100 people attended a pre-budget consultation meeting in West Royalty Tuesday night listen The meeting was hosted by Murphy and Malpeque MP Wayne Easter on the upcoming federal budget should contain. Guardian photo
By Stephen Pate
PEI Disability Alert
The participants at the Liberal pre-budget forum Primary industries must lead economic recovery, pre-budget forum told gave MP’s Shawn Murphy and Wayne Easter some good advice.I had the flu so couldn’t attend: here’s what I intended to say.We need to look back at what the world needs. It doesn’t need more cars or plasma TV’s. A world food crisis is at our doors. The farmers are right. It’s not chic or trendy to be a farmer. It’s just more important.
We also need to support the poor, working and otherwise. With much less money than is being spent on bail-outs, Canada could move to the next level and implement the Guaranteed Annual Income. It is actually expect to save money for the government. We could also provide real supports for the disabled in Canada not the band-aids currently in place.
Unlike rich bankers and CEO’s, the poor create consumption where they live. The current bail-out money is not going to help the economy. It will end up in foreign banks and gold.
The world financial crisis is a direct result of the focus of global business and government on growth, any growth, at all costs. Profit this year must exceed last year or else. The world cannot support that economic model. This is the business model I was trained to work in and it is a failure. People must come first not profits for a few.
The US knew as early as 1990 that growth at all costs was impossible but pumped the money supply to create the dot.com boom which became the dot.com bust. Who cares? More millionaires and billionaires were created by that bubble than ever before.
In 2000, the US Federal Reserve, US government and business were desperate to have more growth. The IT sector was bust so they created consumer demand in housing with artificial money like sub-prime loans. No matter what anyone says, the economy is always driven by consumption and the US is the biggest consumer market in the world. Perhaps someday India and China will replace the US but that is not today.
The financial reality of expansionist policies had shifted 18 years to today. The current solution is a panic response to the collapse of the unsustainable economic house of cards.
The money spent on bailouts is largely ineffective.
If the Liberals had any vision, they’d come up with a breakthrough social program like Guaranteed Annual Income and real supports for the disabled.
These programs cost a pittance of what they are giving to rich CEO’s for bonuses. The poor spend their money where they live unlike the rich who travel and save abroad.
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