Conservatives Create Two Worlds

The elitist economic model places undo importance on the bastardized notion of "leadership". A successful company is the sum of its parts, everyone contributes, there are varying degrees of accountability, skills, stress, but any enterprise is really a community. The irrefutable income gap that is intensifying as of late is really a byproduct of greed; a free market incapable of fairly distributing riches, so obnoxious it even rewards those at the top further, even when performance or fiscal realities dictate otherwise. This isn’t to say success shouldn’t be rewarded, different "levels" don’t deserve appropriate compensation, only that the trend is now towards the obscene, creating different realities behind a warped mindset.

Article today at iPolitics highlights the institutional disconnect these Conservatives are sanctioning, on the one hand preaching austerity to a certain "class", while simultaneously lining the pockets of the perceived elites, as though their value isn’t tied to economic reality as well, the operate outside hard truths and simply carry on, while others bear the brunt of required cuts:

Pure nonsense. You ask civil servants to buy into cutback, under the guise of fiscal necessity, and yet this philosophy doesn’t apply to those at the top of the food chain, they are immune. How anyone can possibly justify the disconnect here is beyond me, you’d have to turn yourself into an intellectual pretzel to achieve superficial coherence.

The article notes a large rise within the Prime Minister’s Privy Council. Now to be fair, the budget did announce a 10% claw back within the Privy Council Office, but part of that was simply moving money around. As well, interesting that the sticker number expenditure merely takes us to 2010 expenditures, wherein it ballooned 12%, despite the initial government calls for "freezes". In other words, when you factor in departmental accounting moves, "cuts" are a fantasy. Good public relations though I suppose, I’m sure supporters will gloss over reality to make a tortured case.

The chief point, this government is giving top executives raises- performance based- yet the people under them who are also capable of important contributions are not only told bonuses don’t apply, but they will fall behind standard of living wise. One group is getting ahead, the other group sees their relative place eroding, effectively sanctioning further disparity, widening the wealth gap. Given this government has preached austerity, SURELY a logical case could have been made for across the board freezes, suspension of bonuses until which time we get our house in order, blah, blah, blah, there would not be any real political blowback given the overall arguments. And yet, this government didn’t see the hypocrisy here, they have exempted the upper tier, austerity is a concept foreign to the elites.

The escalating salaries for the top tier- those closest to these Conservatives- blends in nicely with exploding costs for self promotion, a growing PMO that serves partisan needs, basically one rule for everyone else, another for the self interested. It has become clear, if we do tackle this deficit, it will have been done on the backs of ordinary Canadians, while the vanguard lives in an other worldly existence, free from the necessary constraints of ordinary men.

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