Creators of economic turmoil are aware
The financial collapse and recession that began in 2008 was immediately compared to the Great Depression. The austerity measures now being imposed on populations around the globe can be compared to the years that followed the collapse of 1929.
In the stirrings of unrest today we find parallels from the Dirty Thirties, particularly in what punishing austerity wrought in Germany. The rise of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists began when a centrist chancellor, Heinrich Brüning, began to impose drastic austerity measures in 1930, a reaction to the economic crisis and the country’s stifling debt and reparations from the
First World War. In part as an effort to block the Nazis, he governed with emergency powers, imposed austerity plans over the wishes of the opposition and used the police to quell dissent. As the situation worsened, the country turned increasingly to the right.
Sound familiar?
In Greece and Italy, the leaders have stepped down, replaced by technocrats with ties to the very financial institutions that created the debt crisis overtaking the Eurozone today. Authorities are using the police to crack down on the Occupy movement, including those protesting in Toronto and Vancouver. Still, there’s a growing unrest around the globe as the inequities of the recession and the response to it continue to widen the gap between the haves and the have nots.
As economist Paul Krugman points out this week, it’s the 99 per cent that is paying the price for the often-criminal actions of the one per cent. He notes that the austerity that followed in the wake of the Second World War was taken stoically by the public, as it knew goods were in short supply and people had a feeling that they were all in it together, working for a brighter future. Fast forward six decades and that’s no longer the case.
“Today, by contrast, austerity is being imposed because men in suits say that it’s necessary to satisfy the invisible gods of the financial market,” he writes in his NY Times blog. “It’s understandable that the public is beginning to have its doubts, and not just because those invisible gods somehow demand sacrifices only from workers, never from the wealthy. For the fact is that those men in suits have no idea what they’re doing – a fact that was apparent to some of us early on, but it now becoming common knowledge.”
Krugman is probably being too kind: the men in suits likely know exactly what they’re doing: arranging a system that continues to pay off for the wealthy at everyone else’s expense. That’s why those who caused the financial crisis due to dodgy activities with derivatives and credit default swaps not only avoided jail time, but were rewarded with bonuses, promotions and government jobs/contracts. There was a fine example of that in the last week in the UK, where austerity measures have already taken a toll on the public: the Royal Bank of Scotland, owned by taxpayers since it was taken over to avoid collapse in 2008, plans to hand out $800 million in bonuses to investment bankers despite losing $1.8 billion last year, causing a political backlash that saw Prime Minister David Cameron forced to intervene.
Cameron’s right-leaning government has been ahead of the curve with austerity measures. The shift in tack has been taken by governments elsewhere. The connection between worsening economic circumstances and rise of right wing governments was established in a paper by two economists who contribute to the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. Markus Brückner, an economics professor at the University of Adelaide, and Hans Peter Grüner, chair for economic policy, Department of Economics, University of Mannheim.
“The global crisis has hit OECD nations hard – the hardest since the crises of the 1930s. As the Great Depression was associated with a rise in political extremism, the world may be facing similar political developments today,” they write in a recent study.
“Benjamin Friedman has argued that GDP per capita growth is a key factor for the development of a political system. His analysis, based on various historical case studies, points out that only a continuous improvement of individual living standards provides the ground for the development of what he calls a more ‘open’ society. Accordingly, it is not so much the level of GDP that determines the way in which a democracy develops but the growth rate.”
So, as the economy stutters, we lean right, bringing scapegoat politics and austerity measures that have failed miserably over and over again. In the worst cases, the worst kind of economic collapses brings out the worst in societies.
The economy is slowing down again – more confirmation of that this week from an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study – yet the prescription is more austerity measures. However, such contractionary policies will only worsen the recession, as they have done time and time again.
Those who created the mess continue to prosper, however. They know what they’re doing. The rest of us learn nothing from history. And the beatings will continue until morale improves.
This is not what they gave their lives for
On Remembrance Day, we think about the sacrifices made by those who fought in the world wars that enveloped the globe in horrors unthinkable to those of us who came afterward. We remember, and we hope that we’ll never go through that again.
But what would those who died in battle, and indeed those who served in general, make of the world they’re credited with saving in the name of democracy and freedom?
I’m thinking specifically of the corporatism that has eroded the middle class, subverted democracy, fostered inequality, stolen billions of dollars and led to an unproductive economy where money and power is increasingly held by a small minority? Sound harsh? Not when you think that wars were fought to stamp out fascism, but today we’re getting more of just that. How’s that, you say?
“Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”
Not the words of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which aims to counter undue corporate influence in politics, but of one Benito Mussolini, written in 1935’s The Doctrine of Fascism. He’s someone who knew a thing or two about fascism – as veterans of the Second World War could tell you.
The burgeoning middle class, equitable society and philosophy of the common good that developed in the postwar years were a testament to the values of those who came through war, financial excess, Depression and another great war: they were eager to do away with the scourges of the past and to create a better society for themselves and, more pressingly for their children.
