Danger of running afoul of Parkinson’s Law

Those in search of Parkinson’s Law in action need look no further than Woolwich Township, where Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s classic dictum is clearly in evidence. What is Parkinson’s Law? Even if you don’t know the term, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the sentiment behind it: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. First postulated in 1955 and expanded into the 1958 book Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, the theory came from the writer’s experience with the British civil service. With mathematical precision – and a large dollop of humour – he dissected the actions of bureaucrats, discovering that bureaucracies expand over time, whether they’re needed or, in most cases, not.

In a notable example, he showed that the British Colonial Office continued to grow even as the empire shrunk precipitously. In fact, the department had its largest-ever staff after it was folded into the Foreign Office because there were no longer any colonies to administer.

Two forces are at work in explaining the growth of needless bureaucracies and the costs thereof: “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals” (the Law of Multiplication of Subordinates) and “Officials make work for each other” (the Law of Multiplication of Work). He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by five to seven per cent per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”

Managers wish to appear busy, so they increase their workload by creating paper and rules, filling out evaluations and forms, and filing them. Then they hire more assistants, who in turn require more managerial time for supervision. Moreover, many bureaucratic budgets rely on the “use it or lose it” principle, meaning the current year’s expenditures determine the following year’s budget. This provides a deep incentive to spend (even waste) as much money as possible to guarantee an ever-increasing budget. Parkinson’s views remain consistent with those of conflict theorists, who hold that bureaucratic growth serves only the managers, who in turn use their increasing power to control the workers.

All of this usually adds up to little in the way of productive outcomes, either in government or the private sector (Parkinson’s Law applies to all bureaucracies, but examples are most egregious in the public sector because there’s no offsetting pressure from competitors, shareholders and the like).

What we end up with, then, is much ado about nothing – the size of the bureaucracy and the amount of paperwork don’t necessarily bear any resemblance to the actual work done.

“Granted that work (and especially paper work) is thus elastic in its demands on time, it is manifest that there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned,” Parkinson argues in his original essay.

“Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. Cynics, in questioning this belief, have imagined that the multiplication of officials must have left some of them idle or all of them able to work for shorter hours. But this is a matter in which faith and doubt seem equally misplaced. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work to be done are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson’s Law, and would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish or even disappear.”

What Parkinson outlines is prevalent at all levels of government, growing worse from local to federal.

While Woolwich has largely avoided the worst of the law’s impacts – there has, however, been an entrenched deference to bureaucrats on the part of council members, but that’s just part of the problem – we’re starting to see more of it here.

First off, the size of the staff has been creeping upwards, most notably with the opening of the WMC. Some of the jobs have proven unnecessary, even on the frontlines, though changes have been slow. The situation is much worse at the middle-management level. Then there’s the issue of paperwork, as Parkinson sagely warned of: we’ve seen a lot more consultants and host of over-bureaucratized report writing even for what were once simple functions, from tenders to ersatz attempts at business development projects.

Worse still, as the current budget talks have shown, the township is prone to the Law of Triviality, another Parkinson revelation whereby “the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.”

By that he means just what we’re seeing today: some long discussions of minor budget items, leading at time to easy cutting around the edges, but little regard for the bigger items, which are glossed over quickly.
Woolwich council is not as profligate as the provincial and federal governments. It also has another advantage when it comes to reducing its size: it has no deficits to contend with, which means its cuts will translate into immediate tax savings rather than going to pay down the results of past spending decisions.

As Parkinson and other scholars following up his work have noted, there’s an inherent resistance to downsizing within bureaucracies. When cuts do come, they typically involve frontline staff, not management and other entrenched bureaucrats. Those affected tend to get lower pay while doing the actual work that is of value to the public. In that light, cuts don’t save as much money as they could, hurt services to the people paying the freight and maintain management layers that provide little if any value.

Tip public sector wages in favour of taxpayers

Premier Dalton McGuinty is being more than a little disingenuous when he calls for a public sector wage freeze without making it mandatory. We’ve been hearing the same message for two years, to little avail.
That’s not to say the goal isn’t worthwhile: wages typically make up 50 to 60 per cent of the tax dollars spent by governments, so that’s where the cuts have to be made to get spending back under control. That’s especially true if the goal is to maintain programs and avoid large tax increases, in which case something’s gotta give. That something is the civil service salaries.

The restraint advocated by both the federal and provincial governments finds a receptive audience: most of us have no problem seeing government workers as overpaid and underworked. Fair or not, that’s the perception. Layoffs and wage freezes (if not outright cuts) are an easy sell to the public. Public service compensation now outstrips the private sector by some 30 per cent when wages, benefits and pensions are factored in, and it’s now time to begin reversing that trend.

Public sector unions, seeing the writing on the wall, are quick to argue that private sector compensations should rise rather than rolling back what’s paid to government workers. A nice idea, but one detached from current economic reality, and an issue government has no direct control over, unlike their own budgets.

