"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."-- Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 Third President of the USA

I have been away from writing about the political and economic scenario of Saskatchewan, but my earlier findings was one of extreme disappointment. I labeled our leadership reductionary as Saskatchewan downsized everything in the name of saving money, and in the process they reinforced a hierarchical society for the Few and Privileged. Lately, we have been dwelling on the falsehood of the gospel of the Free Market, that is the economic environment where big corporations and fortunate sons make money with money. In Saskatchewan, the Free Market philosophy materialized with the gospel of 'saving money with saving money' since there hasn't been much money around. Also, the economic philosophy of 'saving money with saving money' has further reduced the scarce mentality of our governmental leadership who have been supporting their economic policies with the assistance of gurus (experts).

We all know how health care guru Ken Fyke wants to save money by having more gurus doing research in Canada's first Quality Council while further reducing health care services in rural Saskatchewan. The scarce mentality of guru Ken Fyke is passed on to his proselytes in government and health administration, and these proselytes, unable to use their scarce mental resources, use the power of their hierarchical voices in order to protect their rhetorical assets from the impending further reductions in health care. So we have the vicious circle of 'saving money with saving money' along with the spiral reduction of services, and along with a stronger sense of hierarchical corporatism which Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul calls Fascism.

Tim Shire, publisher of Ensign, has identified the 'accurate' problem of health care with our political leadership's dogma to reduce governments' size and taxes (privatization). And Shire points out the resulting contradiction of these dogmatic economic policies as the government's size has fictitiously downsized while individual taxes have gone up and while corporate taxes have gone down. And this shift of tax burden has occurred while the Canadian economy has been losing its relative economic growth with most developed countries. Shire writes:

"Business used to pay taxes, about 40% of all government revenue came from business now it is as little as 10% and when you consider the overly generous government handouts to business, the bottom line is that the business/corporate world pays virtually no taxes at all."

Yesterday, Shire and I exchanged some e-mails and he mentioned that we don't need to save money as we need to increase the flow of work, that is real wealth. And this is the 'accurate' problem, instead to focus on how much money we pay for personal and corporate taxes we must focus on increasing our wealth by having more flow of people at work. Therefore, rather than preaching the fascist dogma of less government (and more privatization), we must redirect our attention to the wealth created by people as the understanding of democracy is about people and not about the size of either governments or taxes.

References:
Pertinent articles in Ensign

The Action Plan for Saskatchewan Health Care: A Summary. Saskatchewan Healthy People. A Healthy Province. Saskatchewan Health http://www.health.gov.sk.ca

First! Define the Problem Accurately, FTLComm - Tisdale - Monday, January 14, 2002 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/editorials/taxReform/More/defineproblem.html