BC's poverty, homelessness and generally growing inequality are by choice. These are political choices made by the ruling elite to fight a class war against the working population. Wealth has been deliberately shifted from working people and communities to corporations and the minority who control them. This is not unique to BC, but a general tendency within capitalism, though first broached in the Anglosphere. The plan to do this was clearly stated in meetings of the Trilateral Commission thirty years ago - the same ones which stated that we had "too much democracy." The way to deal with this class war fought against us, is not to demand a few more crumbs from the table but to fight back in a mass movement - as they have been doing in France, Bolivia, Argentina. This is of course more easily said than done. To do this the working population must break the long tradition of subserviance to the NDP and trade union leadership. We need a self-managed, direct democratically controlled movement that will not be sold out by the NDP-labor bosses as the case in '83 and the recent hospital strike. A general strike plus occupation of government offices, the mass media etc - as in the Quebec General Strike of 1972 - would bring the criminals to their knees.

Oh yes all the poor's fault, God things haven't changed a bit in 200 years!

sdgreen, when karma hits you, please remember your oh so compassionate approach to the poor in our communities. When you're hungry and on the street, just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and move to where there's work- at a $6.00/hour training wage to start, of course.... oh wait, thats WAY too much money- and hey, since we'll have no minimum wage, there's another guy, even HUNGRIER than you who says he'll do your job for $5.00/hour...care to make a counter offer?.. but hurry up, there's a lineup of hungry folks behind ya buddy....

Much more to come on this topic later but for now I would note that nine out ten orphans can't tell the difference between normal gruel and fraser institute "imitation" gruel.
To any of the rich people who got busted in Squamish on Saturday in the RCMP highway 99 "sting" - HA, HA!!

Hey,SDGreen,Maybe some of THESE people would go back where they came from if they could,but we are closing places like Riverview which used to house a number of them.Mentally ill people often look physically capable of working but many are not.Those not treating their illness with prescribed medication are easy prey for the street drug pusher.If your illness affects your mind,how do you make intelligent choices?Your ignorant, simplistic and callous views are shared by too many others today.By closing places like Riverview down without adaquate replacment we simply transfer the cost to another area of government.Stop blaming the victom!

As the political system we have devised and lived with for two centuries collapses and the power to extract wealth from one group to give it to another vanishes, we can only expect to see more of these sort of articles to be written.

250 years ago, when Canada was only a little place and everyone here had to really work for their returns - including the 'so called elite' as they were here to ensure that the crown (either France or England) got their take of the booty. The spirit that was needed to make your way included co-operation, entreprenurship, real apprenticeship and an overall desire within everyone to help many others, since winter survival somtimes depended on enough hands to do the summer work and generate the surplus.
These spirits and methods work well in agrarian and Industrial societies, they too can be applied to 'information' societies, but there is a catch; only a limited number are likely to succeed since the mental skills needed are harder to develop than the muscle power needed in an agrarian society.

Now the nature of work is changing, on a global scale. With these changes some will be advanced into a new set of possibilities, others will not.

Consider the nature of society change from the agrarian culture to the industrial one:
1) farm based families started having to move to the new industry towns to find better paying work
2) agriculture had to go from growing 'food' to cash crop management, otherwise subsistence was all they had to hope for
3) agriculture land values started to rise, due to the need for industry location, without good cash crops to pay the taxes or mortgages farms fell from family hands and left many destitute.

now similar trends are happening in the transformation from industrial to information age:
1) more 'work' is being done in an online capacity - with the physical industrial needs being conducted wherever they can be got at the lowest cost = this is simple economics, but now on a global scale with information tech as the driving force
2) those without the technical skills, or withouth the ability to access them will be the 'left behinds' and since the physical work can often be done anywhere, those 'jobs' will have the least value. Therefore the amount someone will pay will be dependant on how little someone whom can do that work is willing to take.
3) large physical location of industrial equipments will become popular targets for organized violence, especially in places where the workers have had a monopoly in the past. Once these locations start being attacked (or set out of action due to strikes) the companies operating the factories will shift their operations elsewhere, count on it.

So using the political system to try and drive this agenda will only send the message to the venture capitalists that your region, jurisdiction, city or town will not respect private property, nor will you accept the reality of the business world today = your region, jurisdiction, city or town will become one of the 'left behinds'.

Continued nagging about these issues simply sends the message to those whom might be interested in investment here to stay away, thus keeping the opportunities for real job creation, or wealth growth away also.

Wow - I actually agree with anarcho, in the sense that it would take a genuine mass movement to effect change. The "established" Left (NDP, Big Labour) can't do it.

I'm pessimistic about the fate of Vancouver. I think there will always be enough people who do sufficiently well there that they have an interest in perpetuating the status quo, but we're also well on the way towards the formation entrenched underclass. Vancouver is the worst I've ever seen it in Canada.

Interesting analysis, Murdock. Largely true, except you leave out one fact. That is the changes you rightly speak of, did not happen like a force of nature. They were imposed from above by a state and a ruling elite, in other words, through politics. If we, the ordinary people, are to be treated like part of the furniture and this domination is the result of ruling class politics, then surely the natural response would be political action but in a different direction. As for us needing the venture capitalists, the largest investment pool is our own pensions, RRSPs and other savings. Our money is being used to screw us. Maybe WE should control it? And as for foreign investment most of it consists of buying up existing companies or investment in areas that are unnecessary such as MacDonalds, Starbucks, or Wallmart.

Thanks Nightbloom. Just more proof how complex life is and how we should concentrate on what we agree upon rather than what devides us. Though a good hammer and tongs debate does help clear the air.

Anarcho - you're absolutely right - people (who have money to save) need to do so without kicking themselves and their community in the rear-end - which means they need a modicum of awareness of their role as pawns in the big scheme of things. Secondly, we need a society with class mobilization - as a reality - which is what our "egalitarian" system of gov't should be fascilitating - and the only way that I know how to do that is through access to education. It has become more and more a matter of the wealthiest being able to afford an education that would guarantee a rosy future. It would save all of us a significant amount in welfare payments if we made sure our youth made it through post-secondary training and were equipped with the best investment - education. This would address the needs of present and future families living on the fringe. Those who are homeless because they can't make a living due to other problems - need to feel respected and valuable as human beings - which doesn't exactly come through with a grudging cheque. We are all self-fulfilling prophesies after all.

There are plenty of jobs in virtually every community. There is no excuse for those identified in Vancouver as homeless to be homeless. They should move somewhere else where cost of living is cheaper.

The problem is that when one is homeless, it is difficult to get a job. The homeless have no telephone number at which a prospective employer can contact them. The homeless have no decent clothes with which to adorn themselves when applying for a job. They have bad teeth (and breath), they do not have access to nice warm showers, and thus, tend to be a bit pungent. A homeless person carries a stigma - "why are they homeless? How can a person so unreliable as to be without a home be a benefit to my organization?" These are the questions a prospective employer will ask themselves.

As for the homeless moving to somewhere that the cost of living is cheaper - where is that? How do they get there? With what? The homeless are having enough trouble scrounging enough for food. Ought they to hitch-hike? Again, to where? What do they do when they get there?

The problem with hitting the bottom is that it takes much more efort to get up again than it does to stop yourseelf from going down. It's a classic Catch-22. No money for clothes, dental care, telephone, home - impossible to get a job. Impossible to get a job - no clothes, dental care, home.

