn't working.

In the end, entitlements put every society on a road….not the road to Hell…..the road to Greece and there are those living in Greece now who will tell you that Hell couldn’t be any worse.

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 © 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Government Takes Over Where The Mob Left Off

The Ontario Government in Canada is overhauling its casino operations. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) is planning to close some casinos and open others with a view to expanding the games offered in its casinos. 

This, in and of itself, isn’t really big news. Governments in democracies around the world are involved in gambling although they prefer to call it 'gaming'. Some own and operate casinos, most operate lotteries and it isn’t really all that surprising that they would revise their services from time to time. They have to in order to achieve the revenues they need to combat the deficits they’ve incurred.

In Canada, the sale of liquor in most provinces is controlled by government-run retail outlets. Where it is available through private retailers, it is still (as it is in other countries) subject to significant taxes. Cigarettes are heavily taxed and their sales controlled. There is even a move to legalize marijuana. I don’t believe this to be an altruistic decision or one based on any evidence of the medicinal properties of weed. I suspect governments are standing by, rubbing their hands in anticipation at the potential tax revenues.

Many governments have legalized prostitution, including the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Nevada and even stodgy old Canada although in Canada we apply a typical schizophrenic approach. Prostitution is legal, soliciting a prostitute is a crime. It's sort of like making the sale of chocolate legal but asking how much it costs illegal. Only government could come up with something like that.

All of this got me thinking…..just exactly what is the difference between government and the Mob?

Booze used to be illegal. It was illegal to sell or purchase liquor during prohibition and while I don’t support a ban on alcohol, why is the government now in a business it used to prohibit?

It’s the same with gambling. The Mob used to run a simple lottery called The Numbers which was basically nothing more sophisticated than players picking three numbers and if your number hit, you won a jackpot.

In Canada, the government runs exactly the same game only they call it Pick 3. In other words, government now engages in precisely the same activity that it once declared illegal. How does giving it a new name make it more moral than the game run by the Mob. Of course, government took it a step further and now runs dozens of lotteries the Mob never dreamt of and realizes billions in revenues as a result.

Government casinos have significantly lower payouts than the old mob-owned casinos. In Vegas, the slot payback typically is around 95% to 97%. In most government run casinos, the payout drops to between 80% and 90% and many of them still don't make a profit or only a small profit. How is that possible?

I’m not prude. I like to have a drink here and there, smoke cigarettes and the odd cigar, have gambled in casinos and even smoked some Mother Nature in my day but it just seems to me that there is something both hypocritical and distasteful about government being in the businesses it used to convict and imprison others for. It seems more than just a tad hypocritical to me that  government was attracted to the business of 'sin' (their old name for it) for the same reason that first attracted the Mob......cash!

Al Capone

Each of these money-makers for government have some things in common besides having been formerly illegal and the sole province of the Mob in the past.

First, all of them are addictive and can ruin lives. I believe in people taking responsibility for their actions, I just don’t think government should be encouraging people to flirt with addiction in order to make money. Thousands of books and documentaries have been produced on the immorality of the Mafia for doing that very thing. The fact that government now sanctions and benefits from the cash doesn’t suddenly make it morally ethical.

Secondly, they are all a form of taxation and typically, taxation targeted most to those who really can’t afford the extra cost. We’ve all read stories in the news about people who have ruined their lives because of booze, dope and gambling; sometimes to the extent of committing suicide. Again, I believe in buyer beware. I don’t think we should prohibit these products or activities, I just question the ethics of government living off what they used to call ‘the avails of crime.’

Finally, there is something extremely distasteful to me about governments that are so desperate for money that they have to constantly twist what is and is not acceptable in society just to make some cash. It is particularly galling considering that governments need the money because of the lack of integrity in politics.

Governments need cash because politicians squander our taxes to buy votes. It’s really that simple. Election after election, promises are made and some even kept. Inevitably, those promises cost more than was detailed in the campaign and government finds itself in debt, scrambling to find new and innovative ways to get some money to pay for the crumbling economic reality they’ve created.

Stupid economic decisions are made like the bailout of the banks in 2008, a bailout that cost the U.S. alone close to $7 trillion. Wonder where that $15 trillion deficit came from? Look no further than Wall Street for half of it.

Wars, entitlements, bailouts, healthcare yadda yadda yadda. Promises made, money borrowed and eventually the government is left with no option but to find new revenue sources.

And that is how government ends up in the sin business. 

