Only the rich get richer

Re: “A windfall from where?” Letters, Dominic Willott, June 18 This letter quoted Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that soon you run out of other people’s money.”

This is just what French economist Thomas Piketty established about capitalism: Left unregulated, conscienceless capitalism polarizes the wealth of a nation to such an extent that the capitalists “run out of other people’s money.” The inequalities that arise when only the rich get richer have disastrous social consequences.

Government was invented to curb the unbridled power of kings/ despots, then evolved to protect the whole community from exploitation by any selfish individual, group or corporation.

Social democrats added another role to government with the adoption of income tax: that of providing and maintaining shared resources such as roads, sewers, schools, hospitals, police, courts, laws and regulations that constitute the commonwealth needed to sustain a modern society, equivalent to the traditional commons that supported village life. Over the past 50 years, the capital class in Alberta has bought the government and used its legislative power to privatize this commonwealth, in effect allowing capital to annex the commons for private profit — again. Then the Alberta government compounds these errors by letting corporations self-regulate their use of the commons to extract more wealth and pollute the environment.

The low rents and low royalties of the oilpatch, the privatization of the electricity system, weak environmental regulation and a love affair with the coal industry are prime examples of this policy and its consequences. Statistics on the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, greater in Alberta than anywhere else in Canada, tell the tale.

Alan B all , Edmonton