The Real World of Economics

 

Jagmeet Singh and the NDP organized a boycott of Loblaw’s supermarkets for the month of May, in protest over high prices and “corporate greed.” 

This made little sense on many levels, and much sense on none. 

Why Loblaw’s? Its profits were lower than those of some other chains.

Then the Conservatives uncovered the fact that Singh’s brother was a lobbyist for a competitor.

The standard evidence of Loblaw’s price gouging was that prices on comparable products were lower at Dollarama. 

But if so, why boycott? Just buy at Dollarama.

And attributing the rise in prices to “corporate greed” is anthropomorphising a corporation. Can an abstract concept or mechanism feel greed? This, from the side of the aisle adamant that corporations are not persons.

As for greed from individuals, the free market is our protection against it. Raise your prices, and your competitor takes your business. Greed bankrupts you. The places where greed has free rein, and where we need to worry about it, are those not held in check by competition: government bureaucracies, the professions. In sum, the Liberal and NDP constituencies. Making this talk of “corporate greed” look like cynical misdirection.

In other news, the Red Lobster chain has just gone under. At the same time, complaints are rising at the high cost of fast food. “Ordinary people just can’t afford to eat out any more.” Wendy’s is in trouble for trying to introduce “variable pricing,” lowering the price of their meals at slower times of the day. Apparently there is something unfair about this. Everyone should always pay the same price. And again we hear this all framed as a fight against “corporate greed.” 

No doubt the rising cost of ingredients is a part of this. In Canada, the carbon tax is also forcing up the cost of everything. But the same thing is happening in the US; and the rising cost of ingredients should hit home cooking as much as restaurant dining.

The real story is that the fast food chains, and midrange restaurants, are being priced out of their market by the rise in the minimum wage. Anyone could have seen that coming. We are, as a result,  by and large going to lose the convenient option of grabbing a quick meal on the go. Main streets and malls everywhere, already emptying out due to the move of consumers to shopping online, are going to lose their last potential tenants and revenue stream, restaurants. And huge numbers of workers, especially young people on their way up, are going to lose their jobs and their future.

As always, hardest hit will be the poor. The children of the well-off can go to university or community college and be qualified for jobs immediately on graduation. But those who cannot afford higher education enter the market with no skills. They must learn on the job and work their way up. They need these low-paying entry-level jobs. Now what? A life on welfare?

Are there any honest souls on the left?

 Or do they really just not understand economics?

The Ontario NDP Platform

 

My local NDP candidate in the upcoming provincial election sent me this flyer. 

A response to her promises.

Expanding OHIP to include mental health care.

Unfortunately, there is little or no scientific evidence that psychiatric/psychological approaches to mental health actually work. So this probably amounts to shoveling a large amount of taxpayer money to wealthy professionals, with no net benefit to the mentally ill. Who may be all the more neglected due to the illusion that “Something is being done.”

The best mental health care is religion, stable families, and voluntary associations. Unfortunately, political parties like the NDP tend to kick at such supports.

Invest in safe schools and affordable child care.

“Invest” is a weasel word invented by Bill Clinton. It means “spend.”

In the case of education, as with mental health, more money is not the solution. We spend more than Finland, and consistently get worse results on standardized tests. We spend more than we used to, but student results have been flatlining or declining. Most of the growth in educational spending has been on administrative positions, not education.

The solution is to introduce competition to promote better performance.

Affordable child care must not disadvantage those who choose to stay home to raise children; for we know this is the best option for the children. The state cannot do as good a job as the family—witness the residential schools. When we subsidize child care out of general revenues, we are acting against the children’s best interests.

Cashable child care vouchers might be the solution.

Fight the climate crisis with a bold and realistic plan to bring us to net-zero emissions.

The truth is that no provincial plan to fight climate change is realistic. Bringing Ontario to zero emissions would have no detectable effect on climate change. The problem is global. Most emissions come from countries like China, India, and Russia. 

Tougher environmental regulations and carbon taxes will only push manufacturing to these countries, crippling our economy and worsening the problem.

The way out of the climate crisis is improved technology. The pro9vincial government might to its small part with research grants, but these too easily turn into welfare for corporate cronies. Perhaps instead, a prize for significant research results.

Better long term and home care.

This is an empty promise. After the deaths in nursing homes during COVID, everyone demands this. So the only basis on which to vote NDP rather than PC or Liberal is if they seem to have a better plan. And they are not saying what it is.

Here’s a proposal: mandated 24-hour webcams, so that families could monitor the care their relatives are receiving.

Make housing more affordable

Another pie in the sky promise. Everyone recognizes the problem, but what is their plan to fix it?

The main problem is that overregulation means developers cannot offer what the market wants and can afford. Most of this regulation is at the municipal level—but the municipalities are the creatures of the provinces. Thoughtful deregulation is the efficient fix, and costs nothing—indeed, reduces government costs. I suspect the NDP would want to add more regulations, making the problem worse.

