Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – T.C. Norris points out that one of the most important developing themes in economic research is the recognition that reductions in employment insurance benefits only force job-seekers into damaging situations rather than creating economic benefits. But as we all know, mere facts won’t
Continue readingTag: economy
Tattered Sleeve: Paint It, Red
But the sound wasn’t sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn’t be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!
Reports are the casserole protests continued tonight. Thousands marching up St-Laurent Blvd earlier this fine evening. Good for them. “That’s the spirit,” as my eight-year-old son likes to say.
You know, for months I was reluctant to get behind this particular student-led movement. It really left a bad taste in my mouth every time I heard about “striking” students thwarting others from attending classes. And like many others I spoke with, “strike” (or its french equivalent, “grève”, rhymes with Bev) seemed a misnomer. If anything, these guys were boycotting their classes, or at the very least, “protesting”. But calling it a strike seemed disingenuous.
I am however, a tolerant Canadian, so I did not quibble with them throwing bricks on subway tracks to get attention when the hardline Quebec Liberal government of Jean Charest refused to even meet with them and hear their grievances. It was not very becoming of Charest, but then again, he is a pompous ass, and when you knowingly elect a pompous ass, you have to expect to live with that devil you knew and know. He was, after all, merely a young pup when learning the tricks of the trade within Mulroney’s cabinet.
But once he had had enough of these unwavering protesters, his pomposity grew to such outbound proportions with his Bill 78 that I knew in a heartbeat that rather than making a Swift, Decisive, Strong Leader decision, he had instead impetuously shat the provincial bed.
I look on it now as my Grinch moment. It awakened me.
There I was, hand cocked to ear, sitting atop Mount Crumpet with all the self-righteousness of the many people like me, feeling unlawfully hindered from wending our little ways through the workings of life to get to our woefully underpaid jobs. I was fully (gosh, naively) expecting to hear the mea culpas from CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and the others. And like all those who’d poo-pooed the movement and quietly categorized them as uber-brats, I had expected them to back down and accept that they were about to be firmly screwed again. The way I got screwed. The way we all have been getting screwed by the untenable but nonetheless well-embraced mantra of neo-liberalism that doesn’t know anything other than sucking every ounce of life from the 99.9% to feed the self-important point-0-one.
But this generation of students? Nuh-uh. They wouldn’t – and won’t – have any of it, even though Bill 78 meant these students had just had their whole semesters scuppered.
But just like the Whos in Whoville who had been robbed of all their worldly possessions, the “entitled” young buggers came right back out into the commons anyway. They came out in numbers much greater than what wept for Maurice Richard’s passing, and they sang their protest song on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012. Over a hundred thousand people marched in bold defiance of a law that so obviously contravenes our utmost rights (bestowed by the people to those that rule us, remember, not the other way around), even the dimmest of voters could not help but see it.
We all heard them; me from the 8th floor office on de Maisonneuve Blvd where I earn subsistence wages for an American company that constantly insists none of us may take a sick day without later furnishing a Doctor’s note, never mind that it’s against Quebec law to ask for that for absences of less than three days.
I went down to the street on my break and watched the marchers head down Peel Street. They were joyously defiant. They had all the violence of a John Lennon or Ghandi.
They were on the right side of history, I figured.
For what I had heretofore failed to see was that the tuition increase wasn’t all they were protesting. The increase, or “Hausse” was more like the straw that broke the camel’s back – the camel that the mass media was always looking beyond because it figured nobody cared so much about camels as about Kardashians. And if it’s sad that they are right in that assumption, it’s also true that they had a big hand in making it so.
I guess I didn’t relate because my own experience in university was that tuition kept going up each year, but my parents (what foresight!) had been saving for me and my sister since we were tots to make sure we had money to get a degree. And they had expected it to be a lot more expensive than it turned out to be.
My first year at Concordia University was also the last year of a long-standing tuition fee freeze (1988), and my contract for a full year’s study, including extra administrative costs, was all of $750. After that, there was books and living expenses of course. And I did my bit. I toiled unrewarded as a volunteer student journalist; I paid my way and switched to studying part-time once the $350-a-year increases kicked-in in 1989, working minimum wage at McDonald’s – a real Flaherty job if ever there was one.
Since graduation, I have found the market for my writing, my reporting, indeed the sum of my skills learned within the two departments of Journalism and Communications, to be drier than a James Bond martini. The jobs just haven’t been there, and when they were, I jumped at them, only to find myself jammed-up with numerous others, like the hammers of an old manual typewriter all struck at once, with none eventually hitting the ribbon, but left with no recourse save full retreat.
I am 43 years old, with two dependants and an ex-wife. I had to start over last year, grateful as hell to find employment that provides good family benefits and a measure of security (not maternity-leave replacement or fixed-term contract work, but permanent, full-time with vacation), despite the fact it pays less than I made twelve years ago as a McDonald’s manager.
So if the greater message is that this society is just not providing opportunity for the average Joe and Josephine, yeah, I get it.
And as someone who is squarely in the red, living in a tiny apartment with no money to go on vacations and unable to set aside anything for my kids’ education, let alone my own retirement (which I imagine won’t come before I am 70, if not 67 – unlike the tsk-tsk-ing well-heeled Boomer generation that is so disgusted by all this protesting), you bet I get it. Even Arcade Fire and Mick Jagger get it.
