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TechnoratiRich Cause the Crisis, Workers Get the Blame
For a while, the Wall Street meltdown gave the rich a bad name.
Even they seemed embarrassed by their own excess. There were reports of designer shops packaging purchases in plain paper bags.
But as going downscale lost its novelty, the rich have grown weary of their own embarrassment. Gratuitous extravagance is making a comeback. I noticed a Tiffany's ad in a Toronto newspaper last week for a "diamond solitaire on a platinum band of channel-set diamonds. From $3,550 to $1,000,000."
Clearly the rich are feeling good in their own skin again. Public wrath, having briefly nipped at the heels of the well-to-do, has moved on to the heels of the less well-heeled - who also carry plain paper bags, but ones you can eat lunch out of.
And so, as the Wall Street-generated economic storm has squeezed public finances, Toronto's city workers find themselves in the crosshairs.
The striking workers are demonized for wanting to hold onto their benefits, including the right to bank sick days, even though they won this fair and square at the bargaining table. It's just one of dozens of concessions the city is now demanding from them.
Although the strike is a terrible drag for all of us, the city workers are in some ways doing us a service - holding the line against employers taking advantage of the recession to demand concessions (if unions simply give in, emboldened employers will go for more), and taking a stand against further erosion of public services.
Of course, in the media narrative, the workers are the villains. The role of the financial elite in triggering the economic storm is omitted, as is the elite's relentless campaign over the past three decades for tax cuts, which set the stage for today's financial shortfalls.
Responding to this campaign, Ottawa kept cutting taxes (more than $160 billion since 2003), rather than using its massive surpluses for public reinvestment. That meant cuts in transfers to provincial and municipal governments, even as extra responsibilities were downloaded onto them.
By August 2007, crash-strapped Toronto announced an array of cuts that threatened to diminish life in the city: less snow removal, shorter library hours, delayed openings for skating rinks, etc. Further down the food chain, struggling school boards were closing swimming pools.
In fact, the crunch could have easily been alleviated - if the Harper government had been willing to transfer the revenue from a planned one percentage point reduction in the GST, as municipal leaders across the country pleaded. His October 2007 budget gave the answer: no.
Business groups never mention that tax cuts necessitate cuts in public services. For the rich, it's often a good trade-off; they can buy their own high-end services. But it's rarely good for the rest of us.
As economists Hugh Mackenzie and Richard Shillington showed in a study last April, Canadian families typically get about $41,000 in public services for their taxes, which amounts to "the best bargain they'll ever get."
Meanwhile, provincial Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, sensing the frustrated public might be ready for a Mike Harris revival, has gone after the strikers, suggesting they should "get a grip."
Hudak wants to direct your anger at the people who pick up garbage, rescue animals, run daycare centres - not at those who've spent years pushing for tax cuts that have left our public services underfunded and who now chase the recession blues with million-dollar shopping sprees at Tiffany's.
35 Comments so far
Show AllThanks guys. I stayed away from here for some time, but I'm reminded of the bright side of CD as opposed to the divisive underbelly. We workers and poor need to unite more than ever. And sometimes I am as guilty of taking the bait as anyone. I also forget that my life could be worse and that those who bear light outnumber those who bear darkness.
Teo Torriate
The sooner a world-wide social revolution is started the better. The rich have no conscience and are nothing more than parasites of society. They all seem to breed in the same cesspool.
I'm ok maxpayne. I know that I'm a good person and am trying to be better. I just get sarcastic sometimes when it comes to my situation since I often am told that it's my fault that I'm in the hole and unhappy. Thanks.
And as I keep saying, if I feel stuck, I can only imagine how people making less than me fare. I'm considered "middle-class" yet find the lifestyle too consumptive and expensive and therefore am treated by people like I am an alien or a failure.
The lie I tell myself is that it's all designed as some sort of long trial. I'm being tested. And I'm sure before year's end, the real tests will begin.
Thanks again max. It's good to know I'm not shouting at the sky in the North Pole.
I'm with you, Thegreatrockyhill...
Your message describing your own personal struggles is more powerful than a hundred other messages posted here where people talk about theories. I can relate very well to some of the things you've been through.
I used to have a great job and a three-bedroom ranch house with a big shady yard. Now I have a low-paying "survival job" and a one-bedroom condo, and I am starting to have trouble paying the bills. But I don't dare say anything, because 9 out of 10 people will tell me it's somehow my fault. My sister is one of them. (She married a bank executive, but nevermind that.)
After work this afternoon, I noticed the guy next door grilling steaks for himself and his girlfriend (again). But I don't complain, I just go ahead and enjoy my can of tuna. Maybe it really is all some kind of a weird "test."