I agree about education. Trouble is, it actually has to start before the child goes to school. They need a learning-positive environment, yet so much in our society works against that. The education system in conjunction with the medical system could do something to help but they don't. Every prospective parent - in exchange for "free" medical attention, should take a class, part of which would explain how reading to children, encouraging them to have an interest in books etc, is a virtual guarantee that they will do better in school and stay out of the courts than those who don't do this. Then they would be handed a package of childrens books.
Secondly, we need to re-establish apprenticeships and get away from the idea that physical labour is a bad thing.

murdock,

Your post assumes that the wealthy will be able to continue to sell their products anywhere they want and are therefore able to live and produce anywhere they want.

The problem is that any society that gets "left behind" can simply close their markets and create their own wealth through their own labour.

The international trade system is voluntary. Foreign investment is not required to make an economy. 97% of the foreign investment in Canada since free trade was enacted was simply the take over of existing Canadian companies. No wealth was created.

Therefore, the reverse of your argument is also true, any group of wealthy elites can easily be "left behind" by simply denying them citizenship and the ability to trade.

Of course the wealthy knows this which is why they're on a constant campaign to remove decision-making powers from the nation-state. Of course it'll never happen because a society that is being "left behind" can always simply reassert itself and even go so far as to refuse to recognize its own currency. All moveable wealth exists only on paper.

sdgreen, if your view of economics worked, sub-Saharan Africa would be the richest place on earth.

You can buy a first year macro-economics text, a copy of P.Berton's "Depression" and Broadfoot's "Ten Lost Years" for probably a couple of bucks each at a used bookstore. Would be money well spent on your education.

Mr. Broadfoots book Ten Lost Years and another similar book by him, Six War Years are great Canadian history books, told by Canadians. About a much tougher, simpler time, but also a time of more trust and community. They should be in high schools. We have a need for workers, these people have a need for jobs, and many of them are capable. Wouldn't it be great if when an employable homeless person wanted a job they were given a room, some clothes and job. Something like housing people in Atco trailers, and a job, construction laborer, landscaper, something. How hard would this be? Even if people fuk up, some will stay off the street and become working taxpayers, not a drain on resources. Been so close to being homeless myself a few times, lucky to have some friends, it can happen to anyone.

climber, if EI offices did their job a lot of unemployed workers would probably find work. EI offices should provide what mnany people lack, they should be like "buddies that let you sleep on their couch and know a guy that's hiring". Instead those offices are nothing better than a public bulletin board that the internet does better. They don't help the jobless at all. To justify their existence you should be able to walk in there the day after you lose your job and get some real help towards finding a new one.

A word on investment capital. If one can make a buck on BC, then one will invest. it doesn't matter who is in power.

The public really never invested in projects until the 1830's, before it was very limited groups investing in almost sure things, made available by the government. The bubbles, which there was many, were overinflated pyramid schemes, that, by reason of the press of the day, were promoted 'to death'. The South Seas 'buble' for one, where England's king made a fortune. The tulip craze in Holland is another example of a massive, government supported scam.

It was the railway boom, where again the mass of public subscribed their life savings on extremely questionable projects. The only difference was, when the schemes collapsed, the concept of limited liabilty was created.

Generally, capital investment only occurs when a profit is guaranteed, such as RAV. The whole concept of private corportations investing BC is bogus. What happens, is the spend so much money in BC and the governmet guatantees them a profit.

We now have a whole industry of the stock market, with pension plans, insurance/assurance schemes, etc. all intertwined to such an extent, it is impossible to tell them apart. If (and when!) the next crash comes it will be catastrophic, unlike the 1929 crash where the elite/ruling class survived, the next major crash will change a whole lot more as the elite/ruling class will lose ther share of investment in the stock market.

As for the poor, they are needed in our society to scare the hell out of marginal members of the elite class to buckle up and work.

just to add, I've got 10 Lost Years, Six War Years and Pioneer Years. They are great books told by the people that lived those times. And they should be required reading by Cdn high school students.

SDGREEN

dunngy quite correctly argues that mentally ill people often have conditions which are often invisible to a passerby. Many people are incapable of seeking the help (and/or the classification) they need. Homeless people are quite frequently people suffering from schizophrenia/schizo-affective disorder, Mental Retardation, Tourettes, Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional-defiant disorder, Axiety disorders (like post-traumatic stress syndrom), Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Paranoid Personality Disorder, Borderline personality disorder, and Depression - to name a few.

I will now delve a little more deeply into just one of the above causes of mental illness. For many, the effects of trauma cannot be cured by saying - "get over it." People who have been abused or exposed to violence are often unable to hold a job or create work for themself in our society. Making these people fill out paper-work related to seeking help for their condition often retraumatizes the victim. So, on top of a person who has grown up sexually and physically abused (and probably witness to other forms of abuse), we send this person to the street to live a life of poverty because they can't just "get over it" and they are incapable of dealing with their very real problems.

Please note that trauma in any form can cause very real changes to a person's brain - in effect, disabling that person. Further, when those changes result in a heightened anxiety response, then quite often more damage continues to occur. It is a vicious cycle, that can be very disabling. We often see this in returning war veterans, but the same sort of thing happens to many people - be they survivors of a natural disaster, or the recipient of bullisome behaviours by relatives or peers. Many of these people end up on the street.

Jan Wong's series working as a cleaner for a "molly maid" type company (she never said the name" in the Globe and Mail should be reading for every politician in the country. The Ontario minister of labour praised her on it at a function and she told him to change labour laws.

Sadly funny he didn't see it was his job in the first place. He should have said "thanks to your article I am going to bring legislation in to help the working poor".

Also sad is if he did bring in laws to help the working poor the right wing would scream anti-business.

SDGreen would likely advocate executing soldiers shirking their duty through so-called "shell shock"......

From the article:

I looked on the map, and couldn't find any place called "Elsewhere". Perhaps an expedition shoudl be mounted to locate this paradise, with it's low cost of living and high job opportunities.

Even Roman Emperors gave the poor food! Poverty has been around for as long as there was civilized man. Maybe the great pyramids were nothing more than a Egyption mega project to make work for the poor?

We all, the so-called left, I think, basically understand the nature of the probelm well enough. It's called capitalism-, which transfer socially produced economic product share from the lower class stratas to the capital owning class.

Yes, it really is "fundamentally" that simple.

The problem always has been, as Avicenna seems to be correctly instinctively aware, education-, though I think not the "formal" education system concept of it so much, as more simply the popular level of understanding of the class system, how it works, and what they can do about it.

And hand in hand with that at some equally fundamental level, a sufficient motivation of sufficient mass numbers to actually engage capitalism confrontationally. And if capitalism has been good at nothing else through the postwar prosperity period, and though it is beginning to wear thin, even now "adequately" enough for enough people to take the edge off this "mass" motivation and preparedness to "take the system on".

Which are the two depressing sides of this period, I think. In summary, an inadequate popular level of understanding of how capitalism really works and what the possible alternatives are, and insufficient "gut level" motivation even yet, especially coming out of the economy, driving folks to understand what is happening to them and to ACT.

Indeed, we are all effected by these twin realities even ourselves, the left, to one degree or another, I think.

