Matters of Concern to the Polity

2019 Federal Budget a Bag of Tricks

The Trudeau government tabled its budget entitled: "Investing in the Middle Class to Grow Canada's Economy" on March 19. The budget is a bag of tricks. It does not identify what problems in the economy it purports to solve and how those problems pose themselves. Instead, it begins with the assertion, "A strong economy starts with a strong middle class." This is a chicken and egg statement. Which comes first, the strong economy or strong middle class? Or does it really matter because the nonsense in the budget cannot be taken seriously? The budget rhetoric is meant to cover up the pay-the-rich essence of government policy. It aims to disinform and divert the people from discussing the economy as it presents itself so as to change its direction.

At 500 pages it is unlikely that many MPs will read the budget bag of tricks before it is voted on which is likely one if its aims. A trick slipped into the previous megabudget bill was a remediation agreement (also known as a deferred prosecution agreement), the mechanism at the base of the SNC-Lavalin scandal that would allow the company to escape criminal charges for its corruption and continue bidding on government projects. This budget is perceived to be a cynical exercise in pork barrel spending to favour the re-election of the Liberals in 2019.

The Trudeau government's obsession with the middle class is the same theme it used in the 2015 general election. The question arose at that time what does the Trudeau government mean by a middle class and why it is so obsessed with it? To designate a middle class means the government also has in mind those in the upper class and those in the lower class.

The neo-liberal concept of a middle class in the 21st century is used to obscure the actual social class composition and how the situation of the two main social classes presents itself as well as the plight of the middle class. A social class is defined by how it acquires its living. The working class sells its capacity to work to those who own and control the means of production, both private and public, collectively known as the financial oligarchy. Those two main social classes see the economy and its problems differently because of how they acquire their living, their social class position. The two social classes defend their claims on the economy, generating class struggle.

There is indeed a "middle class" in capitalist society, although not defined the way the Trudeau government does when it claims this class is comprised of people whose taxable income is within a certain range. The livelihood of the middle class depends on the perpetuation of the capitalist system but its survival is threatened by the overwhelming domination of the economy and the political power by the tiny rich minority. There is inevitably discontent in its ranks as it gets pushed further and further into the working class as government intervention in the economy further strengthens the grip of the financial oligarchy. Any measures in the budget that might favour this "middle class" are aimed at buying its allegiance to the status quo so that the financial oligarchy can get away with asserting its dictate over the economy and society. Responses to the budget of those who claim to represent this section of the population show allegiance to the system while grumbling that the crumbs are not enough.

The working class wants a government which supports them in its defence of what belongs to them by right as the actual producers of all value, and which launches the economy in a new direction that creates stability and security for all.

Those who buy the capacity to work of the working class, the financial oligarchy, want a government which supports them in their defence of their privileged claim on what the working class produces and to perpetuate the current direction of the economy, which favours their class interests.

The Trudeau government's concept of a middle class obfuscates this social class struggle of claims and direction. The budget says, "Investing in the middle class means investing in people -- with more help for those who need it, and less for those who don't." From this we assume more help for those "in the middle class" who need it and "less for those who don't." It appears that what the Trudeau government considers the lower class does not need or does not deserve help at all. A growing number of Canadians have fallen out of the working class into extreme poverty for one reason or another from which any recovery is difficult indeed without massive support from society and social programs. Despite the claims made about it, the budget does not alleviate the problem of Canadians living in poverty or give any momentum towards humanizing the social and natural environment. In fact, the tax credits which it says benefit the "middle class" are not designed to alleviate the problems the people face and, besides their propaganda value, this is not their intention either.

The budget's proposed measures eventually funnel money to the rich, those who buy the capacity to work of the working class and the value workers bring to the work they do. The proposals in the budget can be dissected to show that in one way or another they assist those who own and control the economy.

The budget purports to deal with four areas, namely, "Good Jobs," "Housing," "Seniors" and "Pharmacare." What the government calls "Good Jobs" refers to its new "Canada Training Benefit," saying that "the evolving nature of work means that people may change jobs many times over the course of their working lives, or may require new skills to keep their jobs in a changing economy. For working Canadians, this presents a new challenge: how to get the training they need to keep their existing jobs, or prepare for a new one." The effect of this measure will be to increase the value of the capacity to work of the working class without the eventual buyers of that capacity paying for or realizing the value that has gone into it.

Under the heading of "Housing," the government presents its policies as increasing the purchasing power of the working class such as the "First-Time Home Buyer Incentive" but the essence is that every measure perpetuates and strengthens the control and class privilege of the ruling financial oligarchy and funnels the collective value from the economy towards the rich.

The economy today is working people collectively using means of production to produce useful goods and services so that the people can live a modern lifestyle and society can progress. An economy has objective conditions found in the level of the productive forces and the relations people enter into to participate in the economy called the relations of production.

Canada's productive forces have advanced tremendously since the nineteenth century but the relations of production have not changed. This contradiction can be seen in the unresolved problems in the economy and its recurring economic crises, and most strikingly in the dysfunction in the relations of production. Life itself confirms the necessity for renewal of the relations of production to bring them into conformity with the socialized productive forces.

The budget has both the purpose of covering up the real intent of the measures to pay the rich and to divert working people from looking at the economy with their own social consciousness and economic science so as to open a path forward.

This article was published in

Volume 49 Number 10 - March 23, 2019

Article Link:
Matters of Concern to the Polity: 2019 Federal Budget a Bag of Tricks

    

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