To be fair, governments do have to stop corporate tax cuts, increasing rates by a few percentage points. There’s no point in cutting wages only to pass the money on to large corporations that have been hording revenue rather than using it productively in the economy.

The other union tactic, painting a dire picture of service cuts, also has little credence. Indiscriminate layoffs could theoretically see needed frontline workers let go, but that’s an unlikely scenario. There are ways of judiciously reducing the size of the civil service with minimal impacts. Lowering wages would free up money to tackle deficits and to funnel money where it’s needed.

Making cuts and wage freezes work requires the public to think about service levels and what they’re getting for their money: wage increases and program spending that have routinely outstripped inflation has left us paying much more while getting little or nothing more in return. For example, look at this week’s debate in Kitchener over firefighting services. The city expects to pay $29.3 million for the fire department this year, 55 per cent more than the $18.9 million budget 10 years ago, but residents are no safer today than they were a decade ago. The same can be said about a host of other services, municipal, provincial and federal.
In short, we have government, but not a commensurate increase in service.

Between 2004 and 2011, the number of employees in the public sector grew by 20 per cent, to 3.6 million from three million.

The total number of employees in the sector is more than 20 per cent of the national workforce of 17.2 million, according to figures from Statistics Canada.

Salary figures indicate a growing gap between civil service wages and the average earnings of private-sector employees. The discrepancy is likely to increase, as average industry wages will remain stagnant or decline dramatically in some industries as layoffs take hold. Even though the recession is officially over, unemployment remains high and private-sector wages depressed.

Yet, as we’ve seen in this area, government employees continued to receive multi-year deals worth, on average, three to four per cent a year. With no bottom line – politicians seem to have few qualms about dipping deeper on their repeated trips to the well – governments simply pass the increases along to a public forced to pay taxes, a far cry from the situation faced in the private sector.

Few would begrudge civil servants a decent wage, but when those supported by public money are making more than those paying the freight, friction is bound to follow. It’s with that reality in mind that elected officials have to counter years of excess, waste and concessions. McGuinty calls for freezes, but does not make them binding. If history is any indicator, voluntary restraint will not work. Measures will not be carried out uniformly across provincial government lines, let alone translate into similar restraint at the municipal level. All the efforts will be hampered by arbitrators who’ve typically undermined the public interest.

This is not simply a tirade against government workers. We want services, so we need people to provide them. Those people should be paid a decent living wage. The trick will be to decide what services we really need – hint, fewer than we’re spending money on right now – and what constitutes “decent.” As the annual sunshine list and other revelations of public sector wages reveal, however, we’re a long way past most people’s concept of appropriate compensation. The 30 per cent overage is a good benchmark against which to measure rollbacks.

Fairness is important, certainly, but the priority is fairness to the average taxpaying resident – all other interests take a back seat.

New “downloading” — paying for useless rules

Call it a form of taxation without representation: a long list of legislation that essentially downloads costs to municipalities without giving them a say in any of the decisions. And, to add insult to injury, most of the requirements provide no benefit to residents while lifting evermore dollars from their wallets. From useless paperwork demanded by the Office of the Fire Marshal to overzealous water-monitoring regulations and from accessibility requirements with few benefits to all of the downside of gravel pits, Queen’s Park has long burdened municipalities with the real-world impacts of their own bureaucratic make-work schemes.
It may be futile, but Woolwich officials hope to counter that trend by making direct pitches to the provincial ministers and senior staffers at next month’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association/Ontario Good Roads Association conference.

Tackling just some of those grievances, a list of which was approved by township councillors this week, is the priority of chief administrative officer David Brenneman, who’s seen plenty of red tape in two decades of municipal service.

A clear example of the problem can be seen in what happened following the Walkerton fiasco. Instead of treating what happened as an isolated incident, compounded by Harris government cuts to inspectors, the province instituted sweeping new measures, including excessive amounts of water testing, that collectively added millions of dollars to municipal spending. There were plenty of new rules and procedures, but not one dime to help local governments pay for them. The result: not one iota of improvement, but plenty of added expenses.
That’s no isolated incident, he says.

“Was that (Walkerton) an overreaction to a very specific circumstance? I think you’d find that most municipalities were doing just fine … with their inspection programs.
“In cases like Walkerton, in the end the legislation becomes very reactionary.”

Brenneman notes such kneejerk reactions lead to heavy-handed changes, blanket rules that force every municipality to comply whether or not there was a problem. Poor emergency response in one town, to a flood or tornado, for instance, has led to new emergency management protocols for everyone. In almost every case, they’re not needed, but municipalities are forced to spend the money anyway.
“Often, it’s a reactionary fix,” he argues, calling the resultant costs for implementing and enforcing the rule changes “a de facto form of downloading.”

He likens the provincial approach to a manager having a problem with one employee’s conduct dealing with it by sending out a thou-shall-not directive to every employee – all the others know what the problem is, and resent being lumped in with the troublemaker. Instead, the matter should be handled directly with the employee in question.