Something fundamental and qualitatively has to change in the system yet, to alter this balance of education and motivational elements.

Warning signs are there that there is a changing dynamic within the world political and economic system, of course, in the declining standard of living even within the advanced capitalist countries, arising out of the Neoconservative policy direction, in the systems access of critical resources from those parts of the world it exploitatively depends upon, such as the Middle East, which is increasingly resisting their exploitation, a changing peace and war environment, tilting towards world war, and the insecurities and threat that arise therefrom, of course. So there is an underlying dynamic that I think is destined to undermine, indeed is already, the basic security and effective functioning of this underpinning capitalist system, showing signs of, and sowing the seeds itself of, a mounting crisis. All of which also has to include this incredibly hot summer symptom of global warming, and the other consequences of our systemic abuse of the natural world and its life sustaining systems. It is like a storm gathering on the horizon, and we can all see it approaching, with some fascination, though we are yet even in

sunshine.

And if this process continues, as I think it surely must, for there is nothing effectively counterposing it from within or without the system, we are headed for where we are headed, and especially the US Empire is destined to come down and its economy unravel under the load of its own mounting debt, the cost side of the Empire ledger, and from its own mounting internal social and economic contradictions, and depletions of its own resource base (Which is attempting to pass onto us, by bring us as well into their sudden found "North American "share system". And on the day this seriously all begins to unravel, if I am right, we quickly unravel too, and are thrown into our own social and economic crisis. All the chickens finally come home to roost.

Continued next post...

From previous post...

Util then, I think, we are more or less caught upon the current plane in which we live and operate, only able to attempt to better understand the processes at work all around us, as they shift and mutate. And as well we can, if we think we are basically correct at least, attempt to pass that on to our fellow citizens, and continually improve the ways and the reach of the "education" of our fellow citizens. (That may seem some arrogant, but that's what all people and movements which seek to exert an influence over their time must do, act on their righteous arrogances. :-)

Then we are preparing the way at least, to be better intellectually and otherwise equipped to deal with what we see, obvious enough I think, moving in on us from that near horizan. It is always better to be forewarned and forearmed, in my read, than caught by sudden surprise at the seismic political, war, natural disaster and economic shifts which can catch one and whole societies, and shake the world and peoples lives so suddenly.

I don't know, maybe I but merely continue with what has often been a life of naivete, but it still seems to me that this is a time for continuing to develop one's own understanding of the world and its real socio-political, nature and economic processes, as opposed to simple reliance upon blind "faith", and that it is a time for movement building.

opines sd green.

I take it then you are in favour of an immediate change in the tax laws in this country.

To wit: All income, however earned, shall be eligible for taxation at progressive rates. No more depletion allowances and royalty holidays for extractive industry; no more special treatment for capital gains income; no more dividend tax credits and accelerated write-offs; no more special deals for commerce and industry; no more business-investment loss carry forwards and back and with offset permitted against other income; no more tax holidays for gamblers and lottery winners and no more special treatment for family trusts and inheritance. No more capital gains holidays for more than one principle residence.

I could go on. The biggest recipients of the government largesse you find so inimical to good management practices are not the poor – alas.

I see this whole issue as a slowly exposing picture of the steady disintegration of our current society.

I agree that one solution to assisting those living in poverty is education. However as mentioned above it is usually a much deeper problem than lack of education that is keeping the homeless person on the street.

I know of no solution, however i agree fully with whoever mentioned about doubling lower income or social housing. We need more affordable housing!!! I wish some of those big-ass developers would build a few rental units along with their condos.

One question to those who write off the homeless-if your brother (or mother, or sister, or best friend) lost his/her apartment, would you call him a bum and thumb your nose at him, or would you let the person stay with you awhile until they get back on their feet?

We should remember that without a cohesive community we really have nothing at all.

Really, I believe the gaps between rich and poor will continue to widen until such a time as the worldwide labor force begins to level out in terms of equity, equality, and compensation.

This may or may not happen but if it does, it could mean a more cooperative world from that point on. However on the way to that point there will be much flag hoisting and slitting of throats.

Step easy, is that Mencken-comes a time when every man wants to raise the black flag and start slitting throats? Anyways Coyote, back in the real world now, there is a guy who has contributed on this site, who I believe I met once, who has a demolition company. He hires drug addicts in recovery that have other issues as well, like being on parole. Here is a good guy that is actually doing some good, helping those who are prime candidates for being homeless or prisoners. When I was younger and fuked up, irresponsible, with issues, I found that if I showed up at a jobsite with the right clothes and asked for a job, often I got one, that I would usually fuk up after a couple of weeks, but at least I worked hard when I was there. Lots of construction work out there now, anyone who can work should be working, it would pay society back large if we helped people out a little, with the means to find and last at a job. What does it cost to house a prisoner, pay the cops, insurance, on and on.

climber
I think the name he used here was/is Barryjo or some such. Truman had a long and involved tête-Ã*-tête with him three months or so ago - as I recall. There are some groups in the States (one in Washington that I looked into) who claim to be doing well in this area too although the Seattle group mostly deals with released inmates but when I checked out their operations you could drive a truck through the data - it just didn't hold together. That kind of thing is great, but it'll never be anything more than a band aid. No disrespect to barryjo. I think I still have his phone number in my rolodex.

We spend too much coddling the rich and not enough reaching out to the poor - end of story in my view the wrong people are getting all the welfare.

This program doesn't 'do' some french accents apparently, sorry!

The sad fact of poverty in BC and
Canada is that we do not train anyone, until it is far too late and far to expensive in the game.

Education has become an industry, where the fortunate few go to university and then to a good paying job. Trouble was universities were never meant as vehicle to train people, rather to educate people to enhance ones understanding of things. Trade school were to train people for the work force.

But in the 40's, 50's and 60's, universities became a sort of super trade school for the elites; you had to go or you wouldn't get a good paying job.

Teachers, nurses are just a few examples where the universities have become job mills. The result is, like any other school, half the class is in the bottom 50%!

We are suffering from this nonsense today where we do not train the people who need to be trained, yet spend hundreds of millions on people who will never use their degree!

We are paying for it big time, drug addiction, poverty and the end results. Politicians should be scared as the ever growing population o the poor, may soon realize the power in their hands and then - watch out, it might not be so quiet a recolution!

Frank wrote:

survey says : WRONG

The soviet union tried this, and failed.

The French Empire tried this with the 'continental system', and failed.

The african and mid-east 'arabs' have tried this over 5 centuries, and failed.

To court this disaster again is to want to see Canada akin to a 3rd world state, like something from central Africa, where the normal man in the street not only has no control over what happens to the resources around him, nor does he get any benefit from them, short of turning the countryside into a killing field they end up with no power at all...

Is this the sort of 'wealth created from within' nonsense you are talking about?

"By closing places like Riverview down without adaquate replacment"

Umm and your rash generalizations aren't helping matters much either. The bed closures at Riverview have never been the problem, that's just a red herring. Riverview (and hospitals like it) existed because medication and other treatment options weren't available at the time. When chlorpromazine was developed, everything changed (btw in the 50's, at its peak, RVH had close to 5,000 patients compared to just over 800 patients in the early 1990's). Riverview was meant to be an acute care facility not a quasi-jail/city for deranged lunatiks province wide.

