A Frank Assessment

Pollster Frank Graves offers this assessment of the state of the public's attitudes to their economic prospects.  Increasing pessimism begs many questions.  One that comes to my mind is how Canadians are going to react if the Liberal government's happy talk and moneybags financing fails to produce results.  But this is the risk we decided to take to rid ourselves of the  Harper gang's distorted interpretation of Canadian values.

Make no mistake:  we are on a course that we freely chose.  We will have to see it to its logical conclusion.  The odds seem to have changed since election day October 19, with the collapse of energy prices and the relative value of the dollar.  But the world has a way of offering unexpected new opportunities.  So hang on and enjoy the ride.

Meanwhile, we need to ask how we can insulate ourselves if global market forces turn out to be too resistant to the  Keynsian bargain.  The question for individuals is this:  does it make sense to abandon ourselves to deficit financing just because we've chosen that option collectively?

This University of Calgary analysis of public attitudes seems to line up with the facts.  Consumer-driven economic theory is creating fortunes at the top of an increasingly hierarchical heap, while the rest make do with the small money.  If Canadians are already pessimistic, will we continue to mortgage ourselves to the future, especially if  Justin's "beau risque" turns sour?

The message of this study seems to be that Canadians no longer buy into  right-wing economics any more than they did the expediency and ethical lapses of Harper's approach to governance.  Right-wing economics plays itself out most vividly in America.  The broken promise of "trickle-down" prosperity seems to be driving the campaigns of the most ardent iconoclasts.  You  have to wonder what  lesson Canadians are taking from that circus spectacle.  

          

The Universal Basic Income Sham

The notion that a universal basic income can plug the gaps in an economy built on myths and techno-hype are a cover for the  guilty minds who  have put America in this  position.  For every new digital innovation that creates fortunes for a few, jobs are disappearing by the thousands.  This discussion between two knowledgeable columnists makes me think all the more that a UBI is simply an escape hatch for dream-weavers from the inevitability of a jobless future.  

Meanwhile, the world's most robust engine of innovation is toying with leadership choices who would prolong the dream-induced fantasy that America can be "made strong again" by  the  same old lies.  Wealth doesn't trickle down.  Mostly it sticks to the innovators as real estate, luxury goods and investment portfolios.  

Nobody  seems to be  able  to answer the obvious question:  where is the  wealth going  to come from  to pay everybody  a basic income to be unemployed and like it well enough not to  revolt?  Surely nobody  thinks that the same folks who hoarded their wealth while the public bailed out  the economy in 2008-9 are going  to  underwrite  a new economic reality.

  

The Graveyard of the Elites: Chris Hedges

The Graveyard of the Elites: Chris Hedges: The establishment structure is sliding toward its death, and the foremost sign of this is the silly and sickening display of “junk politics” that we call an election campaign.
- 2016/02/28

Uncanny Predictions Sealed Our Fate

Nikola Tesla didn't invent techno-hype.  That had been going on for generations, picking up tempo when railways first linked communities, spanned continents and spawned electronic communications.  But his astonishing  predictions, captured in the pages of Colliers magazine in 1926 were perhaps the most accurate of any.

What Tesla and his colleague Hugo Gernsback energized after the  first world war, others inflated into a cultural tsunami, with the proliferation of consumer-based economics and the explosion of mass media after WWll.

Most of Tesla's followers were less accurate, even careless.  But their purpose wasn't to be prescient. They filled the print  media and the airwaves with predictions to generate demand for consumer goods.  They succeeded beyond their own fertile imaginations, driving economic growth and prosperity throughout the 20th Century.

Industrialists and businessmen soon realized the potential of future-hype.  Their zeal propelled the advertising industry to unprecedented heights.  It created the futurist  movement, when they began to worry  that the engines of commerce were producing a population saturated with choice.

Only now are we beginning to understand the real cost  of expectations inflated by decades of  hype. Crippling consumer debt has collided with income inequality to create a middle class only now waking up to the fact that economic growth doesn't follow some trickle-down theory.

This new reality may  have played a role in Justin Trudeau's election victory October 19.  It is now certainly being played out in the U.S. primaries, where voters are  ready  to choose any option as long as they believe they aren't being duped.    

