What the hell is wrong with people who think nothing of spending $120/hour to get their car serviced, but begrudge the elementary school teachers their $45 per hour?
The sly bastards at the C.D. Howe institute know they can usually count on some free publicity when they slip Margaret Wente one of their anti-union screeds, and sure enough, there she is today on page F9 of my Globe and Mail, broom red-lined, ranting about our overpaid grade four teachers.
Margaret makes much of the fact that in 2002, at the dawn of the Liberal era, Ontario spent $7,201 per student on education; now it's a whopping $11,451!... yup, clear proof that the teachers unions have been colluding with the Liberal government to screw the tax-payer!
Get a grip, Margaret! This ain't 2002! In 2002 the minimum wage was $6.85; now it's $11.25... the minimum wage has gone up more than our education spending! In 2002 the average house in Toronto was under $300 thousands; today it's a million!
It's not 2002 anymore, folks!
Is $94,000 per year "a lot" of money? Sure, if you're making less. Not so much, if you're making more. According to the latest "sunshine list," well over half of the Toronto Police department is earning into the six numbers. I'd like to think that, as a society, we value the contribution of the grade four teacher as much as we value the contribution of the friendly neighbourhood policeman or policewoman.
A journeyman welder with the (private sector) Boilermakers Union has an all-in hourly rate of over $60, which translates into $120 thousand per year before overtime. Speaking of which, when that unionized welder works a Saturday, it's at double time. When that unionized teacher supervises a weekend volleyball tournament, it's for free.
Then we get the usual bromides about the fast-changing world, where, just because the private sector has managed to off-shore Canada's manufacturing base and create a precariat where there was once a viable middle class, EVERYBODY should live at or below the poverty line with no job security!
Of course we should! After all, according to Wente, precarious employment engenders innovation and creativity! How else will we compete against all those countries we've been rushing into "free trade" deals with?
The fact that some people earn more than others doesn't necessarily mean they're overpaid. Maybe we should worry about raising the standard of living for those on the lower rungs of our economy instead of stirring up spite and envy at those doing alright.
Showing posts with label CD Howe Institute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CD Howe Institute. Show all posts
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Uncorking the same old whoppers about privatizing beer and liquor sales in Ontario
The CD Howe Institute has released yet another "research paper" decrying the monopolies held over liquor and beer distribution in Ontario. Given the sorry state of journalism in the land, their "study" immediately became news in every newspaper in the province.
Liberating beer and liquor distribution from the private monopoly The Beer Store and the government owned LCBO would improve service and selection, reduce prices, and increase net revenues to the government - all the same arguments made a year ago the last time this issue was "news".
Those with long memories will also recall the exact same arguments being made as Alberta considered getting out of the booze biz over twenty years ago, which they did. How has that worked out?
Great and not that great...
The number of places to buy booze has gone up exponentially and they stay open later, greatly reducing the number of people who have to jump in their car, or rather their pick-up truck, and race to the government store to grab another two four and a forty pounder five minutes before closing time! Instead, now you just have to stagger to the liquor store down the block, because every block is sure to have at least one or two.
The number of brands available has gone up exponentially as well. I remember the bad old days of the government monopoly. You were limited to Canadian and Blue in the beer aisle, and Seagrams VO or Golden Wedding in the liquor aisle, and there were only two aisles! Wine had not yet been introduced to Alberta, as the only wine-drinkers in the province were a few gay guys who worked in the accounting departments at the big oil companies. That's a true fact; ask anybody who lived in Alberta in the late 70s.
Now, gays are everywhere, and they have 19,000 plus brands to choose from! So if you're a gay pipe welder in Fort Mac, privatization has been a godsend!
On the other hand, prices haven't come down, government revenues have plunged, and thousands of jobs that once paid a living wage became non-union minimum wage jobs.
This last point tends to be underplayed or ignored altogether by the right-wing think-tanks who put these "studies" together. Full time workers at The Beer Store and the LCBO still make a living wage. Privatize them and those will be poverty level jobs.
Could this be the real agenda of the anti-monopolists?
Liberating beer and liquor distribution from the private monopoly The Beer Store and the government owned LCBO would improve service and selection, reduce prices, and increase net revenues to the government - all the same arguments made a year ago the last time this issue was "news".
Those with long memories will also recall the exact same arguments being made as Alberta considered getting out of the booze biz over twenty years ago, which they did. How has that worked out?
Great and not that great...
The number of places to buy booze has gone up exponentially and they stay open later, greatly reducing the number of people who have to jump in their car, or rather their pick-up truck, and race to the government store to grab another two four and a forty pounder five minutes before closing time! Instead, now you just have to stagger to the liquor store down the block, because every block is sure to have at least one or two.