My employer cut us back to a 4-day work week, and tomorrow is my "day off". I'll use the time to continue to gather stuff I think I can sell on ebay.
Hang in there, for what or until when, I don't know.
Greatrockyhill, maxpayne and fivecorners,
Thanks for verbalizing the feelings that all too many of us have on all too many days.
Philosophy is one of those tools we need to keep employing to stay in the game. And investing in bettering our health and supporting each other. And opportunity will come to the watchful waiters, like us. Stay Strong in Spirit. minnow
Let's not forget that in the eyes of the neo-liberal, YOU the worker are to blame when you were laid off.
You must not have been valuable enough to the company.
You must not have been working hard enough.
Out of work? For shame! Spend every waking minute of your day and more looking for one.
My mother turns 61 in August. She was let go from the health system she worked for after it was bought out by another. No warning, just goodbye.
This happened before about 7 years ago. It was the same exact scenario. She was unemployed for close to 18 months. The unemployment compensation ran out after 9.
But she should have just learned new skills right?
And me, stuck in the shithole I'm in should be THANKFUL that I have a job.
After all, if I were smarter, more talented, and worked even harder than I already do, I'd be in a better job. Better people work in better jobs.
I've been trying to figure out my whole life how, in what way, I am a bad person. I don't think I am. I lead a clean life and stay out of trouble. Every job I've been in, no matter how lousy it was, I excelled in.
Yet all the assholes seem to pass me by on autopilot while drunk and stoned.
Working people and poor people are always blamed for their plight. We're irresponsible, our culture sucks, we're too loose sexually, dumb, lazy, and not good at anything. Our debts are our fault. Our high medical costs are our fault.
And then we're pit against each other for whatever reason, each group made out to be an evil, dangerous "other."
So tax the fuck out of us so that the wealthy can put up with us. Lock us up for profit when our circumstances push towards addiction and criminality or send us to war to die for oil, defense contractors, and the expansion of Western markets.
I wish it weren't illegal for me to blow up an empty credit card headquarters or payday loan center.
But what do I know? I didn't finish college due to running out of money and not wanting to take on debt, I live with my parents, have no car, and listen to the devil's music. I'm a Polack and a meathead. I guess I should be sitting on a barstool right now.
Not a chance. I won't fall for it. They can take their cigarettes, their alcohol, and their drugs and shove them. When I do my benchpresses, I think of all the powerful people causing all the world's problems, the identity politicians who distract and divide us, and the betrayers on my level who act as their lackeys. That serves as motivation.
Righteous anger keeps me alive. Someday they'll all be toppled, and the rest of us will be free.
thegreatrockyhill, you're not a bad person at all. You're doing the right thing. What you're getting is what I'd call the "Rambo" treatment. You work truly hard and yet get punished anyway. Yeah, sometimes I get angry too when I see these kinds of things coming up against me but in most cases, I'm able to fight it back even if no one supports me for it. Keep up the spirit, soldier !
The following article will be a strongly complementary piece for the above one by Linda McQuaig.
"Organized Labour in Canada: The Windsor CUPE Strike: Implications for the Labour Movement and the Left",
by Jeff Noonan, The Bullet, No. 236, Socialist Project, July 10, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14300
That article provides a lot more information about the ... not strike, but three strikes, and the piece refers to CUPE, for which I didn't see a definition in the article, but UPE is for Union of Public Employees, and am pretty sure that the 'C' is for Canadian, so Canadian Union of Public Employees.
Linda McQuaig speaks of cuts made by the Canadian federal government, and I'll mention one that I didn't see in either her article or the above one by Jeff Noonan. The Canadian federal government cut (un)employment insurance from 60% to 50%, unless it was formerly higher than 60%. I'm pretty sure it was that, before, while workman's compensation was 66%, but if not, then it was the other way around. This cut would probably not be noticed by people earning sufficient income to still get the maxium (un)employment insurance anyway, but people who don't earn enough for that will [feel] the 10% cut.
10% may not sound like a lot to some people, but there are many minimum and other low wage workers in Canada, so 10% reduction in (un)employment benefits will certainly make a real or even serious difference.
Oh yeah, there's plenty of greed in Canada.
Rest easy Linda. The economy is getting worse.
Here in the U.S., the Wall Street robber barons get billions of tax dollars to bail them out after they screw up the economy. Then they reward their leaders with multi-million-dollar bonuses and justify it by saying that those executives already had a pay contract that must be honored.
On the other hand, the United Auto Workers were forced to make concessions--even though their wages and benefits are spelled out in a contract.