What bothers me about pointing a finger at Riverview for all that ails the system is, when Woodlands shut its doors for good, no one was screaming bloody blue murder. In fact, the Association for Community Living celebrated the closure of Woodlands. The transition from institutionalizing the mentally handicapped in New Westminster to community living is a success story and goes to show we don't need to segregate people because of their disability. For whatever reason - stigma is high on my list - not as much effort has been put into solving the problems with mental illness like it has been with other disabilities.

murdock:

We are getting there, aren't we? e have no effective manufacturing base. Close to 90% of the things we use are imported, and paid for by the sale of resources, which are being wrenched out of our control by purchases from abroad. Seems like we are prime candidates for 3rd world status......

Canada is a third world country, run by an elite of lawyers and corporate types who don't give a damn about the people.

The PM cheers dying Canadaians in Afghanistan, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts that he would never fight there!

Canada has become a personal plaything for the politicians of all political stripes (NDP included) where the politicians conspite in feathering their own nests, as well as their closest friends!

It's that old, "No Justice, No Peace" thing which you describe Step Easy. Which is one of those things which demonstrates that you are fundamentally right I think, and that this society is disintegrating into the ultimate class line in the sand between rich and poor, the owning class and the rest of us. (SdGreen, Climber and others speak for this neoconservative policy trend development here.)

But as Alcibiades says above, there are no amount of band-aids and, I would say, ruling class "marketplace" self-righteousness that will resolve this broad and deep socio-economic, including ruling class vs working-class disintegration" factor working against them and their system. Continued upon this current neoconservative/neoconazi course, there is a point out there where it rends the social AND economic fabric of this particular capitalist society irretrievably.

And sdgreen is wrong, capitalism has been printing money and creating paper wealth for itself, in order to steal lower class strata share of the economic pie, for a long time now, AND piling up debt. Indeed it was a policy used to mobilize this country up to and sustain in through the Second World War.

The problem is, of course, that continued on too long, to feed the greed driven "corporate pig trough" welfare system for Capital, it destroys the environment , because in the end it is, as Fait Lux has often said, the only real source of long term and sustaining wealth, and/or it accumulates debt for us held by foreigners. This latter element which is the real source of what ails the US

Too true Coyote. In this morning's New York Times there is an interesting guest column by Thomas Frank; it's behind subscription, but, I'll fix that little problem. I'll have to split in two since the length exceeds the 4100 character limit.

Part I:

Posting mistake here, so continuing.

:Excessive quaintities of essentially worthless paper money printed by the big banks, held by foreigners, largely China, which if they suddenly cashed in for US goods and services would devastate the US economy.

Used judiciously as "part" of economic policy, it actually can stimulate and sustain necessary and practical economic activity. But it must certainly not be a policy controlled by the corporate banking system, for their own rather than broad social ends.

For further example, it was not this policy alone, though it was an element, in the collapse of the USSR. Ultimately they were bled down by erronious and corrupt social problems at home, in combination with the costs of their "empire venture" in Afghanistan-, which to finance, did put too much artificially created paper capital out there. It was especially this latter USSR adventure in Afghanistan especially, up against the US financed and armed mujhadeen, later become the Taliban, which bled them to death, literally and in terms of precious economic resources. It is this that brought that Soviet "state capitalist" system to crisis and collapse.

It is the essential same policy set by the way, on an even bigger scale, which is destroying the US Empire-, and by extension, our own current Canadian capitalist system, when all the chickens out there finally come home to roost.

Which in its wierd way, at a certain level, will be the best development possible for our own working-class and poor. For it is likely destined to force us to break away from this excessive US influence on our own socio-economic policy, and depletion of our resources, shipping them south to feed that Beast by trucks and trainloads.

On that day, we will have to look to our own self-reliance as a people again.Which will force us also to confront this problem we have with our own capitalism and its manifold socio-economic inequities.

My view.

And here's part II:

Matthew Josephson was a man of the left, but “The Politicos” is not a reassuring tale of liberal triumph. The figure who towers over this dialectic of graft as it roars to its consummation is the greatest of 19th-century political commanders, the industrialist Mark Hanna, who managed the 1896 presidential campaign of William McKinley. Hanna was famously quoted as saying openly what his contemporaries would say only privately: that we were ruled by “a business state,” and that “all questions of government in a democracy were questions of money.”

When confronted by a groundswell for the earnest reformer William Jennings Bryan, Hanna used every weapon available to make an example of the upstart. While his lieutenants portrayed Bryan as an anarchist, Hanna enlisted the financial support of industry for McKinley, going so far as to levy an assessment on the capital of large corporations. He may not have rewarded his supporters with honorifics like “Pioneer” and “Ranger,” as did his modern disciple Karl Rove, but by the end of the contest Hanna had outspent Bryan by 10 to 1, much of it on “floaters” compensated for their votes.

Hanna’s methods were corrupt, yes. “But his corruption was rational,” Josephson tells us. “It flowed from the very nature of our society and its laws.”

And as we scratch our heads over all the shocking stories of the last six years we would do well to keep Josephson’s dictum in mind. These are not tales of individual venality, separate one from the other. They are expressions of the age. The issue is not merely corruption; it is what old Will Bryan would have called plutocracy.

Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.’’ He is a guest columnist during August.

Jeez, sorry Coyote! Didn't mean to interrupt your train of thought like that!
Good stuff btw.

:-)

It was my error, brother. A premature posting, not unlike... 8-D

A good day to you.

Coyote, don't be telling people what I stand for or believe, mind your own fuking business. All your pontificating is great, people were doing the same thing back in the '60s, smash the state, fight the power, blah blah, ain't gonna happen. What does matter, is finding jobs and decent living conditions for these people. That is what we should be talking about here. The big picture, that you are at least partially right about is of little concern to someone sleeping in a park without two quarters to rub together. Be nice if that person could get some clothes, cell phone, a job in a camp, or a place to live here. Then they could work for a while, get a drivers license, or get thiers back, buy a used vehicle, get a better place and so on. I have done it a couple of times, had help, some people don't have help, how can they get help, thats where this conversation should be going, imo. Or are you not talking to the little people on the street, writing the manifesto instead?

Rick W, re: disaster of closed borders;

We are not getting there at all.

Manufacturing base is the nonsense of sticking to the past, it is akin to continuing to farm for 'food' while everyone else is planting cash crops at the transition of the industrial age.

Now we are leaving the industrial age, adding knowledge to any manufactured items is of greater value than making the item, witness the China effect today on the manufactured process, with the many workers willing to provide the same product at 1/10th the cost of making it anywhere else, this makes everyone have to compete with them. Those locales that cannot accept these changes and adjust accordingly to these conditions are going to get left behind, just like the food farmer while the others are cash croppers.

To see the better effect look to Japan or India, where knowledge industry, built in depth (especially in India), has begun to take jobs away from the middle level workers in many firms, because location has become less important than ever before - this is the 'lever' effect of the very tech that we are using right now!

We are not becoming the 3rd world yet as you and I have the same ability to own property and resources here in Canada as many foreign owners. We have chosen to allow foreign investors so that we have access to a greater pool of capitol. Private property is still respected in our laws here in Canada, property for the public good is becoming more like the 3rd world (read Rafe's column in The Tyee this week), and if anywhere this is where our public servants have been letting us all down collectively. In the areas of Africa I was referring to behave more like the despotic rule of the Tsars or Stalinist Soviet Union, where there is no such thing as private property, no one can 'own' anything, supposedly this is all for the 'public good'. The problem is that 'pubilc good' progressively moves to the hands of the 'private operators' of the government. Whether this is a Military Coup General or a "Decendant of Kings" is meaningless, the common man is not allowed to own anything.