The next three decades saw that happen. The last three have seen that steadily eroded by the rise of corporatism, including its wholesale purchase of the political system, particularly in the U.S., an undemocratic trend that is being reflected here by Harper government policies.
Sure, Canada has been spared some of the economic impacts seen south of the border and elsewhere, but that’s nothing the current government can take credit for. We’ve been sheltered partly because of our resources and, more to the point in a discussion of the economic crisis, by the fact previous governments refused to go along with the kind of deregulation we see in the States.
We weren’t immune to the meltdown in 2008. Despite what the federal government claims, we did have a bank bailout of our own.
The federal Conservatives used the public’s money through the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation to bail out Canada’s big banks by buying $70 billion of home mortgages from the banks, and also used the Bank of Canada and other subsidy programs to help the banks, for a total of almost $200 billion in subsidies in 2009 – yet they did not require anything from the banks in return,” notes Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch.
In looking at the anti-corporatism backlash that’s developed, organizations such as Democracy Watch see the fruits of years of deregulation and lack of government oversight.
“No matter what issue or problem in Canada concerns you, making the largest corporations and banks in Canada more responsible and accountable will help win the changes and solutions you are seeking. A total of 155,000 corporations and 40 banks that the federal government regulates are not effectively required to act honestly, ethically, openly, responsibly or to prevent waste,” he says.
“Incredibly, the laws and enforcement of parking a car illegally are stronger than most corporate responsibility and bank accountability laws and enforcement systems in Canada, and in some cases the penalties for parking illegally are higher than for corporate executives who act dishonestly, unethically, secretively, irresponsibly or wastefully.”
Those who argue that regulation only hinders capitalism – often the same people who wrongly equate capitalism with democracy – miss the point of a so-called free market. The idea of a free-market economy is to let the market decide what will be made and in what quantity, rather than the central planning of the communist system, for instance. It doesn’t, however, mean free from regulation. How many people would argue that business should be “free” to use slaves or child labour? That was once the case in the West, but has been regulated out of the mix.
Once we’ve established that the market is an artificial construct that we’ve devised, we’re free to shape it in such a way that it provides only benefits to society, not harms. The deregulation that fuelled the corporatism of the last few decades – think of the rise of globalization, monopolies and oligarchies and the resultant decline in our quality of life – followed a postwar boom that was shaped by a market system that was devised with the broad public in mind. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but far more equitable than is the case today. Deregulation killed that. New regulations controlling the excesses of the financial sector are needed to put us back on track.
The same goes for removing corporate influence in the political system.
That’s the kind of democracy many died for and that others fight for today.
Can technology make us more democratic?
What does it mean to be a good citizen? Ask a hundred people, get a hundred different answers.
In the context of next week’s Remembrance Day activities, good citizenship can be defined as those willing to sacrifice everything for the protection of the country and other citizens. That’s not a bad start, but a pair of world wars are an anomaly, not the typical yardstick by which to measure citizenship.
Some people will argue the internet and social media have ushered in a new era of citizen engagement.
It’s certainly helped, as is clearly the case with the Arab Spring.
Electronic devices allowed decentralized groups and individuals to communicate, organize, react in a timely fashion and stay one step ahead of authorities. We’ve seen dictators topple from power. Great. But the real test will be what kind of governments emerge from the ruins of the fallen despots. Will new power-mongers emerge, as in revolutions elsewhere? Will some nominally democratic movements peter off into new authoritarian regimes? Even if those countries emulate governments in the West, you certainly can’t argue that we’re the end-all and be-all of democracy, let alone empowered.
Most of us can’t be bothered to get involved. Hell, half of us can’t even muster enough energy to spend five minutes every four years casting a ballot.
Social media does make it easier, though it would mean using our near-constant tether to cyberspace to do more than cyber-stalk your favourite celebrity.
The good news is that our electronic devices might be a gateway to greater involvement. In fact, a recent public engagement survey conducted by the Fleishman-Hillard marketing agency revealed that Canadians would be more engaged in conversations on government policy if there were ways to participate online. The same study also revealed that a third of Canadians have an improved view of elected officials who use social media to engage with constituents.
The survey found that 54 per cent of those surveyed agreed to the statement, “I would be more engaged in conversations of government policy if there were ways to participate online.” Agreement was strongest at 57 per cent among those aged 18-35, followed by those 35-54 (53 per cent) and 55+ (52 per cent). Youth were also more likely to access a government service if they heard about it online: 46 per cent compared to 37 per cent of those surveyed overall.
Not surprisingly, a younger demographic is most influenced by social media in terms of their perception of elected officials. For instance those aged 18-35 were most likely at 49 per cent as compared to 33 per cent of general population to favourably perceive elected officials using social media.
When asked “When you see that an elected official is using social media, to communicate with constituents, does this improve or worsen your perception of them?” of those surveyed, 33 per cent overall said it did improve their perception. 53 per cent said that it had no impact, while only 14 per cent said it worsened their perception.