It seems that, other than a handful of us posting messages here, most people are clueless about this class-warfare double-standard.
Yup.
and the worst of it is this spectacle of low wage workers spewing their resentment against unionized higher-wage and benefit workers becaue "they are overpaid" or "I work hard for a pittance, so they should too". But strangely, their resentment comes to a screeching halt at the first sight of the suit worn by the genuinely overpaid at the top of the coproration who do very little real work.
Yup. Yup. Yup.
Canada, I cry for thee.
Unfortunately, the Toronto strikers' union bosses have comitted their own PR disaster by using picketing strategies that conflate the Toronto citezenry themselves with the city bosses - especially the low income and elderly Torontans who depend on city services the most! They have been ordered to make elderly people stand in line for an hour to dispose of a bag of trash. Fortunately, some of the picket captains have been disregarding the bosses orders.
But the damage has been done, and the pro-business libertarians that dominate the Canadian yuppie class are having a field day and calling for union busting and privatization. Of course, they are stirring up the usual intra-class resentment, where low income non-union workers are whipped into the usual infantile reaction aganist the union workers because they are paid better, and god-forbid, can carry their sick leave over to the next year! No fair! I am a minimum-wage-slave (albeit a somewhat more generous minimum wage than the US), so you should be too!
But, at least I thought, the anti-union attitudes would be restricted to just these municipal workers. Surely, there would be popular support for the Sudbury mine workers strike against the big foreign-owned multinational that bought out one of Canada's most precious mineral assets?
But no, on the Star's web site, the union bashing continues with calls for shutting the mine down followed by strike-breaking.
The ghosts of Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand are stalking Canada big time.
Comments, GWNorth and other Canucks?
The pseudo-progressives care about the poor, about unionized workers, about disadvantaged people . . . so long as those people keep their place and don't try moving up.
The pseudo-progressives are like the boss class in that they don't like nigs or wogs or paks or ordinary working people getting uppity.
Agreed that attitude would definitely make one a pseudo-progressive, but how many actual progressives are you pointing your finger at and name calling when you support neither progressives or the more self-absorbed versions about the place?
"the pro-business libertarians that dominate the Canadian yuppie class are having a field day and calling for union busting and privatization."
Sorry - but not surprised - to see the folks in Canada swallow the same kool-aid that sunk CA and the rest of the US.
Ms. McQuaig says: "In fact, the crunch could have easily been alleviated - if the Harper government had been willing to transfer the revenue from a planned one percentage point reduction in the GST, as municipal leaders across the country pleaded. His October 2007 budget gave the answer: no."
And who elected the Harper government? If you're looking for blame, forget about blaming the elites - who are after all just looking out for themselves. Blame the morons comprising the rest of the electorate that are too stupid to see through the bullshit.
Ayn Rand despised Reagan.
So?
canada, you're heading for trouble. obviously another lesson on why the rich should never control mass media in any form. what a huge advantage they have, the fuckers.
The old Money-Envy Disorder never seems to end - unless those who suffer from it win the lottery.
kafirTom, surely you jest. Money is not the problem, the power that it buys is the problem. Public officials have become whores, who for the sake of making a buck, are destroying this fragile planet.
The life style that you are touting is not sustainable. We live in a planet that has a limited amount of raw materials, and unless you are the owner of a space ship you are in the same boat as the rest of us(all six billion). I understand that you are a greedy person, but greed is not a virtue, and no amount of spin is going to change that. You need to look at the future you are leaving your offspring. Unless you and your brew can breath, eat, and drink the money you are hording, survival is not going to be easy in a planet where the environment has been driven to the point of catastrophic failure trough the actions of a few greedy bastards.
What you call "Money-Envy" is nothing more that a justification for your greed. I don't want your lifestyle. I'm not rich, but I have my own business witch allows me to have some "creature comforts", and I would gladly give it all up if I knew that by doing so the damage to the planet could be reversed. I know that capitalism is based on the acquisition of wealth, but when acquisition of wealth becomes a threat to the nations' survival, those people responsible become the enemy of society. In such a scenario self preservation means that the individuals responsible for the catastrophe have to be held accountable for their actions. The "Upper class" better hope that does not happen, because if it does they will surely be given the same treatment as Marie Antoinette.
Re kafirTom July 14th, 2009 12:10 pm
Spoken like the bastard child of Steve Forbes and Leona Helmsley.
Maybe it's not "The old Money-Envy Disorder." Instead, maybe it's "The Old Why Am I Forced to Give My Hard-Earned Money to The Goons Who Run This Crooked Casino Disorder."