I suspect that you, Rick W, own at least a car, perhaps your house, in the 3rd world YOU CANNOT OWN ANYTHING.

This is why the 3rd world stays where it is.

murdock,

The soviet union tried this, and failed.

Its better than your alternative which is a never ending race to the bottom to try and attract the wealthy to our country. In comparison to your alternative of the future the Soviet Union was a roaring success.

Actually Europe under Napoleon (today is his birthday?) wasn't doing too bad at all. Better than it had previously in fact. Britain wasn't exactly being shut out either as fortunes were made off smuggling in their goods even among Napoleon's own family. You should pick another example.

Really? They've been occupied for much of that time by either the Turks or western powers so I doubt they were shut out of anything. You're just throwing them into the pot without checking that they actually represent what you think they represent.

Rhetoric.

Actually murdock its you that wants Canada to be a 3rd world state. No taxes on the wealthy as if we're living in Mexico in 1850 because of the misguided belief that if we tax them we'll end up poorer. This is complete nonsense.

and its you who are hoping for the day when national governments have no power and we're reduced to killing each other for table scraps or working for the wealthy on their secure, tax-free, estates.

The only wealth that's worth anything is "created from within". A country that develops its own industry etc is better off than one that doesn't develop anything but hopes rich guys will choose to live there. One way makes your people richer, the other way, (your way) makes them poorer.

Yes you can, or to quote you, survey says... WRONG!

The 3rd world is a big place, you're being very selective and ignoring most of it.

India is a member of the 3rd world and you can own things. Ghana is a member of the 3rd world and you can own things. Yet a third of their population remains below their poverty line, which is pretty poor.

There are a LOT of countries in the 3rd world where people can own things. Lack of laws repecting private property are not the problem.

Good analysis and writing, Frank.

It's at this point on property relations, private vs social property, private wealth creation vs broad social development and economic equality etc. that Murdock slips into his defence of status quo capitalism mode. Revealing in the process a startling ignorance not only of the consequences of those "private capital property" relations", but incredibly, also of the third world, for the reputed man of the world he sometimes presents here.

And then presenting this fictionalized assumption package to us as fact.

Even Japan, though it certainly has a so-called "knowledge industry", which with agriculture and manufacturing won't feed, house or cloth a damned soul of its own accord, really brings us as the real source of its wealth, a whole array of superior quality products from automobles to sophisticated electronic products, to name but a few for which it is world renowned. Indeed, we, only less so than we likewise provide for the US, ship them from own resource base, our coal and iron ore for their steel industry, which they transform through manufacturing and ship back to us as value added autos, electronic products etc. etc. We have the same lopsided colonial relationship, even especially with the United States as well, of course. (Which, in the "new global" colonial relationship in which we are trapped, relatively undeveloped and dependant, instead of self-reliant, keeps us racing to sell off more and more of our natural wealth, the real source of all later developed wealth forms-, betraying our own future generations, in order to pay for all this offshore manufactured stuff. Until we wind up virtually cleaned out and beggared one day, if it continues unchecked.)

For a man who gets many complex things about global realities, that he then comes up short in this relatively more simple economic area is baffling. Perhaps revealing the blindness one can have when reality comes up against one's own "private business" self-interest.

Useful, Climber, in the short run, but really just more and more band-aids, without ever addressing the source of the problem.

Food Banks are useful when there is widespread poverty, no doubt, but they are certainly not the solution to the fundamental problem; the source of the poverty that is capitalist economic and class relations.

Again, it's that depth of a saucer of water thing which afflicts the extreme right, Climber. You are still out of your depth.

Murdock, you sound like a real True Believer. Your posting is little more than the propaganda pumped out by the mass media, right-wing stink tanks, neocon politicians etc. Now logically of course, this does not mean ipso facto that such views are necessarily wrong, but in my 60+ years on this planet, what the rulers say rarely turns out to be the correct thing. Now, I don't want you to answer me by positing a false dichotomy. It is not a matter of the ruling elites concept (yours) vs. some failed command economy or protectionist model. There are other possibilities than this which we can discuss if you wish...

Solution, pick your face up out of your saucer, where you'll drown if you remain there, and take a deep breath of air.

I mean, its one thing even to drown in the deep end of the pool, but in a saucer of water? My God! Show some comprehension skill, man!

Democracy, democracy, democracy.

60+!? 8-D LOL

Goddamn fine, brother!

Who the hell said we old radical males get more conservative as we get older. I, and clearly thee, comrade, am more radical now than I have even been.

Capitalism sucks!

So does Climber. As in "social, status quo society, climber/clamber", I presume.

The System still sucks!

Coyote, you insulting old cocksucker, what do you propose in the meanwhile fukwadd? What?

Yeah, Coyote, I am 61 and first got active 41 years ago. None of the people I was involved with in the various radical movements have been turncoats – a little more moderate and nuanced maybe, but join the other side? No way. The idea that we become reactionary with age is one more cliché, the function of which is to induce cynicism and keep the slaves in line. Certainly, we did see it with some members of the previous generation, but then their movement tended to be more narrowly political or economic and ours was Gramscian – it really did fundamentally change the way we – and thousands of others - live and see the world. On the other hand we have never experienced the sort of global defeat that the left of the 1930's did. A friend once interviewed MacPap vets. Their defeat at the hands of Franco left many of them depressed for the rest of their lives. Ours is truly a different era. In spite of 30 years of attack on living standards,in spite of endless lying propaganda and Goebles/Streicher-like slanders, in spite of death squads in Latin America, we are still here, more numerous than ever. All we have to do is exist, and they lose. And this is for Capitalist, Neocon Iamclueless etc., in the historical global sense, you ARE losing. It is a race against environmental destruction and war-madness. If we can survive the next two decades we will have a more humane and democratic world.

I knew a MacPap veteran towards the end of his life, fellow named Jim, from Burnaby. He had me do some plans for renovations to an old rundown boarding house he'd bought - he had a big mortgage - with the intent of starting a home for single male pensioners who needed some place to stay and who couldn't afford anything better.

He too was a wounded soul and your post brought back the memory anarcho. Shortly after I started getting the plans together so he could submit them for a permit to the city he came down with cancer and the whole proposal never went anywhere. He died a few months after and the home never materialized.

Wonderful fellow; try as I might, I could never get him to talk about Spain - it was just too painful; he could have used some more humanity and democracy – for sure.

Blahhh, blahhhh, blahhh. Find a new shelf.

Pretty much what I'd expect from someone who can't add.

Not too many know about the Canadians and the pre-game warmup the Nazis got for the second world war. Hidden in history even more so than Korea, the "fogotten war". These guys were valuable in the big war, some were rejected from the military because of "communist leanings" I believe. Now back in the dirty thirties guys would be running to construction projects, rare as they were. Why are the companies now short of help, why? I worked on hi-rise towers when I took a little break from treework in '04, hardworking guys were in need then, and as rare as virgins in Surrey. WTF? I truly think there should be an effort to put homeless people to work in this sector, I think it would work.

