The headline for the letter in your March 27 edition, “Capitalism ‘delivers death’”, was wrong-headed and foolish. Take a look at our latest, glorious socialist state Venezuela. Venezuela is oil-rich, with the world’s largest oil reserves, and they send oil tankers loaded with oil to Canada’s east coast. The socialist government nationalized the industry (took it away from the greedy capitalists to run it themselves), along with many others businesses. The socialist government has achieved an inflation rate of over 20 per cent, food shortages, and a murder rate of about 20,000 murders per year. In the capitalist Harper state of Canada there are about 600 murders a year. Some say it is safer to visit Iraq or Afghanistan than to visit Venezuela.
I have joked for years that the socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) could not run a coffee shop, yet they aspire to run the province and the country. Now there is proof that I am right. The Windsor Regional Hospital in Ontario contained a Tim Horton’s coffee shop. In their wisdom, the officials and unions decided to take it over and run it themselves, expecting to collect a profit of about $250,000 per year for the hospital. The shop was union run. Instead of making a profit for the hospital they lost about $250,000 a year. The same thing happened at the Newfoundland Health Science Centre, where they lost another $250,000 or so.
There are stories of financial hardships all over North America and Europe. Wise people are saying that there are so many entitlements, such as pension liabilities, that the economy is unsustainable. Socialists and unions say this is nonsense, and that basically the taxpayers should keep paying big pensions to workers in spite of there being no funding available. Greece is an example.
Some people even advocate that governments should simply print more money. That leads to inflation, as has happened in Venezuela and Zimbabwe, and Venezuela has recently devalued its currency for the fifth time in ten years.
Strangely, Canada’s largest provincial labour federation, the Ontario Federation of Labour, is in serious financial difficulties, due primarily to unfunded pension liabilities. The union-controlled town of Stockton in California is the largest town so far to declare bankruptcy, due largely to unfunded pension liabilities.
Many unions and socialists have been on a campaign for some time to “Stop Harper.” Ever since I first heard of Stephen Harper, his primary theme is to be fiscally prudent and try to balance budgets.
The NDP is a party that could not run a coffee shop and wants to stop Harper, which is an admission that the NDP is openly opposed to fiscal responsibility.
Roger Pratt
Nelson