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Occupy this: if you’re living here, you’re already one of the ‘one per cent’
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
October 18, 2011
North America and Europe, geographic epicentres of the Occupy Wall Street movement, are the fattest of fat cats, globally speaking… adults in North America, Western Europe and a few Asian countries, most notably Japan, together possess almost all the world’s household wealth (a measure of total assets, including real estate, investments and all other property, net of any debt.), about 88 per cent. Everyone else, the majority of the world’s people, share the remaining 12 per cent.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Government can work smarter
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
July 5, 2011
A shortage of qualified change leaders is another critical constraint stemming from a number of factors: lack of executive development programs on transformation or innovation leadership in the public service; rotation of senior managers out of project management roles before they achieve success; a limited number of innovative projects to lead; and a reliance on external consultants to assume project management roles… Despite these gloomy observations, there is, in fact, a lot of scope for innovation in government.
Tags: ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Gender inequality isn’t a ‘women’s issue’
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
July 5, 2011
… Women’s World participants are seeking to address: problems such as poverty, food insecurity and homelessness, pornography, sex trafficking and war rape, to name just a few. Because at root, these are all challenges – or crimes – of equality. They are symptoms of the bigger issue: the ongoing disenfranchisement of a shocking percentage of the world’s women. And every government that’s not investing significant resources in righting that wrong is negligent, short-sighted and failing to nurture its nation’s true capacity.
Tags: participation, rights, standard of living, women
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
How civil servants serve a hated master
Monday, July 4th, 2011
June 30, 2011
the civil service is, in theory, a neutral administrative tool. In reality, of course, civil servants have scruples and ideologies just like the rest of us… Thus, when serving a government whose policies they personally dislike, senior civil servants can’t help but face a powerful ethical choice: lead with enthusiasm, secretly resist, or resign? Economist Albert Hirschman nicely laid out the choices in his classic text, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: keep one’s mouth shut (Loyalty); protest forcefully from within (Voice); or leave (Exit).
Tags: ideology, participation
Posted in Governance Delivery System | No Comments »
Homelessness alliance likes city’s budget $14M will make difference, group says
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
April 12, 2011
… the city’s new budget… promises $10 million in new investment to fight homelessness and poverty plus a further $4 million in capital funding. “It’s going to be targeted funding to really focus on bringing some of the homelessness numbers down, and decreasing some of the effects of poverty” [chair Marion Wright] said. Next, she said, the federal and Ontario governments should try to measure up to what Ottawa is doing. The number of people who used temporary shelters last year -7,156 of them -was almost unchanged from the previous year.
Tags: budget, homelessness, ideology, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Delivery System | No Comments »
The fairy tale land called Equilibria
Friday, March 18th, 2011
March 14, 2011
Citizen columnist John Robson poked great fun at me recently with his “Economic children’s story” (March 5): a humorous fairy tale about a land where unions kill the goose that laid the golden egg, until taxpaying denizens (starting in Wisconsin) throw off the yoke imposed by overpaid teachers and garbage collectors. Of course, if workers were really paid in golden eggs, unions would never have been invented. Instead, unions were born in a less pastelhued world where workers fought even for the basics of survival. Employers and their think tanks have been complaining ever since…
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, privatization, rights, standard of living
Posted in Debates | No Comments »
What crime statistics don’t tell you
Monday, February 14th, 2011
February 13, 2011
When citizens increasingly do not bother to report crimes or, worse, are afraid to do so, it gives a falsely reassuring picture of the state of law and order in Canada. It is also troubling evidence of an erosion of citizens’ faith in the competence and compassion of their government when it comes to the criminal justice system. When misinterpreted as proof that citizens are loud ignoramuses, this statistical distortion further contributes to that erosion.
Tags: crime prevention, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Policy Context | No Comments »
Billions of dollars in benefits unclaimed by Canadians, report says
Friday, February 11th, 2011
February 9, 2011
A research report [prepared for the federal task force on financial literacy] examined why some government programs have such poor “take-up” rates. Those rates are considered an important measure of financial literacy. The report concluded that language and poverty often present barriers, particularly when the programs or application forms are complex… government should simplify its programs and application forms to ensure more Canadians benefit from the financial support to which they’re entitled. The recommendation is one of 30 in the report, “Canadians and their Money”,
Tags: budget, featured, ideology, rights, standard of living
Posted in Inclusion Debates | No Comments »
Elections Canada takes aim at disengaged young Canadians
Friday, February 4th, 2011
January 29, 2011
Elections Canada is commissioning a major new national survey as it searches for new ways to encourage disengaged young Canadians to vote… the project will survey 2,500 people between the ages of 18 and 34 who are disabled, unemployed or aboriginal, live in rural areas, or speak neither English nor French as a first language. It’s all part of a “youth research action plan” Elections Canada hopes will help it reach out to a segment of the population that’s increasingly tuning out electoral politics.
Tags: ideology, participation, youth
Posted in Inclusion Debates | 2 Comments »
The working rich [‘job creators’]
Monday, January 10th, 2011
January 9, 2011
… goodbye corporate fat cats, hello job creators… those new corporate tax cuts that seem so ill-timed given the large deficit, so unfair given increases in taxes for the middle class in 2011, are completely justified. They are not going to already richly compensated Bay Street fat cats but to job creators! …Three decades of unrelenting neo-conservative preaching have turned taxes into a dirty word, as left-leaning economist Hugh Mackenzie says, “to the point where even governments don’t defend government.”
Tags: economy, ideology, privatization
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
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