Pubdate: Fri, 19 Jan 2018
Source: Delta Optimist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2018 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc
Contact:  http://www.delta-optimist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1265
Author: Greg Hoover

GREED TURNS GOVERNMENTS INTO BOOKIE, BOOTLEGGER AND DEALER

A few days before Christmas my son and I were in the site office with
a friend of ours solving the problems of the world as we sometimes do.
The topic of government taxation came up and how every aspect of life
is taxed.

As the conversation continued, our friend Mike expressed a point of
view we had never considered so I asked and received his permission to
use it here, with some background and explanation.

When I was a teenager I worked part-time at my dad's General Motors
dealership and every now and then this old fellow walked through the
shop saying hello to all the mechanics and would wind up going out the
back door where he would just stand around. Over the next few minutes
the mechanics would lay down their tools one at a time and go out to
talk to him, as well as the car salesmen and fellows from the parts
department. After a few minutes of this, the old fellow left just the
same way he came in, which was all a mystery to a teenager in the
early 1960s.

Later I learned his name was Charlie and he was a salesman for the
Irish Sweepstakes, a betting scheme that Ireland used to finance its
health system. Since it was illegal in Canada to gamble, everyone had
to be very careful about buying a ticket.

Boy things have changed. Now in every service station and convenience
store Canadians can buy a wide variety of national and provincial
lotteries that the governments control and sell.

The sale of liquor and beer has much the same history with bootleggers
being the largest suppliers until governments saw how much money could
be made. Now there are beer and liquor stores and even grocery chains
selling what was previously not acceptable in society.

It's amazing what gains acceptance when government can make money from
it.

So now our governments have decided the sale and recreational use of
marijuana will become legal so Canadian business is falling over
itself to grow, distribute and sell this plant. The entire reason for
this legalization is money and nothing else. Governments allow
companies to grow and sell it while taking a cut of the profits.

So with the legalization of pot government now becomes our bootlegger,
our bookie and our local dealer. I assume that taking 50 per cent of
everyone's wages, plus sales taxes on everything we buy, is just not
enough to run a country that is already over $500 billion in debt.

I suppose they might think if a good percentage of us are drunk or
stoned we won't care much about how we are being governed. Maybe I'm
old fashioned but I thought we created governments to protect us from
international threats, crime and from ourselves, so I don't see this
action as progress.

Prostitution is the only vice our government does not yet control and
I wouldn't be too sure it won't happen because if I had told the
mechanics in dad's garage that in my lifetime betting, alcohol and
marijuana would be legal and sold by the government I would have been
the topic of several jokes.

So I believe Mike was right: Our governments are slowly taking over
what organized crime used to do and are operating off the profits.

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Greg Hoover is a project manager in industrial and commercial 
construction who has lived with Christina in Tsawwassen for 25 years.
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MAP posted-by: Matt