Homeowners may worry that deregulation would reduce the value of their homes. But this is short-sighted. Opening up properties for the highest and best use should, instead, on balance increase the resale value of their real estate.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop--Er, Sorry, the Singh Trudeau--Pact

 

I was taken by surprise by the formal parliamentary alliance between the Liberals and the NDP. This sort of thing does not generally happen so long after an election. My first thought is that it looked like circling the wagons.

It seemed to make no sense particularly for the NDP. Minority partners almost always get crushed at the next election, because now they are unable to distinguish themselves from the larger alternative. So why vote for a sure loser?

Worse, the Liberals will have been in power for three cycles. By the nature of things, next election, Canadians will be tired of them and want a change. Not a great time to identify yourself with them: to lash yourself to a dying animal.

Andrew Coyne seems to have it figured out.

While up in the polls, the NDP is busted, financially. Maybe their traditional sources of revenue are drying up; maybe they’ve been overspending. But they cannot afford to fight an election in the near future. 

As a result, with the other parties mad as hell and hot for a fight, they are stuck supporting the Liberals anyway, to avoid a snap election. They recently had to support the imposition of the Emergency Act, a reversal of their historic position and an attack on their own traditional working class base. It is humiliating and makes them look sycophantic anyway.

The current agreement saves them from that happening repeatedly; if they have to support the Liberals, now they can claim to be getting something for it.

The Liberals for their part are down in the polls, probably realize they will go down further, and the other opposition parties are eager to vote them out. Probably their own caucus is restless. This gives Trudeau some protection against suddenly being thrown to the wolves. 

It is entirely likely, and probably in the NDP’s interest, that they break the pact before its natural expiry. That way, they can put some distance between themselves and an unpopular government in time for an election. The delicate dance for the Liberals is to do just exactly what the pact requires, so as not to give Singh any legitimate-sounding reason for going back on it.

The surest sign this was all done cynically, expecting to double-cross, is the way the two leaders, and especially Singh, keep stressing how the pact requires trust.

But this will be tricky; as soon as the NDP pulls out, an election will probably be forced. And the NDP is likely to get slaughtered along with the Liberals. This will be a change election, and most likely this leaves the Conservatives in majority territory.

Tom, We Hardly Knew Ye

Tom Mulcair

A friend who has voted NDP his entire life says he cannot vote this time for Jagmeet Singh.

Perhaps this gives some insight into why the NDP’s support has sagged.

My friend feels that Singh lacks gravitas. “I can't imagine him representing Canada abroad.”

He did not say how he would vote; he did say Scheer and May both also lacked gravitas. Of course, I feel the same way about Justin Trudeau, only much more so. He did not mention Trudeau, but surely because in this case the matter was obvious. I got the impression he was just going to stay home.

Then he mentioned Tom Mulcair—how wrong the NDP was to vote him out.

I think that may be important. Singh is being compared to Mulcair as much as to Trudeau. Mulcair had gravitas. Next to him, Singh looks and sounds like a student body president.

I think this is a fatal error indulged in by both the Tories and the NDP. Seeing Trudeau’s success, they did the boneheaded typical politico thing and voted in new leaders who were as similar as possible to Trudeau; young, good-looking, inexperienced. Giving the voters no alternative once they saw the problem with youth, inexperience, and lack of seriousness. (May may not have youth, but she surely lacks gravitas.) Mulcair could have torn up this field and left only embers.

On top of that, there is a festering sense that Mulcair was treated badly by the party. I think my friend resented that as a Quebecker—and NDP support in Quebec has collapsed.

If the NDP is decimated this election, Singh will almost certainly be obliged to resign. If that happens, intelligent NDPers not fond of extinction of their species should organize a Draft Mulcair movement as soon as possible.

Corporate Welfare Bums

David Lewis in much younger days. 

The first time I was eligible to vote in a Canadian election was back in 1972. I voted for the NDP, well to the left. That might sound odd; nowadays I find myself apparently on the right. But given the same issues, I would vote the same way today. My politics have not changed. The position of the goalposts has. Or rather, the position of centre field. Or rather, the teams have changed ends.

The Liberals, in government, had imposed martial law two years earlier, during the “October Crisis” (non-Canadians may need to Google this). This may or may not have been justified, but it was an extreme step, and should not have been done without paying some price at the polls. Such a thing must not be allowed to become politically easy. As a liberal, I could not vote Liberal.

The PCs, unfortunately, the main opposition, on the right, had supported the move. So I could not vote for them as an alternative. Worse, the main plank of their platform was to impose wage and price controls, extreme government interference in the economy. Big government to the max, almost to the level of, yes, Fascism.

Leaving the NDP, the one party to have opposed the imposition of the War Measures Act in peacetime. But that's not all. They campaigned on lowering taxes. But even that was not all: the central plank in their platform was to end “corporate welfare”--handouts and breaks to big corporations.

They were then the small government, civil libertarian party. This shows how much things have changed. In those days, the left was not the party of big government, and the right was not the party of small government. “Conservative” used to mean big government, elitism, and nanny-stateism. “Liberal” used to actually mean liberal.

