Conservatives place a lot of emphasis in this election on keeping taxes low.  They argue that corporate taxes must be kept down if we are to continue our economic recovery (there estimation of our current economic state, not mine) and that Canadians should keep more of their hard earned money in their own pockets rather than give it to governments to spend for them.  It sounds so good.  If one is to believe the banter on radio call-in shows Canadians are lapping it up.  But is it true?

If assessed lower taxes do corporations create more jobs or just accumulate more wealth?  The first rule of corporate economics is that you do not use your own money for investment, you always borrow.  Profits are passed to corporate executives and shareholders.  Plant expansion, R & D, etc. (i.e. the stuff that creates jobs) is always financed with borrowed money.  Therefore the quick answer to whether the Tory corporate tax cuts will create jobs is no.

Will corporations flee to countries with lower tax rates?  If a corporation relocates to Mexico or to some other developing country is the tax rate the difference?  If it were then all corporations would flock to whichever country has the lowest taxes today.  Corporations would need to be constantly relocating until finally all states offered them full tax exclusion.  Our current corporate tax rate is half that of our southern neighbour.  Shouldn’t corporations should be flocking across the border as we speak.  And if corporate taxes existed nowhere, what then would tilt the scale to country A or country B?  The scenario is of course absurd.  Tax rates are a part of the equation but they are not the whole story.  Labour exploitation and increasingly weak or nonexistent environmental protection are more powerful incentives for at least manufacturing operations.

Okay, corporations are huge nasty bloodsuckers and no they probably don’t deserve a tax break but you and I do.  Right?  Why shouldn’t we be able to keep more of our paychecks.  Sometimes it seems that Ottawa and the provinces have their hands so deep in our pockets it may soon cross the line into something obscene.  If the government cut taxes I would have more money to spend.  Right?  Wrong!  If the government continues to cut taxes for you and I and the corporations you will have far less money to spend.

We pay taxes to the government for goods and services in return.  The Conservative plan is that we should pay less to the government for fewer services.  We cannot have it all.  The goods and services provided by the government cost money.  If government revenue declines then something has to go.  Health care?  Education?  Pensions?  What will it be?  The Conservative’s know this but say we can then purchase these services ourselves with the money we are no longer paying in taxes.  What they don’t tell you is that you will be paying more.  It is obvious if you just stop and think about it, which explains the Conservative gutting of education at both the provincial and federal level.  Wouldn’t want anybody out there with the capacity to think now would we.  I should maybe mention here that the Liberals are really Tories in red ties and have contributed almost equally to this overall misconception.  They may have less disdain for your intelligence than the Conservative party but they still work for corporate Canada, not you or I.

Let’s look at a practical metaphor.  I have to purchase a new toilet for my downstairs bathroom this year.  When I go to a plumbing supply store to buy one toilet I am going to pay full retail price.  I might get a small discount from one or another seller to entice me to purchase at his establishment rather than the one down the street.  But because I am only purchasing one unit the seller is limited in how much he can discount and still make a profit.  Profit is absolutely necessary for the seller to earn a living.  However, if one hundred of us got together because we all need a new toilet for our homes the seller’s latitude on price increases.  For a purchase of 100 units at the same time the discount can be much larger and the seller can still earn a living.  Everybody is happy.  As the number of purchasers increases, the price per unit can decrease.  This is basic economics.

Conservative policy wants us to each purchase what we need individually rather than collectively.  They say this is a saving.  In the case of policies like child care they actually tell us that this will lead to economic efficiencies.  What non sense.  Are the Conservatives just too simple to understand this basic principle of economics, the principle of economies of scale.  The Conservative party markets itself as the party of good business sense, the party of fiscal responsibility.  Either they are lying about this and they really are the party of business ineptitude or they are lying to the Canadian people that they are trying to save them money or as they put it keep more of your money in your pocket.  The opposite is the real truth.  Tory tax cuts will cut a deep swathe through not just your pockets but your savings and equity.

Political parties do not do things without reason and contrary to some popular opinion seldom do things out of sheer stupidity.  The Conservative party is not the party that will keep more of your hard earned money in your pocket.  Rather it is the party that will put more of your hard earned money into the pockets of their corporate friends.  Not only will corporations contribute less to the society and infrastructure upon which their profits depend but will receive a windfall in the extra profit from each of us lonely independent actors paying more for those services necessary to sustain our quality of life.  It is a win-win for corporations and a lose-lose for you.  Actually in recent years it has been a win-win-win for corporations — lower taxes, higher profits and a great big present of much of the money you gave to the government to buy services which they then never fully supplied because they diverted that money to their buddies on Bay Street.