The number of brands available has gone up exponentially as well. I remember the bad old days of the government monopoly. You were limited to Canadian and Blue in the beer aisle, and Seagrams VO or Golden Wedding in the liquor aisle, and there were only two aisles! Wine had not yet been introduced to Alberta, as the only wine-drinkers in the province were a few gay guys who worked in the accounting departments at the big oil companies. That's a true fact; ask anybody who lived in Alberta in the late 70s.
Now, gays are everywhere, and they have 19,000 plus brands to choose from! So if you're a gay pipe welder in Fort Mac, privatization has been a godsend!
On the other hand, prices haven't come down, government revenues have plunged, and thousands of jobs that once paid a living wage became non-union minimum wage jobs.
This last point tends to be underplayed or ignored altogether by the right-wing think-tanks who put these "studies" together. Full time workers at The Beer Store and the LCBO still make a living wage. Privatize them and those will be poverty level jobs.
Could this be the real agenda of the anti-monopolists?
Saturday, May 4, 2013
What the Temporary Foreign Worker scam says about Canada's education system
In the first place, it says Canada's education system isn't graduating students that Canadian employers want to hire.
While viewed in isolation that statement may be true, my common cause with Fraser Institute and C.D. Howe types pretty much ends there.
While Canadian high school students consistently score well on international tests, few outside the education establishment are aware that huge swaths of students, those streamed into "basic" or "essential" or "locally developed" programs, never participate in the tests.
Those students are the victims of the self-esteem obsession that has guided Canadian education for the past thirty years or so.
The kids who come from backgrounds that are more affluent, more educated, more motivated, have the resources available to overcome this self-esteem obsession.
They have books in the house and parents who encourage them to read.
The kids who don't have that, have a system that tells them reading is redundant, that "viewing is reading," and that their feelings are paramount.
As long as those kids feel good about themselves, everything is hunky-dory.
So after ten or fifteen years being told how great they are, these students graduate into a world where they quickly discover that feeling good about themselves doesn't translate into employable skills.
Canada graduates huge numbers of youths who are functionally illiterate and struggle to do math at a grade two level.
But they feel really good about themselves, at least until they realize how unemployable they are.
Then they are stymied, because that other pillar of the Canadian system, having critical thinking skills, turns out to be as ephemeral as their self-esteem.
There are tens of thousands of unemployed youths in Alberta, the province that needs to import tens of thousands of Temporary Foreign Workers to man the counter at the local Tim Hortons.
If Alberta youth had the slightest grasp of what "critical thinking" means they would be organizing, demonstrating, and raising hell...
At least if all that "critical thinking" bullshit in the mission statements and curriculum overviews of their high schools was anything other than jargon designed to hide the fact that the system is failing them.
If "critical thinking" were a bona fide part of their education, they'd be picketing and boycotting those fast food joints until the wages offered could provide an acceptable Canadian standard of living.
While viewed in isolation that statement may be true, my common cause with Fraser Institute and C.D. Howe types pretty much ends there.
While Canadian high school students consistently score well on international tests, few outside the education establishment are aware that huge swaths of students, those streamed into "basic" or "essential" or "locally developed" programs, never participate in the tests.
Those students are the victims of the self-esteem obsession that has guided Canadian education for the past thirty years or so.
The kids who come from backgrounds that are more affluent, more educated, more motivated, have the resources available to overcome this self-esteem obsession.
They have books in the house and parents who encourage them to read.
The kids who don't have that, have a system that tells them reading is redundant, that "viewing is reading," and that their feelings are paramount.
As long as those kids feel good about themselves, everything is hunky-dory.
So after ten or fifteen years being told how great they are, these students graduate into a world where they quickly discover that feeling good about themselves doesn't translate into employable skills.
Canada graduates huge numbers of youths who are functionally illiterate and struggle to do math at a grade two level.
But they feel really good about themselves, at least until they realize how unemployable they are.
Then they are stymied, because that other pillar of the Canadian system, having critical thinking skills, turns out to be as ephemeral as their self-esteem.
There are tens of thousands of unemployed youths in Alberta, the province that needs to import tens of thousands of Temporary Foreign Workers to man the counter at the local Tim Hortons.
If Alberta youth had the slightest grasp of what "critical thinking" means they would be organizing, demonstrating, and raising hell...
At least if all that "critical thinking" bullshit in the mission statements and curriculum overviews of their high schools was anything other than jargon designed to hide the fact that the system is failing them.
If "critical thinking" were a bona fide part of their education, they'd be picketing and boycotting those fast food joints until the wages offered could provide an acceptable Canadian standard of living.
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