Friday, July 6, 2012

Discouraged Workers, Deficits and the Whole Damned Thing

The Progressive Economics Forum summarizes the latest StatsCan labour report. 17,000 workers dropped out of a job market that has only produced 7,000 jobs for a labour force that grew by 30,000 in June.

Here's a good (old) article about how the real source of stephen harper's deficits have been in budget-busting tax-cuts, including completely unproductive corporate tax-cuts. This article is a little too deluded about the benefits of balanced budgets for my liking but it clearly details how harper's deficits since the start of the Great Recession in 2008 add up to over $140 billion.

I must point out that I don't begrudge harper for that entire amount. The Great Recession is a worldwide phenomenon. But harper is a devoted enthusiast for the clearly failed economic model that has produced most of that massive number. harper (and, obviously, the imbecilic Jim Flaherty) are shitty economic managers and the deficits would no doubt have been tens of billions of dollars smaller than they have been under almost anyone else.

But in the end, harper and Flaherty are just stupid errand boys. The real problem is capitalism. And the sickness is the neo-liberal variant of financialized capitalism that is going to bring human civilization to collapse unless it is stopped and eliminated.

I just thought I'd type a quick post reminding my dozen or so readers about the complete intellectual and moral failure of the system held up for us as the only viable option.

2 comments:

Beijing York said...

Linda McQuaig had a good piece today. Harper is by far the worst but this kowtowing to a failed system is everywhere from municipal mayors selling off parks and recreation to provincial premiers inviting foreign companies to expropriate and exploit people's land to the most despicable of them all, Harper.

And on the global level it is a sick joke. The Barclay scandal just underscores that capitalism has morphed into a criminal cartel.

thwap said...

More and more, it seems like the pseudo-scientific speculation about the psychopathology of finance CEOs is an accurate reflection of reality.

Perhaps that is a valid way to challenge their predominance over our political system; by generalizing them all as psychopaths and a genuine threat.