This reverie is brought on by the recent announcement by Amazon that it is building a second headquarters in Washington and NYC. And they are being given huge tax incentives to do it. Corporate welfare.

This is as noxious now as it was in 1972. Governments should never be in the business of favouring one business over another. This is an obvious violation of human equality, as well as lousy economics and a waste of money. It is obvious, too, that it is graft—the politicians give money to already rich corporations, and the corporations can be expected to remit back to their re-election campaigns. The elite help one another out, perpetuating themselves, with the money of the poor.

Does the payout mean more jobs for Washington or New York? I doubt it. The money paid to Amazon is necessarily taken from higher taxes on all other local businesses, money they then cannot use to hire more workers. Paul grows flush as Peter grows poor.

And it distorts natural market forces, reducing overall profitability or raising consumer costs for everyone. Is it a good thing if it really does attract Amazon to locate in a place where their infrastructure or labour is going to cost them more? With the difference paid for by the general public?

Of course, a smart businessman is unlikely to be so influenced. Trusting in future government policies is a shaky proposition. Without the tax break, one may in the near future suddenly be unprofitable.

Which means, then, that the tax break does nothing but hand over money for no public benefit.

The ideal solution would be a law at the federal level, in either the US or Canada, that prohibited such tax breaks and corporate welfare. This would be of benefit to everyone; so long as there is no such law, it is politically difficult for New York politicians, for example, not to offer tax breaks, knowing that Texas or Michigan will. And then, if Amazon locates in Detroit or Houston, they will be blamed. A similar rider could be written in to all free trade agreements, to prevent it from being done at the national level.

Amazon is pretty profitable. It does not need a taxpayer subsidy.

How about it, Jagmeet Singh? The pundits say you Dippers are struggling because you cannot find an issue to distinguish yourself from the Liberals. Corporate welfare in Canada is extreme and shameless. The Liberals won't touch it, because they are deep in that trough. They all retire from politics to jobs with Bombardier or Power Corp or Canada Steamship Lines. This issue could appeal to a wide base. Rediscover the heritage of David Lewis!

Singhing in the Rain

Jagmeet Singh

Jagmeet Singh's leadership of the NDP is in trouble. The Dippers cannot seem to budge the polls, and now internal dissent had broken out over Singh's high-handed approach to matters in caucus and in Saskatchewan.

I said at the time that the NDP was making a big mistake in dumping Tom Mulcair. I'd say now this proves me right.

The NDP thought that, with Singh, they could out-fresh face, out-hope-and-change, out-Obama, and out-progressive Trudeau's Liberals.

Bad concept. Trudeau's Liberals were already crowding that side of the political spectrum, governing left. There was not much viable ground to their left. Why vote, then, for a party with less chance of gaining power, when your agenda is being accomplished by the party in power?

Worse, if Trudeau screws up, or the public gets tired of him, Singh does not work as an alternative. He shares the same characteristics likely to alienate from Trudeau: being young, inexperienced, a pretty face, from a privileged economic background, from Central Canada, very urban.

Now imagine how much better Mulcair would play than does Singh on this score and at this point, if you are annoyed with Trudeau. If Trudeau looks amateurish, out of touch,, callow, and, as the Conservatives said, not ready for prime time, so does Singh. Mulcair has an avuncular look, solid political experience, performs well in the House. He looks like the adult alternative. Rather than crowd the left end of the spectrum, he was moving the NDP toward the centre, where they could look like a safer alternative to the Tories as well as the Grits.

Tom Mulcair.

Both Trudeau and Singh came in on the coattails of Barack Obama in the US. Whenever some new US politician makes a splash, the instinct among Canadians and Canadian pols is to find the closest parallel they can to run. But Singh is too late at the feast. Trudeau got there first. Now Obama is gone from the nightly news and the front pages, and that approach is old hat. The drive now, on the right, is to get someone who looks like Trump. Enter Doug Ford. On the left, the obvious model now is Bernie Sanders.

That's the avuncular thing.

Policies aside, Mulcair looks more like Sanders than does Singh.

Can Singh come back? Doubt it. Can the NDP get Mulcair to come back? Doubt it.

But I bet that if Mulcair were still leader, the NDP would be looking right now as though they had a serious shot at being the next government.

Singh for the Win

Jagmeet Singh is bad news for the Liberals and good news for the Conservatives.

The secret key to Canadian politics is that we are always looking South to see what big brother is doing, and then want to do the same. But there is a variable time delay of about seven years.

Trudeau got in two years ago as the best approximation at the time of Barack Obama. Young and handsome, at any rate.

But Singh looks significantly more hopeandchangey. For one obvious thing, his skin tone is closer. He can whup Trudeau for the “Canada’s Obama” vote.

It will probably not be enough for the NDP to win. After all, Obama is gone in the US. A bit too late for Singh. Now we look South, and see Trump. And the NDP is coming from third place currently.