Because they pay only a wee bit more than working in a video store or at a Town Pantry. I know, I know, but if people aren't willing to pay more wages is it any wonder they can't attract workers? Of course when the laws of supply and demand don't work in their favour the usual suspects then demand we increase immigration.

Or we bring in temporary 'guest' workers who'll take the lower wages and say ducky - most of the time. I see some of them are beginning to squeal too.
Rightly so!

Frank, you are wrong, they pay the lowest guy at least $12hr. clerks get the min. like $8. Not a wee bit, that would be like a buck or two more. Lots of laborers get $15-20hr. or more. They paid me $20hr right off the bat and I am not a carpenter, just helped them, non union and all. Climbing trees I got $25hr, now I get $275 for a 61/2hr day, better, like $42hr. Anyone that can work hard will do well right now, its true, go and ask around, look in the want adds. We have to help people to get to that point, its not that far away.

Then we disagree on what a "wee bit" is. I consider a difference of a couple of dollars to be a "wee bit". Besides, about two months ago I asked the guy at the local video store who was travelling to Europe for the summer how much he got paid there and he said $9.65. He said he had a friend who was getting $13.50 doing construction but the extra $4 just wasn't worth leaving a job where he pretty much got the hours he asked for and the ability to go to Europe when he wanted. Now this kid is healthy and about 19 or 20.

Again, I'm not saying whether the kid is right or wrong, I'm simply telling you the difference in wage rates is not enough to get all those guys out of the video stores and Town Pantries of Vancouver. The proof is in the pudding as it were. Next time you go to a Chevron or something, ask the guy there why he isn't working construction.

Climber, the vast majority of homeless people have serious physical and psychological problems. Many are substance abusers. Many have not developed the social skills to get and hold down a job other than delivering fliers. The homeless are a kind of sub-proletariat, whereas the men of the 1930's you mention were working men like you and me and were merely unemployed. These kind of people (the sub-proletariat) have long existed. Years ago the only people living in the street were end of the road rubbies, but 30 years ago there were lots of cheap rooming houses where they could stay. These don't exist any more and so they are in the street. If you want to end homelessness you have to bring back the flop houses.

Working man, do a little research before you so blithely dismiss my analysis. This attack on our living standards is world-wide and effectively begins with the election of Thatcher in 1979, though some say that Pinochet was the first to put it into practice.

Climber has it right:

These folks were used in the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Frank responds:

WHAT?!?!

There was a wall!
They were shooting people trying to get away!
In the late 1940's MILLIONS DIED in the Ukraine!
STALIN was a mass-murderer.

No persons of substance in the 1950's, 60's, 70's, or 80's had any other place where they could expect their property to be respected, their lives to be protected by laws and to have a reasonable life style than the western democracies.

Name me those perons with weath that willingly moved from the US to the Soviet Union during the period of 1950 to 1990!

Not those whom may have done business, but actually moved their home and family to the Soviet Union!

Frank, with 'glory' in his eyes writes:

The normal, man in the street, especially if they did not agree with the 'EMPIRE', was going very rapidly broke. The only way to make a living was to sell to the Grand Armee, much of which was 'expropriated' at the point of a bayonette, or to risk imprisonment etc by breaking the 'continental' system.

The other way to make a living was to buy one of the many 'indulgences' sold by the elites of the EMPIRE, Jerome made himself a small fortune selling these 'licences' in the Netherlands.

The example is exactly what is going on in Cuba, Castro - his family, heirs, hangers on etc all have 'special' privileges, while the normal folks have next to no powers at all. They are fleeing and risking death in the sea, or recapture and return (which may involve death as well); just for a chance at a better life. Just like the Berlin Wall jumpers in the 1960's or the desperate merchants in the 1809-12 period whom were forced to close up shop or submit to the EMPIRE.

Frank, missing my point about 'closed borders' in the middle east:

Such occupations and the general bellicose attitude that the rest of the world has shown the mid-east (what we call it today) has 'closed' the borders of the peoples' hearts and minds.

Their leadership is from those generations that have had the impact of Nasser. There are new generations growing up now that are recognizing the mistake of the past : refusing to participate in the world. Now those leaders are bending this desire to participate in the world to their aims, there are many in the 'mid-east' whom do not want any part of this nasty attitude, sadly because of the conflict(s), we are not willing to listen to them.

So yes, these folks have 'shut themselves out' for five centuries. Now that some 'nations' are seeing the benefits, their leaders are working very, very hard to make sure that the goat herders and bottom of the strata in their domains stay at the bottom - thru enforced ignorance.

Frank, not rhetoric at all:

Actually murdock its you that wants Canada to be a 3rd world state. No taxes on the wealthy as if we're living in Mexico in 1850 because of the misguided belief that if we tax them we'll end up poorer. This is complete nonsense.

and its you who are hoping for the day when national governments have no power and we're reduced to killing each other for table scraps or working for the wealthy on their secure, tax-free, estates.

Hell no, I want more Canadians to wake up!

Stop just accepting the situation and get off your collective butts and start OWNING your future, stop allowing the politicians and foreign interest to do that for you.

If you care that much about all of the items you are spouting here then get out and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

I have been doing just that for at least the last 3 years, I am not as old as you are, and admit that I have not come to the place mentally where I was prepared to do this until about 3 years ago.

Does it have to be large? No.
Does it have to include buying things? No.

Actions can take many ways, but to just bitch about it all is not productive.

National governments power is eroding all the time.

The real killer is going to come once an encrypted money or trade standard is privately established. Then 'money' will no longer be subject to arbitrary deflation, because the private lender will not get any clients if they allow their 'trade device' to loose any value.

Frank, mixing metaphors again:

personally yes the only wealth is created within.

the "created from within" wealth that I was writing about before related to a nation or other physical bordered region of the globe CLOSING ITS BORDERS TO TRADE and doing all trading within.

This is the disaster that the communist nations faced. Trade is needed, even if it is totally controlled and taxed to the hilt. The more restrictions on the trade, the more likely you will have a limited economy.

Let me try to take a simple example, do not nit-pick this example in all of its details, just the rough outer edges, OK?

Oil in the middle east nations.
In Kuwait, this oil was first exported only like it was by Iran.
In Kuwait, the ideas of the customers of the oil, the west were 'imported' along with some experts in areas other than oil. Things like road building, heavy construction (for office towers), and pluralistic schooling. With the schooling in the 1970's came new ideas and the administration of the nation shifted to an elected one. With the schooling of the 1970's came more expressions of private property, more persons everywhere were permitted to own real property and patents were started etc. Ownership of ideas was resumed, they had this sort of thing 550 years before, but the changes brought on with demands from sharia leaders ended these advances. Kuwait into the 1980's and early 1990 was becoming a major powerhouse and fountain of wealth, from the very same oil that Iran was selling.

Now yes I understand that Iran was fighting Iraq durign that period.

However Iran refused to 'import' any ideas, or even technology from the sale of their oil during that period. Iran faught Iraq with a pre-WWI style army and used 'human waves' to stop the tanks of Saddams' army. The 'closed borders' and 'creation of weath from within [a nation]' does not work.

Collaboration and development with others is the only way, these concepts are part of the mindset of the business world.

So far our politicians are still using Machiavelli for thier example and it is not doing them, or us, very well...

