Citizenship - "Choking on Chicken Bones"

Government ownership of many of our key public resources in Canada has declined in just two decades from 22% to just 8.5% - mostly due to privatization. Like Chile, the economic pendulum is swinging at ever-greater speed, with a burgeoning corporate dimension and an increasingly shrinking public capacity. Here’s a bit of a breakdown of who owns that wealth.

• 30 % of Canada’s biggest 500 companies are foreign-owned
• 21% are family controlled
• 38% are widely held
• as mentioned, 8.5% is government-owned
• 3.2% is owned by franchises or partners

Such figures, especially the decline in government ownership, have caused many a tirade against the corporate forces gaining increasing control of not only the economic but also the political resources of this country. That is not the intention here. Rather, it is to point out that in the midst of all this change, significant problems have not been dealt with. And the ability of governments to act directly on such difficulties has been greatly reduced in proportion to their holdings. Like Chile itself, we have gone through some fundamental economic and political reforms that have left much of the country dislocated. To claim that many of the wealthy give considerably to charity and invest in endowments would be true, but it’s not nearly enough to cover the costs of government investment and its withdrawal from the public sphere. In an earlier era when government support was negligible (1920s), American financier Andrew Carnegie gave a full 90% of his earnings back to society. Perhaps that might work if Canada’s wealthiest gave back in such large measure, but until they do, public investments and institutions in this country will continue to decline.This is serious stuff, made all the more difficult by the penchant for ideological thinking from both the left and the right to demonize one another. Nothing can compete with the corporate resources at present, but there will come a point when forces arrayed against such a reality will take advantage of the continuing social decline and seek to press their case for reforms. This is an altercation that can only bring national pain. Better yet that we work together now to seek a better and more equitable balance of this country’s resources, including its people, and the fabulous wealth being generated at present.For much of our present economic situation we can thank the “Chicago Boys” – key economists from the University of Chicago and disciples of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman. Their theories of economic growth based on trade, less government and regulations ideally suited those who already had the wealth to invest in such a high-stakes game. It as these rigorous disciplines that helped to produce the modern economic model that is Chile. Canada followed a similar course, and though its history of public investment assisted in the adjustment to these new financial practices, two decades of such a paradigm are now leaving both countries socially frayed as public investment slowly loses rigor.  These practiced economic disciplines are market-oriented after all, not socially or publicly focused, and since we swallowed the whole thing holus bolus, markets flourished while our social fabric fell into decline.What else could we expect? Did we honestly believe all boats could be lifted from such a tidal shift? As citizens, we permitted ourselves to be duped into a false choice between markets and government when, in truth, neither can do the job effectively in isolation. We shouldn’t have to choose between economic expansion, sustainability and social justice at all. Moreover, we have come to believe that national finance is such a complex and labrynthian world that we can’t comprehend it anyway, so let’s let the experts decide. But many of these experts are pitted again one another in their theories. As long as economic growth is tied to social decline, differences will mount. When a market-oriented economy refuses to apply itself to the fallout from climate change, abiding aboriginal injustices, a shrinking long-term workforce, a looming healthcare crisis, growing regional disparities, etc., and government, largely stripped of its cohesive resources, is told to just sit in the corner, social tensions and injustice can only result. Some good friends of mine continue to hold to this economic formula as though it's some kind of magic, but when I ask them how we fix the social damage, they have little to offer. Those that do weigh in are forced to acknowledge that, since markets aren’t inherently responsible and worried about social costs, that governments have to take a more active role. They admit it, though looking like they’re choking on a chicken bone.Are we honestly this stupid as citizens? Is the new economic order so complex that we must just sit there, consuming and observing, as many of our fellow citizens fall into various kinds of risk? Is this what Canada has become – a nation of helpless citizens, incapable of weighing in because the subject matter is too big? Many of us have clearly benefited from the system as it is, but those numbers are shrinking as the middle-class struggles to hold its own.If we continue to accept this status quo at citizens, then we have sold our collective birthright. Our desire for goods and services must be brought into balance with our social and progressive ideals. If we merely shuffle on in our blind following of the present system, then people like Freud and Bernays are proven right – we are a public that can be manipulated lest we rise up and challenge the prevailing order. We are the good citizens of Canada and it’s time we questioned that logic.