Barak Obama’s health care plan, as it has thus unfolded, should be a clear and final answer to all those who believed this young man would somehow change politics and create a more inclusive, just and caring society.  The pinheads who screamed that socialism would reign and undermine the American way (greed, cynical self-interest, and lack of community) can at last rest comfortably in the certainty that President Obama is different in complexion only from his predecessors.  It is clear that his campaign document, Blueprint for Change, would have been more aptly named, Blueprint for the Appearance of Change. 

Obama still has to announce many of the details of the plan but he has rejected categorically any form of single-payer public system.  His reason:  it would be too expensive given the current state of the economy.  What a crock.  Canadian labour costs have been and remain lower than American in great part because we have a single-payer public health care system  Current closing and downsizing of Canadian automotive plants is due to political considerations not economics.  American political debate would sound like a cacophony of scorched cats if GM were to close American plants and leave all the Canadian plants open.  It would make the company far more competitive if that were the only criteria for restructuring.  So Obama’s proclamation that cost factors prevent him from creating a health care system that would truly address the current crisis in medicine is just a lie.  A stronger argument can be made that the opposite is true.  The United States cannot afford not to create a single-payer health care system given the current state of the global economy if it wishes to remain competitive. 

Surrounded by the executives of the major American health insurance corporations, Obama painted himself as a man of integrity and said he would fix health care regardless of the state of the economy.  As I have said here before, Barack Obama is a master of image.  He spoke of a consensus between the White House and the insurance companies to do what was necessary to see that all Americans would have access to affordable health coverage generously provided by that bastion of social conscience, the health insurance industry.  The question arises what if someone still cannot afford the premiums set by these socially conscious corporations?  First you will have to prove you can’t afford it and if the government decides you could by oh I don’t know living in your car instead of paying rent or whatever, then the talk is that a fine should be imposed.  Only in the United States would anyone think that insurance at gunpoint would be an appropriate solution to assure all citizens have health insurance.  Obviously this policy is not in the interests of uninsured Americans so why even think of it.  Wait a minute.  It was conceived in conjunction with the major insurance companies.  You don’t think that the president and these leaders of American finance would scratch each other’s back and come up with a solution that benefits themselves do you?  Gee, the insurance industry gets to extort millions in profits from a new source, those who can’t afford medical insurance, and the government led by Barak ‘the enforcer’ Obama sees that they cough up the dough or else.  And Barack’s pay-off, I suspect a tidy little kickback to his re-election campaign.  Might as well just call him President Barack ‘Milhous’ Obama and the corporate executives B. B. Rebozo clones.  It is interesting on this note to

Save the cost of health care premiums and rent at the same time. Suicide: the most cost effective option under the Obama Plan.

mention that a criticism of Obama’s current nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayer, is her previous assertion that all campaign contributions are in reality bribes.  She was simply stating the obvious.  A person supports a candidate because she expects him to look after her interests and in a self-serving society like the United States that means the individual’s selfish interests not her communal interest.  A bell should have gone off back in the campaign when Obama rejected public campaign financing.  Guess we know why now.  (Actually the bell did go off but the American public was so caught up in the election of the first Black president and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream they refused to listen to those voices.  I guess that they just forgot that King’s dream was a society where a man would be judged by the content of his character rather than the colour of his skin.)

I chose to pay the rent. Now I have a permanent home.

Health care is a human right.  Money was quickly found to fight an illegal war of aggression in Iraq.  Obama while downsizing that war is ratcheting up another unwinnable war in Afghanistan and in the process propping up a government rife with war criminals.  (While Obama continually tries to compare himself to Kennedy and Roosevelt, his behaviour increasingly resembles Nixon.  Nixon while taking credit for troop reductions in Vietnam failed to inform the public that they were just secretly being deployed to Cambodia which led finally to the rise of Pol Pot and the systematic murder of millions.  Now that’s the American way in action.)  There is no question of cost for these ill-conceived adventures.   They are being fought in the name of security while they have only succeeded in making Americans less secure and making the entire world more dangerous, and more in danger.  A secure state is one that minimizes the possibility that any of its citizens will die needlessly or preventably.  Health care then is a security issue.  Not just programs to deal with potential pandemics but prompt, quality medical assistance to every citizens who needs it when they need it.  Paying the rent or saving your life should not be a choice for a citizen of any civilized country.  Today in the United States it is.  Therefore the United States in NOT a civilized country.  It is a barbaric despotism where the wealthy and powerful spend their time cheating the weak and vulnerable.  And the ‘President of Change and Hope,’ Barack Obama has revealed his true self as the ‘President of No Change and No Hope.’