Just as such actions by a manager have consequences in the office, the province’s decisions have repercussions across the board. Even good ideas that are fine in theory – some are, many aren’t – lose credibility and effectiveness when they’re handed down willy-nilly without thought to what comes afterward in terms of implementation, compliance and enforcement.

“There are a couple of things to consider right off the bat. One, we need more funding. And two, there needs to be more dialogue before this kind of legislation is enacted.”

To date, however, municipalities get neither. In essence, they’re forced to tax without representation.

The same is true of the steps needed to comply with the Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA), for instance, which forces a range of measures and costs on municipalities even where it makes no sense at all. This goes beyond elevators, ramps and sidewalk cuts in new construction, but extends to such things as providing alternative document formats despite zero demand in Woolwich. Still, everyone will be forced to pay for it.
“Without an appropriate level of funding from the province for the implementation of these standards, costs are directly supported by the local taxpayer,” Brenneman says in a report discussed at council this week.
Then there’s the issue of gravel pits, a topic with which the township has become intimately acquainted, and one that he hopes to speak about when meeting with provincial representatives next month.
The process is lengthy and costly, with the concerns of municipalities often swept aside by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ontario Municipal Board. The municipality does all the work, but gets little for its efforts aside from a great deal of political grief, as we’ve seen in debates here.

To make matters worse, municipalities receive only a pittance in revenues from gravel operations. The cost-benefit analysis alone is reason enough to deny all applications. Aside from the process itself, gravel pits bring increased truck traffic that put residents at risk, create more wear-and-tear on the roads, bring environmental problems such as dust and noise, and threaten to despoil prime agricultural land and the accompanying vistas.
To offset the immediate costs, he suggests higher revenues for municipalities. In Woolwich’s case, aggregate extraction brings in about $37,000 a year in revenues. He contrasts that with the fact a single battle at the OMB could ring up $250,000 in legal costs.

Once a pit is approved, municipalities have little recourse in the event of problems. The industry is supposed to be self-regulating, but that system isn’t working. The Ministry of Natural Resources, which can make unilateral decisions about specific sites, typically sides with the operators, not the public it’s supposed to serve.
“The residents of Woolwich do not trust the system,” he notes.

What’s true of the aggregate process applies equally to the range of legislation without regard to what’s best for municipal residents and their pocketbooks. It will be difficult, however, to overcome a system where bureaucrats look to justify their positions by coming up with policy changes, regardless of whether or not changes are needed or make any sense at all.
“I understand why it happens,” said Brenneman.

But how optimistic is he that next month’s meetings will bear fruit?

“We can’t just sit back on the sidelines and not try,” he argues. “It’s always a tough hill to climb. Part of the municipal role is to be an advocate to the senior governments.”
The effort will be aided if other municipalities bring the same message to Queen’s Park, eventually swaying the government. But that’s not going to happen in short order.

A case of Harper’s short-term thinking

Lost in the current debate over pipelines from the Alberta tar sands are the big-picture issues. Yes, the government appears to be taking a decidedly undemocratic position, yes there are economic advantages and downsides, yes there are environmental concerns. But none of these can be looked at in isolation, nor from this overarching consideration: who benefits and at what cost?

Both the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines come with a hefty price tag, political baggage and a long list of environmental caveats. Proponents point to the economic benefits: investment, jobs and profits from building the pipelines and carrying away Alberta bitumen to foreign markets.
Opponents cite the environmental peril of running a pipeline through pristine B.C. wilderness en route to the coast. Construction alone will be damaging, as will the increased tanker traffic. A spill could wreak havoc. There are also concerns about developing the tar sands in general, both for its impact on the local environment and its contribution to the larger matter of climate change.

There’s money and environmental health at stake. So, who benefits if we roll the dice?
Clearly, those pushing hardest for the project have the most to gain: the oil industry, its lobbyists and government supporters. They’ll reap the profits. Those who work in the industry, provide supplies or benefit from direct spinoffs also have pretty good motivation to back a new pipeline.
At some level, of course, we all benefit. We live in an energy-based world, dependent on oil in particular. Every time we heat or cool our homes, drive our cars or use any form of transit, make use of technology or enjoy something to eat we’re buying into that status quo.

That (not so) little moral piece aside, however, projects such as the Northern Gateway pipeline (the Keystone project being on hold south of the border) provide benefits to some while the risks are more widely dispersed. Pragmatically, will the project pay more than the potential costs to society as a whole? And, will those profits be short-lived, with the downside stretching well into the future?

Those are prime considerations in debating royalties paid for natural resources, not only oil and gas but a host of others, from potash to nickel. If we look at the Norwegian model – the country has been setting aside most of its huge oil revenues into a fund for future generations – then we’re certainly falling down on the job here. Non-renewable resources are by and large a short-term windfall for both the companies involved in extracting them and the provincial governments who collect royalties for taking from the public trust.

“We’re not getting good value for our natural resources,” says Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steel Workers who’s made a study of the royalty issue. “Norway is an outstanding example of managing natural resources.”