Frank has the overall 'big' picture right:

India is a member of the 3rd world and you can own things.

I was writing very 'broad brush' when I put in non-ownership as the limit of 3rd world.

This should be taken as a warning to all that not, personally, owning some part of your own 'nation' is a disaster in the waiting for your own family. Were more 'Canadians' to make the effort to 'own' some physical part of thier nation, then less of it would be available to sell to foreign interest.

Stop counting on the redistribution of wealth as your method of survival, as I think the future of all welfare nations is going to be smashed by their own unfulfilled promises for such things as welfare, social security and pensions.

While technically India is in the 3rd world, I think it better fits into the 2nd world, as it is a former Soviet style nation that has changed to a more market based one, indeed the current development index for India is .6 to .649, where most of the 2nd world is at .7 and above.

see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HDImap_current.png

So yes there are possibilities of private ownership in some of the 3rd world locations, I say that it is because of that private ownership only starting within the last 50 years that these 3rd world nations are changing and getting out from their 3rd world situation.

We, in the developed west, still call these nations 3rd world and look down upon them in the same way the CEO looks down on the former copy boy - now 5 years later the former copy boy is the best accountant in the firm and looking at how to take the CEO's chair away from him...

murdock,

All of which is better than your societies of "left-behinds". Your society would make Stalin look like Florence Nightingale.

You don't think people would try to escape your race to the bottom countries? Where anyone who isn't skilled and wealthy has to live in filthy slums with no supports because taxing people is just not on? It would be even worse than Stalin's Russia because your left-behinds would have nowhere else to go since the whole world would be one large Dickensian nightmare. With no place to go they would turn on each other and your impoverished gov'ts would be as helpless as the most failed state to stop it.

No they weren't. Don't confuse the jackboot experience of occupation with the economics of the System. Many had never had it so good, protected as they were from cheap English imported goods with much of Europe as their market. Even that right-wing icon, Jean-Baptiste Say, hypocritically made a fortune setting up a cotton factory in France. If you're a Prussian or Austrian paying off war reparations, or a Russian timber merchant, you weren't too happy about the experience and you could legitimately blame the Continental System for your problems but for the average guy in much of the rest of Napoleonic Europe he had stability and a huge domestic market. As Napoleon said about places like Saxony, his troops were never murdered while billeting there.

Even though Britain had the entire rest of the world to sell to the Continental System was hurting them. They were overflowing with product and needed markets which is why they were always trying to bribe port officials and why whenever a crack appeared in the System their goods poured in. And that was only after a couple of years.

To suggest, as you did, that a future left-behind state that closed its markets would be even worse off ignores not just the experience of the Continental System, it also ignores current events where countries that ignore the IMF do better than those that follow their foreign-trade and market prescriptions.

As for Cuba, Canada, with a similar size population, has lost more people to the US over the past 40 years than they have. Cuba under Castro should be compared to Cuba under Batista.

What? I look around and it seems to me the new generations are even angrier than the previous ones. Which country we're talking about makes a difference. If you have actual examples then let's hear them.

To sum up, I see no evidence that your libertarian scenario of a world of "left-behinds", living in a race-to-the-bottom nightmare of poverty and unable to use their democratic power to tax the wealthy or to protect their own jobs would be in any way superior to Cuba, the Soviet Union or Napoleonic Europe.

The glue of society in your libertarian world would last about as long as a member of a Prussian secret society in one of Fouche's prisons. And once the glue was gone it would be open season on your wealthy superclass living in their well guarded estates.

You mean run for prime minister? Sorry, not my thing.

This is the disaster that the communist nations faced.

This quote, and the one about Iran, ignores the history of the western world. Much of our economies, whether it be Canada, the USA or western Europe were built on protectionism. This was not why eastern Europe failed. Look at the British monopolies in India, or the wealth of Castile during the silver and gold era. Then look at the countries today that have followed the IMF prescriptions. Protecting your markets works.

Back to the Continental System for a minute. As Napoleon was defeated and cheap British goods poured in to Europe it swept away a lot of industry that had built up during the time of Napoleon.

The USA saw what happened and is why they took steps to protect their own industry. It worked.

okay, I'll just criticise the overall picture.

Now yes I understand that Iran was fighting Iraq durign that period.

However Iran refused to 'import' any ideas, or even technology from the sale of their oil during that period. Iran faught Iraq with a pre-WWI style army and used 'human waves' to stop the tanks of Saddams' army. The 'closed borders' and 'creation of weath from within [a nation]' does not work.

I believe your comparison is not useful because there are way too many other factors at work. Kuwait has a tiny population to support. Iran is a very populous country of what? 60 or 80 million? I forget. And as you said they were fighting a war and had just gone through a society changing revolution.

No they aren't. Look at the computer world where you have the Microsoft monopoly versus open-source Linux. The business world reads books like the Secrets to Success of Attila the Hun, and are much more Machiavellian than the non-business world. Its the non-business world that are closer to your "collaboration" model.

Wealth redistribution is, like it or not, a central tenet of modern society. You can't have a society with entrenched inequality if you want it to last very long or not be a police state.

"Wealth redistribution is, like it or not, a central tenet of modern society. You can't have a society with entrenched inequality if you want it to last very long or not be a police state"

Some level of social democracy is the price you pay for having capitalism. Without it you revert to Third World barbarism. Canada minus social democracy = Brazil with polar bears. Certainly social democracy has its failings, but life would be a lot worse without it. If you want to get rid of wealth redistribution, social welfare and etc. there is only one way. That is to get rid of the cause for its existence in the first place. Replace capitalism with economic democracy, where everyone has a voting share, where everyone has a say in their work place, where people are no longer divided into masters and servants.

And where the biggest welfare recipients aren't corporations and trusts - where everyone pays his or her way and there are no golden parachutes for some; slammed doors for the majority.

I am generally in agreement with anarcho, however, I believe that Richard Nixon predated M. Thatcher as the first (capitalist) world leader to knowingly begin eroding the power of working people. He was the one who did away with the last remnants of the gold standard and he decreased buying power for working people by implementing wage controls (that seemed to be more restrictive than the price controls he placed on gasoline). The price controls on gasoline were a pittance to pay when one considers the wealth of gasoline available to the USA during Vietnam and the amount of money the oil companies/military industrial complex made on that war.

Strictly from an economic perspective, it could be argued that Johnson's and McNamara's Vietnam hawkish advisors (who consistantly reported they were winning the Vietnam War) were the architects of the plan to cause the US government to borrow heavily and spend on weapons and fuel. This was a huge transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich. Of course, the human and environmental cost was much higher when one considers the devastations of war. Moving out of the war economy, Nixon was stuck with paying down the debt. The bankers and corporate sponsors of the Republican party would not hear of making the wealthy pay down the war debt. The young middle class and working class had to pay for it with up to 20% mortgage rates and even higher rates for car loans. These became manifest when Carter came into power, and there was little he could do to stop that tide. In comes Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher saying we must tighten our belts to pay for the problems created by the excesses of the populous and by former liberal-thinking governments. Yet, Ronald and Margaret increased military spending again. Go figure... The right-wing press supported Mulroney was ready to pick up the slack in Canada. France and Germany were already on board. At the turn of the century, just when things were beginning to look like working people might have a chance, an invented war and more military spending abound for Britain, USA and Canada...

