$75.00 Old-age pensions at 60 years

 $15.00 a month per child Family Allowance

$25.00 a month dividend for each Canadian

The obsolete Pearson plan

The Union of Electors and Vers Demain, the two official publications of the Union of Electors, claim for each Canadian who has reached the age of 60 years, a pension from society. This grant should be to the amount of $75.00 a month and should be issued to the citizen without any deductions having been made, without any investigations or inquisitions and without increase of taxation.

This is not at all the same thing as the old-age pension plan put forward by Mr. Lester Pearson, the leader of the Liberal party in Ottawa. The Pearson plan is a rather complex affair, but its chief characteristic is that it is based on contributions which the pensioner will have to make. Essentially, it is nothing more than another form of insurance, like the insurance any individual can take out with any of a score of private companies devoted to selling such insurance. The difference, however, between the two, is that insurance from private companies leaves the individual a free agent, insurance from the government, as proposed by the Pearson plan, subjects the State pensioner to pay and at the same time become the victim of all sorts of investigations, restrictions and appalling invasions of privacy by government bureaucrats.

The Liberals expect to present themselves to the people on the occasion of the next elections, with this plan. They hope that this plan will be a major factor in their return to power. In this they are making a serious mistake. Mr. Pearson's plan is out of date. It is a plan for a poor country. Canada is not a poor country. Canada is a rich country and Canadians are citizens of a rich country. What is more, this age of ours is an age of abundance — of surpluses, in fact! Consequently, Canadians, and especially older Canadians who have given their lives and energy to building this rich country, have the right to a dividend, free from deductions and taxes; a dividend based on the wealth of Canada and the enormous progress of the twentieth century.

Mr. Pearson might just as well put his plan — which is strangely reminiscent of economic and financial principles followed in Communist and Socialist countries — away in some pigeonhole, or put it on display in some museun. For the age of the dividend has arrived and the age of the tax is over!

A rich Canada

The reader may be acquainted with, or know of individuals who are members of profit-making companies. Such individuals are known as shareholders. They receive periodic dividends from the company of which they are members. Such dividends are based upon the profits which the company earns. Such dividends are not distributed only to the poor shareholders of the company after they have been thoroughly investigated to find out if they truly come under the designation "poor". No, they are distributed impartially to all shareholders. Now such dividends do not arise from deductions levied on the shareholders, nor from taxes taken from their pockets. They come from the profits made through the companies business transactions. These dividends are based upon the capital which the shareholders have put into the company.'

Well, all Canadians are capitalists who own equal shares, as citizens in that great company, Canada. This company, Canada, realises profits each year. Its wealth increases. It makes progress. Each Canadian, inasmuch as he is a citizen shareholder in Canada, should thus receive each year a part of this profit, a dividend from Canada, a social, national dividend. This dividend should be free from deductions or taxes since it derives from profits and not from taxation. A dividend is not a form of insurance. Insurance is the division of the wealth of yesterday. A dividend is the sharing of new wealth. Each year Canada bring's into existence vast, new wealth. This new wealth, over and above the profits which may accrue to the individual exploiters of natural resources, - ought to bring to each Canadian a social dividend, a dividend, that is, which might be said to be a pension minus deductions and taxation.

Mr. Pearson must recognize that Canada is making vast strides along the road of progress; that it is yearly garnering great new stores of real wealth; that it should grant to its older citizens not pensions but dividends, not pensions with deductions and taxation, but dividends without deductions and taxation. When the granting of pensions is accompanied by deductions and taxes, then we are treading the path of Socialism, not to say Communism. And Mr. Pearson knows this full well — though he seems to have absolutely no fear of Soviet Communism. Pensions with deductions and taxation is little less than the sharing of poverty and the institution of State control over the individual. Canadians live in too rich a country to accept passively the sharing of poverty. Canadians want a sharing of Canada's wealth, such a sharing as Social Credit demands in its claim for dividends for all, without any distinction and without the imposition of any deductions or taxes.

The old-age pension which the members of the Union of Electors - "Pilgrims of a Better World" – demand, is nothing more than a dividend to be issued to Canadian citizens of 60 years or more. The members of the Union of Electors are working to build a better world. Such a better world will not be a Socialist or Communist society; it will not be a society of privation, a world of state control, of investigations and taxation. The better world will be a Social Credit society, a civilization of abundance and individual liberty, a world from which will have disappeared the old tax system and all degrading poverty which thrives in the existing system.

