Some Pigs Are More Equal Than Others

Suggesting that the less privileged
should eat cake eventually cost
Marie Antoinette her head.

“Let them eat cake!”

There is no statement in history that more exemplifies the intense lack of empathy or understanding of the privileged elite for those who struggle to survive and provide for their families. It was this simple and callous statement by Marie Antoinette and the attitude behind it by the French nobility that caused a lot of people to become so lost in privilege they literally lost their heads over it.

It appears we haven’t learned much in the past three hundred years.

The privileged remain as greedy and unaware as ever while those who struggle continue to get more and more angry until something explodes. We aren’t so far removed from those long ago days of violence that it can’t happen today. It already has in some places.

People like the Shah of Iran, Salaam Hussein, Imelda Marcos and Mohamar Qaddafi lived very privileged lives which ended rather abruptly as the result of the less privileged saying, “Enough already!” For that matter, the American Revolution was really a battle against taxation between a privileged monarch in England and his less privileged subjects in the new world.

IMF president Christine Lagarde
pays no taxes on  her six figure salary
while lecturing citizens of countries
like Greece on belt-tightening and paying
their taxes.

You would have thought that modern democracies would be above all of that but you would be wrong. While it is considered quite fashionable to point fingers at the wealthy generally, I think we’re being too indiscriminate. To be sure, some of the folks on Wall Street and related streets around the world could use a good spanking for engaging in highly questionable practices fueled by greed and stupidity. 

There are, however, two kinds of privilege: earned and taken. Those who earn their wealth legitimately are entitled to the privilege it provides. Those who simply use and abuse a system to achieve privilege for themselves at the expense of others are not.

Nobody is better at feathering their own nest than our elected representatives who legislate benefits and privileges for themselves at the expense of the taxpayer and the citizens of their countries.

This isn’t something that is restricted to only one or two democracies or dictatorships. From Berlusconi in Italy to Sarkozy in France, from the members of Parliament in Canada to the representatives and senators in Congress in the United States, it is all the same. Taking care of themselves is always first on the agenda when it comes to their privileges and benefits but last on the list when the tight economic times roll around.

Here’s a question. How many political leaders in our democracies can you name that aren’t quite well off financially? Right….I can’t name any either.

The economies of European countries are
crumbling but none of their elected representatives
have taken a cut in compensation

We’re going through some tough economic times right now. Europe is all but imploding, 40% of American men are out of work and in Canada, government budgets are being cut and public servants are being laid off by the thousands. Doctors are having their incomes cut at a time when 2 million Canadians are already without a family physician.  

Austerity and financial prudence are the watchwords of government these days but apparently, those words don’t apply to the compensation packages of politicians.

In Canada, for example, members of parliament have a pension plan for which the rest of us just might trade a kidney. For every dollar contributed by the MP, taxpayers kick in $24 and by the end of next year; it will be more than $25. Even better, an MP only has to sit in parliament for six years in order to qualify for full pension at age 55. 

These would be the same guys who just raised the age from 65 to 67 for citizens to qualify for the old age Canada pension. While many pundits theorized that the 2012 budget would tackle the issue of MP compensation and pensions head on, it did not. It tossed a little bafflegab into the document about having done a review of MP's office expenses but made no firm commitments to do anything. What the budget did commit to was hammering public servants in the bureaucracy raising the qualifying age for a a pension from 60 to 65 and cutting employer/employee contributions to 50/50. When it comes to describing how privilege corrupts, it would appear that Orwell had it right in Animal Farm.

The MPs plan is financed by quarterly contributions from tax revenues and because the money is paid quarterly, interest is charged on the payment. At a time when banks are charging less than 1% on corporate loans and paying even less on investments, taxpayers pay the MP’s pension plan 10%.

Every now and then a political party like Reform or the NDP or the Bloc Quebequois comes along decrying this absurd pension plan. Some, like the former Reform party even announce with great fanfare that they will not be participating in the plan should they be elected. That all changes once they do get elected and drop by parliament, of course. Suddenly, it looks like a deal too sweet to pass up and so….well…they don’t pass it up or try to reform it. They just start focusing on other issues and hope nobody mentions the pension plan to them in the future.

