Learning Stories
by
Mario deSantis

mariodesantis@hotmail.com

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I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, and free to choose those who shall govern my country.” - -The Rt. Hon. John Diefenbaker, Canadian Bill of Rights, 1960

The whole judicial system is at issue, it's worth more than one person.”--Serge Kujawa, Saskatchewan Crown Prosecutor, 1991

The system is not more worth than one person's rights.”--Mario deSantis, 2002


Ensign Stories © Mario deSantis and Ensign

 


In a world where the privileged make money with money it is obvious that these same privileged people would support the neoclassical 'accurate measurement' of economic performance: the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

So we have governments, bankers, think tanks and priestly academicians all conjuring among themselves about the recurring prediction of the size the GDP would take this next month. They use the law of the average to hide their greed, and they use the supposed scientific law of statistics to back up their predictions and the related supporting governmental economic policies.

I remember when Canadian bankers, the federal government along with the Business Council on National Issues were all busy laying out a promotional economic agenda to improve average productivity and therefore overcome the progressive decline in Canada's standard of living relative to the United States.

What a non sense! You have all these rich guys wrapping themselves in the Canadian flag and vowing to work hard to overcome the United States' standard of living by supporting higher average productivity and the byproduct of low wages and higher unemployment. Then we have these same rich people telling us that the health care system needs both more federal money and privatization.

I am going to explain my truth in what is wrong with our social and economic system. We must all know that in a supposed democratic society social and economic changes don't occur overnight, rather they evolve and they evolve either for the better or for the worse for people at large. In the last twenty years our social and economic systems evolved for the worse as the rich got richer and the poor got poorer*.

We have already written about the disparity of wealth in the United States as the financial wealth of the top one percent of households now exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent. And we have the development of a similar trend in Canada where the poorest ten percent of family units have negative average wealth or more debts than assets. On the other hand, the richest 20 percent of family units own 72 percent of the $420 billion in registered savings plans, 94 percent of the $92 billion in stocks outside the registered savings plans, and 81 percent of the $80 billion in mutual and investment funds outside the registered savings plans.

We must reverse this trend where the rich get richer, and we must stop the deceptive talks of our rich bankers, politicians and gurus who continue to preach the ever continuing growth of both the GDP and average productivity. Why not talking about living wages and full employment instead?

*Note dated July 26, 2006: China didnt follow the neoclassical economic directions and it  experienced the highest ever economic growth of any other country.

References

Ownership Statistics: Why a Shared Capitalism is Needed Shared Capitalism Institute http://www.sharedcapitalism.org/scfacts.html

Kerstetter,Steve, Wealth Inequality in Canada, , December 2002, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, http://www.policyalternatives.ca