moneyFYI
Financial Freedom Is Merely Organized Common Sense
Minorities Lose
I know and appreciate that visible minorities have a harder time than they should. That’s changing slowly. Eventually it will be a bad memory.
I am talking about another kind of minority. Invisible minorities. The ones where many people need what they have or do, and there are not many of them. In that context their freedoms and right to run their affairs as they wish for any price they wish will be taken from them by regulation and sometimes legislation.
Their only option is to go away.
Examples
The Cancel Rent idea
I don’t know how many people really think this a good idea. The basis of the problem is there are far more people who rent than landlords. Politically, and in the short term, landlords can be regulated and even castigated. Landlords are a minority that politicians will use to their own advantage.
They have always done it. Think rent controls, Landlord-Tenant legislation solidly on the side of the tenants, and the negative public image of greedy property owners.
Doctors
There are many more people who might need a doctor than there are doctors. People are envious of their earnings and their social standing. Most have not thought it through. Specialists will have devoted at least a dozen years after high school to learning and being certified in the field. That’s a lot of income given up. Most doctors work more than 50 hours a week. That’s a lot of leisure time given up. Most doctors take it personally when they cannot help or sometimes save a patient. That’s a lot of angst.
Have you noticed the government setting “reasonable” billing rates. Of course they do. I know from examples I have seen that doctors today on a price adjusted basis make net, barely half of what they did 50 years ago.
Think about liability. Courts have driven the price of Errors and Omissions insurance to stratospheric heights. At one time in Alabama there were zero gynecologists’ because the financial risk to practice there was too high. How does that serve the people?
Farmers.
Continuing the theme, there are more people who eat than who raise food. Farmers, by many methods, from price controls, to production quotas, and to rail charges, have been underpaid. If you consider a fair value for the capital invested in a farm, a fair price for the hours of common labour, a fair price for management and special skills, and a fair return for the risk involved, you will discover that most farmers have bought a low paying job. It is a good thing they like the lifestyle.
Farmers make enough to continue but they make well less than fair value for all their inputs.
Oil Companies
There are more people who buy gas than produce and sell it. Do you think it is a coincidence that people think of big oil as bad? What if you exclude the price of crude oil, of which government received royalties are a big part. Oil companies pay the cash expenses to transport, refine, and sell at the pump, including credit card charges, they share what’s left with the government.
It isn’t the same everywhere, but we know there are at least 50 cents per liter of taxes in Ontario. Provincial, federal, carbon, and then HST on the final selling price. I don’t know the price fractioning formula for crude, but it looks something around 1/125th of the barrel price for a liter. At today’s price here, that’s about 605 cents and leaves about 70 cents to divide up among cash outlays. governments, and profit for the oil companies.
If the government gets 50 cents of that 70, and the oil company pays the expenses out of their 20 cents, I’d say the government has a remarkably good deal. Then, to add insult to injury. the oil companies pay taxes on the profit they keep.
No wonder the government wants to cast blame elsewhere.
The takeaway
If you are choosing a career, be careful with ones where there are many votes to be had by discriminating against you. Politicians are clever at counting votes and they know they don’t need all of them.
The people don’t always think value through and they should.
I help people have more retirement income and larger, more liquid estates.
Call in Canada 705-927-4770, or email don@moneyfyi.com
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