Politicians have taken in that message, though to date social media has been another tool for getting out the message, not for fostering generally participative democracy.
Here in Ontario, the McGuinty government says it’s committed to what it calls e-Government. It envisions an electronic citizen engagement of forms, including internet consultations on proposed law and/or policy; “town hall” meetings via the web; open on-going dialogues; online remote voting; and digital voting.
Closer to home, we have the likes of Woolwich Mayor Todd Cowan, who never strays from his Blackberry. He’s cited email and online feedback as the rationale for a number of decisions around both the township and regional council tables.
A fine thing, but is it more than another public relations tool? Something evolving into a true democracy, the kind envisioned by the Occupy Wall Street movement that would make government responsible to the many instead of the privileged few?
Where, for instance, does it fall on the “Ladder of Citizen Participation,” a measure devised by Sherry Arnstein in 1969, well before today’s electronic innovations? Her eight-rung ladder starts with “manipulation” on the bottom and ascends to “citizen control” at the top. The middle rungs are “informing,” “consultation” and “placation” – grouped together as tokenism, which appears to be where we’re at. We’re certainly a long way from the top three levels, “partnership” and “delegated power” on the way to citizen control.
In her paper from more than four decades ago, she cites a placard from a 1968 student-worker rebellion in France. It translates as “I participate, you participate, he participates, we participate, you participate … they profit.” That’s tokenism: governments pay lip service to consultations and other forms of public participation, but then maintains the status quo that benefits only a few.
Sounds like we haven’t come very far in 40 years, despite all the shiny new toys.
A lesson to be learned in updates from Elora
Over on page three of this week’s paper you’ll find a brief outlining Centre Wellington Township’s latest earnings at the slots facility in Elora – $593,000, for a running total of $15.1 million since 2003. It appears like clockwork every quarter. And it’s always followed by comments.
Some people decry publishing the numbers, saying they only serve to open an old wound. Still more see it as an important reminder about the consequences of poor decision-making by local politicians. Many just find it an interesting fact relevant to the readership.
As a couple of recently-published letters show, the issue hasn’t been forgotten. The quarterly reports are a reminder those millions could have easily made their way to Woolwich’s coffers, rather than to our easterly neighbour’s.
For those just joining the fray – and there have been many newcomers since the issue first surfaced – here’s a bit of the history.
In 1999, the Woolwich Agricultural Society, owners of the Elmira Raceway, first approached Woolwich council with plans to add slot machines to its facility on Snyder Avenue (today a sprawling subdivision). The attempt was rebuffed, but a site near Breslau was suggested.
Returning to council a second time with a revised plan for a new track at the south end of the township, the society was shot down again. An understandably miffed organization began searching for more welcoming – and on the ball – locales outside of Woolwich. They eventually settled on a site in Centre Wellington Township, some 15 minutes away from their existing location.
During the initial stages, there was much talk about moral decay, how we could expect to see Elmira transformed into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Gangsters would take over.
Prostitutes walk the streets. Crime would be rampant. And the good people of Woolwich would be transformed into gambling addicts. Never mind that nothing of the sort happened in other rural communities – Hanover and Clinton, for instance – where the racetracks brought in slot machines.
Ultimately, the agricultural society put together a $15-million package to build new facilities on the 68-acre site near Elora, at the intersection of Wellington County roads 7 and 21. The harness racing crowd got a new track and venue, and OLG set up shop with 200 slot machines. It’s been nothing but a bonanza for Centre Wellington. Absolutely none of the problems bandied about a decade ago has surfaced in that community.
“None of the horrors have fallen on our community, as some people predicted,” says Michael Wood, the township’s chief administrative officer. “We never hear a peep about anything over there. Never.”
In fact, the raceway and slots facility has been nothing but a good corporate citizen, bringing business and visitors (4.7 million since it opened its doors in December 2003) and providing a boost to the local economy. And then there’s the money that pours directly into the township’s coffers: $15.1 million – less the 20 per cent it shares with Wellington County – and counting.
That money has been instrumental, filling reserve funds that were tapped for infrastructure projects as the federal and provincial governments rolled out stimulus funding over the last few years.
As with just about every other municipality, Centre Wellington has a huge infrastructure deficit, the result of aging roads, bridges, sewers and other physical assets. Much of the money has been applied to such projects, says Wood.
“We have a huge number of bridges in this community – 104, to be exact. Thirty of them are in need of repair or replacement, with eight of them already closed.”
Every bridge in need of work requires an average of $1.5 million, he explains. “That gobbles up a lot of capital funds.”
The infrastructure requirements far outstrip the slots revenues, but that money has allowed the township to do much more than it could have otherwise, Wood notes.
While the money from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has been a key part of its capital spending, the township does not take it for granted. Revenue from the slots is not simply folded into the operating budget. In fact, it’s not budgeted for at all. Instead, it goes into a reserve fund, and is never counted on, let alone spent, until it’s in hand. Money received this year, for instance, won’t be considered for anything until 2012 at the earliest.
