Raise the Hammer
A recent report, entitled "The Rich and the Rest of Us" by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and reported in the Toronto Star has confirmed what most middle and low income Canadians already knew: We are working harder for less.
In an analysis of 28 years' worth of Stats Canada data on Canadian family incomes and hours worked, the report found that:
The link between a society's income disparities and health of its poorest citizens has been well documented over the years, with countries like Japan charting the smallest disparity and the greatest health, and the US quite the opposite.
When you add these long working hours and shrinking salaries into the mix the pictures becomes clearer - and bleaker - still.
What is no so clear is what can be done to reverse this trend.
By David (anonymous) | Posted March 31, 2007 at 13:10:36
I think this points to one inescapable conclusion, that Globalization was a major failure. I can't even see where it would have ever looked good on paper.
In the US, the industrial revolution made for high prosperity - it built all the homes and factories. As an island nation, the US made 96% of what it consumed.
Then someone decided that "isolationist" was a dirty word. But how did they ever believe that an industrial powerhouse like the USA could ever compete with people willing to work for a bowl of rice per day?
And now, as reported in a FRONTLINE program on the largest Big Box store, the store actually put companies out of business who refused to move their manufacturing out of the US - just so they could buy the products at a cheaper price. It is highly self-serving that these stores need the low prices for affordability by the people they are ironically putting out of work. It appears to be a plan to be the last store chain left standing, and the US just lets this happen.
And now, where business and industry once paved the prosperity road, the US is headed to become an economic wasteland. The Govt has given-up on the ability of the US economy to support the massive debt, and has turned to guns and increased Petrodollars to do it, and in fact leaving the US economy as collateral damage. Those who chase along with the US to rebuild the damages from war, or make their profits with overseas labor, are getting very wealthy. But the common man has to stick it out in the damage zone.
It seems then Globalization had one main goal, to average-out the prosperity in the world - or at least that was the effect. And in order to lift the Third World, countries like the US and Canada, once living high-on-the-hog, had only one way to go.
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