Merry Christmas, Middle Class!

Dear Mona AKA Minister of Middle Class Dreams:

I hope that this finds you, your Staff, your family, Bill and Justin well and on your way to enjoying a truly Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I did not forget about you and neither did Santa. I have two early Xmas gifts for you but more importantly, the Middle Class, that I believe will bring great seasonal joy throughout the year and for many years to come: two ideas for how to enhance and sustain our Middle Class's prosperity and, even more importantly, make you the Hero! Both ideas this time come from me but really from almost the entire economic faculties of most accredited universities so I'm not so smart.

One: please call, write, email or better yet, Tweet, the President of the United States and ask him how he's getting it done. No, seriously now! I know that just to say the name "Trump" unless it's to recount international geopolitical and diplomatic atrocities with Christine and Justin or to vaguely recall the good times when you watched him "Fire" people on TV in the 2000's, is downright dangerous. But, the proof is surely in the goldplated Christmas pudding he has baked down there.

MIddle class incomes in the US have gone up 10% or roughly $6000 since he came to office. Ours have hardly budged. Their unemployment rate is roughly half of ours and their per capita income is 50% more than ours. Even health costs have gone done there for God's sake! The question you should ask him, in 140 characters or less, is "How do you do it, Mistah Trump?" If you do not ask it, surely many other statespeople from around the World will be asking, so get in line now!

Two: If you really cannot bear the idea of even trying to learn anything from President Antichrist, then how about this: one of the reasons our middle class people are falling behind also happens to do with the fact that many things cost more up here than they do in the States. And the reason for that is almost always because our governments protect our business, (yes, big, bad, rapacious, greedy business!), from competition with protectionist laws and regulations that keep consumer choices few, competitiveness non existent, service bad and prices high. Naturally, politicians like you pretend that it protects consumers to do this but it is the opposite of course.  Worse, they claim that it's patriotic and for national security which as you know is the last refuge of scoundrels.

By some accounts, our telecomms rules make cellphones at least $200 per month more expensive for us than for an American family. You may as a busy minister who doesn't get to fly in the Forces' Flight, have noticed how much more expensive it is to fly within Canada than to fly in the US for greater distances. That's because we do not have Open Skies. By most accounts our Agricultural markets' regulation makes all dairy and,poultry products cost hundreds more to families here every year. The savings for a family of just these three fields would be at least an extra $3-5000 per year depending on the family's plans for air flight. But there are other examples. Maybe the worst are tariffs that are so old that they have long since stopped protecting a real industry from foreign competitors but, because they are so punitive, they discourage importers and thus do not even collect revenue while depriving the consumer of new affordable choices, especially in the clothing industry. 

Suggestions: get rid of these tariffs that the PM's own trade advisor once recommended repealing. Then recommend strongly that Open Skies be implemented so that Canadian passengers can choose to hire any airline to take them anywhere they want. Call vigorously for the elimination of all regulation of Telecomms so that it is (except for health and safety) no more regulated here than say oil or beef. Then watch the Middle Class save like crazy and get better and more services, too. Finally, if your colleagues have recovered from the cardio vascular symptoms that may develop just from you speaking to them privately about these ideas let alone in public, go for the end of Supply Management. Not just middle class families will thank you, but many good old-fashioned working class and poor mothers who find it a mighty block to membership in the MC the problem of choosing between buying milk for their children and getting them a dentist, will also hail you as a real life Canadian hero!

Just a few ideas that I hope will warm the cockles of your Middle Class Aspiration-stoking heart in this fine Holiday Season! Don't thank me. I will thank you if you actually dare to dream like this in public.