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  1. Point out the potential increase in revenues to the tax base if it solved, and the probable penalties for all Canadians if it is not solved.  In February 2000, the Association of Canadian Pension Management estimated that tax rates, including personal income taxes, will have to rise by 30% in real after-inflation terms, relative to current levels, over the next 30 years. The reason for this is the impending retirement of the "baby boom " generation.  This, among other things, constitutes the business case for dealing with it properly.

 

  1. Canadians will have to be told that current attitudes, involving secret or overt discrimination based on age when selecting employees, are both inappropriate and based on obsolete thinking. There are several reasons for this, for example:-
    1. There is an obvious need to keep members of the “baby boom” generation working as long as possible, to maximise their contributions to the tax base so as to alleviate the projected tax revenue shortage just referred to. In any case, their life expectancies – assuming the absence of negative attitudes towards them as workers – can be expected to exceed that of any previous generation of so-called “retirees”.
    2. Failure by everybody to recognize this, and act on it, will result in this group being excluded from the work force by the traditional attitudes about this issue which currently seem to dominate management thinking in Canada, when hiring employees. When income taxes rise to unacceptable levels (on account of health care costs, etc) – as if they are not at unacceptable levels already –  working people will then complain more and more about  the money being spent on “…the cost of supporting  all those stupid and demented old people…”, etcetera, in a situation where the root cause of the problem will have been the working people’s  own tradition-based thinking coupled with the classic ostrich-like stance involving “..burying (your) head in the sand…” in order to avoid seeing a problem and as an excuse for inaction.
    3. Continuation of current attitudes will imply that the life-long learning philosophy does not apply to people who are still physically and mentally fit to work. The late President of Occidental Petroleum – Armand Hammer, who was still working in his 90’s – would not have accepted the imposition of such traditional attitudes. There is no reason for anybody else to be told – directly, indirectly, or by silence without explanation - to accept the imposition of this type of discrimination, either.
    4. A further aspect of this problem concerns  dis-ingenuous / dishonest behaviour - the fabrication of an appearance of smiling nicely, being cooperative etc. which we are all told is a required form of behaviour in Canada, both in and out of the work place, when the actual (but hidden) intent is to avoid such cooperation with a particular individual and to avoid hiring him / her. In practice, when the issue of age-based discrimination is involved, which in the work place is technically illegal, what actually seems to happen is that people looking for work are simply smiled at etc., followed by nothing (i.e. no response to sending in a resume, phone calls not returned etc.) or a fob-off based on some convenient excuse whose face value has nothing to do with age. This is part of a wider problem involving dis-ingenuous / dishonest social behaviour where too many people in Canada do not say what they mean and do not mean what they say, giving rise to endless speculation about what they might actually be thinking and saying, and why, for unnecessary and stupid reasons. This same type of dis-ingenuous social behaviour also happens in other contexts.

 

  1. Point out the applicability of the “life-long learning” philosophy to everybody, including all immigrants and all persons unemployed in real terms. Point out the implications of dismissing people based on “lack of Canadian experience” etc. – it implies that (a) the life-long learning philosophy does not apply to them , and (b) that they cannot even read. This will rapidly become more important for both groups (immigrants and real-term unemployed), partly on account of increased immigration (300,000 persons per year) being seen as a major part of the solution to the projected decline in the numbers in the work force which will otherwise occur.

 

6.     In addition to the health care funding issue already referred to, point out the need for large increases in tax revenues as the basis for adequate funding for such things as children’s education, armed forces, security services and law enforcement (police).

 

7.     Canadians therefore cannot afford to allow the present situation, involving persistent dis-information and cover-up, to continue.

 

8.     Point out the existence of programs such as ON-SITE which could play a far bigger part if employers would make use of it / them.

 

  1. Indicate the time scale over which results must show.

 

10.  Point out the absolute necessity  for everybody, including the unemployed,  to be in a position to set priorities  - like business people do - with certainty of getting useful results i.e satisfactory return on effort / time invested. In this connection it should be remembered that applicants for loans – business and personal – have to provide satisfactory evidence of income stability to the lending institution(s) involved. Therefore money-lending institutions, such as the banks, understand the importance of satisfactory guarantees concerning income and in fact insist on such guarantees; hence,  there is no excuse for trying to “explain” to the unemployed and immigrants that such guarantees are “impossible”.

 

11.  Currently there is a pre-occupation with the notion that such certainties – “guarantees” – are “impossible”; this is merely another symptom of the size of the problem and the small number of jobs available relative to the numbers of persons seeking work / want to work. At the same time, the notion of this “impossibility” is just another case of  “there is so much of going on  that you can’t possibly do anything…”. This is a dangerous, unacceptable, obsolete and inappropriate psychology which is causing the business of job hunting, for most people, to degenerate into a futile exercise involving an obligation to undertake endless hornswoggling and deal with endless fob-offs or non-response from employers; part of this involves, in addition,  an inappropriate degree of  pre-occupation with relatively unimportant subjects such as resume-writing, interview technique, dress codes etc. – i.e. pettifogging over issues which have nothing at all to do with acquiring skills that will get somebody work, based on the need for such skills.

 

12.  There is no excuse whatsoever for defending the present situation based on its dominance – e.g. “there is so much of it going on that you can’t possibly do anything…” . Such attitudes imply, in addition, that if there is a problem then no work should be done to solve it – which contradicts the work ethic itself, all of which involves problem-solving in some form (i.e. supply of goods and services  to meet customer needs). Nobody attempted to say that the axiom represented by the obduracy of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist followers in Afghanistan and elsewhere was a reason for not doing anything about them.

 

13.  “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” The small number of jobs available relative to the numbers of persons looking for them at any given time seems to have  produced, by default, a situation where the only people who get jobs, in return for effort at looking for one, are those who have a record of stable employment and constant escalation in achievements and who, as a result, are known to many other persons in similar favourable circumstances. This also seems to be giving rise to the ubiquitous formation of narrow-minded cliques in the work force, who automatically exclude anyone whom they do not “know” who is not in this sort of fortunate position, who apply to them for work. This seems to automatically result in anyone who has had persistent problems, through no fault of their own, being excluded every time. Thus from the job-seeker’s standpoint, which equates to the prospective tax revenue generator’s standpoint, the situation is self-perpetuating in most instances of people looking for work, never mind the obvious stupidity of it.

 

 

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