What he is more likely to do is split the leftward vote more evenly, giving the Conservatives the chance to win. Scheer does not look or feel at all like Trump, but he is the closest thing, and, in the end, a real Trump would probably be too much for Canadians. Politeness is far more important north of the border than south. Reagan got us Mulroney; he wasn’t that close a copy either.

Tom and Max

So Tom Mulcair is out, and it was not close.

By conventional political calculations, this seems like a big mistake. Someone might rise to the occasion, but the NDP has nobody waiting in the wings who looks as good. Mulcair also had only one election campaign; he deserved another chance.

But I don't think the NDP is really that interested in electoral success. Given the party's history, party activists are not there for a chance at power or sinecure. It is more like a club, to which people belong for the sense of belonging. One could also say it was for the sake of their political principles, but then, flaunting those principles is a matter of signalling morality, rather than actually getting anything done. Otherwise, they would be more concerned with getting elected.

Mulcair was never really a full member of this club. He rose through the Quebec Liberal Party. He did not know these people personally. They might have felt more loyalty to a losing leader who was one of them. But if Mulcair could not deliver power, and easily, there was no further excuse for him. It did not help that he tried last election to push them to the centre, allowing them to be outflanked on the left by the Liberals. This had to alienate the majority of party activists who were there for the sake of self-identity.

In the meantime, they watched the British Labour Party veer left by electing Jeremy Corbin, while Bernie Sanders was grabbing headlines in the US. They probably felt sidelined, out of the game they came to play.

So not only are they in the mood to dump Mulcair; they are in the mood to get some of their self-esteem back by embracing the Leap Manifesto.

I guess this also means they endorse assisted suicide, at least by example?

The next leader, whoever it is, will probably lead them back into distant third-party status. But this is where they feel most at home.

Turning now to the Conservative race: pundits generally seem to be consigning Maxime Bernier to also-ran status. I think this is wrong. I think he has the best shot of all the likely candidates.

First, to hold on to its bona fides as a national party, the party should not select someone else from Alberta. Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, and Preston Manning, in effect their last three leaders, were all from Wild Rose Country. That is a serious handicap for otherwise popular figures like Jason Kenney. Brad Wall, from neighbouring Saskatchewan, is not that much better off on this score.

Second, it looks as though Bernier will be the only Quebec candidate. He will surely be the most prominent. Quebec is a huge block of delegates, the second-biggest, and, unsurprisingly given the language differences, they tend to back a native son. Doing well in Quebec in the next election also matters to a lot of party functionaries elsewhere, who are in the business of trying to win political office. Many of them will support someone they feel could go toe to toe with Trudeau in a French-language debate.

Third, in early polling, the most popular candidates for the post are Red Tories, from the old PCs: Peter McKay, Tony Clement, Kevin O'Leary. Most party activists are probably Blue Tories. Maxime Bernier, a libertarian, has a good chance of becoming their standard bearer, and they might quickly rally to his side if it looks otherwise like a win by Peter McKay. In the meantime, the Red Tory vote may be split among several prominent candidates.

Then again, I cold be wrong. I never would have predicted Donald Trump.

The NDP Drops Out of Contention

Tom Mulcair strikes the classic politician's pose: looking up and away, as if into the future.

It looks as if Tom Mulcair and the NDP have fallen off the knife edge. Previously in a three-way statistical tie for the current Canadian federal brass ring, each new poll now seems to show them a little bit further behind.

What went wrong?

In retrospect, I think their campaign strategy was flawed. It wasn’t the niqab issue—that should have been as big a problem for the Liberals. It wasn’t opposition to TPP—that was a Hail Mary after the numbers started falling. It wasn’t any blunder by the leader. Their problem was more fundamental: it was in trying to move to the centre to pick up moderate votes. If it is only hitting them this late in the campaign, it is because undecided voters only start to make up their minds this late in the campaign.

Political operatives always want to move to the centre as the vote nears. It is cynical, but it is the conventional wisdom. You win by managing to cover a larger area of the ideological spectrum than your opponent. You win by having the more popular stand on a larger number of issues.

This idea, besides being cynical, is probably wrong. Political operatives care very much about political ideology and about issues. They naturally assume, therefore, that everyone else does. But anyone who does care is probably generally interested in politics, pretty much by definition, and so probably already committed to one party or the other. If you are uncommitted until the last weeks, it follows that you are not a policy wonk. You are uncommitted because you are not big on politics, and are not that interested in the issues.

What are they looking for?

In Canada, specifically, they tend to look for two things. Most times, Canadians don’t like drama. They are just looking for someone who will be competent and honest and will mostly leave them alone. As Bill Davis used to say, with Canadians, “bland works.” They like a Robert Bourassa, or a Mackenzie King, an un-flashy, managerial type. A Stephen Harper.

Every now and then, though, with these long winters and such, things get boring, and Canadians hanker for a little entertainment. Then they want something that looks like vision, like change, but not too scary. They go for a Diefenbaker, a Pierre Trudeau, even a Levesque.

The NDP’s problem is, in the natural run of things, you cannot defeat a managerial type with a managerial type. If Canadians are in the mood for bland, the bland option is always to vote continuity. So, if Stephen Harper is to be defeated, he must either defeat himself by showing great incompetence of corruption, or his opponent must offer some excitement, and people have to be sufficiently bored to grasp for it.