Norway collects high royalties. It also puts all but four per cent of its earnings into the Government Pension Fund, the largest pension fund in the world, valued at $525 billion at the end of 2010. None of the money can be touched for decades, until the oil runs out, and the fund invests outside the country in order to avoid making the economy dependent on oil profits and to ease inflationary pressures. (Whether that investment should be in purely speculative form – the troubling financial markets – or in the form of direct investment and asset-buying – see, for instance, China’s bid to buy up technology and resources, including Canada’s – is another discussion.)

It’s a great example of long-term thinking in the public interest, says Weir, noting there’s little of that in this country, as even the heritage funds in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which do set aside money for the future, pale in comparison.

Higher royalties, combined with a Norwegian outlook, would do wonders not only for Alberta, which generates the largest revenues due to oil and gas reserves, but also in every province where resources are extracted.

“We should be charging higher royalty rates and then there might be a bigger public benefit from those projects,” he says of the pipeline debate.
That’s especially true during a time of high commodity prices: profits grow, but the public doesn’t share in the good times. In fact, Alberta has been pushing royalty rates lower, unlike what it did during the boom times of the 1970s when its Heritage Fund was growing in leaps and bounds.

Through the Eighties, there was downward pressure on royalties in Alberta. There have been some spikes, but most recently the trend is down yet again. From collecting total royalties of $12.26 billion in 2006-07, the take fell to $6.1 billion in 2009-10.

“The industry has a very strong interest in keeping royalties low,” says Weir, noting the oil, gas and mining industries have been very successful in playing one jurisdiction off of another, threatening to go elsewhere if royalties are increased.

“There’s a belief that provinces have to give the resources away in order to get them developed.”
While that has been the case with manufacturing – leading to the gutting of Ontario’s economy – it’s a far less compelling argument with natural resources, which have to be extracted where they’re found. Of course, there are other locations in the world, but as supplies dwindle – be it for oil and gas, or a host of other resources – the “we’ll go elsewhere” argument holds less water.

Even today, Weir notes, there are a variety of factors at play in choosing where to develop resources, including the size and quality of the reserves, accessibility, infrastructure, a skilled workforce and political stability.

“Canada stacks up very well in those other factors,” he says in urging governments to resist the divide-and-conquer strategy.
The tactic is at play within the country, as resources fall within the provincial sphere: there’s no national standard.

“I would like to see a bit more inter-provincial cooperation to get higher returns.”
That remains unlikely, however, as lobbyists are relentless and the industry spends large sums of money to influence politicians. There is no corresponding effort on the other side on behalf of the public interest, he notes.

“I’m hopeful that people can learn more about the issue, get engaged and push for better returns on their natural resources. The resources belong to the public.”

They call it democracy, but that’s still a stretch

Was 2011 the year of democracy? Or, at least, when we gave lip service to democracy?

As Gwynne Dyer notes in his year-end summary, the planet was full of democracy-related news, most notably the Arab Spring. Public action in the likes of Egypt, Libya and Syria (still unfolding) put shame to the those of us here who can’t even be bothered to vote, nor to even take note of the erosion of our rights and freedoms.

In the latter context, we did see the Occupy movement gain some traction, only to break on the battlements of public apathy and entrenched corporate interests. While casting some light on the inequities of the system, the movement’s failure to breakthrough echoes the string of letdowns that followed the financial collapse of 2008, as politicians of all stripes sold out the public interest to corporations lobbying against regulation and accountability.

We got platitudes – lip service – but no action.

What did stick from the Occupy experience are the 1% and 99% labels. Not just catchy, they are appropriate as they show the growing economic inequities in our society: a handful of people got richer even as the majority of us took a hit. That’s a problem in itself, but the real story lies in the fact that those who have profited are responsible for the poor economy, having lobbied for the deregulation, trade and fiscal policies that created the mess.We remember the slogans, but how many of us really got the message?

As it does every year, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives brought the situation into stark relief this week – and garnered the usually short-lived media attention – with its report on the compensation of Canada’s top 100 CEOs. By noon on Tuesday, that select group had already pocketed $44,366 – what it takes the average wage earner an entire year to make.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ (CCPA) annual look at CEO compensation reveals Canada’s Elite 100 CEOs – subbed the 0.01$ – pocketed an average $8.38 million in 2010, 27 per cent more than the average $6.6 million they took in 2009.

In contrast, after taking inflation into account, the average worker’s weekly earnings are lower now than they were during the worst of the 2008-09 recession.

“The average of Canada’s CEO Elite 100 make 189 times more than Canadians earning the average wage,” says the report’s author, economist Hugh Mackenzie.

“If you think that’s normal, it’s not. In 1998, the highest paid 100 Canadian CEOs earned 105 times more than the average wage, itself likely more than double the figure for a decade earlier.”