The idea is not to become dependent on the money, seeing it only as a nice bonus.
Back here in Woolwich, administrators would love to be in a similar position. The township has managed its finances reasonably well, but that extra cash would have covered a host of recent capital projects without depleting reserves or the need for borrowing. There’s no going back, of course. The quarterly reminder is not about that. Nor is it an I-told-you-so. But it is an important lesson to keep in mind the next time a contentious issue arises at the council table.
In the meantime, Centre Wellington gets to enjoy the spoils of poor decisions made a decade ago. None of the problems. All of the profits.
“We appreciate your largesse,” laughs Wood. All the way to the bank.
Love-hate with unions is much more the latter
You can thank the labour movement, and unions in particular, for many of the employee benefits we enjoy today, including a five-day workweek, holidays, vacation time, benefits, pension, and safety measures. But that was then, and this is now, when unions have outlived their usefulness … at least according to conventional (aka barstool) wisdom.
There’s nothing like talk of a public sector strike to cause a jump in the collective blood pressure, as witnessed by the goings-on at Air Canada (though technically a private corporation) and, earlier this year, at Canada Post.
While we owe much to the early days of organized labour, today unions are often seen as a stumbling block – see the auto industry – or a drain on taxpayers – see any and all government employees.
Reading through some comments about the history of unions, I came across this posting (anonymous, of course): “Labor unions have no place in 21st century. High school dropout rednecks don’t deserve jobs that pay $25 an hour with health, dental and pensions.”
In essence, many of us are unhappy that people of less talent and worth – a completely subjective measure – are making more money than we are – a verifiable fact, as wage levels are published, sometimes with relish as in the case of Ontario’s sunshine list.
We’d happily see unions disbanded, wages slashed, benefits eliminated and employees let go. That goes double, triple or a hundred times in the case of government workers.
The problem is, we’ve already seen where this beggar-thy-neighbour philosophy leads: a race to the bottom fueled by corporations that have exported jobs to overseas hellholes such as China, outsourcing and other tricks in the globalization playbook.
Although the Occupy Wall Street and related movements are affixing the blame where it belongs, anti-union sentiment runs strong in many circles. As rates of unionism fall, especially in the private sector, expect more of us to forget the roots of the labour movement, fuelling even more antagonism.
There are two polarized views about unions and their impact on the economy. On the one hand, some argue the postwar boom was going to happen no matter what, and that increasingly greedy union demands eventually smothered the North American economy and forced manufacturing offshore. The other side sees unions leading to fair wages and a growing middle class, fueling the well-documented postwar expansion. As corporatism and right-wing politics attacked workers and the middle class, only then did the economy founder.
The unions can certainly shoulder some of the blame for the poor public image, however, says a University of Waterloo economics professor who specializes in labour issues.
Instead of benefitting those workers with the lowest wages and poorest working conditions, today unions focus on professionals who already have good jobs. That’s especially true in the public sector, says Mikal Skuterud.
“Historically they organized the lowest-paid people in the workplace, driving up wages.
Today, they’re organizing the people who are already relatively affluent.”
The likes of autoworkers, Air Canada employees and government workers enjoy higher-than-average wages, along with benefits and pensions increasingly rare in the private sector, which leaves other workers with grievances of their own whenever there’s news of labour unrest among those who should be satisfied with their lot.
“It’s kind of hard to be sympathetic,” says Skuterud. “It’s pretty clear why those [anti-union] sentiments have been developing.”
Massive job losses in the manufacturing sector, the largest victim of globalization, have taken a toll on private-sector unions in North America. From representing more than a third of workers in the U.S. during the 1950s, unions now include less than eight per cent of private sector employees today.
In Canada, the decline has been less pronounced, falling to about 30 per cent by 2005, from almost 40 per cent two decades earlier. Blue collar workers experienced the largest declines in union membership, consistent with falling numbers in the goods-producing and distribution sectors, Statistics Canada reports.
When it comes to unionization, age plays a big role. Younger workers, particularly those under 35, experienced more pronounced declines in union membership than older workers.
The movement has responded by concentrating on professional services, especially the public sector. That necessarily excludes the growing part of the service sector, the
so-called McJobs in the retail, childcare and hospitality industries.
These are the people who would most benefit from unionization, says Skuterud, but they’re precisely the ones being ignored.
That’s mostly a pragmatic issue, he adds, noting it’s very difficult and expensive to organize in those sectors.
In the heyday of unions, employers were large and workers were easy to organize in one drive. Today, those big manufacturers are fewer and farther between. Unions require a greater effort to approach multiple small workplaces. And the sectors that could use the most help tend to have higher turnovers, making it more difficult to organize.
It’s no surprise then, he notes, that Walmart has been a target in the retail industry: it’s big and has attracted a fair bit of attention for its employment practices. It has, however, been very successful at avoiding unionization, in some cases closing stores to avoid dealing with unions (see the case of Jonquière, Quebec, for instance).
