To the editor:
Have you ever wondered why Canada is in debt? This, and more, is what 12-year-old Victoria Grant, of Cambridge, Ont., asked on a YouTube that went viral. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/05/16/victoria-grant-banking-canada.html).
Surely, this was a well-rehearsed video, but Victoria explained in six minutes what I’ve known for several decades but found only a limited audience.
A few weeks ago, five university students in Kelowna, third and fourth year students, pretended and lived like they were homeless on campus. We talked, and I gave each of them four pages of thought-provoking material. I later asked one lady what she knew about financial matters, and where money comes from—(she said she knew) nothing. No email or questions from anyone.
At about the same time, before Victoria’s video went viral, I’ve sent a video from Paul Hellyer on money matters, to a UBCO philosophy professor, who responded: “I don’t have the expertise to evaluate the proposal of borrowing from the federal bank, but I’ll ask some people who do.”
Why is there such ignorance, of professors and students alike, on this most important subject?
Most crimes and miseries have their origin in the lack of money and purchasing power that is artificially created.
If people were educated and morally empowered and had a guaranteed income, nobody would steal copper wire from lampposts, or worse, from a 100,000-volt power pole and get killed by electrocution.
Why would thieves in England steal a 10-ton bridge and sell it for scrap iron to a dealer, showing forged papers to police who directed traffic? In England also, thieves stole the lead roofing from a church and aluminium ramps for the disabled.
On the flipside, why is there nothing that can be done to stop an Australian billionaire from building a second Titanic, which is wasting precious irreplaceable resources, just because he was lucky and has money?
I think Victoria Grant would understand, and perhaps her classmates too, that Canada has no need to spend $20 billion on fighter jets and, with our financial house in order, people would not have to work and supply the war industry to kill innocent human beings, half way around the world, and destroying our planet and her future in the process.
My best wishes to you, Victoria.
Gunther Ostermann,
Kelowna