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If we apply these figures of 38% and 6.2% to the numbers in Table 1 above, we get:-
“Not in the Labour Force” - who could be working if allowed = 0.38 X
8.212 million = 3.12 million
Plus
(“Official”) Unemployed = 1.28 million
“Employed” who
in fact are “under-employed” = 0.062 X
15.7 million = 0.97 million
TOTAL CURRENTLY UNEMPLOYED OR UNDER-EMPLOYED =
5.37 million
The true state of affairs is now obvious.
Apart from the social consequences for the people involved, which most people know about (poverty, children in poverty, loss of self-esteem, pejorative and ill-qualified discrimination (“lazy”, “incompetent”, “..too old to be any use to an employer..” etc.), mental health problems, crime, etc., there is an additional problem which is customarily ignored by everybody, possibly by default.
This additional problem is the huge loss of
revenue to the tax base – rather obvious if we are actually talking about over
4 million completely unemployed plus almost another 1 million who are “merely”
under-employed (as opposed to 1.28 million who are “officially unemployed”), as
compared to about 14.7 million who are employed full time at their level of
capability.
At the same time, we all know the incidence of
complaints about personal income taxes in Canada being too high – particularly
in the High-Tech industry. Everybody is also familiar with the lack of funds
for essential services provided by government i.e. health care, education,
national defence etc. and - more
importantly since the terrorist actions in New York and Washington on September
11th 2001 – funding for
essential security services i.e. RCMP, CSIS, Police, national defence (should I
mention this again?) etc. . The situation will rapidly get worse for at least
the next 10 years, on account of demographics, unless drastic corrective action
is taken.
Fundamentally, the question is one of how to
bring about a large increase in tax revenues but without increasing tax rates.
This is possible only by increasing the number of persons who are tax revenue
producers, which means the number of persons working. Obviously, the more an
individual earns – the solution to the social problems he / she would otherwise
have – the more tax revenue he / she will produce for government, to pay for
the essential services just referred to. The foregoing obviously applies to
immigrants in exactly the same way as Canadian citizens, yet currently this is
one of the groups which has more problems finding work than most other people
(pejorative discrimination based on “…lack on Canadian experience…”,
non-recognition of qualifications, not being in a position to “… know
somebody…” etc.). Further, as everybody knows, increased immigration (to about
300,000 persons per year) is seen as the solution to the projected work force
decline due to demographics – but this will not work if the immigrants involved
are not allowed, because of pejorative discrimination etc., to produce a
maximum of tax revenue based on paid work at their level of capabilities as
proven by their foreign qualifications and foreign work experience.
The first step – out of many - in solving the problem is to get everybody
to face the problem in real terms and to motivate them to think about what part
they could play in solving it. The first priority, out of many - obviously – is what measures are needed to
increase the numbers of full-time jobs available to equal the numbers of
persons unemployed in real terms.