Unemployment is rising as our economy swirls the bowl and the Harper government searches for ways to prevent Canadians from accessing Employment Insurance.  I will refrain from making the usual jokes about that idiotic name as it is just too easy and beneath me.  The Liberals under Michael Ignatieff want the government to expand eligibility but Mikey forgets that it was then Liberal finance minister Paul ‘the knife’ Martin that had originally constricted eligibility back in the 1990s.  After Martin had renamed the program from the more accurate Unemployment Insurance two thirds of those previously eligible were no longer so.  This is how the great Paul Martin had balanced the federal budget and created surpluses, by downloading federal costs to the provinces.  Those formerly eligible for federal Unemployment Insurance were dumped onto provincial welfare programs.  The provinces taking the lesson in stride promptly downloaded large segments of their responsibilities onto the municipalities who then cut corners in such things as water testing and treatment and we got the Walkerton fiasco. 

But back to unemployment and the current financial situation.  Disasters like the current crisis should be learning tools.  They are opportunities to rethink a number of previous ideas and practices, from how we regulate financial markets to how we respond to citizens in crisis.  On the latter our system of assistance at all levels needs to be reviewed.  Our social safety net developed ad hoc, various programs appearing at various times as needs arose or ideas presented themselves.  It is time now to systematize their delivery. 

Every Canadian political party has at one time or another toyed with the concept of a guaranteed annual income.  The Conservative Party preferred to call it negative income taxing.  But all parties have considered this basic idea.   There are a number of draw backs which prevented implementation of the policy; start-up costs, bureaucratic reorganization and federal provincial relations.

Under a guaranteed annual income scheme the government would sent every citizen a flat monthly stipend.  Whatever a citizen earned over that would be taxable.  Therefore those who are not in need of the money would have it taxed back.  Our current Old Age Security program works in a similar way.  It is universal.  Those Canadians of wealth declare it as income and end up paying it all back to the government.  A guaranteed annual income would work differently in that it would not be taxable.  Only income earned over that amount would be taxed.  But there would be no personal deductions on your income tax including dependency deductions (because your dependents would be receiving their own guaranteed income).  Not only would personal income tax deductions disappear so would virtually every welfare program now in existence.  Old Age Security (mentioned above), provincial old age supplements where they exist, employment insurance (no need to worry about eligibility arguments), general welfare, disability pensions, family allowance, child tax benefit and the list goes on which shows the waste involved in the current delivery of our social safety net.  Not only would these be replaced by the guaranteed annual income but their bureaucracies would become redundant thus saving millions off the civil service payroll. 

The first year of a guaranteed annual income would be costly.  After the first year though the program would begin to pay back in savings more than it cost initially.  Within a few years governments would have the luxury of lowering taxes or investing the surpluses created.  Of course this idea of short term pain for long term gain would reverse the current philosophy of all Western governments who advocate long term pain for short term gain.  There would need to be a transition plan as the size of the civil service shrank substantially but this problem is not insurmountable.  One of the benefits of a guaranteed annual income is the stability it provides to the economy.  A secure and stable economy would create sustainable growth which would over time absorb the loss in government jobs.  Further, the ability to rely on a base income would encourage individuals to pursue ideas they might now forego for fear that basic family needs could not be met during start-up periods.  This also counters the argument that such a scheme would sap people’s initiative.  That criticism is based on the cynical myth that people only work because they have to.  Like all half-truths this myth has persisted.  The full truth is that people only work at jobs they hate and where they are abused because they have to.   Employers would certainly have to behave better than they currently do to keep valued employees.  A huge stumbling block here in Canada is the idiocy of our federal-provincial relationship.  But once the Canadian public was properly educated in what a guaranteed annual income would mean for them and the country, pity the ignorant government who tried to screw it up.  They might well face the kind of political assassination that happened to the Progressive Conservatives back in 1993.  The Canadian electorate is a fickle lot so piss them off at your peril. 

In the end a guaranteed annual income is the logical solution to our income supplement programs.  Citizens in most modern democracies expect their governments to play a supportive role in their lives.  Therefore, a guaranteed annual income is rational, cost effective, efficient and just plain the right thing to do.

