More than 15% of Metro Vancouver seniors live in poverty, with singles hit hardest – June 13, 2018
This concept that government can or should fix economic problems is a topic Canadians are going to have learned about the hard way eventually. At least for now, Canada is relatively a rich country, however, what Canadians should consider is how the NDP has continuously failed to deliver whenever it comes to economic growth. You can read this article in full for yourself by visiting the CBC website or clicking the link below:
How NDP policies lead to poverty
The New Democratic Party frequently create policies that lead to higher cost to start and run a business, it’s also important to understand that there’s never been an NDP Prime Minister, so what typically happens under an NDP majority is they use their political power to try and merge the Public sector with the private sector an example of this is the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia which is a provincial crown corporation in British Columbia created in 1973 by the NDP government.
Imagine that a provincial crown corporation for auto insurance, what’s even more crazy is that what this means is there’s no competition in the ICBC furthermore the Cabinet of the BC provincial government controls ICBC’s rate-setting through its power to set targeted financial outcomes (such as capital reserve ratios and profits), and through its ability to issue Special Directives to the British Columbia Utilities Commission. As of me writing this, the ICBC has 5,200 employees. The interesting part to all of this stems from the happiness of the employees who enjoy benefits that aren’t available to employees in the private sector. Consider clicking the link below to read some of the reviews from employees of this provincially run corporate entity
https://www.glassdoor.ca/Benefits/ICBC-Canada-Canada-Benefits-EI_IE8759.0,11_IL.12,18_IN3.htm
I live in Ontario and our auto insurance is privatized however we pay the highest rates in Canada, higher than BC, however, the reason for our high rates revolve around regulations created by FSCO. If you’re interested in understanding the Ontario process consider clicking the link below:
http://www.fsco.gov.on.ca/en/auto/filing-guidelines/Pages/default.aspx
It’s important to understand that when regulations are past there are costs involved, now where the Ontario problem differs from the British Columbia problem are employees, the auto insurance employees in Ontario aren’t under government payroll, what I mean by this, is the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, well guess what? ICBC employees also have something similar called contributory defined benefit pension plans. You might say well so what? The problem with this is government debts and liabilities, in order for these government companies to be profitable they have to pass these costs onto the B.C residents who may not even own a car.
Now this isn’t to say that ICBC isn’t slowly opening up their market as costs rise but this type of thinking, is what leads to poverty. Now in Ontario, what exists is a badly run regulatory environment, which is similar to BC but the key question in all of this why is NDP run auto insurance industry so high while Quebec’s publically run auto insurance sector so low? Well in Quebec public auto insurance is limited to coverage of personal injuries while damage to property is covered by private insurers.
The fact still remains that Universal health care exists in Canada, but the problem with the NDP is that when they enact laws, being that their ideology revolves around workers Unions and Government assistance from cradle to crave they haven’t been able to adjust their Crown Corporation to match the Canada Health Act. This type of thinking leads to stagnation or a stagnant economy where rising costs can’t stop. In Ontario, a few changes to FSCO and auto insurance sector will be competitive, in British Columbia, they have a massive and ever-growing government workforce that will one day retire and require the government to pay for them out. Meaning those 5400 current employees will be replaced by another 5400 employees, ICBC will be responsible for paying for the 10,800 past and present employees and these costs will be passed onto taxpayers. Combine this with other costs related to Government like housing for example and you see why poverty for the elderly will only get higher being that government is removing any and all forms of economic flexibility.
Whenever you read or hear about conservative thinkers talking about the unborn having to pay for the mistakes of the present, this is what they’re referring too. It’s not the governments job to take care of you, in a free society we all should be incentivised to take care of each other, how this is supposed to work is costs should be kept low so the private sector can thrive creating must needed innovations, sound money should exist as it prevents the government from making promises it can’t keep, which leads to printing money, which leads to inflation and stagnant poverty.
When these government schemes unravel it’s the people that suffer and the worst part to all of this is that the people won’t understand how it all happened, because they’ve been living in a world where their belief is that the Government provides all things. So, what tends to happen is the people age and as they age their costs to live inevitably go up and because they’re old they can’t work like the used too, which leads to more money being devoted to their health, which is a rising cost environment leads to them losing their house or apartment, which leads them being on the street which leads to the government saying to taxpayers we need to fix this problem by raising your taxes which in time leads to an eventual economic collapse.
In capitalism there are price crashes, financial crashes but, what you learn quickly in capitalism is that a price crash isn’t a big deal if your cost of living is low. What I mean is if people saved money like they used to and the economy crashed, a person could use their savings to live sometimes for 5+ years, because remember when an economy crashes prices for goods and services crash with them.
In a socialist environment when there’s an economic crash, prices don’t fall, in most instances prices rise as the government dilutes or prints currency to give the illusion to people that everything is okay, furthermore because of regulations like minimum wages, if businesses start losing money, workers have to get paid a minimum wage set by the government, which means that a business losing money will have to close it’s doors as soon as possible, because it’s costs aren’t being lowered, to match the crashing or chrashed economy. In a deflationary environment, the entity protected from all of this is government employees.
This is why if you look at countries like Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and others even though the people might be living in poverty the government workers are often living in luxury or better conditions. This also becomes a problem because then government becomes the market and therefore the people will aspire to work for the government. This is how dictatorships are often formed, this is how militaries are eventually used to prevent uprisings which is often the case in Communist or heavily socialist countries. My hope is one day Canadians will wake up before it’s too late.
Interesting times ahead.
