AUSTERITY IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE - IN THIS NEW ECONOMIC REALITY

We just got our hydro bill, and while I’m delighted we have managed to maintain a sensible and reduced level of consumption, it’s bloody hard not to be mad about our $80 HST tally for the period. With the added cost of gas, food, regular water-service increases, tax bill (which don’t generally reduce), plus the inflationary pressures of everything else, it’s hard to be overly optimistic about the future drag on economic recovery.

If you follow news around the world, it’s doesn’t stray much from “dire” and “disastrous.” After watching a recent news clip about a municipality in Alabama that has had to suspend its pensions for retired public service employees, from the former Police Chief, retired officers, Fire Chief and clerical staff, (and, appreciating the warning that other towns may soon follow this lead), it’s difficult for me to understand how financial experts can be so optimistic about the upswing of the economy. Whether Wall Street is doing better or not, main street sucks. There’s a widespread economic disaster brewing, in my humble historian’s opinion, and for those folks who believe, even in Canada, that statistics alone indicate the recession is over.......well, they need to investigate for themselves just how bad it is, on the mainstreets of our neighbor’s communities. Some of those contradictions can be found in stories about failed pensions and no financial bail-outs, for hard working citizens, now left in dire straits by the economic tidal wave, released and perpetuated by others. But it is on the micro-scale that you find the information you need to prepare for the very next economic wave to hit this country. We’re awfully smug about our assumed prosperity......yet if you were to look closely, and be prepared to dig into festering realities right now, in our own country, you’d find smugness has no place even amongst the upper strata of personal economy. Many folks are suffering. Too many. Food banks and charity shops are being pummeled by demand and costs. How long can they survive to help the needy. This is in our land of plenty.

The United States is our major trading partner. Although we like to brag about our economic well-being, we’re relying on stats to make this declaration. If you’re tending the less fortunate, working at a homeless shelter, a food bank, employed in social work, or in the repossession or bankruptcy business, you probably have a few sidebars to add, when the financial experts and bank representatives bestow high regards, on our country’s ability to navigate tough economic times. The same disconnect that always prevails between those who have, and those who don’t, and won’t have, even in the distant future, carries on as “mantra” today, for those arses who truly believe that when they speak, the sea opens a path out of respect for command.

So will an election bring these issues into the profile they deserve? Not really. Maybe some of the candidates will pop by a food bank for a photo-op, or appear to care about the homeless at one of the shelters. There are exceptions, and there are quite a few, in each of the parties,.....kind folk who do go out of their way to represent the less fortunate in Canada. There’s just not a hard party commitment to help improve social assistance issues, that will startle any of us into the kind of respect that compells us to vote for change. Poverty seldom is a top election concern. Rather it is one of those “trust us,” issues, that will supposedly get attention down the road by the new government.

As it has proven a tempest in the proverbial teapot, many times throughout history, government’s abuses of the economy, and their citizenry, while living lavishly themselves, is crashing to a new reality. There are many countries wishing to oust their governing bodies, the direct result of increasing poverty, lack of employment, social assistance and the ever escalating costs of living in general. There isn’t a Canadian, provincial, or regional elected official, who can afford to ignore the growing global disharmony, whether in the United States, Egypt, Tunisia, Europe and Asia. The poor are arming themselves with new technologies for communication, and changing how revolutions organize, build co-operation, network and unfurl as powerful fists at abusive, oppressive dictatorships. The genie has been let out of the bottle, and it’s not going back in. So expect much more civil disobedience to herald change. Some of it will be deadly, as we have seen, and it will cause massive governmental imbalances and vulnerabilities around the globe. There’s no escaping the realities of global economic and political carnage in the next five years, that will give us the kind of collateral damage we’ve been boastful, so far, of missing for the most part.

I grew up in a family that had no choice but to be frugal. In the late 1960's and early 70's, we lived in a small apartment building in Bracebridge, where residents shared a common reality. Modest income. We shared a contenting modest life style. Some had a few bucks more, and had a few more luxuries in their quarters but by and large, it was a blue collar, hard working family grouping, all who shared hopes things would improve. For the survivors, well times and economy did improve. We helped one another in those years. If my family was down on its luck, we didn’t have to ask for assistance from our neighbors. Groceries just appeared and offers of transport, when our car was in disrepair, were generous and accommodating. When our luck changed and someone else’s sputtered, for a tad, we returned favors bestowed. We weren’t ashamed of being of lesser economy. My dad grew up in Cabbagetown, in Toronto, and he knew the protocol of living on less, and achieving a contented, hard working, rewarding life. He could whip up a great Johnny Cake, based on his mother’s recipe, and an “Everything Stew,” she used to make from the little she had to work with to feed four strapping boys. The pot simmered all day long, and was added to when more leftovers were garnered from garden, or general kindness of neighbors. Her husband ditched the family to fend for themselves.

When I think about Canadians with huge mortgages and credit card burdens, some more than the cost of our first house, I worry that the horse is already out of the barn......and no matter how much public advisory now, to reduce debt-loads, there’s no way of getting it under control by closing the barn door now. Many young families are only several pay cheques away from requiring a food bank to survive. As our economic talking heads blather on about upturns and growing confidence of Canadian consumers, even a tremor of another economic downturn, and interest rate increase, will create an economic blood-bath. In our credit-generous environment, we have poisoned the well from which we drink.

When it comes down to municipal governments, trying to survive, and provide decent services to their citizenry......theirs is a most daunting challenge, that can only get worse before, sometime in the future, a resurgence can re-build based on sensible proportion.......and not solely on the basis of .....we’ve got credit so let’s spend it before someone else does.

As an historian, the only way I could write an upbeat assessment of economic realities, as it affects average Canadians, is if I employed fiction to complete the story. We’ve been reading and hearing a lot of fiction these days. It hasn’t helped us embrace our pressing limitations.

This blog wasn’t inspired by the pending issue of a federal election, or the HST imposed on my hydro bill. It has been the incessant bombardment of economic realities, at home and abroad, that has impacted most profoundly. The realization that so many good and contributing folks in our world, have become victims of manipulated and contaminated economies......who no longer can contribute to the consumer-based regeneration......the one our economists and politicians look for, to guarantee an eventual recovery. The retired folks I learned about, in that small community in Alabama, who no longer have their pensions, savings, or spending power, are harbingers of dangers to come for all of us, dependent on the global economy’s prosperity..........even though we’ve never believed our welfare depended, in this post World War era, on the well being elsewhere, to protect our economic outlook.......it does, and shall continue to do so until profound changes to the global economy are enacted.

That’s a long way off. Certainly not in my lifetime.

I hate to say it’s “survival of the fittest (economy).” Tell me I’m wrong!

We can’t afford to ignore this.....especially on the ground level, where the heavy footfall of panic, stomps down hardest.......by precedent of history. Panic isn’t the way to go either. Just be careful out there.