Article content continued

The present federal government has written off the wealthy as a voting bloc and seems to be trying to move far enough left to cut the NDP off at the ankles, an admirable goal, even if the means are distasteful — the red diaper socialists in this country are numerous enough that they would accomplish more in the Liberal Party than as a third party, where they have always been ignored, other than when they were hosed out of their under-clothing by Pierre Trudeau under David Lewis and Ed Broadbent. But even this government, which is responsible, especially in league with its profligate cousins in the provincial government of Ontario, for top personal income tax levels that could not be justified in any circumstances except an extreme national emergency, seems to see that pushing rates much higher will drive wealth out, intensify the ingenuity of tax avoidance measures and raise the cost of tax collection, and someone might even understand that attracting wealth is good for economic growth, though it would be hard to credit this regime with that insight on its record.

The trades are underserved with recruits

There are far too many lawyers, because the legal profession is in charge of composing, as well as arguing and adjudicating, the laws and regulations that, in their ever-rising profusion, assure that there will always be a demand for more lawyers, more over-paid and more contemptuous of most of their clients as each fat year succeeds another. There are too many consultants of all kinds, too many hair stylists where barbers will do, financial advisors that executives who know how to do their jobs don’t need (that is, those who don’t need to cite to their directors and shareholders as the justification for compensation that is too high and as the source of ideas that didn’t work and were costly). In these circumstances, the pressures are not those of the free market for more skilled trades to reduce their cost to customers and employ more people who are now being expensively educated in uneconomic academic courses, creating spurious and practically redundant place men (like Lindsay Shepherd’s harassers at Wilfrid Laurier). The pressures instead assure the proliferation of more and more superfluous occupations at greater and greater social cost.