Here's the story on a Metcalfe Foundation study on Toronto's working poor by Laurie Monsebraaten in The Star:
The legions of Toronto area workers pouring coffee, cleaning toilets and otherwise toiling for low wages in office towers and factories is growing dramatically.Between 2000 and 2005, the area’s working poor grew by 42 per cent, to 113,000 people, according to a groundbreaking report based on Statistics Canada labour and income data.
And here's the Glib & Stale's "Poor Prospects" by Anna Mehler Paperny on the same study:
Across Canada, a job is no longer a ticket out of poverty, or a safeguard against it. And the number of people working but unable to make ends meet is growing in the country’s most populous urban hub – far faster than in Ontario or Canada as a whole. A study by Toronto researchers provided exclusively to The Globe and Mail provides a granular glimpse of working poverty at the census-tract level.
The Metcalf Foundation study, the first of its kind in Canada, documents the changing face of the Toronto area’s workforce.
And it isn’t pretty: Even during times of economic prosperity, from 2000 to 2005, the number of working people unable to make ends meet grew by 42 per cent in the Toronto area.
Now, to be fair, both newspapers have good reporters. It's just that the Glib & Stale endorsed harper. And they run Jeffrey Simpson, Margaret Wente, Marcus Gee and Neil Reynolds on a regular basis. (They'd probably still be running the incompetent Terrance Corcoran, but his "talent" got poached by the wingnut welfare National Post.)
But isn't it odd how the publishers of both of these papers have been running stories that accurately reflect the dismal failure of the economic policies that they (as supporters of Canada's LibroCon Party) have endorsed without taking the next step? The next step being to apologize for having been so wrong about everything and to advocate a headlong gallop AWAY from the neo-liberal snake0il they've been pitching for decades?
It's no surprise that more people are suffering as unions, social programs, access to education and steady jobs in all their forms have come under direct and deliberate attack from corporate Canada. This is what the "loony left" has been saying would happen all along. This is why we're out in the streets. Right-wing morons who want to pretend that poor people's mortgages sank the world financial system can bray and cackle all they want. The fact remains that treating the vast majority of the population as an expense isn't going to lead to economic prosperity. Taking money away from the vast majority makes the vast majority poorer.
Next stop - Rocket Science.
3 comments:
In construction I sometimes hear it called rocket surgery :)
I always wonder about this. Your argument is absolutely manifest to me. Why is this so hard to grasp?
Well, there's the whole H. L. Mencken thing about how hard it is to get people to understand something when their job depends on their not understanding it.
Then there's the way utter, complete, contemptible shit-heads like Neil Reynolds have their ludicrous counter-explanations for every eventuality.
I guess it boils down to self-delusion, ignorance and self-interested greed.
Sinclair Lewis, not H.L. Mencken.
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