"The administration fears, and the press suspects, that the latest revelations in the Enron affair will raise the lid on crony capitalism, American style. Sad to say, none of this is clearly illegal -- it just stinks to high heaven."--Economist Paul Krugman

There have been researches supporting the evidence that social and economic growth is not related to the level of taxation of a country and this growth doesn't even require a balanced budget as a society can carry a deficit with a sustainable debt. And this is something which I naturally understand as work is an essential activity for common people as common people don't decide to work or not to work in accordance to the level of their taxes. But what is mind-boggling is that big corporations, void of their human element, shift their operations around the world where they can pay less corporate taxes and pay less for labour.

Few days ago I listened to President George Bush while he was shouting to a crowd of patriots. Armed with his rhetorical asset of an MBA degree at Harvard he shouted that Free Trade creates jobs for American workers. Now, I want you to ponder to what economist Jeff Gates says and make up your own mind about President George Bush's rhetorics. Jeff Gates says:

"Though we have the luxury of productive capacity far in excess of what we can sell, we cruise the world shopping for cheap labor to boost financial returns instead of paying our people enough to clear the shelves."

And I say that we must not exploit developing countries, we must help them out to help themselves for our own benefit and for their won benefit, and for the benefit of the common good.

We all know that our current recession is nothing else but consequences of the bubbles created by the gospel of the Free Market, yet we have governmental policies supporting tax cuts and privatization. Our recession is mostly due to a weak demand for goods and services, and this is why inflation is low and this why investments are low. However we have another rhetorical asset in British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell who wants to stimulate his provincial economy by firing some 11,500 governmental employees and therefore saving $800 million. We have already written about Saskatchewan Health corporatism and their philosophy of saving money with saving money; Gordon Campbell is another demagogue who wants to save money by saving money. He says "We have a job to do for British Columbia... I've got to get a private sector economy going," And what will happen to those 11,500 fired employees and their families? Premier Campbell is implying that all of these employees are useless and they have been a burden for the economy for as long as they have been employed. This is non sense, and this is straight ideology coming from the gospel of the Free Market.

Again, let me say that we are experiencing difficult times as the world for the Few and Privileged are turning our democracies to the tyranny of fascism.

References:
Pertinent articles in Ensign

President Announces Step to Expand Trade & Create Jobs Remarks by the President to the World Affairs Council National Conference, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C. 6:30 P.M. EST For Immediate Release, Office of the Press Secretary, January 16, 2002 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020116-13.html

Crony Capitalism USA The Bush administration does some pretty corrupt (but legal) favors for special interests, Paul Krugman, originally published in The New York Times, 1.15.02 http://www.pkarchive.org/column/011502.html

Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street, by Jeff Gates http://www.sharedcapitalism.org/book.html

B.C. gov't workers prepare for massive job cuts CBC Canada, Wed Jan 16 15:52:44 2002 http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?category=Canada&story=/news/2002/01/16/bc_jobcuts020116

B.C. premier asks for perspective on government lay-offs CBC Canada, Jan 17 06:13:37 2002 http://www.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2002/01/17/bc_cuts020117