Archive for the ‘Debates’ Category
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Capitalism’s triumph
… capitalism doesn’t just produce wealth, it creates opportunity. In a capitalist system, an individual’s future is not fixed by caste or hereditary social status… In fact, many of the earliest critics of capitalism disdained it because it allowed merchants and others to rise above what was considered their natural station. Capitalism threatened the old social order. And it still does so today.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
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Help consumers. End supply management
Canada’s supply management system predominantly affects the price of milk, cheese, poultry and eggs. As lower-income households spend close to 25% of their income on food, compared to 5% to 10% for Canadians in higher wage brackets, the policy amounts to little more than a tax on poor people, with the gains going to a handful of relatively well-off farmers.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
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US Labour Springs to Life as Incomes Fall
There’s little that’s new in the longstanding progressive rhetoric of union organizing… But what’s new in 2013 is that as the country’s working class is growing in the wake of the 2008 recession, more Americans are realizing that labour’s longtime concerns are their own. That’s because incomes and wages have not just been stagnating, but falling in recent years.
Tags: economy, ideology, jurisdiction, participation, poverty, rights, standard of living
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Give minimum-wage workers a fighting chance
Minimum wages in Ontario have been frozen for three-and-a-half years at $10.25 per hour, while consumer prices have increased by over seven per cent… The resulting decline in real incomes for low-wage workers is very unfair, and has undermined household finances and consumer spending in the province. Relative to average wages, and average hourly productivity, minimum wages in Ontario are significantly lower today than they were even in the 1970s.
Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Canadians aren’t getting the whole story on the economy
Merely reporting how much debt we are carrying, even relative to disposable income, tells us little… over the last two decades, Canadians’ per capita net worth has more than doubled, after inflation… poverty is declining in Canada, median incomes are rising, while inequality is steady or even falling… youth unemployment… is in fact rather lower than it’s been at most times in the last 40 years
Tags: economy, poverty, standard of living, youth
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Street parties publicize call for $14 minimum wage — just enough to break poverty line
The minimum wage campaign, which began Aug. 14, is planning similar days of action across Ontario on the 14th of every month in advance of next spring’s provincial budget, when the Wynne government is expected to weigh in on the matter… The campaign… is sponsored by a coalition of groups, including Ontario Campaign 2000, Parkdale Community Legal Services, Put Food in the Budget, Social Planning Toronto, Toronto and York Region Labour Council and the Workers’ Action Centre.
Tags: economy, ideology, poverty, standard of living
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Wrestling with the minimum wage
… the Ontario Chamber of Commerce — the mouthpiece for 60,000 businesses in the province — favours regular increases in the minimum wage… Rinne said the threat of job losses is overblown, and argued that sharply raising the minimum wage would stimulate the economy and might even create jobs… At present, the Ontario government lurches from freezes to abrupt increases as its ideology and political needs dictate.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
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Arguments against unions are ideological, not empirical
… while ideologues get bogged down by unprovable arguments about how destroying unions creates jobs, they ignore the undeniable benefits to workplace health and safety from unionization (which ultimately lowers hospitalization costs for employers and taxpayers)… it’s a slippery slope: Right to work, as President Barack Obama says mockingly, is “right-to-work for less money.” …Martin Luther King’s… quote…on “false slogans, such as ‘right-to-work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘work.’ ”
Tags: globalization, ideology, rights, standard of living
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Work is undervalued in society’s obsession with ‘stuff’
Why is there so much attention paid to people as consumers, but so little to people as workers? Is it because the mere mention of our rights as workers suggests uncomfortable truths that threaten the very ideological foundations of the current economic system? … It’s as if workers are mere cogs in a giant machine, only worth discussing when a breakdown occurs. There’s no profit to be made promoting workers’ rights; in fact, we are seen primarily as a cost.
Tags: economy, ideology, standard of living
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Is Canada’s great skill shortage a mirage?
Don Drummond… hasn’t found a shred of credible evidence that Canada has a serious mismatch between skills and jobs. In fact, most economic indicators point in the opposite direction… Drummond asked finance department officials how they came up with the figure… They refused… he considers it a strong possibility that Ottawa’s heavily promoted Canada Job Grant — the centerpiece of its economic plan — is built on a false assumption.
Tags: economy, ideology, immigration, jurisdiction
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