The rich really are different

The very wealthy shouldn’t get to shortchange the countries they call home

A few weeks ago a snippet of news and a headline flashed by me on social media. It ran along the lines of “Students Whine about Returning to Real World as Free Tuition Cut.”

Whichever publication wrote this line is lost in my memory, but the idea of treating austerity as the “real world” stayed with me.

There is a part of our society that claims spending enough money to truly take care of people, whether they’re going to school or in a nursing home, is some sort of impossible fairy tale.

Yet in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and even Greece, there is no tuition for postsecondary students who are from the EU. Whose world is real?

This argument that we need to live in some Darwinian real world always makes me think of people from the United States who claim that universal health care is simply impossible, who could pay this incredible cost!

We look on in bemusement here in Canada, as people in the U.S. say it can never be done, unafraid to call an ambulance if we’re seriously ill.

It can always be done. But everyone has to pay their fair share to make it work.

A friend of mine made a sad, but very true observation the other day when he said, “Some people would rather see people die than pay more taxes.”

When the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers came out, it became clear how hard the very wealthy worked to shortchange the countries they called home.

They’re not alone in this. An article published Dec.17, 2017, by Toronto Star investigative reporters analyzed the financial filings of Canada’s 102 biggest corporations and found that “these companies have avoided paying $62.9 billion in income taxes over the past six years.”

Of course, our tax rates for corporations and very wealthy individuals are ridiculously low. In another Toronto Star article it was reported that “in 2015-2016, for every dollar that corporations paid in tax, the Canadian public paid $3.50.” The last time these rates were equal was 1952.

What would our country be like if we stood up to the corporations and said health care is more important than your share buybacks? If we told our wealthiest people, education is more important than your second yacht.

I want a real world where our governments don’t wring their hands and say it’s just too expensive to deal with problems like the opioid crises and homelessness, while our banks report record profits.

There is money out there, but we need to elect representatives who can stand up to business.

We need to elect representatives who don’t already own that second yacht.

We need to elect people who actually live in the real world we live in.

There’s an election coming this fall. I wonder how many of the people running hide their money offshore.

I wonder how well they know the corporate lobbyists.

Noelle Allen is publisher at Wolsak and Wynn, a Hamilton publishing house