In that case, it's not a disorder, but a normal healthy expression of disgust and revulsion at a well-known charcter from history: the person whose only reason for seeking power is the chance to abuse it.
No, it is Money-Envy - coupled with unshakable faith in one's Perpetual Victimhood. The result of that would be no different from what's in this op-ed and in these comments.
The reason why you won't criticize the rich, is the moronic notion that one day you'll hope to be one of them. Keep deceiving yourself, because it's all a mirage.
Kafir ------ I will poison your air, water,earth, food, airwaves, school teachings,mind and work place. Steal your political power. And pay you much less then your value so I can bloat myself and then tell you your whining.
You and others here probably would do that if you could.
Kafir that IS what the collective rich, who you defend, have done to the collective poor who you denigrate.
Sioux Rose
This is the softer version of "The Shock Doctrine."
In America the despicable handing of the nation's fortune to the bankers so they can swim in an embarassment of false riches while social services are everywhere cut is a cautionary tale one hopes history will boldly recount. (If there is a history TO tell.)
This is what happens when the public's air waves are sold to the highest bidders. Owning the means through which messages are conveyed, dark powers hold the reigns and engineer a consensus based on targeting all the wrong "suspects." The elites have always managed to hold onto their ill-begotten wealth largely by orchestrating campaigns directed at "dividing and conquering." So long as "the little people" are directed to resent the small perks one groups appears to receive (at another's expense), they never look high enough to the true source of their massive and all too real discontent.
Thanks to the Internet, authors like Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges, more and more persons are given the tools to connect the dots. Because the corporate takeover that spans the globe means privatizing things as necessary as healthcare and (access to) water, I believe there will be a worldwide rising up of "the common man/woman." The Pentagon specifying urban warfare as its future target (for theaters of war) was ominous insofar as this prediction is concerned. Furthermore, that so many nations have made use of America as global trafficker-in-weapons means they are positioned to attack their own citizens once enough of them rise up. And rise up, they shall.
The film series, THE MATRIX, spoke well and wisely about the takeover of human life by machines. Corporations are like machines. They are heartless and strip humanity and decency from almost everything they sink their profit-demanding fangs into. Perhaps "we are all Zion," now. A few in this forum have paved the path to "how to unplug."
"Thanks to the Internet, authors like Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges, more and more persons are given the tools to connect the dots."
No offense but if only progressives and liberals could unite instead of insulting other people's intelligence and condescending them. Being too know-it-all and insulting others for having superficial intelligence doesn't make the Internet any helpful. It just turns more people away and fewer people will be able to connect the dots. Let's do more to help others resolve and/or clear their disagreements and misunderstandings and stop being too know-it-all and condescending or else we risk losing even the Internet. We need to bring in more people to connect more dots. Thank you.
That'll be the freakin' day. One thing wrong with progressives is that they are too disputative. They would rather eat their own then stand up to the enemy.
I tell you. We could learn from Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment which he brought up when he ran for office back in 1980. Obama and his team appeared to have done the same so far and kept the conservative wing of the Democratic Party strong.
By the way, I didn't mean to sound too harsh on the response but I couldn't help but feel angry about it after I had one coming to me earlier just because of a slight misunderstanding and disagreement. Luckily, someone else on this site pointed me to a very enlightening article written by Sioux Rose herself and I was amazed at what she wrote back in 1994. Read it and you'd almost think that she was writing this article in 2004.
http://www.siouxrose.com/article.venus.htm
I was also given a recommendation that I read George Lakoff's "Moral Politics". I know Lakoff had warned about intellectuals in the progressive realm chewing their own.
Yep, we have a hell of a lot to do and it ain't gonna be cheap or quick but we cannot afford to not correct this.
Sioux Rose
Ah, Max, one really knows there is a Divine order when you, with whom I've had a duel or two, turns round to promote something I have written. Okay. I'll take publicity pretty much wherever it comes from. Thank you! And by the way, do you think your wife would care to offer an Indian curry recipe to the forum? (I will apologize a second time to you here. I admit I was touchy on that subject. Did you read the article from the courageous woman from Afghanistan? What women go through on this planet upsets me enormously. I realize many men suffer, too. It's just that the scales are so off kilter!)
"Privatizing profits while socializing losses" That's the global economy in a nutshell, raydelcamino... Socialism is not dead-it's just not for the poor and middle class.
Here it is again. The rich lecturing everyone else about restraint. LMAO.
It is like telling everyone bankruptcy is wrong...unless your name is Trump.
Privatizing profits while socializing losses; rewarding corporate criminals while punishing victims...sounds like a page out of the Obama playbook (with credit to the Dubya Regime for refining the rhetoric).