Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Why the one per cent has it all

These are not good times. The young graduate with no work in sight. The old fear retirement because their pensions and savings (if they existed in the first place) are no longer sufficient.

The notion of the disappearing middle class is so commonplace that mainstream politicians — from Barack Obama on down — routinely talk of it.

Yet there is plenty of wealth around. Most of us don’t own much of this wealth. But if we’re willing to borrow to the hilt and max out our credit cards, we are allowed — briefly — to take part in the great barbeque.

Even those juggling two or three part-time jobs can, if they are lucky, enjoy an illusory sense of well-being — a trip to Vegas here, some sharp clothes there.

So it’s an odd as well as a bad time.

In these days, it’s useful to try to figure out why all of this is going on. And that’s where the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, an openly leftish think tank, performs a handy service.

The centre’s latest effort is a broad and rather subtle study by George Brown College political scientist Jordan Brennan that tries to come to grips with why so many people are, in relative terms, so badly off.

I say broad because it’s hard to summarize A Shrinking Universe in one paragraph which, I suppose, is why the centre flogged it to me rather than television.

Brennan’s paper is a critique not only of the economy but of the way most of us look at the economy. He takes on the widespread, if unstated, assumption that people get what they deserve — that CEO’s or derivative traders earn their seven-figure paycheques because they are in some way uniquely productive, while the rest of us don’t because, well, we’re not.

He advances a view that is not new but that is rarely heard today — that income is not distributed through the competitive magic of the impersonal market, but through naked power struggles in institutions that are near-monopolistic. Think National Hockey League.

Brennan starts with the growing income inequality in Canadian society between those at the very top — the so-called one per cent — and the rest of us. He makes the point, which should be obvious but isn’t, that in the developed world relative poverty not absolute squalor is the problem — that social pathology is not solved in Canada just because the underclass has enough SpaghettiOs to eat.

He then asks why society is becoming more unequal. When did this start to happen?

The answers are complicated and interwoven. Brennan chooses to focus on corporate concentration, arguing that as big companies eat up more of their competitors the huge gap between the wealthy and the rest expands.

For me, his look at timing is more telling. Brennan makes a good, if not entirely new, argument that the real turning point in Canada occurred in the 1990s when globalization pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement came into play.

This was also the time when the developing world, led by China and India, began to sign on enthusiastically to an agenda of trade and investment liberalization.

The effects of this are now well-known. Free trade with the U.S. and Mexico sandbagged much of Canada’s manufacturing base. Trade with China sandbagged the rest. Investment protection deals such as NAFTA and the new Canada-China pact have weakened government’s ability to regulate. All of this has decimated unions, allowing bosses to pay their workers less and themselves more.

Non-union shops, as always, have quickly followed suit.

Brennan points out that, on average, the country’s top 60 corporations did particularly well. He also argues that foreign investment — by both Canadian firms acquiring outside assets and outsiders acquiring Canadian companies — has accelerated the trend toward inequality.

Experts in the field can argue over the details of this paper. I think he’s, at the very least, on the right track.

More than that, I’m just pleased anyone is bothering to explore these questions.

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Thomas Walkom

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