A really poor person makes or gets, say, $10,000.00 a year (welfare recipient).  A ‘rich’ person earns say, one million ($1,000,000) annually.  Of course there are many more ‘elite’ who make more than that but one has to admit it, $1M a year seems like a pretty good hit for most people.  I’d take it. 

David Hahn, the admiral of our aging ferry fleet makes that and he hasn’t resigned.  It seems adequate for him!  I think one has to accept that $1,000,000 a year is more than enough to live on and even have a bit left over for your RRSP.  Right?  Well, the ratio of income between the two recipients described above is 100 to one.  David Hahn makes 100 times more than what a poor person makes.

You know what?  I don’t care.  Life is full of inequity and unfairness and, even if it were not, some people work harder, do more and are more valuable to the economy than others.  I can accept a disparity of 100 to one.  It’s a bit galling, I suppose, from an idealistic point of view but I have learned to mix a bit of reality into my idealism and I can live with it.

Hell, I am so tolerant that I can accept twice that (200 times) for a good hockey player or Angelina Jolie.

But it turns out the richest of the hedge fund managers makes 50 thousand times what the poor person makes.  Every year!  Seems billionaires  are so rich they can’t reasonably spend the interest off their wealth even if they spent a million dollars a day!  There are now so many of these super-rich that the Forbes Richest 400 list is all billionaires and the lower ranks of billionaires can’t break the 400 mark!

50,000 times more income per year is the greatest disparity in all of history by a huge, huge factor.  Even Marie Antoinette, when advising the revolting French to ‘why not eat cake?’ only had 100 times the income of the poor peasant.  John D Rockefeller never exceeded 300 times.

Another way to look at it: if you count  each second (i.e. 1 – 2 – 3), it will take you twelve days to count to a million.  It will take you 32 years to count to a billion.  It will take you almost 140 years (counting every second) to reach the same number as Jimmy Pattison has in dollars.  And JP is small potatoes.   Real disparity: you can’t live long enough to even count Jimmy’s money!
 
Something has gone out of whack in the ‘fairness’ of it all to be sure but that is not really the issue.  The issue is that dollars – in a capitalist society – replace votes in terms of influence.  When everyone has the same, one vote per person can have some influence in the way things go.  But when one person has 50,000 times the influence of others because of their income, political votes are rendered largely irrelevant.  The voter investing his/her ballot has been effectively marginalized by the ‘new votes’ (dollars).  No wonder the electorate is apathetic.  They ‘feel’ that their vote doesn’t count and it doesn’t.

Add to that globalization and those who now pull the strings are ‘out of reach’ of the revolting peasants.  Remember, the peasants took Marie’s head!  When Britain threatened to ‘punish’ (tax) the excessively rich so-called bankers who helped bring down the global economy (2007/08), the banks simply threatened to leave London and go to Switzerland.  The banks (virtually created and supported by the laws of the nation) are now so big they can thumb their noses at the government who created them!

So, what do you think your provincial vote is worth these days?

Answer:  It is not worth the same Canadian penny they are soon to discontinue.  Your vote ain’t worth squat!  You know why?  Because you are voting to sustain the very same system that makes your vote worthless.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Is there an answer?  Well, there are too many of them to chop off their heads and they have lots and lots of security (haven’t you noticed?) with which to monitor our collective behaviour and mood so it just may be that the battle is lost and the dark side has won.  Sorry, Luke.  The force just wasn’t as strong as we hoped.

And, if that is the case, learn to say ‘yes sir’ to the jackboots of regulation and adjust your tastes and consumptions to that which you can barely afford while you work harder and harder to do it.  You know, like it has been for the past two decades?

I suppose we could all rise in one united voice and vote for a ‘new party’ that promises to end this return to peasantry and slavery but, really, who might that be then?