Spoiled Overspenders

Let’s face it……we (here in Ontario, Canada) are spoiled.   Now, now, read all the way to the end before you throw your stones!

We have good paying jobs but we want more money, guaranteed forever job security, free health benefits and lower income taxes.

We have free health care (mostly) when many other countries people loose their home because of a heart attack or long term.

We have a 13 billion dollar deficit in Ontario.   How on earth can we possibly be that far in debt and no one is concerned?   If we are supposed to be a first world country and have the extra to share with third world countries how can we be so far in the hole?  Now that I think of it is there such a thing as a second world country?   Somewhere in the middle I guess with only slight debt.  Seems like every country is in debt.   Tonight I’m going research if there are any countries not in debt.  (I just looked it up and found the answer which I posted below!)

Anyways,   so many people in Ontario are freaking out right now over every cut that is being made.   I am in agreement that some things were already underfunded and shouldn’t see cuts but most places are running over budget and how else can the government fix the 13 billion dollar debt if not cuts?   They could increase taxes!   Oh but we don’t want that either.   We are a hard people to make happy.   We want it all.   We want more spending on everything that affects us but don’t care if it doesn’t affect us.   We don’t want to pay any more taxes most people actually want them lowered.   I certainly don’t envy the politicians who have to make the decisions about how to reduce that 13 billion.

It’s not just our government that is so far beyond the realm of manageable debt.   Our families are too.   More families have zero savings for retirement than ever before.   It’s like we don’t even think about tomorrow.   Maybe everyone is hoping they don’t live to be 80 or maybe they just hope their kids will pay the thousands of dollars a month to live in a retirement or care facility.   The Bank of Canada says average household debt not including mortgage is $22,081.    That’s a lot of debt.   When you add in mortgages it goes up to average of $154,000.   Total Canadian consumer debt is $1.7 trillion dollars.  I remember being a kid and thinking a million was a lot.   Then they added in billions and then trillions and when you’re talking debt that is inconceivable.   Our heads can’t really wrap around those kind of numbers.   We can’t even imagine how to pay that off.

Being part of a government funded agency that is 3 million dollars in debt isn’t much fun when cuts are made.  The cuts seem so deep and so hard and impossible to try and turn that debt around.   Every cut sucks.   Every cut makes me want to cry.   I don’t want to lose any of our workers or resources.   (Well maybe one or two! lol)  But what I see happen every time I’m in a position where cuts need to be made…….people get creative;  they start using their brains to come up with solutions that they didn’t need to seek before.    When people are told they need to cut back on spending it is easy to cut the small stuff and cut the easy stuff but the real trick is to think outside the box.   How can we rework the funding we have been taking for granted for so many years and make it work better?   I see workers coming up with new ideas that will save tons of money and time.   But those ideas weren’t there for the last ten years.   They are coming up with them now because they have to.   In order to make things work with less people everyone left has to be a better team and come up with creative solutions to solve the problem of less.

Households have to do the same.   The bank only hands out money for so long before they make you pay it back and get out of your debt.   Eventually money loaners come knocking and want their money; especially if they need it themselves.   Households need to bring in more income and if the can’t they need to come up with creative solutions to problems.   New ways to make food last longer,  new ways to make clothing last longer or grow with kids and new ways to do more with less.    There are hundreds of websites dedicated to saving money.   Thousands of Pinterest links to how to make money or make things last longer.

Have you ever watched Schitt’s Creek?   If not it’s pretty hilarious.   We see a family that are billionaires reduced to having to live off their one property a crappy motel in a town they once bought and forgot about.   They have to adapt.    They go through a lot of tears and stress and have to learn new ways of working with what they have and making cuts.   No more new anything.   No more fancy anything.   They have to work.   They have to be creative.

If all the smart people would spend less time complaining and whining about cutbacks when we are so far in debt, and get in a room together to problem solve solutions I bet they could come up with some great ideas to get out of debt.

Wait isn’t that who we elected?   The people we vote for are smart.  They have way more schooling and education than I do.   Not sure if they care more than I do about issues such as cystic fibrosis funding, foster care, education for my kids, and manageable costs for university and colleges but we can hope that one of them has a connection and cares about these issues.

I remember taking economics in high school and we were given a budget and a province to run.   We were told our province is 1 million dollars in debt and we had to make cuts or raise taxes to balance our budget.   Our group all agreed even at our immature age that no one wants to pay more taxes so raising was out of the question.   That left us to be the bad guys and make cuts.   Our choices were awful.   We had to choose between education, health care, veterans, seniors, and more.   NONE of the options were good.   Everyone had a plight and wanted more money.   Each person in our group also had opinions on what should not be cut because of personal biases.    What we ended up doing was cutting a bit from everyone so no single group would feel it as a personal attack.   That activity has never left my mind.   It gave me empathy for government.   It helped all of us see just how hard it was to balance a huge budget and the enormously awful feeling it gave us to make cuts from veterans and babies alike.    Somebody’s got to do it.   Somebody has to be the bad guy and make the cuts.  We can’t continue with a 13 billion dollar debt and then keep going into deeper debt.   At election time most groups say they will balance the budget.   Does anyone realize what that means?   I give our government kudos for trying.   I am glad it’s not me.   So glad it’s not me!

Four Worlds
After World War II the world split into two large geopolitical blocs and spheres of influence with contrary views on government and the politically correct society:
1 – The bloc of democratic-industrial countries within the American influence sphere, the “First World”.
2 – The Eastern bloc of the communist-socialist states, the “Second World”.
3 – The remaining three-quarters of the world’s population, states not aligned with either bloc were regarded as the “Third World.”
4 – The term “Fourth World”, coined in the early 1970s by Shuswap Chief George Manuel, refers to widely unknown nations (cultural entities) of indigenous peoples, “First Nations” living within or across national state boundaries.

Taken from https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/third_world_countries.htm