Happy New Years

Community

My New Years Resolution for our society is to no longer worship at the twin altars of individualism and technology but rather to embrace the saviour of community.

From the industrial revolution to the high tech revolution we have deluded ourselves that technology would solve all our problems. While technology may indeed have made the lives of the wealthy better, those at the bottom see much fewer of it's benefits and I have no doubt that it has contributed to the growing inequality in our society.

Individualism has been just as disappointing a solution to our problems benefiting only a select few individuals at the top with very little benefit “trickling down” to the bottom.

The fact is our problems are not technological but social and require sociological solutions. We are at our best when we work together as communities to improve the lives of everyone. If we want to build a better society we have to build better communities that serve everyone not just the privileged few.

We could even call this “communityism” but that's a bit awkward sounding so instead let's just go with social democracy.

Postscript

Philosophically thinking about the meaning of life and how our lives are just a tiny speck in the space-time continuum and how if you are someone who believes in community you will realize the only rational reason for living is to make other peoples lives better, while if you are an individualist you had better just hurry up and acquire as much stuff as you can before your time runs out.

The Pensioner and the Pandemic

This is the post I was going to write before I was rudely interrupted and told to lock myself in my room.

I may indeed be the least affected person on the planet by this pandemic, and the only one that it seems to be not such a big deal, simply because it simply has not had a huge impact on my daily life.

Health-wise, although technically in a higher risk group by age, I am in the lowest risk group by perhaps the most important metric, economic status. I am not living in a long term care facility or living with a pre-existing condition that puts me at greater risk and I am relatively healthy with a strong immune system. As long as I follow the recommended precautions regarding mask wearing, physical distancing and avoiding crowded indoor gatherings I feel completely safe.

As a retired pensioner I do not have to worry about either being out of work and out of income or conversely having to work in an environment that may expose me to the virus. This is a huge issue for many people, especially those in lower income occupations, many of whom are in the highly praised but underpaid “front line” occupations we hear so much about now and who will no doubt go back to being ignored when this is all over.

Most importantly my daily lifestyle has been impacted very little. The biggest inconvenience has been having to wear a mask when grocery shopping. My daily routine of outdoor exercise, primarily cycling with some hiking, has had little impact other than having to be somewhat more aware of keeping as much distance as possible when passing people.

Yes, we have not been able to eat out at restaurants but we only did that once every two or three months anyway, and that is a luxury many live their wholes lives without being able to afford.

We have not been able to travel outside the country for the past year, but then most people are not in a position to undertake foreign travel on an annual basis, and we have not done any recreational travel within the province for the last year, again something that many do not have the economic means to do regularly.

We saw investments in equities fall significantly (but they have now recovered) but our concerns about economic effects should be saved for those living from paycheck to pay check rather than for those that can afford to invest in the stock market.

I really have no reason to feel hard done by due to the pandemic.

Money Cannot Buy Happiness But ...

They say money cannot buy happiness but it certainly can buy food and shelter and education that can make the difference between misery and happiness, not to mention that health is directly related to economic status.

Yet people still claim people are poor because they are lazy and all we need to do to get rid of poverty is to create more wealth. Can anybody look at these numbers and seriously claim the problem is one of wealth creation rather than a critical need for wealth and income redistribution.

Keeping this in mind what reason, besides absolute immoral greed, could the excessively wealthy not want to redistribute the excessive wealth they cannot even comprehend, never mind spend, to those living in poverty and misery.

Can America Be Saved

 I am writing this as a citizen of a world that no matter where we live are strongly impacted by whatever America does and whatever happens in America

America is celebrating but it will take a lot more than the end of the Trump presidency to save America. Trump promoted and encouraged, and even used the office of the presidency to legitimize the worst of America. The worst of America existed before Trump, was made stronger with Trump, and will continue after Trump. It's proponents may even become more strident.

Saving America will require government policy changes, legislative changes and even constitutional changes, but most of all cultural changes.

The toxic and partisan nature of American politics is not going away quickly or easily and the politicians are not going to solve America's problems. Toxic partisanship means ideas from the other side are rejected and fought against because they came from the other side and are thus seen as evil. In the rare case they may be seen as good ideas they are opposed rather than supported so the other side cannot take credit for them.

How are Americans to come together to solve their problems in this political atmosphere. I would propose a constituent assembly of Americans to propose solutions together. This assembly should be diverse, include all incomes, occupational groups and the unemployed, come from all regions, religions, including the non-religious, and include people of all sexual orientations and gender identification. It should also represent a broad variety of political philosophies while purposely not considering party affiliations in the choice of participants.

They should sit down together as Americans to find away to make America the country that it can be and their political leaders should commit to implementing the required changes no matter how difficult it will be politically.

