Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 2:36 pm
You forgot to tell us about your pottery collection, Rosco.
You can't just blame taxes, the Conservatives and the right-leaning Liberals shifted the tax base relentlessly away from business and the wealthy to the middle and working classes. The end result is that those classes are over-taxed while the very wealthy and especially business get a virtual tax holiday. The goal of that has ostensibly to create more jobs, but given the cut-throat and greedy business practices allowed, this has not been true.
Canada has increasingly moved towards being a service economy, but service jobs tend to be low-paid. The entry into the market of entities such as WalMart has made that problem worse.
Something a service economy requires is somebody to purchase the services. The low wages are leaving an increasing number of people unable to do so. While somebody making $30.00 an hour will return the majority of their income to the local economy, a corporation providing a $15.00 an hour wage for similar services will send the majority of the profit back to their head office, usually in the US. That money is not reinvested locally and does not create more employment in the area.
