To the Editor,
RE: City proposes 4.97 percent tax increase, Feb. 2
I can’t for the life of me understand how officials at all levels of government can acknowledge the inflation crisis that resulted from the COVID-19 supply chain breakdown and not draw conclusions about how this affects the most basic yet largest percentage of the population.
I’m talking about people working low-wage, service-providing jobs: the labourers who have worked their whole lives without union contracts that provide cost of living increases. I can’t throw around statistics like a politician, but I can tell you that many people I know have worked in their jobs for five, 10 or even more years for an employer who has not increased their wage, not even a couple percent a year to match average inflation.
The result doesn’t take a mathematician to break down. The people earning the lowest wages, who provide most of the services that keep our economy going, are in fact experiencing a wage decrease. Their dollars don’t go as far: not even far enough to pay the bills, gas, groceries and services at the very places they work at.
Yes, this is the pesky inflation that everyone talks about but has no answer for. It breaks my heart and my budget that governments at all levels have no problem adding to the burden of the masses of poor people who are getting poorer.
Officials at every level don’t care about that because they do get cost of living increases. They have the power to give themselves raises and we get to watch them do it.
Reyna Waller,
Port Alberni