So, what does the future hold for unions? Not much, despite stabilizing numbers since dramatic drops in the 1980s and ‘90s. Other factors – immigration, education polices, outsourcing, trade agreements – now have a much larger impact on the labour market than do unions.
“Almost certainly what has happened is that there’s been an internationalization in the labour market that has undermined unions.
“Looking to the horizon, nothing’s improving for the union movement.”
Development could be a central public space
One of the speakers addressing council at this week’s public planning meeting had it bang on: the mixed-use development proposed for Breslau is not something untested, it’s the norm in Europe. In fact, the dense mix of homes, shops, offices and other workplaces – precisely the goal of new provincial legislation – have evolved there over centuries.
Cities that began long before the automobile and which later adopted train travel that still dominates today are models for those who would see us become far less car-centric here.
That so-called complete community model is precisely what Thomasfield Homes’ Tom Krizsan is proposing for land immediately east of Breslau. There’s certainly a long way to go – the township wants to carry out a comprehensive land-use review of the area prior to making any decisions – but if there’s going to be development in Breslau, this is the way to go.
“This is a complete, compact, walkable community, that will also be home to Waterloo Region’s one and only suburban GO Transit station,” says Krizsan. “By the term complete, I mean a mixed-use community, one in which people can live, work, shop and play in one area; by compact, I mean that the mixed land uses are nearby and the densities represent efficient use of land, and by walkable I mean kilometres of nature trails and manmade trails, a pedestrian bridge over Hopewell Creek, and well connected street patterns giving people the opportunity to walk to work, walk to the GO station, walk to parks, cafes and restaurants and to walk to school.”
He certainly paints a compelling picture of a far more relaxed, human-scale lifestyle, even if we’re never likely to match the ambience of European communities.
The inclusion of the GO station anchors the Euro-style plans. Trains are a fundamental part of most cities on that side of the pond. And a connection to Toronto will do far more to take cars off the road than the region’s ersatz attempt in the form of light rail transit, though the hope is that it, too, will encourage similar development along the route between two malls.
While there are no plans for local transit connecting Breslau, the GO train would provide connections to Toronto and the GTA, a draw for businesses looking to set up shop in Waterloo Region.
“We’re looking for something where people can get off the GO train and walk to their high-tech jobs. Or they can live in the neighbourhood and walk to their high-tech job,” says Krizsan. “GO Transit is possibly the catalyst that’s driving this development. They (GO Transit) want to be in the center of things. They don’t want to be in the middle of some empty field.”
The region has already earmarked the Breslau area, including lands around the airport, and north Cambridge for employment lands, space being at a premium elsewhere. What happens in Breslau has significance far beyond the village itself and even Woolwich Township. But there is also one big local factor to consider: Breslau has no downtown to speak of. There’s little in the way of retail or services available.
And while the new community centre has become a focal point, public spaces don’t abound.
With this development, there’s a chance to create a central shopping and entertainment area coupled to something akin to a town square, a necessity as the village grows in leaps and bounds thanks to the thousand new homes in existing new subdivision, with more to come.
“Chances are this new community will serve as the town centre in the long run,” he says, noting residents are keen to see retail development. “There’s no place for grocery shopping or anything.”
If this project goes ahead, we can expect to see complementary development ensue. That would include plans by Smart Centres for retail stores on some 50 acres of land north of Victoria Street, just east of Ebycrest Road. The developers of power centres such as the Walmart-anchored development in St. Jacobs see great promise in the underserviced Breslau area. That land, too, will be part of the land-use study the township plans for the entire area, an attempt to come up with a comprehensive development strategy rather than dealing with applications in a piecemeal manner.
“There are a lot of things to consider for the Breslau area and the wider eastside lands,” Krizsan acknowledges. A veteran of many projects, he knows the wheels move slowly.
Still, he’s happy to see people are eager to adopt the kind of development he’s proposing. While the region currently sees much of that land as purely industrial in nature, the mixed-use proposal makes far more financial sense and is in keeping with increasingly stringent provincial regulations governing densities and live-work options.
“The public has bought into this complete community. Walk to school; walk to work; walk to shopping – everything nearby. It’s very, very attractive. All of these things make for a better lifestyle.”
Crowds gather because the system is broken
The protestors on Wall Street get it. Those planning similar “occupations” in other cities, including Toronto, get it. Those who dismiss the efforts, well, they miss the point completely.
The Occupy Wall Street movement, itself inspired by the Canadian group Adbusters, has spawned a series of similar protests around the globe. Organizers are looking to do the same in Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, where Bay Street is the target on Oct. 15.
You don’t have to look far to see comments dismissing these activities as the work of a bunch of misguided young people, union members and troublemaking activists. That’s certainly the response you’d expect from those within the targeted establishment group, but it extends to others who don’t see what unfettered capitalism, deregulation and concentration of wealth have done to undermine the fabric of society.