How many of us could afford to have our mortgage payment triple overnight?  I couldn’t and I doubt there are many out there that could.  Now with unemployment rising rapidly more and more families will end up watching their possessions parade out of repossessed homes toward an uncertain future.  Billions, trillions have been pumped into the banks and yet no one stopped them from ripping the life out from under the very people who had provided that money.  They are toxic assets now, not people, not families. 

In recent days a housing project a bank seized from a developer that went under was torn down in California.  Bank officials determined demolition would be cheaper than repairing the houses and completing construction.  Twenty houses, homes, were torn down at this particular development and workers on site reported they had a similar demolition order for another development not far away.  Squatters had moved in and vandals had caused damage.   Much of the vandalism, beyond the usual obscene words spray painted on the walls, was theft of fixtures and infrastructure carefully removed by tools.  Sounds to me like someone was cutting a few costs on their home renovations.  Probably some of the very same sanctimonious individuals mentioned above.  The squatters on the other hand may well have included some of the very people this same bank had ripped from the comfort and security of their own living rooms and thrust onto the street.  Now they became squatters and vandals, the mainstream media purposely or ignorantly making them one and the same in the minds of a gullible public.  Sleeping tonight made easier thanks to a propaganda industry dehumanizing them. 

People ask me what I have against a capitalist system.  Well open your eyes.  This is capitalism at work.  The capitalist market is amoral (I would argue immoral).  The bank has no responsibility to care what happens to people.  Bank executives don’t have to answer for the consequences of their acts.  If people suffer it is not their problem and government should not stick its big nose in, that would just mess things up.  Government doesn’t know what they are doing;  the financial geniuses of Wall Street do.   Yeah right!  Try selling that argument to anybody today.  That is why the capitalist system doesn’t work.  It argues that society should be run without any moral oversight.  The law of the jungle; survival of the fitest; all the rest of that crap.  How hypocritical.  Capitalists want society to be dog eat dog until something starts nibbling on their flanks.  Then it is ‘call in our buddies the local, state or federal authorities to pound these nuisances back into the muck they are.’ 

Okay so who brought the vaseline?

The squatters at that development needed a home and they found one.  That is dog eat dog.  They should have been allowed to defend it.  After all a man’s home is his castle and as soon as they laid down amongst their meagre possessions those houses became their homes.   Nothing is more beautiful than when an inert mass of wood and metal begins to breathe with the soul of a home.  Our so-called government authorities are truly agents of the monied classes.  Rather than stand aside and do what the capitalists argue they want from government, let the private sector function, they stick their big noses in, not to tell the bankers that they need to be responsible citizens, but to make sure the vulnerable can’t stand up for themselves. 

Poverty is not the cause of social turmoil as the common myth would lead us to believe.  Rather, disparity is the culprit.  People generally are accepting of poor circumstances as long as they feel the pain is felt universally.  When Marx and Engels talked about the withering away of the state this is what they had in mind.  In a society where wealth is concentrated in a few hands it is necessary to maintain a highly coercive state apparatus.  If however wealth and economic power is widely distributed very little coercion is necessary to maintain a calm and secure society. 

It is interesting to note in current times that those who most argue for a minimalist state are those who also argue for greater state coercive power.  The New Right does not want the state to be involved in our lives except to keep THOSE people under control and we all know who we are.  When they talk of a minimalist state they are referring to the Hobbesian Grand Watchman.  Government should keep us secure.  Good idea on the surface.  But justice would keep us even more secure without having heavily armed paramilitaries running our streets with guns and tasers (see past articles on RCMP love of tasers). 

The slogan so commonly chanted at rallies and marches, No Justice - No Peace, is not a threat but a statement of fact.  In an unjust society motivation to violence is never far away. Where justice prevails only those few who suffer from anti-social disorders would create a problem diminishing the need for state coercive power.  We could save young people entering the police force the psychological damage done them by a training regimen that makes them the social problem they are today.  Saving not only them but their families and friends as well.  Current police personnel could be put into rehabilitation facilities where mental health experts can attempt to salvage something human in them.  Okay.  Okay.  I digress.  My ranting aside my point remains valid.  Where people feel they are treated justly, they are less motivated to destabilize the society by violence. Less violence; less need for coercion.  Simple.

