Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves

That is what my father used to tell me.  It was good advice back when the monthly budget was one or two hundred dollars. In government today however, due to the size of the budget, it is more apt to say, 'Take care of the Millions and the Billions will take care of themselves'. But that is exactly why waste is an easy trap to fall into to. We can allow millions to be treated like pennies and no one notices if they are spent wisely or not.

However, it is important to take extra care with the public coffers. Every dollar paid in taxes is given in trust.  The public in general may not have a good sense of how much a billion dollars is, but they know what a million dollars is. It is the cost of a home in Vancouver which takes a lifetime to pay off if you are one of the lucky ones who can afford living there at all.  So when the govenment is careless with its Million Dollar Pennies, people notice.

It makes them calloused to the political process. This is a day and age when we see our youth 'occuppying' because they don't believe the system works. We need a more people involved in government, not less. From the informed voters to party members and all the way up, we need to invite people into the discussion. We will not get there by ignoring gov't waste, no matter how small.

Why we all can have a voice in Goverment

 Many times I have heard people say that they don't believe they have a voice because the party they want to vote for doesn't have a chance of winning. This is a fallacy. It is a belief that if you do not elect your candidate then your vote was somehow wasted. This is simply not true.

The way that our democracy works is that everyone can join a party and have input into the local chapter to bring forward their ideas. In many parties you don't even have to be voting age before you can join and have a say. These ideas are debated and the best ones then get accepted and move up to a regional, provincial or federal level within the party where the debate continues. The best of those become party platform and policies. If a person's ideas do not rise to the top, they have the option to refine, reword and reapply those ideas until they do.

Then, in the election, the candidates all get to debate their platform and the ideas which started with the general public come back to that same public. The best ideas from one party will influence their opposition as everyone tries to come to terms with how to best meet the needs of society.  Whether or not your particular candidate wins does not change the fact that they helped to shape the debate.

Democracy is a system in which nobody gets what they want.  We negotiate in order to forge the best compromise we can.  If you want to have your way, you need to start a dictatorship or a monarchy and make sure you are in charge. If you want to be part of something greater, you need to join the party of your choice and get involved in the conversation.

Austerity Measures

We see how uncontrolled social spending has worked out in Europe. The Austerity Measures in Greece are just a small part of the pain that they are going through as they pay for the last decades of fiscal mismanagement.  Yet we don't seem to learn anything from it.  The NDP under Adrian Dix would like to charge headlong toward the same end.

We say we want responsible government and we should. However, to have that, we need to be responsible citizens. If we want to help the most at risk segments of our population, we need the rest of us to stop looking for the big government programs and allow the government to be fiscally responsible.  Greece is no longer able to help their citizens and that is where we will be if we don't get control of our spending now before it is too late.

Canadian Nuclear Plant at Chalk River

Canadian Prime Minister Harper has been accused of firing Linda Keen just out of spite because he didn't like her conclusions about nuclear safety at the Chalk River Nuclear Lab. That was in 2007, when she was the President and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The PM is characterized as being anti-science to the point of muzzling scientists that say anything that would hurt business. Other events are cited to bolster this conclusion but let’s look at this one first.

The Chalk River reactor makes the majority of the world's supply of medical radioisotopes that are essential for nuclear medicine. There are 4 others in the world that create the balance of them, but they cannot meet the demand. It was shut down for routine maintenance and found to be fully operational and safe. However although it had 2 failsafe power supplies to provide continued cooling in the case of an accident, it was scheduled to be equipped with a third that would be earthquake resistant. It was about 1 year beyond the scheduled timeframe for this to be done.

So, the reactor was deemed to be just as safe as it had always been for decades but not as safe as it could be.  Ms. Keen wanted to keep the reactor off-line until the upgrades were done.  No one doubted her science or questioned that this upgrade would be beneficial. However, the shortage of radioisotopes was beginning to be felt and it was a fair certainty that necessary treatments would be impossible for some people if the reactor remained off line. The decision made by Parliament (remember too that the Conservatives had a minority gov't and so the other parties could have stopped this if they had wanted to) was that the lives that were 100% sure to be in danger if the reactor stayed off-line were to be considered as higher risk than the lives that might be impacted by an earthquake that might happen and might take the other power supplies off-line. Emergency legislation was passed to restart the reactor in opposition to Ms. Keen and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Parliament cited the safety of citizens requiring essential nuclear medicine to be of higher priority than the reactor upgrade.

Ms. Keen refused to obey the legislation and would not allow the reactor to be re-started. She was fired for that choice and NOT because of her opinion that the reactor should be upgraded. Everyone agreed that it should be upgraded, just not immediately. A plan to upgrade the reactor without the loss to the medical community is what was needed.

So, did the Prime Minister act in a way that showed contempt for science or human safety or the democratic process?  I don't see how any of that can be said about this event.

