What do we do now that money no longer makes the world go round?
While many are fearing pink slips, dealing with thinning resources or adjusting to other insecurities of the moment, it seems strange to be talking about upsides to the hard times. But, believe it or not, there are a few. Here are 10 of the positives of living through this money meltdown:
1. Less pressure on the natural world
It seemed like a typical report at the time -- a survey on artists' earnings in Canada was released in early February. But when examining the details, the facts becomes more alarming with each sentence -- earnings by the likes of actors, writers, painters and directors have been in a freefall since 1990.
The study by Hill Strategies Research (prepared for Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council) revealed that Canada's 140,000 artists had annual incomes that were 37 per cent lower than the average Canadian worker.
Based on the 2006 census, average wages amounted to just $22,731 per year. That of course, does not count the part-time jobs artists do to sustain a living.
Examine the data and the figures are maddening.
If you think banks on the verge of bankruptcy, widespread job losses, declines in world trade and the spread of economic and financial distress signal the end of "free" market capitalism; or that talk of Keynesian economics, and the adoption of "stimulus" packages by Canada and the U.S. signify the end of right-wing policies, think again.
The analysis of the financial mess that guides the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury originated with Milton Friedman, intellectual godfather of the American right. The policies adopted in the U.S., supposedly to fight off the threat of world depression, are designed to re-empower financial capitalists, not to, say, replace them with nationally owned credit institutions.
Watching the crowds in Iceland banging pots and pans until their government fell reminded me of a chant popular in anti-capitalist circles in 2002: "You are Enron. We are Argentina."
Its message was simple enough. You -- politicians and CEOs huddled at some trade summit -- are like the reckless scamming execs at Enron (of course, we didn't know the half of it). We -- the rabble outside -- are like the people of Argentina, who, in the midst of an economic crisis eerily similar to our own, took to the street banging pots and pans. They shouted, "¡Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") and forced out a procession of four presidents in less than three weeks.
Why did the Liberals support the Conservative budget when the analysis is clear: the Finance Minister ignored the vulnerable, punished women, did not provide a serious stimulus to a flagging economy and tied up infrastructure spending in so much red tape that no shovels will be sighted this year?
The reason the Liberals did not oppose it, and would not have opposed it -- regardless of the prospects of taking power i
Craig McInnis, writing in the Vancouver Sun about the deficit budget introduced yesterday, assailed the Prime Minister, "Stephen Harper's extraordinary reversal of a lifetime of bashing big-spending governments, deficits, debt and Keynesian economics is a stunning betrayal."
Despite this hysteria in some right-wing circles, labour, social and environmental advocacy groups all felt that Stephen Harper's budget, released Tuesday, fell short of the response required in this time of crisis.
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![James Laxer](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/picture-62_0.jpg "James Laxer is regularly asked to comment on current national and global issues by the Canadian media and frequently writes columns in major newspapers and periodicals.
In 1969, he was one of the founders of the Waffle Group, Canada’s largest New Left political movement. In 1971, at the age of 29, he ran second for the national leadership of the New Democratic Party. In the mid 1970s, James Laxer was a leading crusader against the power of multi national petroleum companies. His books, speeches and television appearances helped lead to the creation of a nationally owned oil company, Petro Canada, established to counter the power of companies like Exxon in Canada.
In 1981, Laxer was appointed research director of the federal New Democratic Party. At the end of his two year term, he wrote a controversial, book length critique of the party’s economic policies, charging that they were seriously dated. The report was front page news in Canada and was debated for months in the national media.
In 1984, the National Film Board of Canada hired Laxer to be host narrator, for a series of documentaries on the changing global economy and Canada’s place in it. In preparing the series, Laxer travelled extensively in Japan, Europe and the United States. The series, entitled Reckoning, was denied broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation because it was seen as too controversial.
Instead it was broadcast by a hook up of all the English language educational networks in the country. The series was also broadcast in the United States, as well, by a large number of PBS stations. The Reckoning series has won awards in both the United States and Canada. One of its films won the blue ribbon, first prize, at the prestigious American Film and Video Festival, for best political documentary. The same film won the Atlantic
Film Festival and national Gemini Awards in Canada for best writing in an information series, awards which went to Laxer and the film’s director as co-authors.
In 1986-87, Laxer spent a year in Europe writing Decline of the Superpowers. From 1978 to 1981, he hosted a public affairs television program on TV Ontario. He regularly went to Europe to conduct interviews with leading European political and intellectual figures. In 1993 his book False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada, was published by Lester Publishing. In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics
After the Neo-Conservative Assault was published by Viking in 1996. The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism, was published by Viking in 1998, and by Penguin Canada in 1999, in a paperback edition. Dalton Camp wrote that the Undeclared War "is an informed and cogent book on the great and growing dilemma of our time: how to preserve a free society in the face of increasing disparity and the creation of a new class society---‘a dominant class and a dominated class.’ This is stuff we need to know." Laxer’s book, Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America was on national best seller lists for seven weeks in the autumn of 2000. In his review of the book for the Globe and Mail, David Shribman, Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Boston Globe, commented: "This is a book by a Canadian that can change the United States." Stalking the Elephant is to be published by The New Press in New York in September 2001. In 2003, his book, The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel, was published by Doubleday Canada. In 2004, Douglas and McIntyre published his book Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism. This memoir of James Laxer’s childhood was the winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for best biography/memoir in 2005.
James Laxer is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto")