Blogs

Don Drummond had a bit of a strange op-ed in the Toronto Star on Sunday. On the one hand, he acknowledged the debate over the option of corporate tax cuts and called for the impact of cuts to be monitored so that we know whether or not they are actually delivering on their goals. On the other, he reviewed and dismissed all of the arguments against corporate tax cuts as negligible. Read more »

My mother-in-law passed me Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, saying “You just have to read this one.” The next day, before I had even had the chance to crack the covers, Bob Goudzwaard referenced the book twice in his AGM speech, calling it “a most excellent little book.” With two such ringing endorsements, I could hardly put off reading the book. And having done so, I would echo Bob Goudzwaard: it is indeed a most excellent book.

Empire of Illusion is a stinging indictment of our celebrity-obsessed, narcissistic culture that has lost sight of how the values we preach have been perverted and replaced with consumerism, corporatism and militarism. Hedges laments the state of democracy, the power of corporations and the wealthy, the growing class divide, the unwillingness or inability of our elites to stop the slide, and the illiteracy and obsession with illusion over reality that prevent most of us from identifying the problems. Read more »

Earlier this year, Senator Hugh Segal published a great op-ed in the Toronto Star calling for those concerned about crime to get tough on poverty. “Less than 10 per cent of Canadians live beneath the poverty line but almost 100 per cent of our prison inmates come from that 10 per cent. There is no political ideology, on the right or left, that would make the case that people living in poverty belong in jail,” the Senator argued. “To be tough on crime means we must first be tough on the causes of poverty,” he concludes.

Segal argues for a Guaranteed Annual Income, also known as a Guaranteed Livable Income, noting that it would take only $12,000-$20,000 annually to bring a person above the poverty line but we spend $147,000 a year per federal prisoner. Read more »

The Basic Income Earth Network Newsflash arrived in my mailbox this morning, and I was surprised to learn that one of the candidates pursuing the French presidency in the 2012 election is basing his campaign on a citizen’s income, also known as a Guaranteed Livable Income. And not just any candidate: former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, best known for his opposition to the Iraq war as France’s Foreign Minister in 2003.

I went to school in France for a year and a half and witnessed a historic presidential campaign up close, and I have retained a fascination with French politics ever since. The French political system is quite different than the Canadian system, with an elected President who selects the Prime Minister who may or may not be elected him/herself. Read more »

With the Conservatives winning a majority government by virtue of 6,102 votes and only 39.6% of votes cast, talk of electoral reform is surfacing once again. In fact, rallies were held across the country on May 14 calling for electoral reform and some form of proportional representation in Canada.

Meanwhile, a referendum in the United Kingdom – a key component of the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats – saw Alternative Vote go down to defeat on May 5 with 68% of voters opting in favour of first-past-the-post (FPTP). Read more »

The OECD released a report last week highlighting the rapid growth of inequality in Canada and other rich OECD countries. The report covers the period from the mid-1980s to the late 2000s, meaning that this rapid growth of inequality took place during a period of strong economic growth. In other words, trickle down is a complete and utter failure – it’s led to the rich getting richer, not to a rising tide that lifted all boats.

The OECD report offers several reasons for the rapid growth of inequality. Not surprisingly, distribution of salaries and wages is primarily responsible (that’s not hard to figure out when the best paid CEOs make 155 times more than the average worker). This also reflects the growing trend of precarious labour, in which nearly one-third of jobs are low paid, part-time or temporary, offering few or no benefits, and provide no job security. The OECD report identifies globalization as a driver of change in employment structure impacting wages. Read more »

The Globe and Mail has an excellent article today looking at the costs of poverty and the social and economic benefits of fighting poverty and income inequality, "How paying people's way out of poverty can help us all." In particular, the authors look at the issue of widening inequality and the political unrest it can cause, concluding "Despite Canada’s reputation for a strong social safety net, the country is becoming economically polarized. And the decades-old dominant economic dogma that growing wealth among society’s highest earners would trickle down to those less fortunate is being challenged by an alternative approach: Eliminate crushing poverty among the lowest earners, and wealth will trickle up." Read more »

Now that the election’s over, I can get back to that task of clearing out all the things that accumulated on my desk and in my inbox while I was on mat leave. And may I say, it turned out to be a good half year for discussion of guaranteed livable income. Some interesting news coverage, online conversations, and some small but nonetheless hopeful political developments:

Yukon motion on GLI
Steve Cardiff, NDP leader in the Yukon, introduced a motion calling on the Yukon government to introduce a “guaranteed minimum annual income allowance” for all citizens. While the prospects of the motion being adopted may be small (the NDP represent 2 of eighteen seats in the Yukon legislature), the motion nonetheless draws attention to this important issue and provides a forum for debate. Read more »

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve written about the problems with labourism and its emphasis on securing economic security through paid jobs. I’ve highlighted the need to broaden our definition of work to include unpaid forms of work and the urgency of breaking the link between economic security and paid employment. But it has to be said that Christians are sometimes the worst offenders for insisting that people must work for a living. Our cultural emphasis on paid employment also has roots in the Catholic and Protestant notion of a work ethic.

But in fixating on paid employment, we’ve distorted the very idea of work as good for human development. We’ve also failed to come to grips with the fact that insisting on a responsibility to work must also equate a right to work – and how does that take shape in a world in which there are not enough paid jobs for all? Read more »

So if jobs are not the answer to poverty and economic insecurity, for the reasons outlined previously, what is? Guy Standing offers two new directions to replace labourism and industrial citizenship: occupational citizenship and basic income.

Occupational citizenship would allow people to shape their own careers with the mix of work – productive and reproductive, paid and unpaid – that they felt best suited them. It would also help to restore the reproductive aspect of work as occupation, including nurturing, caring and civic friendship. A good occupation, Standing argues, should be viewed as one that encompasses a range of activities that allow for self-development, improvement of skills and ability, a social identity, and the ability to allocate time to other activities such as leisure. It should not be defined by competitiveness or efficiency. Read more »