Without taxes

Well that's all very well, you will say, but how are we going to hand out these pensions unless we have taxes?

My friend, you will never, believe me, understand the solution as long as you continue to think only in terms of hard cash — dollars and cents. "Try, and clear your mind of the dollar sign and strive to think in terms of "things".

Let me ask you a question: "Is Canada capable of furnishing $75 worth of products and services each month to every Canadian of 60 years and more?" Or to be a little more precise, let me put it this way: "Is Canada capable of furnishing each month, to each Canadian of 60 or over, goods and services to the value of $75 without depriving the other Canadians of a just and adequate share in goods and services? Can our Canadian citizens of 60 years or more, buy each month from our stores, $75 worth of goods and still leave in these stores a sufficiency of goods for the remainder of the Canadian people?". Do you think they can? Of course you do. And so does every other citizen who has eyes with which to see and a mind with which to think!!

But now we come to the question of money. Here we come up against a solid wall of ignorance. I tell you that Canađa is able to issue $75 a month to every individual over the age of 60 without having to tax the others. And iminediately a great cry goes up: "It's utterly impossible! There must be taxes?"

Why must there be taxes?. What have taxes to do in this matter? The purpose of taxes is to take money, purchasing power away from those who have need of it in order to buy goods. Taxation is a privation, a rationing of money. Hence, taxation is a deprivation of goods, a rationing of goods which are purchased with money. But why should taxpayers be subjected to the rationing of goods? There is a superabundance of products.

But, you will say, it is money which we wish to ration. But I tell you that in rationing money you, at the same tinie, choke off the flow of goods to the consumer.

But then how are we going to pay pensions to the old if we do not tax the young? The money for such pensions, my friend, must come from some source other than the pocketbooks of rate payers. The money for pensions must be taken from that source whence money takes its beginning. It must be gotten from where money is born, from where it is created - from the banking system.

It is not the pocketbooks of taxpayers which should be taxed. It is the banks, the system of banking. Or to put it another way, the banks should be given the necessary orders to issue the money necessary to make up these pensions. The bank is the source of money for the country, just as the farm is the source of wheat for the country. Just as the farm provides wheat for the nation, so too should the banking system provide money for the nation.

To children and all others

In fact, every Canadian should be paid a pension — a dividend, that is. That is why the members of the Union of Electors request that family allowances be raised immediately to $15 a month for every child. In fact, children should receive, each and every one, a dividend guaranteeing them the necessities of life - a dividend of $25 a month or $50 a month according to the productive capacity of the country. This would be just, logical and entirely possible. And if we are at present asking for only $15 a month it is because we recognize the obstacle in the narrow-minded and utterly stupid policies of our modern economists, who, sad to say, have so much influence upon the decisions of legislators. For it is one of the tragic characteristics of our modern culture, that men who have come forth from universities proudly flaunting a colorful array of degrees and diplomas, are utterly incapable (or unwilling) of seizing upon realities. The results of all their studies seems to be that they are equipped with a magnificent vocabulary and a positive genius for beclouding the truth of an issue. They are completely lacking in the true humanism which looks to the betterment of society. They have a mind only for propagating and preserving the old philosophies which have bred the world of want and discontent. They talk and talk, and their fine language rings like the voice of divine prophecy foretelling a better world, in the ears of the masses who believe whatever they read in the daily press or hear over the radio and television. And when they have finished talking their is nothing to show except the slavery of Socialist State control or out-and-out Communism. And in such a society of chains they hope to be among the masters...

No, our economists are completely unable to understand pensions without taxation. They understand only what they learn in the university courses - courses which are paid for by the money of the people. Taxation they understand — taxation with its despoliation, its robbery of the people, its plucking of the taxpayer, its crushing of the poor, its enchainment of society. But the proposals of Social Credit with their alleviating dividends, with their remedies for the ailments of our sick economy, remedies which in no way harm the material well-being of the individual — these they cannot, will not comprehend; they understand only a system which will bring them profit and power.

An instructed class with blunted souls and a class of financiers with ever-growing ambition, here are the two main obstacles to the realization of a monthly dividend without taxation for each and every Canadian. Turn the full light of the truth upon these obstacles and they will vanish like the mists before the morning sun.