These are the same people who miss the point by focusing only on the vandalism carried out by a very few taking part in protests such as last year’s G20 summit in Toronto, or similar anti-globalization demonstrations all over the globe. Instead, they should see an increasing frustration with the inequities, as the political and economic system is skewed in favour of the few at the expense of the many. More and more of us see the intertwined political and financial systems working against the common good.
Simply put, there is a growing dissatisfaction with that most pervasive ism: corporate capitalism.
The kind of “anarchy” gaining vogue these days has less nothing to do with vandalism (though there is a certain measure of that) than it does with exposing how the current system is failing the majority.
The goal is essentially reinventing democracy. Well, really, restoring democracy to its original intent: widespread and decentralized decision-making in the public good rather than the top down, hierarchical structure prevalent today.
The Occupy Together movement that sprang to life over the last month is first and foremost about drawing attention to our worsening plight, encouraging 99 per cent of the population to take action against the greed and corruption of the other one per cent.
American actor Mark Ruffalo, in a piece that appeared this week in The Guardian, is indicative of the growing support for the occupation movement.
“It is a thing of beauty to see so many people in love with the ideal of democracy, so alive with its promise, so committed to its continuity in the face of crony capitalism and corporate rule. That should be celebrated. It should be respected and admired,” he writes.
“Their message is very clear and simple: get money out of the political process; strive for equality in taxation and equal rights for all regardless of race, gender, social status, sexual preference or age. We must stop poisoning our food, air and water for corporate greed. The people on Wall Street and in the banking industrial complex that destroyed our economy must be investigated and brought to justice under the law for what they have done by stealing people’s homes and savings.”
There are those who say these protests do nothing constructive. Why aren’t these people doing something positive? Where, they ask, are the solutions? The solutions, of course, are well known.
Prohibiting a good deal of the financial speculation that goes on daily would be a good start. Billionaire investor George Soros, who has spoken in support of the new movement, has long warned of the problems inherent in a capitalist system that has drifted far from the model that brought prosperity to the middle class.
The growth of the financial sector in a deregulated market has wrought havoc, he says, as noted in his book entitled The Crisis of Global Capitalism.
“The global economy is characterized not only by free trade in goods and services but even more by the free movement of capital. Interest rates, exchange rates, and stock prices in various countries are intimately interrelated, and global financial markets exert tremendous influence on economic conditions,” he writes, noting proponents of the status quo push us further away from a human-centric form of organizing to one dictated only by money.
“The functions that cannot and should not be governed purely by market forces include many of the most important things in human life, ranging from moral values to family relationships to aesthetic and intellectual achievements. Yet market fundamentalism is constantly attempting to extend its sway into these regions, in a form of ideological imperialism. According to market fundamentalism, all social activities and human interactions should be looked at as transactional, contract-based relationships and valued in terms of a single common denominator, money. Activities should be regulated, as far as possible, by nothing more intrusive than the invisible hand of profit-maximizing competition.”
By taking to the streets, those involved in the Occupy Together cause are drawing attention to just how far we’ve drifted from a political and economic systems that serve the public good. Those with wealth have power, and they use that power to buy government influence. The first step, then, is to get corporate money out of the political system, one that has become a revolving door between government insiders and lobbyists. A system that sees legislation drafted by corporations and PR firms tabled word for word by politicians.
Removing that unfair influence will take more than a few weeks of demonstrating, but by drawing attention to the problem, they hope other will join the call for a more democratic arrangement.
Long-term thinking absent
Not surprisingly, there’s been a decided lack of big-picture thinking on display in the provincial election, now just days away. We’ve been subjected to the usual sloganeering and sound bites. The Liberals and Conservatives, neck and neck, attempt to paint each other as the bogeyman.
Much of the debate, such as it is, centers on taxes and would-be economic fixes. The topics are the subject of short-term thinking, an affliction that’s permeated all facets of our society.
Adopting the business model that’s taken hold in the last three decades – today’s stock price, shareholder value and this quarter’s profits above all else – our political system has been shaped by constant lobbying from those who see society through only the lens of finances. It’s what’s made citizens no more than consumers.
Politicians, of course, have a built-in capacity for short-term thinking: the election cycle.
They make promises and float policies designed for immediate impact – spend for votes today. That’s problematic in and of itself, as it gives little regard to the idea that actions taken now will have impacts years, sometimes decades down the road.
Making matters much worse, however, is the equally troubling issue of taxation. The promises they make come with a price, but 30 years of neoconservative lobbying and influence have made taxes a four-letter word, meaning many politicians will try to win votes by promising to spend today while simultaneously pledging to cut taxes. That often means deficits, a situation that’s ideal for politicians intent only on re-election: the bill won’t come
due until later, when they’re off living comfortably on gold-plated government pensions.
That kind of thinking is what got us into today’s mess. That the very people who supported tax cuts to corporations even as government largesse filled their coffers are the ones leading the charge for austerity measures – not to themselves, of course – has been lost in the shuffle.