In seeking to look safe, the NDP have inadvertently stripped themselves of any excitement. Trudeau’s Liberals, though, had some inkling this was not the way to go. There is an old saying in the Liberal Party: they always lose if they run to the right of the Conservatives. After all, if you want conservative, you naturally think CPC, not Liberal. Let alone NDP. So the Grits have put some “real change” into their platform: legal marijuana, electoral reform, deficit spending. Nothing too scary, but enough to look cool and a little naughty.

The NDP, seeing their polling begin to slide, doubled down on their initial error by coming out against the TPP. A worse move they could not have made. They figured they were losing by straying from their “base,” so they tacked back suddenly to the left. Instead, they cast off their chance to look managerial, but did it by promising no change. Making them even more boring than the Conservatives. Worse, the original move to the centre made them look dishonest and opportunistic, and the deoubling back made them look doubly insincere and opportunistic.

The Conservatives ought to be in trouble, but are still in contention. Theoretically, the NDP’s fall establishes the Liberals as the clear alternative. If you assume it’s about ideology, instead of 33-33-33, Conservatives- Liberals-NDP, we now risk moving towards 33-66, Conservatives-Liberals. NDP votes are supposed to go Liberal, not jump across the ideological sky to the Conservatives.

So far, that is not happening. The Liberals seem to be going up, and the Conservatives seem to be going up. If there is now only one left-wing party to choose from, there is also, by the same token, now only one managerial party to choose from. These two may cancel out.

In general, the managerial approach is the preferred one in Canada. The vision thing is the harder sell. There is a reason why Canadian governments tend to stay longer in power than anywhere else in the Commonwealth, or perhaps in the democratic world.

So I suspect the odds still favour Harper. The TPP may be the perfect touch, a little change, but change that enhances rather than tarnishes the image of good managerial government.

By the same token, win or lose, the Liberals would be foolish to ditch Trudeau as leader. Each succeeding election, the craving for change will grow, and he has the proper image. "Not ready yet," that's all. If that.

The Great Leap Forward

A commune canteen during China's "Great Leap Forward."

Let's have a look at the new “Leap Manifesto," shall we? This could actually be fun. Didn't our grandmothers warn us to look before we leap?

1. The leap must begin by respecting the inherent rights and title of the original caretakers of this land, starting by fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

There are no inherent aboriginal rights. First, the concept of “aborigines” is perfectly arbitrary, and second, all men are created equal. We are bound by treaty in some cases. No more, no less.

2. The latest research shows we could get 100% of our electricity from renewable resources within two decades; by 2050 we could have a 100% clean economy. We demand that this shift begin now.

In a nation that has the world’s second-largest reserves of oil and gas, why would we want to? Nor is “renewable” the same thing as “clean.” Nuclear is probably the cleanest energy, but is “non-renewable.” Biomass is probably the most disruptive to the environment, but is “renewable.”

3. No new infrastructure projects that lock us into increased extraction decades into the future. The new iron law of energy development must be: if you wouldn’t want it in your backyard, then it doesn’t belong in anyone’s backyard.

This “iron law” would prevent the construction of a lot of things of general value: cemeteries, prisons, mental hospitals, halfway houses, community living for the mentally retarded, town dumps, landfill sites, and so forth. It would also probably prevent the building of any factories or farms, which might have some detrimental effects on the economy.

4. The time for energy democracy has come: wherever possible, communities should collectively control new clean energy systems. Indigenous Peoples and others on the frontlines of polluting industrial activity should be first to receive public support for their own clean energy projects.

Small, locally run public utilities obviously lose any economies of scale. Is there any upside? And why need the government be involved?

5. We want a universal program to build and retrofit energy efficient housing, ensuring that the lowest income communities will benefit first.

It is in your self-interest to make your home energy efficient, to save on utility bills. Accordingly, no government intervention is necessary. This is just a handout to homeowners and landlords. You take the money out of their pockets, and then put some of it back in again.

6. We want high-speed rail powered by just renewables and affordable public transit to unite every community in this country – in place of more cars, pipelines and exploding trains that endanger and divide us.

This is technically impossible as written. A train that stops at every community cannot reach high speeds. Not sure what an “exploding train” is. It sounds bad. How will we ensure that the high-speed trains do not also explode? How does public transit replace pipelines?

7. We want training and resources for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, ensuring they are fully able to participate in the clean energy economy.

Carbon intensive jobs? Presumably, jobs in the oil patch. Those guys are making good wages. They are not likely to quit their jobs to go back to school to train for another job that pays less. In any case, they don't need our tax money.

8. We need to invest in our decaying public infrastructure so that it can withstand increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

Bridges and roads and such do need to be tended to regularly. On the other hand, politicians hardly need to be reminded of this. It is their prime opportunity for porkbarrelling and graft.

Think globally, act locally: backyard blast furnaces during China's "Great :Leap Forward."

