A peculiar instance of youthful racism from my past surfaced in the rinse cycle of my semi-consciousness today. I had just woken up and in these glorious days of vacation while I am still under contract, but have exactly no work to do for my employer, I am afforded the leisure of not bolting out of the sack, driving some coffee and breakfast into my belly and showering before I'm fully awake. I can ease into an awakened state. I can evaluate the dream I was having just before opening my eyes, mull over some options for the day like chores or meals, writing a blog post or maybe seeing what a friend or family member is up to. I can think about my employment situation and the many different possibilities that lay ahead. And, as I almost always do, I can contemplate the unnatural disaster that is our world.
Today, during that last part, I was reminded of my high school years and some details jumped up out of long-long-long term memory that brought a smile to my face. The name of a corner store, which wasn't exactly on a corner, but it WAS across the street from the liquor store corner, of the town I went to high school in, Castlegar, popped into my head. Jo Alves! I remembered what may have been one time or it may have been many times, going to buy smokes with my best friend Brian Manning. To be clear, I didn't exactly smoke, I was one of those leeches who never really had enough money to commit to the habit, but was always bumming cigarettes from friends in financial positions in which they could, and had. Brian smoked Player's Filter. No! Wait a sec, I think he smoked Player's Light.
He sometimes got a full pack, and he sometimes bought what was alternately called a "half-pack," "poverty pack," or a "ten-pack." Not every store sold these. In fact it might have been illegal. But Jo Alves' sold packs for $1.30 and poverty packs for $0.70. How do I know this? Well this is where the youthful racism comes in. The owners of Jo Alves' were Portuguese. They spoke English but with heavy accents that Brian and I found entertaining. Like I say, it might have been once or it might have been more than once, but Brian asked the price of a pack of smokes and the cashier replied, "Dollere therety," with heavily rolled r's. We got a kick outta that and repeated it a thousand times to each other afterwards. Then Brian asked about the half-packs and didn't hear the response, so he asked the cashier to repeat it. "Seventy! Seventy, boy," was the response. So "seventy, boy" was another endless source of mockery for us. Like I said, it was youthful racism and I'm not at all proud of it. I bring it up only to illustrate one aspect of this unnatural disastrous world of ours.
25 smokes for a buck thirty! That is just over a nickel a cig! I don't smoke, but if I could find cigarettes today at those prices, I think I'd have to start! To be honest, if I could find cigarettes at that price today, I'd buy them by the truckload and sell them all black marketly. I'd be rich before I got caught. But what a foolish thought! That's not the way the Canadian (or ANY) economy works, is it? It's not possible for the little guy to get rich. Only the big guy. But the mechanism is the same, only in reverse. If I found a good price (dollere therety) to buy smokes and then sold them at a greatly increased price that I knew people would pay, I'd be doing what Player's has been doing for years. Difference is, it's illegal for me to do it. But why? That's the billion dollar question. It's exactly what the businesses do! They MAKE cigarettes for a cheap price, then sell them for a greatly increased price that they know people will pay.
And where cigarettes are concerned, there is a HUGE advantage for the people who sell them: addiction. The manufacturers, distributors, merchants, ANYbody can raise the price of them and addicts will still pay. Do you know what the price of that same pack of smokes would be today? $15.50! I think it would actually be MORE because that is a stat from 2019. And it depends where you buy. Here's a modern photo of a pack of Player's cigarettes:
So let's do some math here. At the time of the story, I believe I was making $7.35 an hour at my after-school job washing dishes and slicing meat and cheese at the Homestead Soup and Sandwich Deli. A pack of darts at a buck thirty would have been... let's say 18% of my hourly wage. If I were to spend 18% of my hourly wage on a pack of smokes that cost $20.50, I'd be making... I hope you're sitting down for this... $114.00/hr. Anybody out there pulling in a hundred and fourteen bucks an hour? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? ...
Here's another way of looking at it: I was making $7.35 an hour and that was minimum wage. The price of cigarettes went from $1.30 to $20.50 from then to now. So if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation since the 1980's when I was going to high school, a guy washing dishes at the Homestead Soup and Sandwich Deli would be raking in $116.13/hr!!! Minimum wage in BC right now is a whopping $14.60/hr. And business owners are crying about it!
The Homestead Soup and Sandwich Deli was a happenin' joint! It was so busy, they needed TWO guys in the hot, steamy back room washing dishes, bussing tables and slicing. Me and Chris Schurren (I'm sure I spelled that wrong) worked our arses off! And after the place closed down, we were the guys who stayed behind to sweep and mop and clean the grill. YOU wanna work an hour there for $14.60? Me neither!
I think the Homestead closed down long ago, but if it were still open, there'd be some poor schmuck bustin' his/her ass for an hourly wage that can't even buy him/her a pack of smokes! And, once again, the owner of the Homestead would probably be whining about the minimum wage laws being too harsh. She/he would say that salaries eat up far too much of her/his profits.
How did we end up here? Well, if you've read my blog regularly (and who hasn't?) you'd know that there are three things that contribute to the answer to that question: 1. Corporate greed 2. Gov't working for corporations 3. "Weak" people.
We all know of MANY examples of inflation that is completely out of control! Even youngsters. We KNOW we're getting screwed! But we are conditioned by a certain belief system that allows us to accept this injustice, in fact, to add insult to injury, the popular mentality of recent times is that we are not just supposed to accept it, but be happy in it! Does that elephant look happy? No? Well then I don't wanna spend time with her and allow her to infect me with her negativity! Sound familiar?