The report finds that those CEOs among the country’s richest 0.01 per cent, a privileged group of 2,460 tax filers whose minimum income was $1.85 million in 2007. Their incomes soar above the average income of $404,500 (2007) required to enter the richest 1 per cent club. The lowest paid of Canada’s CEO Elite 100 pocketed $3.9 million in 2010, though few of us would shed any tears over that.

“The conclusion from these data is inescapable,” says Mackenzie. “Soaring executive pay plays a significant role in driving the growth in income inequality in Canada. “The gap between Canada’s CEO Elite 100 and the rest of us is growing at a fast and steady pace, with no signs of letting up.”

These people are certainly the elite, as the title of the report suggests. Still, there’s something to be said to fall into that 1% category that is the mainstay of the Occupy movement. If you’ve made it into Canada’s richest 1% club, you’re among the 246,000 who made a minimum of $169,300 and an average income of $404,500 (as of 2007, the most recent year for which data are available.).

What about the remaining 99% of us? Well, we’ve not been so lucky, says the report.

Between September 2010 and September 2011, average weekly earnings in Canada rose by only 1.1 per cent. After taking inflation into account, weekly earnings are now lower than they were during the worst of Canada’s 2008-09 recession, resulting in a dan­gerous mix: Canadians are feeling the squeeze of shrinking disposable incomes, a rising cost of living, and record-high household debt.

Clearly, the very modest efforts made to correct such inequities did not make the problems vanish when the calendar flipped over. Much more effort is needed if we’re going to reverse a decades-long slide. Note, however, that politicians don’t have that kind of change among their resolutions.

 

Christmas brings out our better natures

“Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the holiday season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall.  We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.”

Dave Barry’s comedic take on Christmas certainly hits home with many of us from whom the hustle, bustle and crowds serve to put a damper on the festivities. Beyond trips to the mall, the stresses related to the season do seem to sap the energy out of all the excitement and goodwill that are the hallmarks of Christmas.

This is not an entirely new phenomenon, as can be seen in Julia Peterkin’s 1934 novel A Plantation Christmas.

“I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness.”

Those and similar sentiments notwithstanding,  many of us hold the yuletide season in our hearts, if only because yuletide events are among our most cherished childhood memories, despite the impressions those old notions of Christmas have either come under attack or gone by the wayside.

For Christians, there is the significance of celebrating Christ’s birth – and all that it entails – in observing the holiday. But even among that group, Christmas has become a more secular event: the holiday we celebrate today, with its grab-bag of “traditions,” is the product of many inputs beyond the birth of a baby boy some 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem.

In the midst of all the stresses, author Donald E. Westlake has some advice: “As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December’s bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same.”

Of course, Christmas has become highly commercialized – some of the symbols we use today were in fact created by marketers – almost to the point of overkill. But there has always been something – a feeling in the air perhaps – that made the season lift the spirits beyond anything the so-called greeting-card holidays could ever do for us. That feeling of warmth and goodwill, no matter your take on Christmas, is tangible; in some ways, it appears on the wane today as business, stress, and political correctness intrude on the holiday – much as they do on our lives as we progress from childhood into our adult lives.

That is undoubtedly a shame. Maintaining our childlike enthusiasm would make Christmas, and many other things, far more enjoyable.

“It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself,” offers up Charles Dickens, who knew a thing or two about Christmas spirit.

Ideally, we would really give into our younger selves: most of us knew better, if less. The holiday does tend to bring out more of our humanity, as if it were a reset button of sorts. Our compassion for others, our empathy and feelings of shared fortunes are taken out of the attic along with the decorations and leftover wrapping paper. Christmas is one step back towards our humanity, the rest of the year two steps away from it. Simple math shows how far we’ve strayed … and what we might become.

Again, Dickens observes how Christmas brings out our better natures, in contrast to other times of the year.

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

The poet Ogden Nash had a more practical take on the season: “People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.”

Christmas, then, brings out our better natures. Or at least our ideal selves, seldom emerging at other times of the year. Perhaps that’s what promoted author David Grayson to offer up this thought: “I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day.  We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year.  As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.  And thus I drift along into the holidays – let them overtake me unexpectedly – waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself: ‘Why, this is Christmas Day!’”

Of all the holidays on the calendar, none compares to Christmas. It’s certainly no mere greeting card holiday; it comes with its own magic. Rather than fretting about what it’s become – a subjective take, at best – maybe we should just enjoy the season, observing it as we see fit and holding on to our own traditions.

And, if you’re still in need of a last-minute gift or two here on Eve of Christmas, you could do worse than to follow the advice of novelist and journalist Oren Arnold: “Christmas gift suggestions:  To your enemy, forgiveness.  To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.”

Debt is what’s keeping the middle class afloat

Haven’t even started your Christmas shopping yet? Maybe you should just take a pass on it this year. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has given you the perfect out: we’ve already got too much household debt.
Retailers may not be amused by the timing of Carney’s latest pronouncements, but they needn’t worry, as most of us aren’t paying attention. We continue to spend, spend, spend … on credit.