           

Falsehoods and Faery Dust

Here's an insightful look at how North Americans have come to understand 'the big lie' that  we can all share in trickle-down economics.  As a result, both Republicans and Democrats are shifting their support from establishment candidates.

Populism is in political vogue here too.  Justin Trudeau's Liberals enjoy 70 per cent support  from Canadians -- for the moment.  But a day of reckoning is at hand.

If the U.S. elects another wingnut as President, the disappointment and  the self-induced chaos will tear apart the fabric of America.  If Trudeau finance minister Bill Morneau can't find the right balance in his first  budget ... if Justin can't forego the selfies and faery dust act ...  if he can't at least look like he's paying attention to the balance sheet, Liberal fortunes will begin a downward slide that may not end until the next election.

But  for the moment, it's worth reflecting on how we got  here.    

Justin's Faery Dust Dims

It's somehow fitting that our new prime minister is tying Canada's future to the "fourth industrial revolution" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week.

Klaus Schwab in 2012

Just four years ago Davos co-founder Klaus Schwab astonished observers with his keynote remarks at the opening of the 2012 gathering of world political leaders and businessmen.  At the time, we posted a blog item that we called a placeholder in the Conversation of a Generation.  That was because we frankly didn't  know what to make of Professor Schwab's assertions that capitalism, in its present form, has outlived its usefulness.

The professor's analysis came on the heels of the Occupy Wall Street movement that caused people to question the sustainability of the gulf opening up between the economically disadvantaged and the crony capitalists who are killing their own golden goose one big slice at a time.

This time Justin Trudeau is the keynote speaker, an acknowledgement of his miraculous political upset of Stephen Harper only three months ago.  With the global economy sliding toward the brink of the unknown,  organizers undoubtedly felt that some boosterism might help. 

 Trudeau rose to the occasion  with the pitch that "My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources.  I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness."

Neil Nails It

It took CBC correspondent Neil Macdonald to rein in this show horse: "prime ministers have to cheerlead; they all do. But Trudeau's ... happy talk is beginning to sound a bit detached from certain realties that the unimaginably important heavy-hitters in Davos are probably quite aware of".

In other words, enough of the faery dust already. When Trudeau gets back on Canadian terra firma there are real issues to be addressed with more than incantations of diversity, cooperation and inclusivity.  It's time we had more to tell our partners in counter-terrorism who didn't invite Canada to the NATO conference on that subject this week.  Provinces and municipalities deserve a better sense of how the government plans to deliver its infrastructure commitments than Trudeau's standard reminder of how many 'just  folks'  he listened to while he was wandering in the political wilderness as leader of the third party.   

Leave it to Neil to state  the obvious:  "... we must all have internalized that there is value in diversity, and that we must work together as Canadians, and that we are an incredible, wonderful, virtuous place."

"We also have problems, though. Time to get at them, no?"

Is Gravity on Justin's Side?

The Occupy movement may have fizzled out early in this decade.  But this writer in The Atlantic argues that by launching 'income inequality' onto the public agenda, Occupy activists have helped to shift the political center of gravity to the left.  An interesting thesis with at  least as much evidence as forecasting the demise of the 'Laurentian Elites'.  Recent ballot box evidence seems to favor the analysis advanced by The Atlantic's

Are North American leaders going with the flow?

Peter Beinart, who goes on to say that police violence against  blacks has produced another tectonic shift to the left in the U.S.

Only time will tell whether the newly refreshed Trudeau Liberals were rewarded for extinguishing the dark political arts of Stephen Harper or whether they're onto something bigger.  If you follow the writer's argument, Justin Trudeau may be in the vanguard of a continental drift to the left.





    

Let Sunny Ways Occupy Us

Justin is in the house

A thoughtful deconstruction of the Occupy movement from 2011 reveals the confusion that keeps people from meaningful political action.  This insider's account of what caused the Wall Street movement to fade away isn't so surprising.  Newcomers to social activism often shun the tools that allow dissenters to disrupt the status quo.  It also wasn't astonishing that it happened in the U.S., where the republic's usual mechanisms are so tightly seized.

Since October 19 our own form of parliamentary democracy has shown it still has the flexibility to break the grip of the vested interests.  Working within the parliamentary framework that Winston Churchill called the worst form of government except for all the others, the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has declared that it will use the parliament itself to consult Canadians on how to reform their first-past-the-post electoral system.  The self-interested are already starting to howl.  Like their recently-deposed leader so often did, they would rather dump the conventions that  have sustained this nation through war, depression and existential crisis.

