London Should Have More 50% Off Days

So, we’ve had more than a month to ruminate on the situation in London, Ontario where international machinery company Caterpillar battles it out against a few hundred unionized labourers at Electro-Motive Diesel.

Unfortunately, there’s not much that’s going to happen because all of our leadership is on the side of selling out to the international ‘who’s who’ of screw local workers and these people will have to accept half of what they used to just to put food on the table.

With this in mind, I have a suggestion: 50% days, starting in London, taken nationally.

We create a bunch of pins, bumper stickers, shirts, etc that declare that we – citizens of this community – are fine with accepting 50% off our wages and salaries, but we’ll also demand 50% off other costs of living, including some of the following:

Gas
Food
Mortgage rates
Housing prices
Property taxes
Books
Clothes
Cars
Donations to charities and political parties
etc

And … to top it all off, the City of London should embark on a ’50% off profits’ campaign, where any company not based in London will also face a 100% increase in property taxes to reflect the reductions demanded by its citizens.

It’s the only way folks: since the Kevin O’Leary MBA-types out there are telling us it has to be this way and we have to take it or leave it, we need to fulfill the second part of the equation.

If Davos Isn’t About Capitalism, What’s Stephen Harper All About?

C’mon people: even organizers of the planning sessions in Davos agree that ‘capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us,’ and yet Stephen Harper stands on a stage and declares war against the evil pensioners.

I’m sorry, but this is shameful. He can’t stand on Canadian soil and make such a declaration and he’s still pretending that he’s done something special with the Canadian economy.

What’s his track record?

Record deficits
Structural financial issues
Massive handouts to non-Canadian companies
Elaborate and expensive advertising campaigns, resulting in billions in taxpayer funds going to Canada’s media monopolies
Expensive defense programs that have no lid on them
Brutal attacks on democratic institutions in Canada

And now … the war on pensioners.

If you’re a Conservative, can you really be proud of this? Do you enjoy the idea of pulling the plug on your parents?

Good luck Boomers. Enjoy your Alpo after all the contributions you’ve made to Canada.

I hope you think twice before you choose Conservatives and pocket-book politics if we ever get a chance to go to the polls again.

The Future of Labour in Canada

In most media circles, the title ‘The Future of Labour in Canada’ is almost always asked as a question and not as a statement: ‘what’s the future of labour in Canada?’

While I’m not a labour expert, I’m more optimistic and I don’t see it as a question. It’s an opportunity.

It won’t take Harper and the rest of the country’s neo-cons to destroy every facet of organized labour in this country and we’ll all be poorer as a result.

Weekend work, no benefits, rental housing instead of ownership are just a few simple examples of what an economy without basic rights to earn just a little bit more holds for all of us if we don’t start to take action in this country.

For the record, I’m not a unionist, but every day, I enjoy the contributions that folks on the line have made over time towards my lifestyle and I do try – in my own little way – to thank them whenever I can.

This poll on rabble.ca asking what labourers should do provoked this blog entry. Feel free to answer the poll yourself, but my preference is this suggestion: occupy the plant.

While I know it’s not a realistic solution, we have to remind ourselves that Canadians have invested in this plant, the City of London has made commitments towards it and by definition (admittedly, a thin one) and one could argue that we own that plant. It’s ours, we should occupy it and we should kick Caterpillar out of this country.

Again, it’s very unlikely that this will happen. Our government, like or not, doesn’t support this and would sooner send in riot police to protect the plant before acting as moderator to a potentially awful situation for the City of London.

It speaks to a bigger consideration when it comes to the future of labour in Canada.

Historically, most labour organizations have made significant advances when it comes to their own personal gains, but we’re about to witness the evolution – forced for sure – of Canada’s labour movement.

First, take the idea of a union out of the equation. For now.

All of us need to ask ourselves what options exist for Canadians to make a better living, assuming for a moment, that unions don’t exist.

In a classic capitalist scenario, there’s stuff like basic wage rates, benefits and even stock options for a lucky few, but when we’re talking about people working for massive international organizations like Costco or WalMart, those examples just become ridiculous. There’s no way ‘Joe 6-pack’ or ‘Sally Single Mom’ will ever have any leverage over these kinds of institutions.

Second, cut the big companies out. No, not in a violent, vendictive kind of way.

We need to decide that it’s time to shift our economic fortunes towards people that matter and the only way we’re going to do this is if we truly understand who’s local and who’s not. We have to turn our back on the bigger forces of globalization and find ways to enjoy and support the undercurrents.

Third, all of us need to consider and pursue a different business model: the co-op.

2012 will be the ‘Year of Austerity’ brought to us by the likes of Rob Ford and Stephen Harper, but they’ll ‘discover’ that there is no ‘gravy train’ and will have to make draconian cuts once they’ve pretended they’ve lifted a few rocks called ‘efficiencies’. The resulting insults to all Canadians who have relinquished control to these liars will hopefully incite some response, but that response will be weak and will not have the impact needed to alert Canadians that our standard of living is about to drop down a deep shit hole.

2012 is also the International Year of the Co-op. For those who haven’t heard of this business structure, a co-op is essentially a worker owned, typically local organization that earns and keeps revenue locally.

It is jointly owned and democratically controlled.

And co-ops offer the only hope for Canada’s labour movement.

There’s no choice. The age of animosity must come to an end and the age of ownership must begin. Labour has no choice but to adapt.

Finally, the voice of labour – the NDP – must adapt as well. The fortunes of the NDP will quickly dry up when Harper and Ford and others kill unions. Relying on a dwindling base is foolhardy, at best. Becoming a central force behind the growth of co-ops in Canada will ensure longevity and loyalty from those who’s fortunes rely on strong, local economies.