At the rate some governments are going, they will soon drive the mob right out of business. Of course then, they will declare that a victory. Some victory. It seems we are being governed by those who have more in common with Al Capone and Bugsy Segal than Winston Churchill or John Kennedy.

It makes you wonder if this was what Canada’s Fathers of Confederation or the founders of The United States envisioned as they drafted those noble documents that became our constitutions and then put their signatures to them.

Probably not. I doubt they envisioned the government concept they were creating eventually becoming pimps, bootleggers, pushers and casino operators but then, they had never heard of the Mob or the opportunities horning in on Mob's territory might provide.

As Elvis said before he left the building. "Viva Las Vegas!"

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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A Scot and A Bear Try To Explain Government Debt - I said 'try'

A very long time ago, my Uncle Jack  and I got into a heated debate about government borrowing. He was an assistant deputy minister of finance in the federal government and he was adamant that I didn't understand that it was quite harmless for the government to borrow money because essentially, we were borrowing from ourselves. Apparently it wasn't ok or else borrowing from ourselves evolved into borrowing from others and now most of the world is in hock up to its eyeballs....and stupidly, we seem to be in debt to many of the same countries to who we either lend or provide foreign aid.

How in the hell does that work? How do governments who borrow money from others also end up being lenders to them? It seems to make sense to someone out there because almost all major governments including the US, Canada and most of Europe are in debt...mostly to each other and the mountain of debt service is about to cripple the global economy. Increasingly many are in debt to  China, probably to get enough money to loan to other countries.

Delightful!

Politicians, of course, take no responsibility for any of this convoluted mess. They blame previous governments or they blame you and I. It's our fault because we demand too many social programs. But, I don't actually remember demanding anything (other than to be  left alone). I do remember countless, visionless and faceless politicians from democracies all over the world promising all kinds of things in order to get elected. They also promised good government but that's another story.

Typically, politicians make promises to get elected and then borrow money to deliver on some of those promises. They don't regulate major financial institutions and the high-flyers who misuse the capitalist system to sate their own greed  and when it implodes, they blame you and I, the great unwashed.

To be honest, I do believe that to some extent, it is our fault. We bought the fantasy, after all. We fell for the honey-words and let them bribe us with our own money and money they borrowed. Like over-indulgent parents , we gave them a huge credit card and like arrogant and spoiled children they spent money we didn't have to buy things we didn't need. The result? Mom and dad had to bail the kid out either through increased taxes or the reduction of the very services purchased with the borrowed money. It's sort of like borrowing to buy new golf clubs but having to turn in your membership at the club because you can't afford to play anymore.

Unfortunately, countries can't flush their debt with a simple bankruptcy and we're not allowed to spank them. Countries can default and have in the past but today we're more connected financially than most of the 400+ million people connected to each other on Facebook. If one country goes down, the entire house of cards collapses taking the world economy down with it. Fortunately the governments of the G20 are on the case. Don't be concerned that these are the same governments that got us into this mess.

Some blame the left's tax and spend agenda while others blame the right for mismanagement. What a pointless argument! They are the same when it comes to borrowing and it doesn't matter whether you support the left or the right, the borrowing continues and believing that one party or the other will change that is lunacy.

In my adult lifetime, a series of conservative and Liberal governments have run the national debt in Canada from $17 billion to half a trillion. It may not sound like much compared to the $15 trillion debt in the United States built by both Republicans and Democrats but Canada is a nation of only 35 million people and that national debt doesn't include another half trillion in provincial and local government debt.

It is the same in democracies around the world. The orgy of borrowing continues and government debt is spiraling out of control. The United States, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Itally and, of course, Greece the poster nation for where it all leads, continue to borrow as if they never have to pay it back.

As the people of Greece are discovering................you do! 

I keep hoping that a politician will show up who a) can think beyond the next election b) is a true leader and will show leadership and c) tells the truth from the beginning and not only when there is no other alternative. I also hope that we will put aside our differences and our entitlement greed to listen if that  person ever does  emerge.

It's a vain hope I admit but in that regard, I'm like our dog, Jasper, who still follows me around hoping that food will suddenly fall out of my pocket. Sometimes, hope is all you have, especially when your fate and that of so many others is in the hands of people who's logic it is not only convoluted but downright dangerous to our success as nations.

Politicians of all parties, both the right and the left, like to think of it as pubic service. I think they should think again before they create a world economy that will make the depression look like a minor inconvenience,

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© 2011 Maggie's Bear
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