So I am with you. Sorry I wasn’t listening earlier. That’s what happens when you’re working for the clampdown. I always loved that song. Now I’ve lived it.
Not the way I’d hoped.
*Photo: thanks, Aly Neumann!
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Paint It, Red
But the sound wasn’t sad!Why, this sound sounded merry!It couldn’t be so!But it WAS merry! VERY! Reports are the casserole protests continued tonight. Thousands marching up St-Laurent Blvd earlier this fine evening. Good for them. “That’s the spirit,” as my eight-year-old son likes to say. You know, for months I
Continue readingTattered Sleeve: Paint It, Red
But the sound wasn’t sad!Why, this sound sounded merry!It couldn’t be so!But it WAS merry! VERY! Reports are the casserole protests continued tonight. Thousands marching up St-Laurent Blvd earlier this fine evening. Good for them. “That’s the spirit,” as my eight-year-old son likes to say. You know, for months I
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Doug Saunders points out that we have a relatively simple choice between seeking to exact revenge on criminal offenders and actually reducing crime: We know exactly why Norway has such lower recidivism numbers. Prisoners, being under constant observation, are very easy to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Harris rightly tears into the Cons for turning our federal government into Versailles on the Ottawa: The Harper government has more than a touch of Queen Nancy. It has already morphed into Versailles on the Ottawa. The facts, and the rules, are being
Continue readingCanadian Trends: Splitting Economic Hairs
Well it looks like you can all relax. It would appear that I had it all wrong. Apparently Canada doesn’t have a debt problem: The agency said a 40 per cent drop in prices or rising interest rates would put pressure on Canadian households, but not have a large impact
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Julian Beltrame reports on the Cons’ concerted efforts to add to corporate bottom lines by attacking working Canadians: One of the measures is so sneaky, says NDP MP Pat Martin, nobody seemed to notice the line buried deep in the 452-page Bill C-38
Continue readingCanadian Trends: Repression is in the eye of the beholder
When is a person officially “repressed”? Everyone seems to have a different idea of when repression warrants retaliation and revolt. For some, it seems that nothing less of 20 years of dictatorship can do. Unless there are daily disappearances, secret police, and killings – there is no repression. Others see
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Duncan Cameron discusses how the Cons have already taken Canada and the world in exactly the wrong direction. But Murray Dobbin points out that we should be working on how to change things for the better once they’re finally removed from office,
Continue readingCanadian Trends: Ideas have a habit of spreading like wildfire
Well, it would appear the real battles have begun – this I was anticipating as the obvious response to Charest’s new law. What I didn’t anticipate was an international day of solidarity with them. Wow! That came as a pleasant surprise! Also nationally across Canada several cities joined in. Personally I don’t believe
Continue readingHey kids in your 20′s – Think you’re getting screwed? You are!
These days you see so many young adults living at home, “mooching” of their parents. There are comments like “when I was their age I was married with kids and had a good stable job.” There is this whole idea that people in their 20′s are prolonging their teenage years
Continue reading350 or bust: In A Capitalist Economy, the True Job Creators Are Middle Class
Nick Hanauer, entrepreneur and one percenter, exposes the fallacy that it’s the super rich who create jobs. He makes a strong case for taxing the rich to create benefits for the entire society, including growing the middle class. It’s good policy for everyone. Hanauer asserted that TED refused to post
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dana Flavelle and Rachel Mendleson both cover Lars Osberg’s study on the harmful effects of inequality. But let’s highlight the key conclusion from the original source: (T)he continuation of a divergence in income growth trends necessarily creates changing flows of consumption and
Continue readingCanadian Trends: The inevitable result of increased complexity and profit
Chinese fake parts ‘used in U.S. military equipment’ As real profit margins sink and the full effect of peak oil kicks in, these are the sorts of stories there will be an increasing amount of. The only way to maintain the illusion of growth is constant “cost cutting”, and fake
Continue readingCanadian Trends: The monster in motion is one we’ve all created
In Quebec 300+ have been arrested, fascist laws passed, and the anger builds. At the NATO summit journalists are again being attacked as hundreds of thousands protest the “war on terror”. The anger builds, the violence erupts, and it’s all going to happen again, and again, and again. Today I saw
Continue readingelementalpresent: The Real Culture of Dependency: In Defense of Atlantic Canada
This post is co-authored with Brian Foster “Is the EI system making it more attractive to not work?” That’s the (attempt at) thought-provoking (or fire-stoking) title of a recent National Post piece, written in the aftermath of Jim Flaherty’s intellectually lazy and socially irresponsible public musings on the psychological, voluntaristic reasons
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne tears into the Cons for being interested solely in developing a junk labour market where both work safety and income security are sorely lacking. And Chris Selley offers his own rebuttal to the “no such thing as a bad job” mentality:
Continue readingCANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: To start a real revolution, learn from Iceland first
The people of Iceland forced their corrupt government to resign. They created a public assembly to rewrite the constitution. The banks were nationalized. The people decided not to pay the debt that private banks created. It was a revolution, a … Continue reading →
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – No, there was never any doubt that any statement which could possibly be interpreted as insufficiently jingoistic in favour of the oil industry was going to give rise to a backlash from the Cons’ oilpatch base. But it’s well worth noting that Thomas
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