In the course of a couple of generations, we’ve undone centuries of efforts to create a society based on the common good. Much of the we’re-all-in-this-together ideals that came out of the Great Depression and the Second World War, for instance, has been replaced by relentless individualism.
Rapid urbanization whereby we no longer rely on family, friends and the broader community – indeed, we may not even know our neighbours – makes us forget just how interdependent we really are. A consumer-based society, pushed by marketing, focuses on individual pleasure. This comes at a cost to the collective ‘us,’ especially when discussing matters of financing the common good: taxes are seen as taking money away from ‘my’ enjoyment.
Increasingly, we’re encouraged to give rein to our natural tendency to look after number one. Couple that with an individual’s capacity to seek immediate gratification, and long-term planning for our collective future becomes even more difficult.
There’s nothing wrong with looking out for personal interests, but we’re in danger of forgetting that most of the middle-class gains of the postwar years stem from socially-driven ideas. In purely economic terms, the collective efforts are the rising tide that lifted all boats – some more so than others, certainly. Today, however, there’s an element that seems hell-bent on undoing precisely the conditions that allowed for the great prosperity now under attack.
Thanks to decades of concerted effort, many people have bought into a set of diminished expectations about the role of government and, more troublingly, the possibilities of shaping a better society. We’ve had democracy reduced to the occasional trip to the polls. We’ve seen government reduced to managerial functions, where debate is constrained to a few well-worn topics. We’ve seen the economy reduced to fiscal policy – deregulation’s the order of the day as the financial services industry sets the agenda. We’ve seen citizenship dumbed down to passive observation, at best.
Fewer of us bother to vote, let alone take an interest in elections. Far fewer still look past the slogans and latest complaints. But if we’re going to have a better society we need to think about the future 10, 20, 50 and 100 years down the line. The road we’ve been on for the last three decades, driven by the neoconservative corporate agenda, has diminished our quality of life. We have to look past dubious vote-buying programs, immediate tax cuts and partisanship.
Long-term thinking is not just for issues such as climate change, though we’re not prepared to tackle even that issue, despite the consequences. No, it’s all about living for today. But long-term planning is crucial for a host of issues that clearly part of today’s political reality, encompassing all levels: long-term resource consumption, human migration, transportation demands, retirement and pensions and the like. Our failure to do so has led to rampant consumerism, environmental crises, unchecked immigration, urban sprawl, financial speculation and a host of other ills that plague our economic, political and social systems.
It’s those issues we should be mindful of in making a decision Oct. 6, even if no one is talking about them out on the hustings.
Raising the spectre of class warfare
In opposing President Barack Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to help dig the U.S. out of its self-made financial hole, opponents such as Republican House Speaker John Boehner invoked the issue of class warfare. They call it a populist move, making the wealthy and corporations the target of failing middle-class and growing underclass.
Opponents also vow to quash the $1.5-trillion plan in Congress. But Democratic supporters, who’ve been particularly critical of Obama’s lack of progress and what they see as continued compromises, are cheering his tougher stance.
What the U.S. – and indeed much of the West, including Canada – needs is more class warfare. Oh, not in the sense of the riots we’ve seen in Greece, Britain and France, for instance, but in the sense outlined by noted American historian Howard Zinn, who argued his country’s two major parties are simply different sides of the same coin, neither interested in the welfare of average citizens.
“Whether Democrats or Republicans are in power –and we have a lot of historical experience that tells us this – corporate power will dominate the country, the military-industrial establishment will be in power, the war against the poor will continue, and we will need a movement, a great national movement, to oppose that.”
That’s precisely what’s missing from political debate, here as assuredly as in the U.S. Today, the framework is based on austerity measures: how much to cut from social spending in order to balance the budget. But that’s really just a distraction from the bigger issue, namely the framework of our civil society. That has more to do with regulatory matters than it does with particular spending choices.
In short, it’s about who benefits from the political and economic systems we’ve created – and let’s be clear: they are manmade, not pre-ordained. For much of the postwar era, it was a large segment of the population. For more than 30 years, however, the number of beneficiaries has grown smaller, increasingly in favour of the wealthy and corporate classes. Everybody continues to pay, but fewer and fewer profit.
Conservative governments, funded by those who’ve seen the most benefits, have certainly led the charge against the types of advances that came out of the Depression/Second World War experience, including regulations governing minimum wages, working conditions, the environment, corporate ownership and financial services, to name a few. But they’ve been joined by their major opponents here (Liberals), in the U.S. (Democrats) and the UK (Labour) as money influences the debate.
Decision after decision that has been harmful to the middle class has been couched in just the opposite terms – supporters knowing full well you can’t sell policies by saying a handful will make out like bandits at everyone else’s expense. From financial deregulation (the cause of the meltdown from which we’re still “recovering”) to free trade, from outsourcing to corporate welfare, we’re told the changes will make us all better off. Or, if that doesn’t work, we’re told the sky will fall if we don’t go along with the prescribed course of action. For the latter, look no farther than the billions of dollars funnelled into corporate hands in the form of bailouts following the 2008 collapse, often paid to those responsible for the crisis in the first place. Large sums of that cash were paid out in bonuses, with banks and investment companies quickly returning to profitability while taxpayers are on the hook for the money, all the while suffering from unemployment and underemployment.