As factory workers and the service workers who rely on their commerce lose their homes, anger is bound to rise.  It is not that we think that everyone should be paid exactly the same or live exactly the same lifestyles.  Equality is not sameness.  But there should be some relationship between what someone can legitimately expect to receive from society and what they contribute to the society.  Here in Canada we have a game called hockey.  It is a fun game and I have fond memories of playing it myself in a vacant lot or on the roadway.  But today grown men are paid millions of dollars to chase a frozen rubber disc around an ice pad.  Is there any connection between contribution and recompense here?  America has its equivalent baseball and football.  Today, men (mostly anyway) are receiving multi-million dollar thank yous for driving companies into the ground.   Only bad management and arrogance can explain General Motors plunge from number one to bankruptcy in fifty years.  Especially since the number of cars sold today is exponentially higher than the number sold then.  Apparently they not only did not gain any of the increase but lost the customers they had.  Quality management there, eh?  With grown men playing for millions while children scavenge to survive; with incompetence rewarded by the very people it destroyed; how can anyone expect peace and calm? 

For a practical example of a peaceful yet poor society one only need look at the Tanzania of Julius Nyerere.  Nyerere retired from office and returned to live in the village in which he had been born.  There was no coup or assassination attempts.  Tanzania is a very poor country and Nyerere died as poor as any other citizen.  Justice works.  But in North America we see increasing calls for more police, tougher sentencing, greater restrictions of citizen rights.  The Patriot Act and the anti-terrorism laws in Canada are just the tip of the iceberg.  (One thing I will give Americans, they always have neat names for their laws ).  Terrorism is a convenient excuse to accelerate a process that has been going on for decades.  Particularly since the expansion of the franchise to all formerly discriminated groups, we have seen a steady gutting of the political sphere and an aggressive campaign for control by economic players.  Can’t have THOSE people thinking they can determine the course of their own lives.  If you go back and watch the scene in the film Remains of the Day where Anthony Hopkins character is being ridiculed by the participants of the pro-Nazi meeting you will witness an example of the attitudes of any of our current business leaders.  The very concept of democracy is ridiculed. 

And there is the problem.  Justice means sacrifice.  Justice requires honour and humanity.  Police are cheaper.  So lock your doors tonight but don’t feel all that secure.  Remember the words of Phil Ochs’ song ‘Outside a Small Circle of Friends:’

Living in the ghetto with the coloured and the poor

The rats have joined the babies who are living on the floor

Now wouldn’t it be a riot if they really blew their tops

But they got too much already and besides we got the cops

For now anyway, for now.

Violence.  Civil disorder.  Unrest.  Words that seem to be floating around a lot these days.  At the ‘water cooler’ the conversation is on connecting the current spate of shootings in the U. S. to the economic downturn.  Too early to really be conclusive on that one yet.  We know from past experiences that there can be a relationship between violence and economic upheaval.  The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a rise in criminal activity and gangsterism in the United States.  In Europe it led to political upheaval, revolutions and civil wars.  When people are frustrated, insecure and desperate they tend to lash out.  The difference between the two variants of western culture, Europe and North America is in the focus.  At least in that one tends to be more focused and communal and the other unfocused and individual.  If we accept the idea that the current tragedies in the United States are connected somehow to the economic crisis then the pattern would appear to be repeating itself.   

It is fascinating to me that in a country born of revolution like the United States that another revolution appears to be an impossibility.  It is as if the first revolution killed (no pun intended) any possibility of another.  But then if we examine the so called American Revolution it was not a revolution at all but a simple rebellion.  Its aftermath did not usher in a new political culture but rather a variant of the previous one with some of the players and their insignia changed.  So perhaps I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am.  In America the violent reaction to economic conditions is more a psychological release of pent up frustrations.  It remains strongly individualistic.  Channeled into a political movement such energy would exert great power.  Enough power to fuel a revolution and then some.  Instead it explodes into meaningless tragedy.  The shot is fired not at the gates of the Bastille but at the hearts of the innocent.  The result is only sorrow for the victims and anger at a gunman who himself is a victim of a social order bent on convincing its people that not only are they alone and isolated but that that is a good thing, the natural order. 

If only that energy could only be directed against the U. S. Treasury and their accomplices in Congress, the White House and on Wall Street.  We would truly see a new day in America as so often promised.  Instead if the pattern persists all we will see is more funerals.

The G20 fiddled as London burned with passion.  People from all over descended on the city.  Once more unto the breach Shakespeare said and so they came.  CNN, that bastion of unbiased and insightful news, giggled at the foolish simpletons who clashed with police commenting that the protests would have no effect except perhaps on Gordon Brown, the host.  His public image moving forward in his career might be tarnished.  Oh how sad.  Well let the CNN info-tainers chuckle away.  The result is just to put these passionate people in some pretty fine company.  Thomas Payne, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King.  All of these icons of past days were laughed at, their ideas considered absurd.  Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win!”  So I guess those of us who believe there is something to shout to or at our leaders have reached the second stage.  We are making progress .   And from recent events stage three seems to be warming up in the bull pen. 