When I say "weak people" I certainly don't mean it. Does that elephant look weak to you? Me neither. But allowing itself to be restrained by that puny rope and stake IS weak. That's how I see the strong Canadian people. We're elephants! We have a LOT of power, we just prefer to settle for a miniscule portion of what our country OWES us. That elephant could easily rip that stake out of the ground and rampage. Why doesn't she? Well, if she does tricks, they give her peanuts. That's the majority of us. The average Canadian does tricks for peanuts. And we settle for that. We do our best to be happy in that. And when we can't, we just ACT happy in that. Anybody other than me sick and tired of ACTING happy? Anybody else think our country is many times over rich enough for all of us to actually BE happy? So what's stopping us? Effective socialization. A bullshit belief system.
Let me give you an example of the kind of socialization that we've all had, whether we know it or not, that has subdued our power. Is there anyone who read that line, "what our country OWES us," and didn't have some kind of a knee-jerk entitlement distaste? Be honest. You did, right? Hell, I had one while I wrote it. We're conditioned to believe that feeling entitled to things is wrong. But it's not. Frivolous entitlement is wrong. Proper entitlement isn't. Guess who conditioned us into these feelings that proper entitlement is wrong. The people from whom we are entitled to, absolutely entitled to, a lot more shit than we are getting! Big companies, banks, government. That's about it.
If you've ever wondered what our government does, or more specifically, what our government does with our tax money every year, this is it. They condition us. In 1867, the government didn't need a budget. They governed, they didn't buy shit. When the world wars started happening, the government asked for a little and the people gave. And just like the cigarette companies, they have increased the amount little by little in accordance to how much a weak bunch of people will give. You don't need to look any further than the fact that we are still giving to fund wars that have long since ended and been paid for to get an idea of HOW weak the Canadian people are. Here's a little quote from a Fraser Institute paper on the history of Canadian taxes:
"Paying for this expenditure changed over time. From 1867 to World War I, the federal government’s revenue was dominated by customs duties, which peaked at 66% of revenue in 1912. The needs of the war effort sparked the search for new revenue, which led to the creation of the first personal and corporate income taxes and the first federal sales tax. Over time, the importance of these three new revenue sources grew and it is anticipated that by 2017 the personal income tax alone will make up 51% of federal government revenue, corporate taxes, 13%, and commodity taxes (GST, excise taxes and customs duties), 17%."
Of course with a purposely supercomplicated tax code that is over 1500 pages, you can't expect the numbers to come out correct. 51+17+13 is only 81. There is 19% missing. But of the 81 mentioned, regular people pay 68% of it while corporations pay 13%. People get zero subsidies and corporations get enough government subsidization to render their overall tax output to either zero or below. That's right, in Canada we are PAYING many of our corporations to make money while we are charged to be their labour force. Another Fraser Institute paper calculated 144 billion over ten years between 1995 and 2004. More payroll tax is paid by employees that corporate tax is paid by the company in most cases. Who do you suppose is footing the bill for that missing 19%? Feel like that elephant now?
Compare corporations to Canadian people. We were born in Canada. Most of our corporations are not Canadian. They owe the most to Canada for their fortunes. But they don't give SHIT to Canada. Canada is the people, not the government. What they pay for the privilege of doing business in Canada is 13% or less depending on the subsidies our corrupt government gives them. The people who owe the most pay the least. The people who are owed the most receive the least.
Canadians have a birthright. We were born in Canada and have a far more legitimate claim to the riches of the land than do the corporate parasites. Our major industries, mining, logging, oil, wheat, water, that is the land and the land is Canada. The people are part of the land. When someone sells our natural resources, they sell part of us and we get 0% of the sale. This is NOT frivolous entitlement in any way. This is theft. But we have beer. Hockey. If we pull up this stake, maybe we won't get this meagre living we've grown used to.
You'd think that the more tricks the trainers force the elephant to do, the closer that elephant gets to just stomping them and going back to Africa or India or Southeast Asia where it's from. But it seems the longer it's in captivity, the more shit its owners can throw in its face. Is there a breaking point?
I remember my Mom's 2nd husband, Phil swearing, before my high school days, that as soon as cigarettes reached a DOLLAR a pack, he'd quit. He's dead now, probably from smoking. He smoked Player's too, but PLAIN! No filters! UGH! Anyway, if he were alive, he'd be obediently paying $15.50 for his cancer sticks just like Canadians are paying more and more tax every year. What we get hasn't changed and our salaries haven't gone up. When indexed against inflation, they've gone down. But we continue to pay our dues in humility and servility.
I'm sure any Canadian who is reading this has already thought of several things that have gone up on par with or faster than cigarettes over the years. If I were to hazard a guess or a few, I'd say beds, glasses, hockey equipment (except weirdly skates), and maybe the number one victim of inflation in Canada has been university/college tuition. A few of our cities like Van, T.O. and Calgary have condos that have shot through the roof, but most housing HAS gone up, but not like the above listed items. Gas? I dunno. If EVER I needed comments on a blogpost it's now! What has risen in price in Canada? Meat? Eggs? Cable? I haven't been there to see.
$100 in 1980 is supposed to be only $330 bucks today if indexed for inflation. So you can see that cigarettes FAR overinflated during the time between the 80's and the 2020's. What other items have gone up outrageously? Here's an article that might give some perspective. It also includes one thing that has actually gone DOWN in price since the 80's. Can you guess what it was? I think you can but don't bust your block over it, just read the article.
Like the frog in the pot who slowly boiled to death, we have had prices creep up while our salaries have stagnated and rather than jump, we've gone down with the frog soup. All of us. Really old people will tell us we just need to work hard to get a cozy retirement like they have, but we know that's a practical impossibility. But we'd rather argue with the old folks than DO something about it. And that's what the evil triumvirate are banking on. Corporations, banks and government are sure we'll acquiesce. Like captive elephants.
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