The NDP could add co-ops in a productive way to their platform:

Create favourable tax status considerations for new co-ops, including reductions in co-op tax rates and the tax on transfers to owners (similar to preferential dividend policies)
Allow Canadians to add co-ops as investments to their RRSPs
End preferential tax policies for larger, non-co-op corporations (eg. WalMart and so on) and increase their tax rates
Begin a national education campaign addressing these fundamental opportunities

I’m sure there are lots more options. We just have to work together.

Davos 2012: You’ve Been Warned

It looks like Davos 2012 – a massive meeting of the world’s ‘official’ leaders – will test the waters with reforms of ‘outdated’ capitalism.

Is this an admission of the failure of the world’s economic intellectual ‘powerhouses’ to develop a real and functional economic system that doesn’t pit man against man, man against nature, and so on?

Pundit George Soros has already called it and you can now consider yourself warned:

As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.”
In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties.
The global economic system could even collapse altogether.
We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression.

Socialism, then?

Fascism, more likely.

Timeline: How ‘Too Big to Fail’ Happened in the US

This image is a fantastic representation of the rapid array of mergers and financial manipulation that took place in the 20+ years preceding the whole ‘too big to fail’ ‘financial crisis’ that occurred in 2008.

People: be wary of Conservative talk about how ‘they’ prevented a financial meltdown because they probably would have let it happen here if they were in charge (I know … the PCs were in charge in the early 90s, but they were progressive).

Zero Growth

This Alternet article explores the concept of ‘zero growth’.

What is zero growth?

I would argue that zero growth is a reflection of true, basic capitalist economics where money isn’t being printed and competition exists between suppliers, ensuring that average increase for prices, wages and other inputs grow at exactly zero percent.

It’s certainly better than collapse!

Read and please feel free to discuss.

#Occupy Electro-Motive?

For most of the world, this is all old news, but I have to vent about this issue.

Electro-Motive, the locomotive manufacturing company that’s owned by Caterpillar Inc., gave a shocking update to 500+ employees at the beginning of 2012 by telling them they had to accept less than half their original pay or the plant will be closed.

Caterpillar’s move devalues us all.

When these guys were making $30 an hour, I could charge a similar rate for my time. Now that they’re being forced to accept about half that, that has a negative impact on my billing rate.

Should I charge clients $25 per hour? $20? $15?

How low are we supposed to go?

This is a kick in the junk for all Canadians.

Admittedly, one of the greatest challenges this country (and others) faces is the resistance of unions to change. How many accept stock option plans or direct local ownership? How many engage in co-op-type models instead of worker / employer models that are cast in the beginning of the 20th century as opposed to the 21st?

What are unions doing to respond to these kind of actions locally and globally?

And what actions are our governments taking when they forked out millions to Caterpillar Inc. to set up shop in London, Ontario? What did they do to encourage ownership at the local level? Why didn’t they anticipate companies coming in, stealing our money and locking out local citizens?

What’s their plan for stability or are our politicians only good at throwing our money around for foreign corporations?

Last question: when so much went into this plant in terms of public investment, why are not considering Electro-Motive to be public property? If we spent the money to get the plant here, then part of that plant is ours and belongs to the people of Canada. It probably wouldn’t be easy, but we should re-tool the facility and convert it to making all kinds of train-related vehicles (trains, subway cars, trams, light rail, high-speed transit, etc).

To be honest, I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I know this: more people should be asking them.

Perhaps these questions will come up when thousands of people descend on London’s Electro-Motive plant January 21 to rally against Caterpillar Inc.

I’ll be there. Join me.

A Brief History of Plutocracy

Plutocracy = rule by the elite.

From ‘the Rothschild Model’ to the ‘Rise of Corporations’ as methods by which we are all fueling perpetual war.

This is 26 minutes well spent.

Of course, not all of it should be taken as gospel, but we need to understand his last comments as they relate to the ‘market’. There is a supra-national group of organizations that are not subject to any democratic input.

I also like the solution: don’t fight the beast. Stop feeding it.

Global Research ’2011 Year of the Dupe’: An Awesome Read

Global Research has released their 2011 Year of the Dupe article and it’s well worth reading for anyone that wants to know about what really happened in 2011.

The essence of the article addresses America’s expansion around the world and extension of hegemonic corporate powers universally.

It explores the deceit that’s being used to fool us into believing that a revolution is happening worldwide, while it also exposes the abyssmal coverage of the #occupy movement that occurred in North America and elsewhere.

Go ahead. Click through, print off and grab a coffee and enjoy some truth for the holidays!

Economics, Media and Mass Manipulation

I don’t recall where I got the link for this site, but the context of this article on Economics, Media and Mass Manipulation is riveting, despite the length. It’s well worth the read, packed with data and the author accomplishes what they set out to do: prove that change is coming, whether we like it or not.

The three pillars sustaining the American empire edifice of never ending war, ever accumulating debt and excessive consumerism are crumbling. The growing corruption and weight of un-payable debt have weakened the very foundation of our grand experiment. The existing structure will surely collapse. My entire adult life has tracked the decline of the American empire. I had become comfortably numb. I came to my senses and began to question all the Federal government/Wall Street/Corporate Media sponsored truths about eight years ago. Many others have also awoken and begun to challenge the false storylines dictated by those in power.

Yeah, right. I can hear you now: whispering about the pot-induced lyrics of Pink Floyd in context of ‘Comfortably Numb’, the chosen title of this piece, but it was this chart the reminded me that income opportunities, taxation and share of income is definitely not skewed in our favour:

Every day we work, we lose money to inflation and taxation. The cards are clearly stacked against us, but apparently things will be OK so long as we continue to inflate our debt, swap real assets for credit assets and keep track of what’s happening with ‘Dance with the Stars’.

What can I say? Things are going to change. If they don’t, things are going to change.

Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Category Archives: economics