Monday, December 3, 2007
The Toronto Star Has It Right
What's that? Did I read that correctly? The Toronto Star? The same newspaper which I ranted on here, here, and here? Well, yes, actually. The Star today has reported on an enraging topic, where the federal bureau of employment insurance stands at an obscene, tax-payer bludgeoning $54 billion dollars.
How can this be? The federal government of Canada itself does not possess a surplus of this magnitude, and yet the socialist program of Employment Insurance, which steals untold amounts of monies from our weekly pay cheques [automatically debited for "convenience"], has an astounding surplus. And what, you may ask, is the reason for it? I think the answer to that is fairly simple. Nobody can get it.
For those who live in their parents basement and don't yet pay taxes, E.I. [as it is known] is a frustrating deduction which is taken directly off your salary every time you receive a payment from your employer. It is intended [in socialist theory] to be banked for you, on your behalf [how very generous of the government to hold on to your money for you], in the event that you lose your job and require governmental assistance while you search for a new job. Never mind the fact that if you do lose your job, it takes 6-8 weeks of bureaucratic processing to get any payment, by which time you could be either employed or homeless [pick one]. Never mind the fact that the very definition of "insurance" means to "insure" against the liability of something which could cause you either grievous harm or injury financially. No, never mind those tedious facts. Because you probably won't get E.I. at all:
Critics say the program's "draconian" eligibility rules are responsible for people slipping through the cracks into poverty while the federal government uses the money to finance tax cuts to corporations, and other things.
"For people who are paying into that insurance, it's not working for them ... (I)n the next economic downturn that we see, many of those people will not have support from EI to cushion them," said Frances Lankin, president and chief executive officer of the United Way of Greater Toronto.
"It is one piece of the overall strategy that is going to have to be developed if we are to bring down poverty rates," Lankin told the Star.
The surplus generated by the employment insurance program doesn't actually exist as a separate entity. The difference between what is collected in EI premiums and what is paid out is counted as general revenue, and the bulk of it is used to fund other programs or to pay down the national debt.
In other words, we're paying an extra tax we don't need to pay. Since the government is not using the funds they say they're allocating them for, a more blunt word for it would be "theft". Employment Insurance is collecting roughly a billion dollars more per year than they can ever possibly need, and it goes directly to federal revenues which are in turn used for other programs or government expenditures.
This, despite the fact that E.I. premiums have even gone down in recent years. What really gets to people, though, is the eligibility is very high in an economy which expects a high rate of turnover. The hours required to be eligible pretty much means that part-time earners, or seasonal contractual workers can't receive back the very money they put into the fund. Think of it as a "pay now, screw you later" fund.
This means that in Ontario alone, 70% of those who end up unemployed will not qualify for benefits, meaning they can slip into the unemployment ranks or welfare. To put this in perspective, many contract workers, such as construction tradespeople or landscapers, may lose their jobs after a few months of steady work, and be completely on their own to survive. Good people, with good educations, and skills, can be utterly left in the lurch by a system which requires a qualification of hours based on arbitrary numbers, instead of actual input into the system. What I can't for the life of me understand, is how the government can deny a person of the money they have already paid into a fund. This isn't welfare. This is about real working people, being disenfranchised by their own government.
There are two simple solutions to this problem. The first is to fix the system to allow people to receive Employment Insurance as it was meant to be used: to insure against the fluctuating effects of the economy through a fund into which everyone pays. The second is to scrap the entire system, and allow the worker to keep that portion of his stolen paycheque. In either sense, the worker should be entitled the benefits of his labour. Full stop.
Posted by Raphael Alexander at 6:51 PM
Five weeks of around the clock fishing, sold to offshore factory boats for cash (the gov't doesnt know how much), then they sit in the Legion for the rest of the year on pogey, with their boat as a residence. Or so I hear :
