Kawhi Leonard Leaves Canada, Could High Taxes and a Lower Canadian Currency be the primary reason? – July 6, 2019,
On a fun note, plastered all over my news feed was Kawhi Leonard leaving The Toronto Raptors for the LA Clippers, which was interesting for me to read from an economic perspective, because well, isn’t the Canadian economy booming? If it’s one thing I like about the NBA as well as Baseball is the market components of how their leagues operate. Bryce Harper is a baseball player who signed a $300 million dollar contract and a lot of people know about Mike Trout’s $430 million contract extension. Mike Trout if he could avoid the tax man could end up a billionaire at the end of his baseball years.
Although many socialist minded Canadians think that’s too much money for one person, I’m a believer in the free enterprise system our forefathers blessed us with. If there’s market demand for your services, you get what you can while it’s there to be got, because in a Capitalist society what goes up inevitably comes down. We’ve heard it plenty of times sports athletes going bankrupt, if your costs and liabilities exceed your money earned, you can go bankrupt, currencies crash all the time, and in Canada, we’ve made it an objective of ours to keep our currency low.
A lower currency is one thing, but imagine combining that with extremely high taxes, there’s no getting around it, the socialist republic of California has less debt than the Province of Ontario. Look it up, when We the North in Ontario got rid of Kathleen Wynne, public debt was higher in Ontario than it is in California a U.S State that has more people than all of Canada.
Ontario vs. California: Who’s Really in Debt? – fraserinstitute.org
Now, when Canadians see an image of California, they see a homeless problem, people crapping in the streets and extreme levels of poverty, so a Canadian might ask, well if California has more debt than Ontario, why does Ontario appear to be more prosperous? The answer is simple EQUALIZATION PAYMENTS and of course our ability to manipulate our currency. Thanks, Alberta, Saskatchewan and to a lesser degree British Columbia, thanks to Western Canada, this NBA Championship is for you guys! We couldn’t afford to keep him, but hey we’re NBA Champions, so congrats!
But he left us California, he left us to go home, he left a well run Toronto Raptors organization to play in a U.S State that on paper even with its extreme progressivism still offers a comparable standard of living with much better weather conditions. Sure there’s the earthquake problem, but anything better than paying comparable more taxes in a progressive country where Hockey and currency manipulation is considered normality.
If you ever wonder why Canada’s currency is low, it’s because of our public debt can’t sustain itself without it. Doug Ford hasn’t asked for Austerity measures, he simply asked for a little financial responsibility in Ontario’s public sector and Doug Ford is being viewed by the Political left (The Greens, The Liberals, The NDP) as Hitler. When you’re a successful person with options, Canada doesn’t come to mind as a destination to bring your talents too. I know engineers, Doctors, nurses, architects, smart professionals who were born in Canada, but who, like Kawhi Leonard, currently leave Canada, primarily for economic reasons, quality of life reasons, cost of living reasons?
Kawhi Leonard is from the LA area, and initially that’s where he wanted to be traded to, The Raptors gambled and got rid of a loyal Toronto Raptors player(DeMar DeRozan) who wasn’t as good as Kawhi Leonard but gave the team everything he had. Well, the Toronto Raptors organization, when presented with the right offer, did what any collective group would do, they did what they thought was best for their greater good and landed what is now considered one of the best players in the modern NBA Kawhi Leonard.
That’s indicative to collectivist ideologies, what’s best for the here and now, let’s not worry about the future, what part of the private sector can we sacrifice to fuel the growth of the public sector. Eventually, like the Toronto Raptors, you’re forced to give up your best player who was loyal from the start in pursuit of a Rental or a leased player, who has no social or emotional ties to the heart of the organization. In Canada, we’re losing our best and brightest in pursuit of foreign idelogies that in the long term won’t help us very much. Canadians, similar to DeMar DeRozan who spent their entire lives, entire careers paying taxes into Canada’s public sector being replaced not by real refugees who desperately need our help, no by ‘economic migrants’ with Gucci bags and money shopping around for countries with the best welfare State.
Canadians who love this country helped to build this country being told to step aside for the new Canadians who we’re told are our future, ask yourself Canada, are we like the Toronto Raptors? Disregarding ourselves of the loyalty of a DeMar DeRozan in pursuit of the lease/rental of a Kawhi Leonard. Has it ever happened before where the best player on an NBA basketball team left for another NBA Basketball team that’s never won a Championship in their history? The LA Clippers have never won an NBA Championship EVER! It’s not like Kawhi Left for the LA Lakers, he left to go on a team that’s known to be a perpetual losing franchise. When Canadians here about our top tiered talent leaving our country for America, remember the Kawhi Leonard Raptors story!
Interesting times ahead