Now I can stop here and say let Americans fix America, but being who I am I cannot do that without proposing some solutions for some of the most obvious and worst problems facing America.

We just came through an American election so let us look at that first.

Election day is when almost all elected American officials are elected, federal, state and local. Nobody talks about this but that in itself is a major problem for democracy. Voters are expected to be able to make choices about who they want to represent them for a large multitude of offices. Can they really absorb and analyze all the information necessary to make informed decisions. This system, I believe, encourages voters to just give up on deciding who to vote for and just vote a straight "party ticket", further strengthening the hold of toxic partisanship on America's political culture.

The other fact, strange to me and I suspect the rest of the world outside America, is that America holds 50 separate elections for federal offices each with separate rules. How can every vote be equal when there are 50 different sets of rules for voters.

And then there is the election of the President by the Electoral College where some states elect more than twice as many electors per voter as other states, not to mention the fact that the winner take all system means close to 50 percent of a states votes may not count at all in the presidential election if the parties are close in that state.

The Electoral College supposedly protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority but is that not the Senate's role where Senators elected by a minority of voters have a veto over legislation passed by Representatives representing a majority of voters. The Electoral College system is more akin to the Tyranny of the Minority. Everyone voting for President should have an equal vote otherwise the President does not represent all Americans equally.

We have not even mentioned the fact the elections are run and controlled by (state) politicians where gerrymandering, voter suppression and other shenanigans are considered fair game as long as you can get away with it. American elections are simply a power game with only lip service played to democracy.

Other countries do it differently. Elections cannot be fair if they are controlled by one of the parties seeking office. America needs to have an impartial non-partisan agency to control their elections, and for federal elections the rules must be the same for all Americans. America should look at the Elections Canada model, perhaps the fairest and most effective model in the world, that not only ensures elections are fair but facilitates encourages the electorate to get out and vote.

‘A crazy system’: U.S. voters face huge lines and gerrymandering. How Elections Canada makes a world of difference north of the border (Toronto Star)

Elections Canada says its system protects Canadian voters from U.S.-style drama (CBC News) 

And then we have the American justice system where we have a misguided understanding of what democracy means.

In a democracy the laws should certainly be written by the elected representatives. However the application of those laws and the adjudication of them is something that must be done according to those laws, not according to the whims of public opinion. The police and prosecutors should enforce the law as it is written and judges should interpret it that way. There should never be a conflict between doing the right thing and keeping their jobs. But this is exactly what making these positions elected positions does. It makes law enforcement and the courts a matter of political partisanship and public opinion where they should only be guided by law and fact. We see this extended to an extreme in the appointment process for the United States Supreme Court.

The United States must depoliticize the legal and court system if it wants to be a true democracy and it must reform the Supreme Court appointment process.

They would be wise to look at the Canadian experience where one cannot predict how Canadian Supreme Court justices will rule based on who appointed them.

Nothing separates America from the rest of the western world more than the violent nature of their society, and in particular American gun culture, which is somehow grounded in the Second Amendment, considered part of the United States Bill of Rights.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed [Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia]

Oddly most Americans, apparently including their Supreme Court, seem to ignore the first part of that statement.

Why a clause providing a right to own the means of mass murder would be included in a document intended to protect human rights only the Americans can answer, but I suspect the answer would not be very convincing.

The most compelling argument seems to be that America has become such an irreversibly dangerous and violent and lawless society that it is a necessity for everyone to be armed. I prefer to retain hope that America need not be such a society. However, regulating and reducing gun ownership is an absolute necessity to eliminating American's crime and violence epidemic.

The rest of the civilized world seems to manage quite well by considering firearms ownership to be a highly regulated privilege similar to automobile ownership but America seems to believe it is still living in the era of the wild west.

Compounding the problem of the Second Amendment is the American absolutist approach to rights, which makes it not only impossible to properly regulate gun ownership but also makes it near impossible to outlaw hate speech or prevent terrorist white supremacist war lords from forming private armies and using them to intimidate other citizens, usually non-whites or non-Christians, not to mention their threat to democracy itself.

A charter of rights need not be absolutist, as clause 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms demonstrates:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982]

I must say that the Supreme Court of Canada has done an admirable job in interpreting that clause in a reasonable fashion, without any sign of political partisanship.

We have looked at issues that have the most obvious legislative and constitutional solutions. We are not going to attempt to deal with all the challenges facing America today, including race relations, police misconduct, misogyny, sexual inequality, LBGTQ rights, Islamophobia, anti-science attitudes, and on and on. Most of these issues require changes beyond public policy, changes to the social culture of America.