9. We must develop a more localized and ecologically-based agricultural system to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, absorb shocks in the global supply – and produce healthier and more affordable food for everyone.

Probably the worst way to avoid shocks in the supply chain is to try to get all your food locally. This is an almost literal example of putting all your eggs in one basket. That, and the eggs will probably cost more. And you will have little but eggs to eat.

10. We call for an end to all trade deals that interfere with our attempts to rebuild local economies, regulate corporations and stop damaging extractive projects.

By this same logic, we should stop buying from shops, and make everything ourselves at home. That ought to make life better. It worked for our neanderthal ancestors. No, wait, the neanderthals died out, didn't they?

11. We demand immigration status and full protection for all workers. Canadians can begin to rebalance the scales of climate justice by welcoming refugees and migrants seeking safety and a better life.

What, exactly, is “climate justice”? What does it really have to do with getting a cheaper gardener? Do we really want to limit immigration to workers, not their families, or is that just doubletalk?

12. We must expand those sectors that are already low-carbon: caregiving, teaching, social work, the arts and public-interest media. A national childcare program is long past due.

What do all these “sectors” have in common? There is nothing obviously “low-carbon” about them. Heck, kids in childcare are not just carbon-based life forms: they tend to exhale and excrete carbon dioxide from every orifice. Not to mention requiring heating and electricity. No ,what these sectors have in common is that they are commonly imposed involuntarily by government. They also seem to approach the ideal of the proverbial town where everyone made a good living taking in each other's laundry. That ought to work.

13. Since so much of the labour of caretaking – whether of people or the planet – is currently unpaid and often performed by women, we call for a vigorous debate about the introduction of a universal basic annual income.

A universal basic annual income is not by itself a bad idea. It could be a cheaper alternative to the huge bureaucracy that has grown up around redistribution of wealth, and might see more money actually ending up in the hands of the poor. But the first half of the sentence above suggests why it might not work out so well: it could break up families, by undermining the role of the husband and father.

14. We declare that “austerity” is a fossilized form of thinking that has become a threat to life on earth. The money we need to pay for this great transformation is available — we just need the right policies to release it. An end to fossil fuel subsidies. Financial transaction taxes. Increased resource royalties. Higher income taxes on corporations and wealthy people. A progressive carbon tax. Cuts to military spending.

I thought the whole idea of preserving the earth was to leave a small footprint? Not to consume?

These people can never have been poor. For the poor, ”austerity” is not a “fossilized form of thinking.” It is the necessary means for survival. It is the poor, above all, who cannot afford a government that is spending recklessly. There really is a tomorrow.

15. We must work swiftly towards a system in which every vote counts and corporate money is removed from political campaigns.

Removing corporate money from political campaigns—so long as that includes all corporations, not just business corporations, i.e., also unions, professional associations, and non-profits—would be a good thing, it if were possible. But it is not. You cannot make a law, however draconian, and it would have to be draconian, that is without loopholes. Since it is not possible, transparency is probably the best we can do.

Alberta Swings Left

The Alberta election yesterday is an example of how strange the results can be in a “first past the post” (so-called) electoral system like our own. To be sure, there was a major swing from right to left in the popular vote. The combined left-of- centre vote went from 19.74% in 2012 to 44.76% of votes cast in 2015. That's significant. Nevertheless, the NDP win hinged too on a collapse of the Liberal Party and a surge by the Wildrose. The left of centre vote was united behind one party, and the right of centre vote was evenly split in two, so that the NDP was able to come up the middle. Based on raw votes, which is to say, the actual popular will, the government of Alberta would still be to the right of centre: you will note that 44.76 is still less than 50%. The Wildrose plus the PCs took 52.01% of all votes, and the tiny Alberta Party another 2.28%. Instead, the election has produced an absolute majority for a party that is not even centre-left, but left-left, on the Alberta political spectrum: not the moderate Liberals, but the out-there NDP.

Change in government is good, and Alberta was overdue. But lurches like e this are probably not. They make it hard for businesses and individuals to plan for the future.

This seems to me to illustrate the argument for my own proposal for the Canadian senate. One could do something similar, after all, on the provincial level. Leave the lower house elected as now, by riding; and add an upper house elected province-wide, or nation-wide, by proportion of the popular vote, without ridings.

Why? In the first case, because it would more accurately reflect the popular will, ensuring that all voices are heard. In the present case, assuming, for simplicity, a 100-member upper house, the result would be 41 NDP members in the upper house, 28 PCs, 24 Widrose, 4 Liberals, and 2 Alberta Party, with one Green. In other words, while the NDP would be the largest bloc, it would be a minority government there. The right wing would have a majority in the upper house.

This would also work towards stability, reducing sudden lurches in government policy.

A problem with bicameral legislatures generally is that they can cause deadlock. This is also a problem with proportional representation, as it makes it much more difficult for any one party to get a majority. My proposal would avoid this: only the lower house would have the power to initiate bills. The upper house, on the other hand, would have solely the power to rescind bills previously passed, which had been in effect for a set time period. Even if this time period were just a year, this would allow the lower house to budget on its own.