In a speech this week, he reiterates points he and others have been making for some time, namely that we’re maintaining our middle-class lifestyles mostly through debt. While Canada is in better economic shape than other countries, we’re headed down the same road, with the same crises and austerity measures as our reward when we get to the same point as, say, Italy and Greece.

“We might appear to prosper for a while by consuming beyond our means,” Carney said Monday. “Markets may let us do so for longer than we should. But if we yield to this temptation, eventually, we, too, will face painful adjustments.”

Easy credit and low interest rates have fueled the borrowing, but it’s our spending habits that have got the better of us: bigger homes, new cars, electronic toys and so on. Our wants are limitless. Our wallets, not so much.

Worse still, our real incomes and net worth are in decline, meaning we’re borrowing just to maintain the status quo. So, even as household debt climb by 13 percentage points relative out our incomes, we had less than we did last year. Or even last quarter, as household net worth fell by 2.1 per cent in the third quarter, its second quarterly decline. Although residential real-estate assets increased, this was more than offset by the decline in the value of our investment in stocks (including mutual funds) and our pensions: the Standard and Poor’s/Toronto Stock Exchange composite index fell by more than 12 per cent during the quarter. Per capita household net worth declined to $180,100 in the third quarter from $184,700, the sharpest quarterly reduction in stock prices and per capita household networth since the fourth quarter of 2008, reports Statistics Canada.More of us are getting caught between falling incomes and growing household debt, which reached an all-time high of $1.5 trillion earlier this year. Worse still, increasingly the borrowed money is being used to finance day-to-day expenses rather than consumer goodies.
This is no accident, nor is it the result of the financial crisis that began with the meltdowns of 2008, as the middle class has been under assault for more than three decades. The recession and “recovery” that followed collapse caused by the financial services industry is indicative of the trend: corporate profits and executive bonuses quickly bounced back, while unemployment remains high and those with jobs work longer and harder to tread water.
In his speech, Carney notes the corporations have been sitting on those profits, hording cash or speculating in the markets rather than investing in real economic activity that would create jobs and get the economy back on track.
Greater productivity and a concerted effort to seek customers in emerging markets would do wonders for the Canadian economy – and, ultimately, the global situation – if only firms would do something useful.
“This would be good for Canadian companies and good for Canada,” he says. “A virtuous circle of increased investment and increased productivity would increase the debt-carrying capacity of all, through higher wages, greater profits and higher government revenues. This should be our common focus.”
That’s mostly wishful thinking, however, as governments have done nothing to encourage that kind of behaviour. Just the opposite, in fact, given the emphasis on corporate tax reductions, deregulation, mobile capital and a host of other measures that have reduced corporate accountability. Those who call for tax policies to prompt companies to spend accordingly – taxing at a much higher rate profits not put back into productive use, for instance – have been dismissed by the business lobby, which continues to exercise tremendous influence despite the self-made crises.
This kind of bad behaviour is nothing new. Look at the history of automation and productivity gains in industry. They were supposed to bring us a higher standard of living and more leisure time. Instead we got neither. In fact, just the opposite happened. Corporations did in fact make larger profits, but the money was shuffled into the hands of a few and into dubious financial transactions. At first, workers in Canada, the U.S. and other advanced economies were displaced by the productivity gains. Real wages fell as unemployment levels rose, putting more downward pressure on incomes due to the competitive job market. Later, of course, more of the jobs were transferred offshore to low-wage countries, a trend that continues today. The result? More profits, with almost all of the gains concentrated in a few hands.
Governments routinely aid and abet the shift. That the likes of Carney and some of his European counterparts are making even low-key mention of the inequities means those who’ve created the lower standard of living are taking note of the social unrest that’s starting to bubble to the surface.
In an economy based on consumerism – a problem in its own right – debt-based spending is unsustainable, as is a shrinking middle class. In the short term, heading out to the mall with your shopping list provides an economic boost. In the long run, we may have to curb our enthusiasm … at least until the bills that will arrive in the New Year have been paid off.

Capitalism has become the biggest religion

Born from religion, including roots in paganism and animism, Christmas has become much less about any theism and much more about the largest of the isms: capitalism.

As noted in the story about Chalmers Presbyterian Church in last week’s edition, fewer of us are attending church, leading to the demise of traditional churches. Far more of us will spend time at the mall than at church this holiday season.

We’ve long decried the secularization of Christmas, with Santa supplanting Jesus and gifts trumping family time. Spend, spend, spend is the mantra – now more than ever given consumerism as the salvation for the faltering economy.

The economic focus of Christmas is a clear indication that capitalism is our new religion, as early 20th century thinkers such as Max Weber and Walter Benjamin noted, sagely predicting some of the worst excesses we see today.

Benjamin, in an unfinished essay called Capitalism as Religion, does not equivocate: “Capitalism is a pure religious cult, perhaps the most extreme there ever was.”

He writes, “One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion.” By that he suggests that rather than finding answers, guidance and meaning in traditional religion, we turn to another construct in capitalism. Solace at the mall, rather than the church.

