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Sure the GM bailout worked. For GM
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Nov 20 2010
State capitalism works. That’s the lesson of General Motors’ near-miraculous recovery. What’s not yet clear is exactly for whom it works… The whole point of bailing out GM during that dark winter of 2008-09 was to save jobs. And certainly, with the company now back in the black, there will be jobs. The only question is where… Now we have the same company (freed of its creditors) making the same kinds of autos, paying its workers less and planning, over time, to refocus its production on China — all aided and abetted by governments here.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
Recession and the failure of the left
Saturday, October 9th, 2010
Oct 09 2010
Today’s economic slump is routinely compared to that of the 1930s. But the most striking difference is political. The Great Depression gave a boost to both labour unions and the left. This time, the opposite is happening… unions tend to be viewed as bastions of privilege, latter-day versions of medieval guilds that exist only to protect the lucky few. Indeed, unions have become bastions. The roughly 30 per cent of Canadian workers who still belong to unions enjoy better pensions and benefits, higher wages and more paid holidays than the 70 per cent who do not… Unions cannot thrive when they represent only a minority of workers.
Tags: globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
Expect more economic trouble; just don’t expect Ottawa to help
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010
Oct 06 2010
… now, belatedly, Ottawa has recognized that this country is not immune from a crisis that still roils the industrial world… this may help explain why Flaherty wants Canadians to make an “adjustment” to their expectations. Here’s what that means. Young people should not expect good jobs when they leave school. The unemployed should not expect any work at all. The sick should expect health care to be cut back. The poor should expect to get poorer. The old should not expect the pensions they worked for.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
False populism and the myth of the gun-hating Toronto elite
Saturday, September 18th, 2010
Sep 18 2010
… it’s intriguing to see our Conservatives… attempting to graft American categories onto the Canadian political system. That’s what federal House Leader John Baird was doing this week when he described the dispute over the long-gun registry as a battle between authentic Canadians and the “Toronto elites.” It was a direct steal from the language of U.S. right-wing populism, which pits so-called real Americans (also known as God-fearing patriots) against an alien conspiracy usually referred to as the liberal elite… There’s a right populism in Canada too, but of a different sort.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, women
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Expanding medicare to include drugs could save money
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
Sep 15 2010
medicare represents roughly the same proportion of the economy that it did in 1975 – about 5 per cent. In other words, visits to the doctor are not bankrupting the country. What has shot up disproportionately is the cost of drugs. And much of that cost is publicly subsidized, through tax breaks for privately insured employee health plans as well as a host of provincial and territorial programs aimed at the old, poor and very sick. This crazy-quilt system is a particularly inefficient way to provide the population with necessary drugs. And to their credit, the authors of the OECD report understand this. They recommend that Canada set up a national, public pharmacare plan–but only when it is affordable.
Tags: budget, Health, pharmaceutical, standard of living
Posted in Equality Debates, Health Debates | No Comments »
Why Harper’s government is so divorced from reality
Saturday, September 11th, 2010
Sep 11 2010
… for many who support right-wing parties, moderately high unemployment is useful. It keeps wages down and encourages employees to work more for less. It keeps unions in check. Insofar as it reduces tax revenues and leads to deficits, it provides an excuse to stomp on public sector wages and eliminate government programs. Best of all it keeps the population in line. Most are too busy worrying about their jobs to pay attention to matters like climate change or the Alberta oilsands. Economic collapse would be disastrous. But — for some — economic hard times can be convenient.
Tags: economy, ideology
Posted in Debates, Governance Debates | No Comments »
The G20 summit’s grim lessons for civil liberties
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Jul 03 2010
… the state blatantly abused its powers. Summits legitimately require security; but in this one, governments went over the top. The federal government transformed the city’s downtown into a no-go zone. The provincial government secretly passed new regulations to give police extraordinary search and seizure powers and then, when citizens found out, pretended that it hadn’t. The police used their authority to prevent breaches of the peace as an excuse to jail citizens who were committing no crimes. The second is that most people don’t care.
Tags: participation, rights
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Ottawa’s war against bank reform
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
May 19, 2010
Under the IMF proposals, individual countries would keep the proceeds of their own taxes… the IMF suggests that revenues raised could be used for any purpose — including paying down the debts that governments have incurred over the past two years to keep their struggling economies alive. By itself, the global bank tax would not prevent another meltdown. Clearly, more regulation is needed. But a tax would help. Done correctly, it would create a better balance between the financial and real sectors of the economy… Ottawa’s attempts to actively sabotage any such agreement are not just misguided. They are malevolent.
Tags: budget, featured, globalization, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Ontario’s phony war against druggists
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
Apr 13 2010
Copycat drugs cost significantly more in Canada than they do in the U.S., in part because the small number of generic firms here have adopted their own quasi-monopolistic practices. But Matthews is studiously ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room. In all of the government’s recent announcements, there is no mention of Big Pharma. There should be. Brand name pharmaceuticals account for about 73 per cent of the roughly $4 billion spent each year by Queen’s Park on its drug programs.
Tags: pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
User-fee follies revisited
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Apr 07 2010
…health care is not just any consumer product. The big spending decisions, such as when to have an MRI or undergo chemotherapy, are made not by patients but their doctors. In fact, health care is one area where penny-pinching now (“Oh, this lump probably isn’t cancerous; I don’t need to see a doctor”) can cost much more later…
…the real cost drivers in health care are those services that lie outside of medicare proper – mainly drugs. If Quebec, or any other province, seriously wanted to control health costs, it would use its bargaining clout to negotiate lower drug costs with the big pharmaceutical firms.
Tags: Health
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
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