William Watson Says Scrap Public Programs — Even When They Work Well
Sometimes the right-wing columnists which populate our supposedly left-wing mainstream media get truly bizarre. Witness, for instance, today’s asinine free-marketeering in the Ottawa Citizen by William Watson, who offer the absurd and even pathetic market that even though EI programs successfully helped laid-off workers during the recession, we should get rid of them anyways to prevent lazy ne’er-do-wells from soaking up aid “during good times.”
Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that Watson, who calls himself a “small government type,” sees absolutely no inconsistency from his casually contemptuous dismissal of the poor on the one hand, and his job on the other. He’s a professor at McGill University, where his salary is presumably paid for by the big government he claims to detest. I guess that’s just different.
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Sam Gunsch
yeah, for me, it might be possible to stomach the casual mean, cheap-shot elitism if Watson and others of the same ideology applied the same critique to the public funding for corporate interests via tax code subisidies.
Good times arrived in the Alberta tarsands some 6 or 7 years back with steady world oil price increases, but the fed’s and my home province continue to preferentially subsidize the tar sands industry with accelerated CCA schedules, introduced in 1995 (or ’96?) under Chretien+Martin+Anne McClelland, when the tarsands industry was stalled out, or when the tarsands profitability was negative, i.e. they were almost in the equivalent state of structural unprofitability ( just about to be unemployed, i.e. going broke ). Yet that coporate ‘unemploymen insurance’ continues with not a peep from the Watson’s, even through today’s good times.
You may know the most bitter irony is that the huge increase in western Canadian fossil fuel exports, subsidized by Canadians, have pushed the dollar up more than 10% higher than it would otherwise trade, thus causing over 200,000 lost jobs last report I read in Ontario and Quebec manufacturing.
As we all see, the Watson’s seem to have some selective analytical methods and habits regarding mega-corp’s obscenely profitable with help from taxpayers… in the good times it is apparently OK for mega-corp’s to remain on the public’s tab so long as the Watson’s can buy and hold stocks in Shell, Syncrude,Total, et al.
I don’t know if it happened but to acknowledge possible change of policy, the federal budget before the election, may have had a 1/3 reduction proposed to the 100% CCA rate for the tar sands. But the entire tarsands CCA advantage should of course be revoked. But the Watson’s stock portfolio might take a bit of hit in that event. So let’s not talk about that.
Anyways, everybody can buy stocks if they want. So everyday Canadians on unemployment really need to just get with the program.
Sam Gunsch
Sam Gunsch
Watson’s column today printed in the Edmonton Journal’s premium spot.
Headline: Not time to give up on tax, EI reforms.
Subhead: While statistics show the system worked, we still need smaller government.
Front page headline today:
Carbon project captures $865M
subhead: Alberta, Ottawa pitch in funds for greener oilsands.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Feds+Alberta+commit+million+Shell+Scotford+carbon+capture+project/5003273/story.html
So… supposedly Conservative governments favor social funding of oilsands mega-corporations for speculative technology. Social funding for citizens to pay for food, housing while seeking work, not so much.
… ‘tighten your belts.’
Sixth Estate
I saw that too. The worst part, in case you missed it, is that Shell has also been given official permission to claim bogus carbon numbers as an “incentive.”
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