Improbable as the new Trudeau mantra may be, it offers possibilities for change. Until somebody conceives of a better system, it makes no sense to abandon the procedures that history has bestowed.  But if tweaking can make them work better -- that is, to respect principles of democracy that vest power in  the  majority instead of  a privileged few -- why not support it?.  

          

A Season for Seeking

Oliver Boldizar appears to have had a remarkable life, to be sure.  I wonder who’s going  to document it.  Seems like his journey was designed as a lesson for others in the consumer-crazed and unsustainable society  that  we inhabit.  I had a nephew who broke the mortal bonds on his 33rd birthday in despair over the life he was living.  Although  he only left home for a year in rehab, he couldn’t come to terms with his existence in a culture that celebrated inane behavior and worshipped consumption.  In the end, his vital organs gave out too. 

Oh, and compliments of the season to you.  Increasingly, I’m with the reactionaries who want to strip the pretext of religiosity out of Xmas.  But there should always be a time to step off the treadmill and think about what we’re doing.

Citizen of the World

The environmental movement has been around since the early 1970s, more or less thanks to Maurice Strong.  Thousands of people have subscribed to its principles.  But Strong was the towering figure who transformed principle into action.  From  the beginning, Strong understood the extent of the threat from carbon emissions.  He also understood that nothing would be accomplished unless the environment and the economy were managed together, in a balanced and coordinated way.   And he gave effect to his  beliefs not from the head of a line of demonstrators, but as chairman of some of the most powerful energy industry leaders. The  point was, THEY had the power to make changes.  NOT the demonstrators, who could only pressure them to act.  Strong also understood that traditionally, politicians follow public  opinion.  They  don’t lead.  So, after one aborted attempt to run for office, he never aspired to political office again. 

There has been a disinformation campaign under way for many years, initiated by people who want to debunk environmental leaders like Al Gore and David Suzuki.  The criticism is usually that they have  profited personally from their preaching.  Because Strong has centered his efforts for the last  30 years or so around a think tank based in the West he has also been dismissed as an elitist, new age kook.  But Strong also understood that one answer to climate change is innovation.  Not more innovative consumer products so much as new ways of thinking by people with the power and influence to organize societies to act sustainably. 

Like Pierre Trudeau, Maurice Strong was a Canadian who became a Citizen of the World before that phrase was coined.  In a way, Justin Trudeau’s introduction to the world stage in Paris this week closes a circle that his father and Maurice Strong helped to create.  As a middleweight nation, Canada isn’t going to solve this problem single-handedly.  But we can show others the way with a credibility that warring superpowers have long since surrendered.  If they’re successful, I believe it will be people inspired by the likes of Maurice Strong who will make it happen

We're Back!

Hi there folks -- family, friends and fellow skeptics.  So you've had a break from my perpetual pestering.  Well that's all  over now.  It's been three years since I went missing from this forum to discover the true meaning of press freedom in  this new information age.  Thanks to some personal experience with the online news media, I've discovered it means working for nothing.  If I'm going to do that, I'll publish my own views.

According to today's contribution from the  CBC's Ideas series that may be a good thing.    Hard as it is for an old ink-stained wretch to accept, I understand the point that  writer Paul  Mason has made in his latest book entitled Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future  If you think that idea is too much to swallow, have a listen. It will only take a few minutes and I promise you it won't hurt.  What WILL hurt  is continuing to live with  this unsustainable system that rewards greed and ignores all other reality.

Oh, and by the way, if you're among those who cringe every time you've heard that "We're Back" since October 19,  that too is a good thing.

Of Pygmies and Giants

Nearly a year after the Occupy movement burnt itself out there's reason to believe that its message may be getting through.  The rejection of Romney's bankrupt economics by voters from the 99 per cent cohort gives one pause to think that America could come to its senses again some day.  But Obama will need to be a great president to pull it off and there's little evidence he can rise to the challenge.  After all, he too is a product of his own experience.  And in today's America, vested interests seem to be pulling too many of the strings.  If this assessment seems harsh, click on the link for a slice of American culture that lays it bare.  The fact that somebody can still bring this message to air is one of the few reasons to believe that the situation could ever improve.   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7lKNjtvfpc