ANDREW GLUM
Opinions Writer

Eric Macfarlane’s article “The burdened generation” highlights some of the most urgent issues facing our generation. I would like to address the glaring societal problems raised in Macfarlane’s article and offer some potential solutions.

The primary issue is debt. In addition to the problems brought about by staggering federal and provincial debt, as Macfarlane pointed out, there is the problem of individual household debt, something that hits every Canadian (excuse the pun) a little closer to home. The average Canadian household’s debt for 2009 was an all-time high of $96,000.

The issue of governmental debt is connected to the problem of where the money for healthcare and our parents’ pensions will come from. I would like to offer a solution that would solve all of these problems in a relatively simple fashion: tax the rich.

If you are reading this and you are studying to becoming a lawyer, engineer, or a doctor, rest easy. I am not referring to you. You are on your way to providing an essential and highly practical service to your fellow Canadians, and you deserve to be well-paid for your hard work.

By “the rich,” I am referring to those who earn 10 or even one hundred times more than the average doctor, engineer, or lawyer simply by making financial transactions or serving on the board of a large corporation.

As it stands, a Canadian who earns $1 million (or any higher amount) per annum will pay a maximum of 50 per cent income tax (if he/she were to live in Nova Scotia) and a minimum of 39 per cent (if he/she were to live in Alberta). Further, only half of any money earned from capital gains is taxable in Canada.

The high end of the pay scale for the average Canadian doctor, lawyer, or engineer is roughly $100,000 per annum. If a person earning this salary lived in Saskatchewan, they would be taxed a maximum of 39 per cent.

It is not a stretch to say that the usefulness of a physician or engineer is greater than the usefulness of a CEO, in the eyes of most Canadians. However, there will always be the objection that ultimately, it doesn’t matter how useful these professions are to the average Canadian — their wealth is a result of their success in the free market and they deserve to be liberated from government interference. The trouble with this line of thinking is that corporations are at least as taxing on the average Canadian as the government is.

Last year, about 22 per cent of my income went to the government, a considerable amount more to the university, and the remainder, in one way or another, went to various corporations. And whereas the government, at least in theory, is democratically controlled and its wealth is distributed in democratically decided ways, corporations are centrally-controlled oligarchies, accountable to no one except their stockholders.

Regarding the details of my three-word solution (“tax the rich”) I suggest modifying the highest tax brackets — or simply creating new brackets — to reflect the peripheral value of brokerage and executive managerial occupations. A great first step would be to implement the Financial Transactions Tax, an idea backed by the Canadian Labour Congress, among many others. This proposed new measure would tax financial transactions such as the purchase of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and foreign currency.

Estimates are that a worldwide financial transactions tax of just 0.05 per cent would generate up to $600 billion U.S. per year.

Through increased taxes on the richest Canadians, there would be plenty to sustain pre-existing social programs while, at the same time, helping to fund new research and programs aimed at tackling environmental problems as well as revamp the deplorable state of the Canadian public transportation and rail system.

I disagree with Macfarlane that it is “our parents” who have “burdened us with some tremendous hurdles.” It is not the older generation, as a whole, who has benefited at our generation’s expense, but the wealthiest class. While I agree with Macfarlane that “our generation will have some serious public policy choices to make in order to maintain the qualities which make Canada such a great nation,” I’m afraid the ones who are in the best position take the necessary organizational steps are those he refers to as “bleeding-heart unions.”

A functioning social democracy is a prerequisite to the development of an economically accountable democracy. Real democracy starts when people organize with the people they spend 40 hours a week with at work — unlike many parts of the world, unionization in Canada is constitutionally protected and all it takes is meeting a quota of signatures. Unions serve as the most basic, localized form of economic democracy. After that, the goal is to connect with other unions and activist groups that share similar interests until there are enough people organized to put more pressure on the government than privately held money can.

Despite the numerous problems our generation has been burdened with, there are real, practical solutions available. We are lucky to live in Canada, where these remedies are more easily exercised than in poorer countries or countries whose governments maintain authority through coercion or violence.

It is simply a question of whether we are willing to do the work required to push democracy to its fullest potential, or have become so disenfranchised, or simply bored, by our broken economic and political system that we would rather let the rich govern for us.

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image: Pete Yee