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Letter: Tax surcharge needed for employees on sunshine list

'In Ontario, the amount of workers on the Sunshine List of workers making over $100,000 a year has grown exponentially, from 4,494 workers in 1996 to a whopping 244,390 making that amount last year'
20170302 Canadian cash
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To the editor:

It is quite clear that due to out-of-control spending and poor negotiation, the bureaucracy of the Federal and most Provincial jurisdictions in Canada has ballooned.

For example, in Ontario, the amount of workers on the Sunshine List (a list of workers making over $100,000 a year) has grown exponentially, from 4,494 workers in 1996 to a whopping 244,390 making that amount last year. You can see these stats about the ballooning list here. There are therefore 54 times more people on the list now than then. As a result of the government essentially printing money to pay for these exorbitant salaries, inflation has gone up and up and up.

The recent Education Workers' strike/political action in Ontario highlighted the poorest government-paid workers, but what about these 250k workers at the top of the food chain? By making $100,000 or more a year do they really need to access the food bank, etc., be poor, have no money for anything like the poorest education workers do, or can we assume that they are basically swimming in money? I assume the latter. Therefore, the government has no moral loyalty or desire for social justice for such rich public servants. So then, cut their salaries drastically! 

Make the poor richer, and make the rich poorer, this is the mantra of a progressive taxation system that takes more from the wealthy. But what is taken from the rich 250,000 government of Ontario employees? Nothing (except tax). There should be a tax, a surcharge, a "sunshine" surcharge. All money earned over $100k should be considered excessive, so that 20k over $100k in one year, should be considered like $100K minus 20k the next year. So every employee who made $120k last year should receive $80k this year for the same amount of work. This is to make up for the 20k they shouldn't have been paid, from a moral perspective. 

If they leave or retire, then good, more room for younger employees. Out with the old, in with the new. Or don't even rehire. Down with the rich bureaucracy sucking off the fat of the taxpayers, off with their parasitic ways, off with their monopolistic self-interested control of the civil service. Take the billions that are saved from cutting this fat and throw it from airplanes onto the crowds, as you probably will do more social good that way, for at least some of the money will end up in the hands of the poor. 

Take universities, for example. As a case study, let's look at one English professor. He made $100k 20 years ago, but then steadily increased to earning $200k a year. Are his skills so rare, in demand, and hard to find that you need to pay him 2 million over the course of 20 years? No, of course not. Pay the same professor $60,000 a year and you will get the same result. There is no qualitative improvement that comes from spending more than $60k on a Professor, or on any course instructor. If all educational institutions collectively lowered the salary for most Professors, it would save billions with little to no effect on the quality of education. Hope they saved up their money when their salary at $150k salary when it should have been $60k. 

I call for a Province-wide and Canada-wide pay freeze and pay reduction.

The current salary of an MPP in Ontario, for instance, is $116,500, which makes the MPP earn less than probably 200,000 other government employees. At the rate at which salaries are increasing, the janitor who cleans the washroom floor, the stablemate who collects dung from horses, and the Bovine Semen Collector whose job it is to help impregnate cows in a government-approved way, and the man who fills the private troughs for pigs, and the man who collects the government-sponsored manure, will be making more than MPPs in a few years time. The man wiping the toilet seat in the legislature will have to tip the poor MPPs for giving him work to do to justify his making more money than them. The janitors will be tipping MPPs to give them work to do, $1 per floater.

Cut, cut, cut these employees. Swoosh, cut the salaries, put the salaries into a reverse dimension, and make those earning over $100k taste what it feels like to be like the low-paying worker that the vast majority are. Convert rich bureaucrats into common workers, and forget about $60 for those earning $100k... they should start from $40k. 

In fact, restart the salaries of the entire bureaucracy! $40k start, $50 for special, $60 for extra special. And it's that simple. Collect the $20 or $30 or $100 billion in savings. Woosh, off with their salaries. They don't like it they can quit, go to the U.S. and do the brain drain, oh well. 

The only jobs that should be high paying are for those where genuine brain drain can occur, like for instance doctors and specialists, who can easily go to the U.S. or another country to do their profession for more salary. If anyone can do their job, that job must start at 40k. Time to turn back the clock on government salaries, it is 1990 all over again. 

Pay 1990 salaries to reduce inflation to 1990 levels! It's sunset for sunshine listers, and then it will be a winter full of dreary cold days for high-payed bureaucrats like it is for the rest of us. The sunshine list should enter its winter of discontent. 


Sincerely,

Robert Nelly