Benjamin was clearly influenced by the writings of fellow German philosopher Max Weber, who almost two decades earlier at the turn of the century wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which attributes the rise of the mercantile system to the teachings and work ethic of the likes of Martin Luther and John Calvin.

“Remember, that time is money,” Weber wrote in 1905. “He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.[...]Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker.”

That kind of reasoning gave rise to the investment system: money makes money. That accession was driven by Protestantism’s demands that followers throw themselves into their work – becoming devoted to their craft, or calling (a very religiously-charged word applies to a vocation) – and the demand that the money generated by that work not be used for personal luxuries and aggrandizement – a philosophy certainly long since abandoned.

The money generated though the diligence of workers could not be spent on themselves, the church (where modesty was key) or charity (which was frowned upon, seen as encouraging lack of industry), but could be channeled into investments, giving rise to capitalism, he argued.

Benjamin took that line of thought one step further: “Christianity in the time of the Reformation did not encourage the emergence of capitalism, but rather changed itself into capitalism.”

So, capitalism isn’t so much a new religion as it is the evolution of the old one.

Certainly that’s not at odds with what we see today, especially in the pronouncements of the Christian right in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, in the ideologies espoused by the current government in Ottawa.

Just think of how convoluted the finance industry has become, complete with language that is as incomprehensible to most as Latin was to the average churchgoer in Luther’s time.

Those who manage the system have cast themselves as priests, interpreting the higher order to the rest of us. And the entire system is based on faith, belief that the bits and bytes stored on a computer actually represent money and economic activity, despite our doubts.

Our hesitation is justified, as the mess created by the make-believe system of credit default swaps and subprime mortgages clearly revealed – it was all smoke and mirrors. Despite the debunking, many remain among the faithful, and the system rolls on. We have faith it will get better despite lessons to the contrary.

The traditional religions have taken note, however. Their representatives, including archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Benedict XVI for instance, have condemned the global financial system and its practitioners for providing nothing of value. Worse still, the system has done harm to untold millions of people. They’ve seen that money has ceased to represent anything, but has become something with intrinsic value of its own, which is clearly not the case … unless you’ve bought into that particular brand of religion.

CBC is more popular than the government

Should the CBC’s 75th anniversary be its last?

Chances are you said no. There is, however, a certain contingent that would scrap the public broadcaster, some on ideological grounds (the CBC is leftist), some because “entertainment” should be a private-sector function, and some because they don’t watch the boring/crappy/biased/insert-putdown-of-choice offerings, so they shouldn’t have to pay for it.

I don’t watch a whole lot of TV. I don’t have cable. One of the channels I do get is CBC – I do watch it, but not all that often (even hockey, that stalwart of the schedule, is increasingly difficult to watch for its Toronto-centric focus, though it doesn’t often fall to the abysmal level of some U.S. feeds). For educational and information shows, along with good series (often British, a la PBS) TVO does a much better job. That said, CBC shines on the radio side.

I guess that puts me in the pro-CBC camp, along with the majority of Canadians, despite the concerted attacks led by private broadcaster/publisher Quebecor and fed by the Harper government.

A recent poll commissioned by the advocacy group Friends of Broadcasting found 46 per cent of us want to see the CBC’s current funding levels maintained – that’s about $1.1 billion just now – while another 23 per cent favour an increase. Only 17 per cent supported cuts.
Axing the CBC, not part of the poll, is certainly a much-discussed topic of various online forums.

That last option is unlikely. As are the options preferred by the majority of Canadians, as the government has indicated it expects the broadcaster to meet the five to 10 per cent across-the-board cuts its demanded of most departments and agencies going into 2012 budget deliberations.

Cuts to the CBC would be at odds with Conservative promises, including those made in last spring’s election. The government has pledged to maintain or increase funding, notes Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesman Ian Morrison.

“A 10 per cent cut to the CBC’s budget, as the Conservatives are contemplating, would have devastating consequences that would be visible and of great concern to the vast majority of Canadians.  In addition, the steady attack on the CBC by various government MPs could change the direction of public support [for the government] on this issue.”

Speaking from Ottawa, where the organization this week launched a satirical campaign whereby the CBC is bought by a U.S. wrestling promoter (see www.friends.ca), Morrison argues the government would be well advised to honour public sentiment.

“Public broadcasting is very popular with Canadians, including a majority of those who are Conservative supporters.”

During the government’s five years in power, there have been threatening rumblings, but it has continued funding for the CBC. In that regard, it’s done better than the Chrétien government, which slashed the broadcaster’s budget, along with many others, as it fought to tackle the massive deficits of the Mulroney era.

“This government has not attacked public broadcasting the way the Chrétien government attacked public broadcasting, cutting $400 million from its budget,” Morrison explains. “Chrétien did a lot more damage to public broadcasting than Harper has done to date.”

He worries, however, that the situation could change for the worse.

There’s a great deal of hostility coming out of Ottawa these days, including a recent lumping together of the CBC and the Canadian Wheat Board, the farmers’ cooperative that Tories are in the process of neutering.