Inside the imps of imperialism plotted their next move.  With illusion worthy of the great Harry Houdini they declared they had pulled a diamond out of the dung.  With a trillion dollars to developing economies and a vague promise of greater regulation they announced that they would avert a depression.  Translation:  they can keep the system they so love, which benefits they and their friends greatly.  By so doing they also avert what might be the greatest political upheavals since the Great Depression and the revolutions of 1848.  At least they hope they will.  The trillion dollars is to be dispensed through the IMF and the other usual suspects.  It will come with a heavy dose of liberal laissez-faire political doctrine as is the wont of these agencies of the imperial powers.  These institutions all operate on weighted voting so that the major economic powers can control the show.  Bye-Bye any concept of justice.  States will be told to reduce spending in areas such as education, health care and social services.  These things are all under attack in our own societies so it is necessary to keep THOSE people even worse off. 

Outside people cried for real change.  Shouted to have their voices heard.  The were corraled into small areas by police, a procedure called kettling.  They were not allowed to leave the area.  Parents who had to pick up their children at school were refused.  And by extension, frightened children waited, many probably terrified when parents who were always on time were hours late.  But the British courts had approved the practice.  There were no washrooms.  People were forced to find privacy where they could.  Ostensibly this was done to prevent property damage.  After all property is far more important in our society than people.  But even this formal response to the media, when questioned, was a lie.  Each individual in each area had to submit to be photographed and give particulars before they could leave at end of day.  This violates British law but as we know in Canada the “Law” is above the law. 

So why go through this indignity.  Millions of others sat at home and did nothing, content that their leaders would look after them.  It is simple.  Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young put it in a song called Ohio, “How can you run when you know?”  The people in the streets of London knew and they could find their way there, their voices trumpeting the collapse of the walls of the Bank of England.  Others know and they write their politicians.  Others write letters to editors or blogs or let their friends know.  None of us can change the world by ourselves.  But if we all do our part.  Whatever it is.  The world will change and it must.

Photos retrieved from Guardian UK online (see link in sidebar under News).

Here’s something you are not going to hear everyday.  I agree with the group of Right Wing analysts who are arguing that this downturn in the economy is natural and a normal part of the capitalist economic system.  They are absolutely right if you will pardon the pun.  Capitalism is a cyclical system.  There must be booms and therefore there must be busts.  So Recessions / Depressions are just part of the cycle.  How deep this one will be is still any one’s guess.  The experts range in opinion from a recovery early next year to a total economic collapse by mid 2010.  Who is right only time will tell.  But this is not the first recession or depression the world has experienced and it will not be the last as long as we maintain a capitalist system. 

I also agree with the Right Wing pundits that the current stimulus packages are misguided.  I am being kinder here than they tend to be but then don’t expect me  to start agreeing with them whole-heartedly.  I haven’t gone off my nut yet.  The Right is arguing that the stimulus is wrong because it is communism which they equate with state / government ownership.  Communism does not necessarily mean state ownership but I will leave aside correcting this delusion of theirs as I don’t think they are interested.  Besides, it would involve thinking and their is only so much you can ask of the pin-headed Right.  But the stimulus is misguided for two basic reasons.  First it may not work.  If it doesn’t, can the taxpayer come up with another trillion or so dollars next year when the current funds run out?  The answer is probably not without seriously affecting our quality of life and will we be in a mood to ante up more money after the stories of lavish parties and bonuses that have surrounded this first effort?  At the very least it will be a hard political sell.  So the current solution has not left us many options in the event of failure.  It’s an all or nothing venture and the public is not prepared for the nothing.  The second reason that the stimulus package is misguided is its intent.  It is intended to fix the current system and that is where it loses me.  As I said above, we can expect these down cycles, some to the point of creating serious economic and social hardship, as long as we have a capitalist system.  Maybe it is time we thought about something different. 