But we would be remiss if we did not examine the two pillars that make America what it is, and I believe hold it back from what it could be, the worship of unbridled capitalism and individualism, coupled with an irrational fear of "socialist" ideas.

Interestingly enough U.S. News & World Report has just issued it's quality of life ratings and the top 10 countries are countries with "socialist" ideas.

Meanwhile, under American capitalism income inequality today may be higher today than in any other era. As an example, Amazon's Jeff Bezos made 1.2 million times the median Amazon employee in 2017.

Of course he receives that income because he works 1.2 million times as hard as the workers that actually provide the services Amazon sells. It has nothing to do with worker exploitation or predatory business practices.

Amazon is only one example of how American capitalism has come to work. America is a long way from the theoretical pretense of fair profits and and decent wages and working conditions.

American capitalism is inextricably intertwined with American individualism and the idea that not only can anybody, but everybody, can become a millionaire. There is no need for redistribution of wealth when capitalism can create an unlimited amount of wealth. There is no such thing as limits to growth as the earth has unlimited resources and energy and the planet has an unlimited ability to absorb the effects of unbridled industrial capitalism. All of this of course is what the experts refer to as bullshit but it drives the American capitalist philosophy because it is a simple answer to so many complicated questions.

It is this frame of mind that links capitalism to individualism and the idea that if everybody acts in their own self interests the interests of society as a whole will be served and the somewhat related credo that "what's good for General Motors is good for America". This is what enables so many Americans to put the interests of the wealthy and corporations before all else and explains why so many voters tend to vote against their own self interests.

It also explains the hesitance of so many in America, during this global pandemic, to make small sacrifices of individual freedom, like wearing a mask, for the sake of saving the lives of their fellow Americans and their willingness to simply disregard the advice of experts when it is inconvenient for them. Contrast that with other western countries where the sense of community is much stronger than individualism and the infection and death rates are much lower.

Electing a leader that does not depend on the worst of America for his base of support will certainly help but if America wants to solve its problems it needs to build a sense of community. America has massive problems that will require much more than people seeking to serve their own self interests. They require people working together for the good of the whole society.

It is becoming obvious that the measures necessary to fix American society will require a tremendous amount of political will and fundamental cultural changes. No doubt the usual political observers and experts will all agree that that simply is not possible. We know who failed to even try, but can the American people Make America Great Again.

The MEC Mess an Intuitive Understanding

These comments are not based on any comprehensive analysis but rather my intuitive response to what has been filed in court and published online and the media coverage.

It appears that both sides may be correct, sort of.

From a business point of view the Board of Directors actions may be the best way to preserve as much of the operating business as possible.

From a co-operative point of view the opposing MEC Members are clearly correct that this goes in opposition to MEC's founding principles and values and those of co-operatives in general.

Need it be stated that MEC is a co-operative and not a for-profit business.

Is Charity Evil

We supposedly live in a major developed industrialized country which is one of the seven most advanced economies in the world, yet:

many people depend on charity to be fed and not starve,

many people depend on charity for a place to sleep so they do not freeze to death in winter,

many people depend on charity to have a place to stay to protect them from being killed by their domestic partners,

despite our so-called public health care system we depend on charity to fund major medical research and many of our public hospital are in permanent fund raising mode to provide the beds and equipment they need to provide that care,

even our public education system depends on charitable fund raising to provide such basic amenities as library books, as well as extra programs, leading to a class-based public education system depending on the wealth of the neighbourhoods schools are located,

and the list goes on and on.

Do we not have a social responsibility to provide these basic human rights to our citizens. Should we not be funding these basic human rights collectively through a progressive tax system.

Who really benefits from charity.

Certainly corporations use charitable donations not just for tax benefits but for brand image enhancement. The wealthy use it not just as a method of tax management but also personal promotion. But it no doubt also provides a way of easing one's guilt for one's greed.

What would it be like for society if instead of making tax deductible charitable donations corporations paid all their employees a living wage. What would it be like for society if instead of making tax deductible charitable donations the wealthy paid their fare share of taxes, including a wealth tax.

What would it be like if we did not need charity because we fully funded a complete public health care and education system from a progressive tax system where everybody paid their fair share.

What would it be like if we eliminated the need for charity by establishing a minimum wage and a guaranteed basic income that allowed everyone to have a decent standard of living.

What would it be like if we did not have charity because we didn't need charity because we recognized as a society that everyone had the right to a decent quality of life.

What is the role of government if not to ensure citizens have a decent quality of life.

Does charity enable government to shirk that responsibility.

Is charity evil.