Capitalism and Illegal Immigrants

Why does the US have such a problem with Illegal Immigrants?  I think it works this way.

·       Capitalism is controlled by competition so that businesses are always looking for ways to be cheaper and must do so in order to guard their market share

·       Rich people encourage this by wanting cheap products so that they can have even more

So as a result, the businesses need a large pool of abject poor who will work for next to nothing. At first they had slaves, which is the cheapest labour available.  Then they lost those and tried to keep them as tenet farmers who were little better than slaves.

Then they slowly lost that social stratum and the unthinkable happened. A Socialistic policy was put in place, called minimum wage. This is designed to take wealth from the rich and give it to the poor. The justification is that the rich are treating the poor unfairly and the need to have laws to force them to be fair.

The way it works is that the companies will now have to pay more for labour and so the price of food and other commodities will go up. The rich will have to spend more on these basics so they will have less money for other things and so their standard of living will dip slightly. The poor on the other hand will also have to pay more for things but they will receive quite a bit more in wages and so will actually be able to afford more than they could before, so their standard of living will go up.

So, how can a company defend itself against this? They need to find another large pool of abject poor to take advantage of. Enter the illegal immigrants.

·       They do not need to be given minimum wage or benefits since they have no legal recourse.

·       They have it worse in their home country so they are willing to work for next to nothing.

·       They have now become this generation’s slaves.

People may say they want to crack down on illegal immigrants who steal US jobs, but they don’t really. If they did, the results would be:

·       They would be forced to pay more for labour and the cost of commodities would rise

·       Everyone would see their standard of living decrease as a result

The greed of a nation requires these people be here to work for next to nothing. And no one wants to allow them to stay legally because then they would have to get minimum wage and that would defeat the purpose of having them here illegally in the first place. All the bluster against them is just politics. People even sooth their conscience by saying that they are creating jobs and that these people are glad to have the work.

I predict that they will always be here because that’s the way people want it to be.

Economics and the Bible

So does the Bible advocate Capitalism or Socialism?  This is a huge question for many people and one that I believe we stumble over. Socialism is a system in which the community is supposed to take care of the needs of everyone in it. Whereas Capitalism is a system in which each person is supposed to take care of themselves. Given that focus, I would say that God would prefer Socialism. When He asked Cain where Able was, Cain asked if he was his brother's keeper. God sidestepped the question somewhat but still made it clear that, "Yes, we are our brother's keepers." But even so, I when I read my Bible it talks about each person working and gaining personal benefit from their own labour. It never condems the rich just because they are rich nor does it attempt to share resources equally between all people. In the Law in Levitcus it openly acknowledges that people may become poor and does not provide any social system to make them rich again. So why, if God loves us all and wants us to take care of each other, does the Bible appear to be mostly Capitalistic.

I think there are many reasons.

1) Because of our selfishness:  
To start with, God is against both laziness and greed. But he is also realistic. He made us after all and he knows what we are like. He knew that we were going to be selfish and therefore would tend to fall into either laziness or greed. But a Socialistic system would colapse under laziness, so it cannot be sustained. Therefore, because of the hardness of men's hearts I believe God gave us a more capitalistic system and then encouraged us to be generous to each other.

2) To teach us:
God takes each of us through a different journey. Some are poor and need to learn to trust in Him to provide. Others are rich and need to learn that they still need God and that they need to help their fellow man. Many of us go through phases in life where we get to learn both lessons.

3) Inspite of the Bible supporting a more capitalistic view, it has several key socialistic laws to control the greed of man.
 - the poor where allowed to glean in the fields of the rich and take food for free
 - poor people could not be charged interest on loans
 - food could not be sold at a profit so that everyone would be able to afford to eat
 - merchants were not suppossed to create scarcity in order to drive up prices.
 - all debts had to be forgiven in the year of jubilee

These were major socialistic constraints put in place to protect the poor from the greed of an uncontrolled capitalistic system. So I believe that God DID NOT give us a totally free market guidline for living. He gave us a workable form of Capitalism with a sprinkling of Socialistic common sense.

In the USA (arguably the most Capitalistic nation that has ever been) there are still socialistic overtones.
 - unions
 - minimum wage
 - medicare
 - medicade
 - foodstamps (now called SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
 - Anti-trust laws (prohibiting monolopies)

People are on both sides as to whether these programs and others go too far or don't go far enough. That is a question open for fair debate. However, the question of whether or not there should be Socialistic controls on a Capitalistic society for me at least is clear. Biblically we are given the model that we DO NEED laws to control the greed of man. The Bible is in favour of a hybrid solution, tipped, perhaps heavily, to the Capitalistic side.  

WikiLeaks

I do not believe that leaking sensitive material indiscriminately is a noble thing to do or in the best interest of the public so this is NOT to justify wikileaks. On the other hand, why did the government think that they would be exempt from the rules that apply to everyone else?

 

Lk 12:2-3 There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.