While Harper has been quiet about the CBC – uncharacteristically leaving the comments, hints and innuendo to others – there seems little doubt the attack is emanating from the PMO.

“This new attack that began in July is out of the blue,” he says. “There’s some kind of orchestrated campaign going on.”

Whether that includes fuelling the attack by Quebecor, including hundreds of often-frivolous access to information requests and the resultant court challenges, is open to speculation. What is clear, though, is that Quebecor has a conflict of interest, as it competes directly with the CBC for advertising dollars. That is reason enough to dismiss its antics.

The anti-CBC push could be little more than past efforts of mollifying the Reform base by giving the impression of being tough on the broadcaster, or it could be the first step in a plan to “eviscerate” the Mother Corp. by, for instance, stripping away its ability to sell advertising, which would wipe $500 million from its coffers.

The true intent remains unknown. Like so many of its ‘open and transparent’ moves, the government is being secretive about its intentions and goals.

“This is serious,” Morrison notes. “The government is making decisions behind closed doors.”

There’s that openness and transparency again. This time the secrecy is being used to formulate an attack on what is one of the most popular national institutions, one that does indeed link Canadians from coast to coast to coast. That’s more than can be said about many things to come out of Ottawa.

Our humanity should extend beyond season

The Christmas season – now upon us, ready or not – brings out our better natures. Maybe it’s years of childhood practice: behaving well lest we end up on Santa’s naughty list. Or maybe once a year we take to heart the message of community and goodwill towards men.

Whatever the case, we certainly find it easier to be generous and considerate when it comes to our fellow man (which, of course, includes women, children and small furry animals, in some cases).

Once a year, we take the time to think about others, at least for as long as it takes to share a smile, a greeting and perhaps even a bit of charity. The rest of the year? Well, not so much.

That dichotomy begs a host of questions, not least of which is what exactly is it that we owe each other as humans, citizens and residents? It’s a question that goes back millennia, and forms the basis of social contract philosophy, from the ancient Greeks through Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Hmmm, I sense a yawn coming on, kind of like when I go on about pension reform.

At any rate, the topic flows naturally from a discussion of the impact of the Occupy movement – another recent hobby horse – and the current police crackdowns. Criticized for a lack of defined goals, the movement’s real purpose is to call attention to inequities and to challenge the rest of us to think about a political and economic system that in essence encourages us to be selfish and not to take into consideration what we can do for each other as a community – to forego our humanity.

The protestors give lie to the notion that our system of government – our democracy – is based on the consent of the governed. Government policies that run contrary to the public interest – an increasing proportion of its actions – surely are the opposite of what we’d consent to. They benefit the one per cent at the expense of the 99, as the memorable slogan reminds us.

Who is responsible for that? Certainly those who’ve benefited have fostered an unending propaganda campaign that’s been every bit as effective in sweeping aside citizenship as the corporate marketing has been in turning us into consumers. We’ve happily abdicated power and responsibility for the comforts of our lives. Excuses about being busy are just that. Still, we’ve opted for the distractions, and can’t even be bothered to show up at the voting booth for five minutes every four years. As a result, we’ve got the government we deserve, one that acts against our interests and against the common good.

We’ve tuned out, bought into consumerism and the ideal of rugged individualism while enjoying the fruits of what years of community-minded spirit and policies brought us.

It’s a trend that was identified in a collection of essays edited by American sociologists Howard L. Rosenthal and David J. Rothman in a book call What Do We Owe Each Other?, which, ironically, appeared in 2008 just as the Ponzi scheme that is the global financial system was unraveling.

“Income distribution is now as skewed as it was in the heyday of the robber barons. The Top 25 hedge fund managers on Wall Street earned in one year as much as 80,000 New York City schoolteachers did in three,” they not in introducing the text. Yet it wasn’t until recently that we’ve taken real note of that inequity.

Those who benefited from the arrangement did so away from the public view, as we went about our lives. The authors indentified “a conviction that most Americans were, bluntly put, selfish.

Ready to do everything possible to satisfy their own and their family’s needs, they were utterly indifferent to the well-being of others. Little or nothing was owed to strangers, whether they were fellow Americans or immigrants, documented or undocumented.”
Public sentiment has become more mean-spirited. Nowhere is that more clear than with attacks on public institutions, most notably through the tax system. Even governments have jumped on the pile.

“[It] appeared that both public and private enterprises did very little to promote or satisfy mutual obligations,” the authors note on the declining notion of the public good. “Tax policy at the state or federal level, and benefit and pension policies at the corporate level, did not push back inequalities or overcome indifference. Neither in the polity nor in the economy was a sustained and systemic effort made to promote the commonweal over individual self-interest.”

The political and economic systems we live under are both manmade constructs. We devised them, and they’ve evolved into something that no longer meets the needs of the majority of us. If the social contract means that there’s a greater, common good, then that contract has been violated. We’re going to need more than some Christmas cheer to get back on course.