This would prevent any direct clashes between the two houses, and allow a majority government in the lower house to get on with the practical business of government. There would be no fiscal crises like the recent budget battles in the US. But there would still be a check on government actions.

The idea of ridings is, on the whole a good one. It is a way to protect geographically-based minorities from being run over roughshod by majorities. On the other hand, it does this by short-changing any minorities that are not geographically based. The upper house could handle that: you will note that it gives increased representation to minority parties like the Alberta Party and the Greens. In Canada, our problem tends to be regionalism; we could use such a unified chamber as a corrective. A regional grouping like the Bloc Quebecois would have much smaller representation in this upper than the current lower house. Giving more voice to minority parties, in turn, would encourage their formation, allowing more voices to be heard in parliament and in our public affairs, without the political splintering and ever-changing coalitions one sees in nations like Israel or Italy. There would be a point in voting NDP even if you knew they could never win your local riding.

This form of upper house would also give parties the opportunity to protect star candidates whose talents they consider vital to their success, or their success in government. Such protection would in turn lure more people of high calibre into public life.

Not incidentally, the structure I propose would naturally lead to legislation being regularly rescinded. This corrects a problem with the current system: now, all the incentive is to add new legislation, never to repeal old legislation. As a result, government naturally grows larger and larger, which is not the best thing to have happen. Better to have a balance here.

In the meantime, Albertans, get ready for a rocky ride. Ontarians went through something like this a generation ago, when their longstanding PC government was supplanted first by the Liberals, and then the NDP. It was a less dramatic swing than this one, and I think most Ontarians would now agree that it did not turn out terribly well.  

Reasons Canada Is Not Ready for Self-Government #6: Tommy Douglas

Statue of Tommy Douglas as "The Greatest Canadian."

In a recent CBC poll, Tommy Douglas was voted the “Greatest Canadian.” Obviously, he is still popular with Canadians—indeed, apparently more popular than when he was actually running for office. I guess this is progress. It did not seem to matter that he once advocated eugenics—the forced sterilization of the infirm, mentally ill, or even immoral--for the betterment of the race. It was the same policy Hitler was advocating at the same time. Douglas later grew quiet about the idea, but it seems he never publicly renounced his former stand. Whether he still believed in it or not, by World War II he would surely have understood that the idea was no longer politically marketable.

Racial theorist and minister J.S. Woodsworth. Opposed war with Germany.

In believing in this method of eliminating the poor--by preventing them from breeding--was Douglas just one rogue NDPer/CCFer? No, this was a, perhaps the, common view among Canadian socialists of the time. The founder of the CCF, J.S. Woodsworth, was another public advocate of eugenics and forced sterilization; he worried about the effects of the floods of new immigrants on the “racial stock” (see his book Strangers within our Gates). Other promoters of eugenics included all five of the “Famous Five,” commonly honoured as Canadian feminist pioneers.

Statue in downtown Calgary honouring the "Famous Five" eugenicists.

You'd think this kind of callous dehumanization of the poor would delegitimize a party and a movement that claimed to represent their interests. In the end, it’s roughly the way “Ducks Unlimited” looks after the interests of ducks. Plainly, the CCF/NDP has never really been the party of the poor. It is the party of the petty bureaucrats, who wish to expand government in order to expand their personal power. Yet ordinary Canadians still vote for them in large numbers—large enough that they are currently the Official Opposition, the second-largest party in the House. Rather like turkeys voting for an earlier Thanksgiving; or lemmings voting for a field trip.

But enough of that; there is another problem here. The alert may have noticed that both Woodsworth and Douglas are ordained ministers. This is true also of an uncanny number of prominent NDPers: Bill Blaikie, Stanley Knowles, Lorne Calvert, Dan Heap, and on and on.

Granted, we see pastors in politics in other countries too. But in nowhere near this concentration in one party; and elsewhere there are usually extenuating reasons for it. For example, pastors have been prominent in the US because for many years this was virtually the only learned profession open to blacks.

There is a reason for the separation of church and state: it is very dangerous to mix politics up for religion. It is dangerous for politics, and it is dangerous for religion. On the religious side, it kills true spirituality. On the political side, it almost automatically invests the state, as here, with some or all of the prerogatives of God. This mix of politics with religion is the essence of the “true believer,” rightly defined: someone who makes their political beliefs into a religion. The original and classical example, for which the term “true believer” was coined, is Fascism. Other obvious examples are al Qaeda, Maoism, Marxism generally, and Jonestown/The People’s Temple.

Trained for the Orthodox priesthood.

Besides the fact that mass murder tends to result, such evangelical politics makes democracy impossible. When political opinions are a matter of moral right and wrong, one has by implication the moral right to defeat and destroy those who disagree by whatever means necessary. A free vote? That’s simply decadent.

The belief in the superhuman power of the state leads as well to crackpot notions like eugenics. It is simply a matter of choosing the correct government policy in order to achieve paradise on earth.

