Reminder...Summer Social this Saturday

Just a reminder about the social this Saturday!

The Ginger Project wants you...to come on out to a BBQ backyard party at Michael Laxer's house on Lake Ontario (no kidding, the backyard is, in fact, right on Lake Ontario). And yet it is still on the Queen streetcar line!!!This time its not for discussion purposes, or for debate, but simply for fun!!!

The event is at 93 Lake Promenade, in South Etobicoke (click for Google Maps).
(This is west of Kipling and south of Lake Shore Blvd W - just take the Queen streetcar) It will be held Saturday, July 11 starting at 5 pm.

Enjoy a great night of burgers, dogs, vegetarian dishes, drinks, music and conversation in a cottage like setting.

Booze will be available at a cash bar, or BYOB.

Kids are more than welcolme, and feel free to invite friends.

And...if you come out for a few hours you will be spending more time in Iggy's riding than he ever has!!!

Please RSVP to michaellaxer@hotmail.com if you are planning to come out.
See you there!!!

On the Garbage Strike and Recession

Thus far in the Toronto/CUPE strike, the major media outlets have largely fulfilled their role with respect to framing the discussion for the public. A person from another planet reading any of the Toronto dailies might conclude that 18 bankable sick-days is the only thing between Toronto and Utopia (or Mogadishu, depending on which news outlets one follows). The strike, and the coverage of it by the mainstream media, is another reminder that while a strike may have practical implications for those participating in the job action; it also fits within a pattern of struggle that the right seems to understand better than the left.

Following the credit-crisis and the beginning of the recession, the governments of Canada and the United States, intervened in the automotive sector to prevent that industry’s collapse within North America. The end result is the governments of the United States, Canada and Ontario each owning a portion of General Motors, with the Canadian government having the ability to appointment one member of the board of directors, in exchange for several billion dollars in loans. In the United States, major financial institutions are in the process of paying back loans given to them by the federal government.

Regardless of how one feels about corporate entities and the power they assert over individual life, the decision to provide financial support appears to have been correct. Indeed, it appears that the initial failure of the US congress to provide funds to stabilize the US banking system may have exacerbated the effects of the financial crisis. Allowing the failure of major corporations, and the subsequent incalculable damage to civil society, is something that only a political extremist could countenance. It is interesting, however, to note two things: firstly, that this behaviour by the “private” sector is not atypical. One can look back through the decades and find numerous similar examples of the public bailing out the private sector (the savings and loan crisis in the late 80s, Chrysler in the late 70s, and numerous other protectionist initiatives by the Reagan Administration). Again, these actions may or may not have been justified. They do, however, put the lie to the notion that the private sector is either efficient, or that it remotely follows anything approximating “free-market” principles. The Canadian Taxpayer Federation, a well known band of radical anti-capitalists, estimates that “between 1982 and 2005, Ottawa handed out over $18.2-billion to corporations, of which only $7.1-billion was repayable, and only $1.3-billion was ever repaid”, according to the National Post.

The second point of interest is to compare the treatment of corporations, with the treatment of labour, in this example the CUPE locals currently on strike. While governments have spent billions propping up the automotive sector, the individuals at CUPE have received a slightly different message from the government. Writing in the Globe and Mail with a scarcely concealed glee, Marcus Gee notes that “a global recession and tone-deaf unions have furnished him [David Miller] with the ideal ammunition” to roll back “disco-era benefits like 18 days of annual, bankable sick leave.” Most other op-ed pieces in newspapers follow similar themes, which I invite the reader to review, if only for the sake of humour.

While unionized workers who pick up trash and look after our children receive sermons on the need to make sacrifices for the sake of the economy, their “private” sector counterparts suffer their own form of free-market discipline... or so one would think. In the business section of the same Globe and Mail edition, we learn that for CEOs in Canada, there is “little evidence that chief executive officers' pay was closely linked to performance last year, despite devastating economic and market conditions.” In addition, the same survey found that “an average CEO took home $5.1-million last year (compared with $5.4-million in 2007), including a salary of $863,000, a cash bonus of $1.2-million, share units and stock options of $2.4-million, as well as other benefits and pension contributions worth about $600,000.” The discipline of the market continues to work its wonders.

At the beginning of the article, it was noted that there is a pattern of struggle related to these issues that the right understands better than the left. The pattern is that, in practical terms, there is no such thing as a free-market system. A free-market economy would not have allowed executives at publicly traded corporations to take in the salaries they did when their businesses were failing. It also would not have bailed out corporations or entire industries that were on the verge of bankruptcy, regardless of the impact to society. All modern industrial societies are, to some extent, socialistic. The only question is whether or not it will be socialistic in a way that benefits the greater population, or in a way that benefits a small minority. Any individual who considers themselves a serious left-wing political activist, ought to realize at all times, that their final objective should be a society where the decisions about who receives bailouts, which industries are allowed to survive and fail, and how those who work in those industries will be cared for, should be decided by the public at large, and not by meetings of shareholders or lobbyists. This political system, is democratic socialism.