The central myth revolves around the free market, which typically boils down to privatizing profits and socializing losses, witnessed time and time again.
“Be wary when you hear about the glories of the market system. The market system is what we’ve had.
Let the market decide, they say. The government mustn’t give people free health care; let the market decide,” Zinn wrote in an article in May 2009, less than a year before he died at age 87.
“Which is what the market has been doing—and that’s why we have 48 million people without health care. The market has decided that. Leave things to the market, and there are two million people homeless. Leave things to the market, and there are millions and millions of people who can’t pay their rent. Leave things to the market, and there are 35 million people who go hungry.
“You can’t leave it to the market. If you’re facing an economic crisis like we’re facing now, you can’t do what was done in the past. You can’t pour money into the upper levels of the country – and into the banks and corporations – and hope that it somehow trickles down.”
Trickle-down economics, of course, is what we’ve been living with for more than three decades. It’s founded on the belief that what’s good for the wealthiest classes is good for everyone. Bank profits are at an all-time high, financial services are raking in billions and corporations have rebounded nicely.
Unemployment remains high in much of the West, personal debt levels soar and the standard of living falls. But it’s the latter group that gets to pay for the austerity measures we’re told we need in order to pay for the profits of the former.
As the recent riots have shown, we either deal with the class struggle in the manner of FDR through Lester Pearson, or we deal with it on the streets.
Rare is the politician who looks out for you
Our wellbeing so connected to the health of the U.S. economy, it’s hard not to watch with trepidation the increasingly dysfunctional political situation there.
Long corrupted by corporate interests, the convoluted system of governance has proven completely incapable of doing what’s right for average Americans, opting instead to prop up the discredited financial services industry, trickle-down-economic theory and military-industrial complex.
Despite all his early rhetoric about hope and change, President Barack Obama has been unable to muster little of the former and almost none of the latter. The status quo remains: the gap between rich and poor widens, unemployment climbs, poverty levels soar, and social services such as health care grow scarcer.
In the bought-and-sold system, there is one lone voice of reason: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. A multi-term independent with links to the Democrats, Sanders isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.
“We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed, but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country,” he says of the economic squabbles in Congress. “The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”
A former mayor of Burlington, Vt. – perhaps his proximity to the Canadian border aided him on the path to becoming a self-styled democratic socialist – Sanders represented his state in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 2007 before being elected to the Senate. He has faced few serious challenges in all that time, typically winning handily, a clear indication the electorate supports his positions.
In the recent battle over debt ceilings and the federal budget, he continued to point out that hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare have gone untouched even as Tea Party-fueled cuts to social programs hurt people and the economy.
Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 per cent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. Spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families, he argues.
This week, he went on the offensive over a new report showing massive jumps in the U.S. poverty rate.
A U.S. Census Bureau report released this week found that more than 46 million Americans, about one in six, lived below the poverty line in 2010. The census report also said that about 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, a number that has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.
The United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. While 21.6 per cent of American children live in poverty, the rate is 3.7 per cent in Denmark, 5.3 per cent in Finland, 6.7 per cent in Iceland, 8.3 per cent in Germany, 9.3 per cent in France.
“I suppose we can take some comfort in that our numbers are not quite as bad as Turkey (23.5 per cent); Chile (24 per cent); and Mexico (25.8 per cent),” Sanders says.
At a time of medical breakthroughs in treatments for cancer and other terrible diseases, the reality is that life expectancy for low-income women has declined over the past 20 years in 313 counties in the United States. Those in the top 20 per cent of American incomes live, on average, at least 6.5 years longer than those in the lowest income group.
“I recite these facts because I believe that as bad as the current situation is with regard to poverty, it will likely get worse in the immediate future,” he notes. “As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street we are now in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Millions of workers have lost their jobs and have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Poverty is increasing.”
Why can’t more politicians be this direct? Why aren’t more of them standing up for what benefits average citizens?
Of course, many Americans – including all those Tea Party supporters – don’t recognize the reason for their decline. Partisan reasoning has Americans believing Republicans are all about smaller government and fiscal responsibility, when just the opposite is true. Substitute Canadians and Conservatives here and you can see we’re in the same boat, albeit without some of the worst fundamentalist dogma coming out of the States.
If voters are so polarized that they can’t see the obvious – they’ve truly drunk deeply of the kool-aid – then Americans can never have a rationale debate about how to move forward.
Of course, that assumes real change is actually a possibility. Keeping the public occupied with mindless partisanship, petty bickering and, above all, pop-culture distractions works out just fine for those who are happy with the status quo: the real power elites who have no interest in changing a good thing.
As Sanders points, it’s the average person who’s footing the bill for bailing out the rich corporations. And many of those taxpayers are oblivious to the facts, which is true on this side of the border as well.