It is hard to believe grown adults could convince themselves of such a notion. Canadians, it seems, in large numbers, can.

The Party of the Poor

Only a grocer's daughter...

A friend of mine, a fellow Canadian, backs Obama for the US presidency.

Interesting how Canadians, Brits, Bessarabians and Jordanians always have a favourite in US elections. Nothing could make clearer America’s status as “leader of the free world.”

Why does my friend like Obama? H answer is straightforward. He is well-educated and has a decent teaching job, but considers himself, on the whole, one of society’s “have-nots.” The Democrats he sees as the party of the poor; the Republicans are the party of the rich and of the big corporations.

If I believed this, I would also support the Democratic candidates, so long as competence and honesty were equal. I believe, however, that the Republicans are really the party of the poor, and the Democrats are the party of the upper class.

Formerly on welfare.

It is true, apparently, that those at higher income levels really do break Republican, while those with lower incomes break Democratic. This distinction is not that clear, however; it is more reliable to say that urbanites, rich or poor, break Democratic, while suburbanites and folks in the country, rich or poor, break Republican. And there are no good stats for income levels above $100,000—I suspect that once the income gets stratospheric, you would find a Democratic tilt. The Gates’s, the Buffets, the Soros’s, the Jobs’s seem to trend Democrat.

But look at where the Democratic leaders, or the Republican leaders, went to school. Here my case becomes, I think, clearer. While both parties tend to favour Ivy League, Dems are more consistent about it. This, where you went to school, far more clearly than annual income, indicates class. Ivy Leaguers will tend to be the second or third or fourth generation of wealth in their families. More importantly, they will all know each other, will have grown up together, will have belonged to the same fraternities and gone to the same parties. They will think alike. They will be conscious of themselves in class terms.

University of Saskatchewan, class of 1919.

Quick tally: Obama—Columbia, Harvard. Kerry—Yale. Gore—Harvard. Clinton—Oxford. Dukakis—Swarthmore, Harvard. Mondale—University of Minnesota. Fritz at least was a man of the people.

For the Republicans: Romney—Harvard. McCain—Naval Academy. Bush—Yale. Dole—Washburn University. Bush I—Yale. Reagan—Eureka College. Ford—Yale. Washburn University? Eureka College? Not exactly Ivy League. Definitely more diversity here.

Both parties, in sum, are dominated by an old-money ruling class, but the Democrats more so. If you did not come up through the right schools and the right connections, you have a far better chance of reaching the top among Republicans. This speaks to class consciousness.

Not incidentally, it is the same in Canadian politics. Quick tally of Liberal leaders: Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff, as is well known, were actually roommates at U of T. Rae: U of T, Oxford. Ignatieff: U of T, Oxford, Harvard. Stephane Dion: Laval, Sciences Po. Paul Martin, U of T. Jean Chretien: Laval. John Turner: UBC, Oxford, Sorbonne. Anyone who did not know each other at Oxford, Laval, or U of T? We’re talking one degree of separation at most.

Conservative leaders: Stephen Harper: University of Calgary. Stockwell Day: no degree. Joe Clark: University of Alberta. Preston Manning: University of Alberta. Brian Mulroney: St. FX, Laval. Kim Campbell, UBC. Jean Charest: Sherbrooke. The most obvious difference between Conservative and Liberal here is East vs. West; but the Western schools are on the whole less well-established, and the Western establishment is often first-generation. And apart from that, we have a far greater spread. Sherbrooke? No degree?

Okay, how about the NDP? They’re the party of the working class, right? Thomas Mulcair: McGill. Jack Layton: McGill. Alexa McDonough: Queen’s, Dalhousie. Audrey McLaughlin: Guelph. Ed Broadbent: U of T. David Lewis: McGill, Oxford. Give them credit for Guelph. Everything else is Canadian Ivy League, with a special shout out to McGill. Could this be why their teams are called the Redmen?

Sure, the Liberals and the NDP want to look after the poor. The upper class has always wanted to look after the poor: part of their mandate and their justification is to look after the poor. In the Arabian Gulf, sheiks are obliged by custom to have a free water tap on the outside wall of their compound, so that the poor can always get fresh drinking water, a major issue in the Arabian desert. The English lord was socially obliged to see to the health of anyone ailing on his estates. And I do not want to be cynical about this; ruling classes are not altogether a bad thing.

But invite them to your parties? Go to school with them? Let them marry your daughter? Elect them to a leadership position? I shouldn’t think so.

And there is a fundamental problem with a ruling elite that claims it is not a ruling elite, but instead “the party of the poor.” This is dishonest, and suggests there may be other dark deeds afoot. A ruling class is only tolerable when it is bound by a strict sense of honour to work for the general good; this speaks of a lack of any such strict sense of honour, and so of a corrupt ruling class.

In the meantime, the choice for those who are poor or on the outside of society in some way is this: do they want to be “taken care of,” by the Liberals or the Democrats or the NDP? Or do they want to move up, no longer being poor, no longer being on the outside? Then you go with the Republicans or the Conservatives.