Frank wrote:

where is this written in either the BNA act, Canada Act or Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

I defy you to find such a provision, therfore how can you make such an asinine comment?

murdock

You're being absurd.

Frank never said it was a provision of anything - he simply stated that a society with entrenched inequality (which wealth redistribution, i.e. progressive taxation, is designed to ameliorate) will either disintegrate or become a police state.

And he's absolutely right. As far as your excessively formalistic approach, this is pretty typical of you when you go off on one of your Republican rants.

I know such an idea is anathema to a libertarian like you. So what. There are so few libertarians - and the few there are happen to be so self-involved and naive - that it likely isn't something anyone else needs to be too concerned with.

I'd add one other possibility to Frank's though. I'd say the other possibility is revolution and I can point out a whole basket full of examples.

And, after all, the nominal subject of this thread is dealing with poverty...not creating the republic of murdockville.

Alcibiades,

no I am not being absurd.

the critical part of the quote is:

such a thing should be at least written down in an important document such as one of the three I mentioned.

it is not.

this is not a republican rant, it is reality.

the reality is you can fail or succeed under our laws as you choose.

I shall freely admit that some, cannot freely choose, as they are mentally unfit, or have major addiction issues.

That does not mean that the rest of society owes them a living.

It is a measure of our society - for certain - that the way we treat these persons collectively, either for bad or good will be brought home to us all collectively.

To try and entrench some sort of wealth redistribution is to do exactly what the Soviet Union tried, it does not work. Our tax laws are built around setting up a good and just society, there are provisions in those laws to establish a common welfare - from the time of the Beverage plan.

What has happened is our governance has been taken over by the employees and now they are bending all the rules (since they draft them) to suit their own purposes. So the shift that is being complained about here will go on no matter whether it is Tory, Liberal, NDP, Green or Rhino party in the Commons, as it has become the PMO that runs the show and the employees in that PMO will not give up thier control over the purse strings.

There are many and good ways to re-establish the good and just society, we just cannot get the government employees to get out of the way - even when we have elected MP's and MLA's that want to achieve these goals.

Baloney.

Lots of countries use the tax system to create a much better and more egalitarian society than we have here and you know it. I you don't, there's not point in talking to you. And they aren't all communist states either.

If we continue along the way we're going now we will end in revolution and communism, or worse. Your view of the world is absurd and far to fixated on your own personal peccadilloes.

On this subject murdock, I wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw you because I don't think you're any closer to holding the keys to the kingdom than any other average, mildly intelligent and somewhat well read individual.

You seem to have no faith in the commons; on this point I have no faith in you.

I'll take a dedicated and professional public service any day, as opposed to an ideological crank who thinks no government is the best government.

I defy you to find such a provision, therfore how can you make such an asinine comment?

This comment is so far "out there" its hard to fathom where it came from.

Let me get this straight, you look to the BNA Act as to how to run your life? Where in the BNA Act does it tell you to home school? Section 91? Where does it tell you to vote for a new Wal-Mart or buy from Amazon?

Why stop at the BNA Act, why not tell me to show where in the Bible it says to be your brother's keeper? It would be about as relevant.

Gee, where in the BNA Act does it say don't tax the wealthy and the state should be left to wither on the vine?

Murdock is no libertarian, Alcibiades. I am a libertarian. Murdock is what we call a "vulgar libertarian" or "neoliberaltarian" Wealth redistribtion is only wrong for Murdock when government gives a bit to the people. However when the state is used to funnel wealth from the people - the true creators of wealth - to the corporate ruling class that is fine. Corporate capitalism is based upon the state and wouldn't last 2 weeks without it. All the attacks upon social democracy by the vulgar libertarians and their pals the neocons are hypocrisy pure and simple. The real way to get rid of state provided social services and taxation is to get rid of what has caused it in the first place - corporate capitalism. If we were all independent producers - either as individuals/families or in coops our social needs could be served by democratically run user-fee based mutual aid societies and not the state. This is the only genuine way to eliminate statism in society. Murdock's way, the way of the neocon and vulgar lib is a crime against humanity as it plunges the weakest of our population into misery.

Frank,

So then we are no longer a society based on the rule of law?

Just go on and do what you like, when you like for whatever reason you like?

Just because you say that your way causes no harm does not mean that it is true.

At least I am realistically accepting of the current laws and understand how they are changed and affect my life. You are living a delusion that some mystical central tenet of modern society is understood and applied by all.

It is not, I take pleasure in pointing this out to you and any others that persist in similar delusions.

anarcho, calling me names, does put in a great idea:

Sounds excellent to me, so what exactly do we need Ottawa for?

Agreed, anarcho. But I think that's what he calls himself - personally I think you're right, he's just a subspecies of neocon who has some particular problems with all public organizations and publicly-funded and run services. In any case, he frustrates me and I end up posting nonsense like the above:

which is an embarrassment and should read:

'If you don't, there's no point in talking to you.' Which is what I wanted to say, apropos of Murdock's post.

I certainly agree that the system we have now is rampant state sponsored corporate capitalism or plutocracy which doesn't, in the main, even qualify for the minimal conditions set by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The pretense that we are acting under the care and control of the invisible hand of the market is such utter crap that I can’t understand why it hasn’t become the biggest bad joke of all.

And further, it's making things worse, not better, according to any legitimate analysis.

Murdock, I am not calling you names. I have given you a political label - there is a difference. Calling you an SOB would be name calling. Saying that you were a "Vulgar libertrarian" is giving you a political label in the same way that "right-wing social democrat" , "centrist liberal" and "ultra conservative" are political labels. Of course, I could be wrong in my judgement of your political/social opinions, after all, I have only a few postings to go on. The fact that you agree with my ultimate goal for society leads me to believe that I migt have misjudged you. In that case, my apologies. And as for Ottawa? In my vision of Canada as a vast sort of Switzerland type federation with an economy based upon cooperation, it wouldn't have much to do, other than maintain a constitution and a set of standards. Of course, we are eons away from such a vision being accomplished. Indeed the human race may well be eliminated before it happens.

murdock, your BNA tangent has nothing whatsoever to do with the conversation.

This is how you opened this dialogue. Exactly where is it that you see your future society being guided along by the BNA Act?

Actualy I'm living in the here and now. You're acting like some monk in the 10th century waiting for the apocalypse that comes with better encryption technology.

None of your examples predicting the "end-times" hold up to analysis. As for my "delusion", point me to one credible economist that believes greater inequality will be stable in the long-term. As a bonus, point me to where I can read how returning to a feudal order where the last 700 years of history are turned on its ear and elites are once again living at the top of a social and economic order above the democratic dictates of the world's poverty stricken population, is a good thing.

Laws require gov'ts murdock and you're against their existence. So its ironic that you now claim to be wrapping yourself in the BNA Act and Canada's laws for some reason I haven't grasped.

You're arguing with yourself, ask that question to your wealthy superclass and their advanced encryption technology that you claim gives them freedom from gov'ts and borders.

And just because you claim to be real shouldn't make me believe you're anything more than a new Eliza program written by a 3rd year.

Like a belief in the reality of borders and governing structures? Well at least in my case I'll have a passport when I get to a border. You can just tell them you don't recognize their power over you because you have double secret banking technology offshore that can only be cracked with a super decoder ring.