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From: robinson@ubc-ean.CDN (Jim Robinson)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: First Chance Program and other Ramblings
Message-ID: <741@ubc-ean.CDN>
Date: Mon, 20-Aug-84 00:57:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-ean.741
Posted: Mon Aug 20 00:57:14 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Aug-84 08:13:34 EDT
Organization: UBC EAN, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 85


  
 > Recently Prime Minister Turner announced the 'First Chance' program to
 > provide youth with initial job training.  It's supposed to provide
 > training for zillions of unemplyed youth so they won't be turned down
 > from a job just because they don't have any experience.
 > 
 > What good is this program????  Besides wasting humungous amounts of
 > govt money (I seem to recall $1 billion after a couple of years) all
 > it does is provide youth with training for non-existent jobs.  The
 > guys with experience will just get shuffled bit further back in the
 > unemployment line.
 > 
 > Shouldn't the first priority be job *creation*, not redistribution?
 > Start public projects or something (I can think of quite a few streets
 > that need repaving...)
 
 
Tom Haapen is correct in pointing out that all the training in the world
is not going to help people if there are simply no jobs out there.
However I strongly disagree with his proposal that the government should
be involved in job creation ( read make-work ). 

The government is simply not equipped to create permanent jobs in the
private sector and public works projects are merely a way of postponing
the inevitable crunch since there are deep rooted problems in the economy
and in all probability it will not be enough to just wait out this bust
we're going thru. 

What the government should be doing is trying to create an enviroment which 
facilitates the  creation of new businesses and the growth of present ones.

Unfortuneately, I cannot pretend to know just how to do this, but I think
a certain amount of deregulation is a first step. The Liberals were on the
right track with wanting to deregulate the airline industry, but have so
far merely paid lip service to the idea. Over-regulation often has
the effect of reducing competition among the various players, and competition
is an essential ingredient in a free market system.

Another move in the right direction would be for the federal and provincial
governemnts to drastically reduce their taxes on gasoline. I can sort of
understand high taxes on alcohol and tobacco since they are considered to
be "sin taxes" and those commodities are certainly not essential to the 
well being of the country ( or for that matter the person that uses them ).
But, to tax gas at the present horrific rate seems to make as much sense
as taxing water. Gasoline is the lifeblood of an industrialised country 
and over-taxation of it cannot help but produce a downward pressure on the
economy. It's really quite amazing to compare what we pay for gas in 
Canada to what is paid in the US especially when you take into account that
the gas purchased from Alberta is about $2 a barrel cheaper than imported
gas.

My last suggestion is to implement a flat income tax rate. This will have
a double pronged effect in that               
a) From then on EVERYBODY would have an interest in seeing that their tax
   dollars are being put to good and efficient use (e.g. is it really
   necessary to create a new position for Eugene Whelan in Italy just 
   because he wanted to be Prime Minister ), and           
b) The disincentive that presently exists for those making above a certain
   amount to work any harder would disappear and would undoubtedly result
   in increased productivity on their part which will in turn result in a
   healthier economy. 
( Of course, it would be necessary to increase the standard deduction so
that the truly poor are not  hurt by this change. ) 
I am expecting to hear some rather heated replies concerning this suggestion.


Unfortuneately, the Tories and the Grits are presently  hell bent on
seeing which of them can regurgitate the greatest number of worn out
ideas. The didn't taste too good the first time around, and they
don't taste too good now.

In case you haven't guessed from the above, my personal opinion is that
the people best qualified to spend taxpayers' money is the taxpayers           
themselves. This was at one point termed supply side economics. Then
when Ronnie adopted it, it was derisively called Reagonomics. Then, when
the US economy took off like a 747 it went back to being supply side
economics.

The idea which has the least merit is increasing taxes, which is precisely
what will happen on October 1st when Marc LaLonde's silently ticking
tax time-bomb goes off and the price of nearly  everything that you and
I buy on a day to day basis  goes up. 

                                                J.B. Robinson