Lessons We Must Learn From COVID-19 to Build a Better Society

Community is the key to the future. Those societies that are fairing best in responding to COVID 19 are those with a strong sense of community. America's dismal response is not just because of Trump, but also due to the country's overemphasis on individualism over community.

Our public health care system, part of our collective sense of community, was key to our response. It made our ability to control the outbreak possible. But it is still flawed and could not respond was well as it should have because it is underfunded and incomplete. We saw that particularly in the for profit long term care sector, measured in body counts. We must complete the system by extending it to prescription drugs, vision and dental care and most importantly long term care of the elderly and home care. We must eliminate profit from the provision of health care so that patient care and profits are never competing for funds. Most importantly we must realize that health is the most important priority for everyone and under-funding health care in order to promise lower taxes is in nobody's best interest.

Our economic safety net was the next most important factor in our successful response. Unfortunately we did not have a proper system in place to respond and the government had to respond with a series of patchwork measures put together quickly which, while it managed to avoid the worst of our southern neighbours problems, it still left the most disadvantaged, well still disadvantaged. That series of measures, as necessary as they were, increased both the deficit and national debt because the government, that has been under-taxing the wealthy for decades, did not have the financial capability it should have.

What we needed and what we need is a basic guaranteed annual income, and not just one to keep people barely above the poverty line but one designed to provide a decent quality of life for everyone.

We say 'we are all in this together" but we clearly are not equally in this together and never will be as long as we live in a society of massive economic inequality.

We talk about groups such as seniors being more at risk but in reality the biggest risk factor with COVID 19 is economic status. Those placed at highest risk, our so-called front-line heroes, those responsible for producing and providing our food and goods, are working in cramped and unsafe conditions, along with those working in high risk long term care facilities, are the biggest group of COVID 19 victims. And these are the people most susceptible to the economic consequence of COVID 19, often living from paycheck to paycheck. A few extra dollars per hour for a few weeks is not the solution.

We must deal with the economic inequality in our society by raising incomes at the bottom and reducing them at the extreme top end. CEOs of corporations who make their profits and fortunes from minimum wage earners simply do not earn the millions of dollars per year they are paid. They are paid that because of an unequal economic and political system. We must reform our tax system so that those that can afford to pay more do and those at the bottom pay less at the same time as we reduce the gap between the bottom and the top.

We need to raise minimum wages to a level that provides a decent quality of live and use the tax system to redistribute the wealth of the excessively overpaid. We cannot build the type of community and society we need on a basis of extreme inequality.

We also cannot build the society we need without concern for the environment it lives within and without addressing the challenge of climate change.

We need to build a new society, based on community rather than individualism, if we want to meet the challenges of the future and this includes a move from more individual spending to more collective spending. Fundamental change is required if we are to survive the challenges of the future and thrive within it.

Also of Interest:

THE FIFTH COLUMN: Towards a Green Social Democratic Economy

THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Inequality, Democracy and Taxing the Rich – A Modest Proposal

THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Democracy

On Television Part 2 - Cutting The Cord

Those of you who have read THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Television may wonder if the Fifth Columnist has finally decided to cut the cord as it made a pretty good argument for that.

Well we have finally overcome over 40 years of inertia and made the decision and as of the end of the month we will no longer have a cable television service.

Our original plan was simply to replace it with streaming services and some downloads but decided for one time costs only to also add an antenna based over-the-air (OTA) television service.

There was potential for a significant number of channels if we went with a sophisticated rooftop antenna system.

 

However we decided we did not want to deal with a rooftop install and rotor systems and cabling and decided on a simpler indoor antenna that gives us local CBC and CTV and Global and TV Ontario (and sometimes the local french CBC station). This provides us with easy access to local news. As well most of the American broadcast channel programming we watch is on CTV or Global so we will still get that. What we are losing are some programs from cable only channels, though some of these are also available on streaming services like Crave TV.

We added an inexpensive (certainly compared to the purchase price of the equivalent Rogers device) OTA PVR without subscription fees so that we can record programs and watch them when we want them without commercials.

On the streaming front we stayed with the old standard and reliable Netflix, as well as Crave + HBO/Movies, adding Starz, providing a lot of high quality programming.

We also continued the CBC Gem Premium package as a good portion of what we watch is CBC programming and this provides all of that plus more, with no commercials. It also provides live access to all local CBC stations in Canada as well as the CBC News Network.

The newest addition that we did not have before cord cutting is BritBox, a relatively unknown service in Canada that provides programming from the BBC and ITV. If you are not familiar with it you should check it out as a provides a remarkable range of high quality programming.

And if this is not enough we can supplement it with a few free sources of programming.

By cutting the cord we cut our TV budget almost in half while still contributing to the cost of providing programming but providing less subsidy to the middleman cable company.