It’s not just you who thinks there’s too much useless chatter at the start of the meeting. Meetings that don’t start on time are less efficient than those that do, and less creative. Another neat factor researchers found out is that people are less satisfied with a meeting that starts
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Things Are Good: Successful People are “Lazy”
It’s ok to be lazy. In fact, incorporating come lazy behaviours into your work might make you more productive. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, it’s true. There are certain tricks that you can easily incorporate into your day to day at work to enhance what you do, even though others
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Towards a Green Social Democratic Economy
Background/Context Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.[1][2][3][4] Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets.[5][6] In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are
Continue readingThings Are Good: Inspiration from the Past: Be Less Productive
The last century witnessed multiple calls for shorter work days (8 hours!) and more vacation time; this century we’ve been focussed on helping companies make more money. We presently live in a culture that values “productivity” over all else and many take it as a point of pride that they
Continue readingThings Are Good: Four Day Work Weeks Increase Productivity, Decrease Stress
Working a job that is free of stress is rare, however there’s an easy way to make your current job less stressful: work four days instead of five. This is obvious, but what might not be obvious to some is that a four day work week is just as productive
Continue readingThings Are Good: If You’re a Nice Person You Likely Have More Fun Than Others
Some people think that the way to get ahead in life is to be a pushy jerk, and those people are wrong. What you should be is nice. Yup, that’s all it takes. Don’t be like that stereotypical Gordon Gecko wannabe, instead just be. There is now more research that
Continue readingThings Are Good: Email, Productivity, And How You Feel
Dealing with an endless stream of emails is challenge in any office environment – even just socially it can be rather taxing. The solution to email always seems to be just around the corner with a new startup from Silicon Valley appearing every year to “save” us from email. Here’s an idea it’s not that […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Look at Nature and be More Productive
Go ahead and let your gaze look out that window while you work. If you get caught, tell your boss that you’re just getting ready to be more productive! The challenge: Can looking at nature—even just a scenic screen saver—really improve your focus? How much can 40 seconds of staring
Continue readingThings Are Good: Focus Less on Work to Improve Everything – Even Your Job
Stressed about not getting enough done at work? Don’t be. It turns out that you can improve how much you get things done at the office by not thinking about it. Turn your attention elsewhere and focus on things that do matter instead. But, how can performance at work improve
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Someone is making slightly more than you and this report says it’s time for it to stop!
Here’s a familiar refrain: “Someone’s wages rose faster than someone else’s: report”. This depersonalized version sounds about as cynical as it should especially since the first someone is usually not a CEO whose wages are actually rising faster than everyone else’s – it’s that fat cat across the street, like
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Britain’s, Not France’s, Middle Class Is Being ‘Run Into The Dust’
http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/02/middle-class/ Filed under: Capitalism Tagged: Britain, Capitalism, France, investment, productivity
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: StatCan Debunks Small-Business Mythology
Canadian economic commentators often worship small business as the supposed source of economic dynamism and growth. This cult of small business has greatly influenced public policy, with federal and provincial governments giving huge tax preferences to small corporations. But new Statistics Canada research finds: “The gap between the levels of
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Funding Cuts to Alberta’s PSE Sector: There Are Alternatives
It has recently been reported that the University of Alberta wants to “reopen two-year collective agreements” with faculty and staff “to help the university balance its budget…” This appears to be in direct response to Alberta’s provincial government announcing in its March budget that there would be a “7% cut
Continue readingThe need for a global no-growth agreement
Trade agreements are all the rage among nations these days. And that might not be a bad thing if they were principally about trade rather than about empowering corporations at the expense of workers and governments. In any case, what the world really needs is not global trade agreements but
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Canada Originally Intended All Education To Be Free
Out of Canada’s 33 Fathers of Confederation, only one went to university.1 It’s not that Nova Scotia’s Charles Tupper was the only intelligent one among them, other founders were businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, it’s that none of those jobs, and many others, did not require any post-secondary education. The eduction
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Canada Originally Intended All Education To Be Free
Out of Canada’s 33 Fathers of Confederation, only one went to university.1 It’s not that Nova Scotia’s Charles Tupper was the only intelligent one among them, other founders were businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, it’s that none of those jobs, and many others, did not require any post-secondary education. And the
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Canada Originally Intended All Education To Be Free
Out of Canada’s 33 Fathers of Confederation, only one went to university.1
It’s not that Nova Scotia’s Charles Tupper was the only intelligent one among them, other founders were businessmen, doctors, and lawyers, it’s that none of those jobs, and many others, did not require any post-secondary education.
And the eduction jobs in the late 19th century did require was entirely made free shortly after confederation because provincial governments, though extremely small and limited, believed that their public schools should provide all the instruction necessary for citizens to obtain jobs in any sector, be it agriculture, engineering, manufacturing, commerce, medicine or law.
Today however provinces have lost sight of the importance they once placed on education. Where once provincial governments provided all the training necessary for a skilled workforce, they are increasingly providing less while at the same time businesses are only requiring more.
By 2020 the BC government predicts that 77.3% of all jobs will require a post-secondary education. That means in seven years provincial governments will not provide the education needed for three-quarters of all jobs whereas for decades those same governments believed it was important enough to provide the education for every job.
When Canada was founded, education was seen as the extremely important public good that it is. Even in that most conservative era of small government, where health care wasn’t paid for, roads were tolled, and government sanitation services were non-existent, education was such a priority that our provincial governments sought to make it entirely free to every citizen, to provide the training and skills for any and every job.
That is how education in Canada was originally viewed by government, and that is how all education necessary for all employment was publicly provided for decades. Of course over time that changed, and now Canada has a skilled labour shortage, productivity is declining, and our economy is stagnating.
And though today education remains perhaps the most beneficial public good, it is now a costly private expense, while health care, an almost entirely private good, along with roads and sanitation are completely paid for with public funds.
The great past of Canada was built on the importance of education and the complete public provision of it in order to train its citizens for every job. Over the last few decades that has changed, and with it so has Canada’s opportunity for a great future.
1. [Richard Gwyn. John A, The Man Who Made Us, p.321 ]↩
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Why Health Care Should Be Privatized
It would be a risky claim to suggest health care should be privatized while education, from preschool to post-secondary, should be fully publicly provided, but considering the importance of education, what’s really risky is that currently we have it the other way around. To compare the importance of health care
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Gender Wage Gap hurts Economic Growth
BREAKING NEWS: Women are paid less than men across OECD countries. OK, it’s not breaking news. Not even close. In Canada the ‘Female to Male earnings ratio’ has hovered around the 70% mark for the past 20 years. And for women with university degrees, the ratio peaked in the early
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: The Conservative Economic Record
Sept 2012: Unemployment is up at 7.4%; it has been increasing since June while American unemployment has only gone down. July 2012: Worst trade deficit ever in Canadian history at $2.3 billion. 2012: GDP growth rate is declining (PDF pg 22). Canada is no longer the fastest growing economy in
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