Capitalism is the most dynamic economic system mankind has ever devised.  And we did devise it.  Capitalism is not nature as some like to present it.  Capitalism can create more wealth in a society faster than any other economic system we currently know of.  However it also creates great inequality which leads to social tension and requires a more coercive state.  We can keep putting band aids on the old girl but the fundamental problems will not change.  Karl Marx was absolutely correct (I would never say he was right as that would be blaspheming against my faith) when he wrote that capitalism contains its own gravediggers.  EVERY time capitalism has been allowed free reign to operate, unregulated and unchecked, it has collapsed upon itself.  Compare the heady days of the 1920s to the equally heady days of the 1990s and beyond and you will see many similarities.  We know what happened in 1929.  That is history.  We do not know yet whether it is repeating itself now but even if this recession does not pan out into a full depression it is already as, or more, severe than any other recession since the Great Depression.  Not to blow my own horn but I have been expecting this big implosion since the 1980s when the move to laissez-faire first rolled into full swing.  Anyone with a basic understanding of history could have predicted the current situation.  When it would happen was always a mystery but that it would happen was never in question. 

The new question becomes, now that we are in a major bust cycle, what do we do about it?  Another band aid?  Or transplant surgery?  It is a tough question.  So let me give you an easier one.  Do you want your grandchildren to lose their house and have their lives torn apart by another recession / depression?  If you support those who want to just put a new band aid on the old girl then the answer is yes.  Think about it.

I have been silent of late about the carnival sideshow we call an economy these days.  As I suspected the Armani-suited freaks from Wall Street and Bay Street have been back to the well a few times and have been dancing a jig to explain spending our money on lavish parties and bonuses equal to the lifetime salary of ordinary people.  The fact that they believe they can justify this nonsense is in itself a wondrous spectacle.  While the bailout should never have happened and the money wasted on last year’s men, in some cases women but mostly men, should instead have been spent on the structural changes our society must undergo to avoid the impending environmental catastrophe, our fearless leaders acted predictably in supporting those who have long pumped money into them.  I will let you form your own image of how these captains of industry and finance pumped the money into the politicians. 

The next stage has now arrived.  Chrysler telling Canadian governments that unless they receive more public money and workers accept concessions they will close plants in Canada is a repeat of the old threat of the 1930s, ‘If you don’t like your job and what we give you, there are a hundred people waiting outside to take it.’  That’s right blame the worker because Toyota and Honda have seized the auto market.  Toyota and Honda must be genetically modifying the workers at their facilities.  Maybe they inject each new employee with some Japanese DNA.  Is that it?  Even with the concessions made by American unions, labour costs are still cheaper in Canada,  So the jobs will go to the developing world, likely Mexico where human rights and a living wage are the stuff of dreams.  So who is going to buy your cars Chrysler?  The underpaid Mexicans?  Not likely.  They have more pressing needs to spend their money on than a Neon.  You might not know this in your gated world but most people I know put food, clothing and lodging above purchasing a car.  Do you believe that unemployed Canadians and Americans will buy cars with the paltry sum allotted them by unemployment insurance schemes?  (I know in Canada Paul Martin changed it to Employment Insurance but lets not be slaves to losers and their ideas)  Henry Ford years ago realized that in order to sell his cars he needed workers who were paid enough to buy them.  Interestingly Ford has proposed that governments give consumers significant incentives to purchase rather than just pour money on the funeral pyre of the big three. 

There is another issue at play here.  We are, laughingly anyway, in a War on Terror.  Both the United States and Canada have passed draconian statutes to increase police power and undermine the basic rights and liberties that we have come to take for granted.  I abhor these laws with every fibre of my being, however, in the case of these arrogant corporate terrorists, I am prepared to make an exception.  Just as the murder of a loved one makes our opposition to the death penalty waiver if only temporarily, the spectacle of being threatened by a parasite who has gorged himself on the wealth created by my family and friends, who today face economic ruin because of the incompetence of said parasite, makes my commitment to human rights for everyone waiver.  After all, I am also a staunch defender of animal rights but I sanction the killing of rabid dogs.  At this moment I see no difference between a rabid animal and those that hold our society for ransom to protect their own affluence.  So perhaps there is a time, not against innocent individuals but against those who openly flaunt their acts of terror,  committing them before cameras with no attempt to conceal their guilt, that the new anti-terrorism laws could be justifiably applied. 