MPs are paid a handsome salary. The base salary for a Canadian MP is $157,000, a portion of which is tax free. Those members who have extra responsibilities like sitting on committees, acting as parliamentary secretaries or cabinet ministers are paid additional income for their trouble. Senior members like the leaders of the opposition parties, the prime minister and the speaker of the house are paid even more and also receive a car allowance which usually means a car and a driver.

MPs also receive 64 free return airfare tickets annually.

Now I understand that we’re a big country and that there is travel involved between Ottawa and an MP’s constituency. I also understand that there are additional expenses in maintaining residences in two locations and even understand that if we don’t pay a respectable income, we won’t attract respectable representatives.

But when is it enough?

We are already paying more than $126 million in office expenses, $25 million in free air fare and well over $10 million in salaries, benefits and expenses for 308 people. That’s the number of MPs in the Canadian Parliament, 308 and they cost us over $200 million which seems pretty significant when you get right down to it.

The pension from heaven alone costs taxpayers $110 million last year while MPs contributed only $4.5 million. The current value of their pension fund exceeds $1 billion so it would appear that unlike many in the private sector who saw their pension funds raided by corporations until there was nothing left compliments of rule changes by politicians, polititians have little to worry about for the foreseeable future.

This brings the total cost our elected representatives have voted to pay themselves over the years to well over $300 million per year. Nice work if you can get it!

We provide subsidized meals in the Parliamentary restaurant, subsidized haircuts in the parliamentary barber shop and a list of other little benefits that people don’t think about but which politicians from all parties thoroughly enjoy.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault at 19 was elected
to Parliament in 2011 and is just one
more electoral victory away from a
$30,000 + pension when he reaches the
age of 55.
photo: Toronto Star

What this all boils down to is that the average Canada citizen who qualifies will receive $534.10 a month from the Canada Pension Plan compared to $5,970 an average MP who retired last year received from the MPs pension plan. Retired members will qualify for that pension after only serving 6 years in parliament and a full 10 years earlier than a Canadian citizen qualifies for the Canada Pension.

Politicians have the opportunity to legislate whatever they want for themselves and they do with great gusto! Two decades ago they even had the balls to legislate a payment to their parties from taxpayers simply for receiving votes during the election. For every vote a party received in the previous election, it was paid $2 annually until the next election. Ostensibly, this was to eliminate the need for corporate funding and thereby reduce the influence of big money in elections and we all know how effective that was. It was simply one more privilege politicians handed to themselves at taxpayer expense.

Fortunately, the current Conservative government is phasing out the practice and guess, who screamed the loudest. The opposition parties on the left, of course. They were most upset despite all of their protestations about protecting the taxpayer. As soon as it was the money they received that was on the block, those principles went out the window.

When you control the trough, you can get
pretty much whatever you want.

Scratch any politician from any party and under the glib rhetoric is just one more pig at the trough. Think I’m wrong? Governments all over the world are talking austerity and budget cuts. In the United States, the presidential election is on and the campaign hyperbole has already heated up. Name one politician who is talking about leading by example, just one politician who is talking about having benefits to elected representatives undergo the same cuts that they are imposing on everyone else. 

When it comes to sharing the wealth or the hardships equally, some pigs are more equal than others.

If there is merit to the argument that you must pay decent money to attract good people, I wonder how much more than the hundreds of millions we are currently paying will be necessary to start getting some decent people in government. We certainly haven’t been getting our money’s worth lately but then….our members of parliament have done such an abysmal job of managing our national affairs, a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to………..unless you’re a retired MP of course.

It’s our own fault. We polarize into factions, argue, blame and accuse but in the end, we never stop and realize that it doesn’t matter which political party it is, they all behave the same way. They all wallow in the privileged lifestyle while handing us crumbs of cake to nibble on at election time and we…..well….we fall for it every time. We just tug our forelocks and say thank you and then go back to blaming the government of the day and each other when it all goes south.

It’s next to impossible to build a successful and prosperous nation on such a blatant lack of common sense but apparently it isn’t preventing many from trying. They might better stop and remember that we didn't offer this compensation to MPs, they gave it to themselves and without ever running on what they intended to do as part of any electoral campaign. In other words, they gave themselves the mandate to pay themselves what they wanted.

The pigs at Animal Farm said all animals were equal but once they discovered the joy of privilege, they changed that to "some animals are more equal than others." It's what usually happens when the pigs have control of the trough.

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