I fear that massive social turmoil, accompanied by economic upheaval, is coming in the next decade.  This fear is due to what I heard at the Toronto Global Forum earlier this week.

Panelists described the need for massive government investments in health care, climate change, sustainability, incentives, etc.  But no discussion about where the money will come from and the need to increase taxes. Individuals will also have to make major changes and spend money.

I will summarize what I heard from the leaders about their approach to getting the public to make major changes……tell people it’s important and tell them they must change.  They leaders had no concept that they need to listen to the public, understand their concerns, help the individuals understand the urgent need for personal change. This approach of dictating change will lead to even more social upheaval than COVID.  Our leaders have no idea how to change the behaviour of large groups of people.

There is a science to large scale change of human behaviour.  I’m saddened that our leaders are unable to learn and plan to take the simple approach of dictating change. This will result in massive resistance by the public.

When I got home that evening, I read two articles in the newspaper.  One was about the need to increase defense spending in Canada given the war in Europe and tensions elsewhere.  No mention of increasing taxes.  The other article was about the deterioration of physical infrastructure of Toronto, the  city I live in.  Deterioration is occurring because billions of dollars of maintenance is being deferred into the future.

The public complains and wants more spending but doesn’t want to pay more taxes to correct the problems.