Make no mistake about it, what Chrysler did is an act of terror.  Terrorism is not about killing people.  It is about threatening people to cause them to act in a certain way desired by the terrorist.  In 2001 the attacks were not terror because they killed people but because they could be carried out.  The terror was the fear of vulnerability.  The act itself was important only to give credence to the threat.  Workers and governments have no doubt that Chrysler has the capacity to carry out their threat, at least to a significant extent.  Therefore the threat has credence.  Chrysler could reinforce the fear by cutting back or closing one or two plants but in this economic climate that would be unnecessary.  So Chrysler has carried out an act of terror.  They have threatened the well-being of Canadian society as a whole.  Hundreds of thousands of families now wait with bated breath to see the outcome.  Families that may lose their home because of it may be inclined to give in out of fear.  Far from helping, acquiescence to Chrysler’s demands would further deteriorate our economy as those who today can still maintain their home may not on lower salaries and those who might have purchased a home will not.  All the jobs that spin off from the economic behaviour of Chrysler workers and their families will be negatively affected whether Chrysler carries out the threat or not and whether the workers accept concessions or not.  The act of terror is a fait accompli.

This is exactly what Osama bin Laden attempted to do, disrupt Western economies thereby weakening our societies.  If bin Laden sat down at a parliamentary committee he would be hauled off in chains in a blink of the eye.  So why not that Chrysler executive whose actions will be infinitely more successful at achieving the goal of Al Qaeda?  As I watched the fat little slug smugly make his threats, I wanted nothing more than for the RCMP to storm into the room, shackle him and drag him off to the darkest dankest dungeon in Canada.  There to have electrodes attached to his testicles.  Then let the interrogation show begin.  I would even pull the switches myself to watch him dance and sing like Liza Minnelli. 

Perhaps in prison he would learn a useful skill.  Given that he doesn’t look much like a fighter I suspect his training will involve a shower and a bar of soap.

With the first half of the $750B already dolled out to banks and financial institutions the results are less than promising.  First there was the frenzy to try to buy each other out.  Not more stable buying up unstable institutions, which might have made some sense in streamlining the industry and providing some stability, but the big boys trying to play a high stakes game of Monopoly with our money.  Now it seems that some individual institutions have given out more in year end and Christmas bonuses to executives than they received from the government.  I absolutely loved the rationalization given by the apologists for the banks.  It seems that these bonuses are necessary if they want to be able to keep the best people.  HELLO!  Aren’t these the same best people that got the industry into this mess in the first place?  Or was it that the best people were all on holiday for the last 20 years and the help somehow screwed the pooch without their guiding hands.  Maybe these people suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder, yeah, that’s it.  They are the best people when they are drinking champagne and celebrating their bonuses; as soon as they sit behind their desks the evil idiot inside them comes out. 

This is what happens when you hand out money with little or no oversight.  I have a major insight for all of you out there in cyberland.  Corporate executives and business people in general are just that people, with all the foibles that go along with that designation.  In fact in our system it is virtually impossible to rise to the upper executive  level and have any ethical fibre to your character.  If you aren’t prepared to pimp your mother for a nickel you will inevitably run into the glass toilet bowl on your descent into upper management.  So these guys are just being true to form.  They need those million dollar bonuses so they and their families can enjoy this festive season.  Oh and the bonuses are down from last year they assure us.  But I bet they are still more than those who are being laid off from manufacturing plants in all sectors, not just auto.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the envelopes in which the bonuses were delivered are worth more than some American and Canadian families have to spend this Christmas.  As a matter of fact I know they are because I know many people who have $0.00 to spend this Christmas.  But these are the entitled, the movers and shakers.  These people would be lost if they couldn’t pay people to do everything for them.

Hegel in the Phenomenology talks about the master-slave relationship.  The slave is independent while the master is dependent.  Without the slave the master is nothing and cannot survive.  First without a slave how could he be a master and secondly he relies on the slave for the means of subsistence.  The slave, however, not only provides from him/herself but also for the master.  The slave has no need of the master to survive.  The only thing the master gives to the slave is his/her slavery.  Once the slave realizes this, he/she is no longer a slave.  It is time for us to realize that we the slaves of this planet are the ones that sustain the self-appointed masters.  It is time for us to walk away and let these parasites die if they cannot adapt. 

Others are starting to do this already.  There is move afoot in South America to create an alternative to the World Bank which has enslaved developing countries for decades.  Several South American nations have paid off their debt to the World Bank by helping one another.  It is their intention to found a new Bank without the neo-colonial strings exerted by the World Bank.  Voting would be equal; one member, one vote unlike the weighted voting at the World Bank which gives control to the industrialized West.  Micro-banking is growing around the world and needs to be introduced here as well.  And it is us that needs to introduce these ideas, you and me.  Let’s just take what we provide to those who have been our masters and use it for the benefit of ourselves, the decent people in this society that actually create and sustain its wealth.