News Story of the Day: As most of the population in Canada struggles, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to give everyone a raise.
PM Selfie himself has approved giving Members of Parliament and Canadian Senators a pay increase of $3,000 in their salary starting Friday. Cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will receive a larger raise: Ministers will get a $4,400 hike, while Trudeau will see a $6,000 boost in pay. All other government employees, such as parliamentary secretaries, party whips, chairs of House of Commons committees, will also see pay increases.
Altogether, this will cost taxpayers more than $1 million this fiscal year. It may be small, but it’s not pleasing some think-tanks.
“I think it’s very poor form considering they are running a $29-billion deficit that they can’t even show some leadership by tightening their own belts, and what signal will it send to the public sector unions when it comes time to negotiate?” said Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, in a statement.
“I don’t think most Canadians have much sympathy for the notion that MPs need a pay hike, considering they already earn far more than the average Canadian.”
When Trudeau’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, did the same thing, he earned the ire of many of his opponents, in both office and in the citizenry. Now that Trudeau has done it, there’s hardly a word of condemnation from liberals. Ah, the left-right paradigm at its finest.
Chart of the Day: Want to see how gold has performed since 1968? The Federal Reserve has a chart looking at the price of gold from 1968 to today. Gold has gained recently headlines for its strong start to 2016.
Illustration of the Day: Will Ohio Governor John Kasich win the Republican nomination? He, as well as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, thinks he can.
Quote of the Day: Cafe Hayek’s Don Boudreaux writes about California’s experiment with a $15 minimum wage. He warns that politicians don’t care about the science or the results, but are easily influenced because they’re awarded by the special interest groups, which often hurt the general public.
Finally, economic science tells us also that politicians do not behave apolitically. Contrary to the implication of your advice that California’s ‘experiment’ be ‘monitored,’ politicians are not disinterested scientists conducting experiments to discover and implement only policies that promote the public interest. Instead, politicians are unavoidably subject to political pressures that frequently reward them personally for pursuing policies that benefit concentrated interest groups at the larger expense of the general public.
Video of the Day: Cuba has been in the news after United States President Barack Obama made a historic visit last month as the nation finally starts open dialogue with the island socialist nation. This is an important time to learn the lessons from Cuba, which is done by Fox Business Network‘s John Stossel.
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