The Real Economy Feels The Pain

In his recent article, Andrew Coyne’s rather dubious perspective on the Occupy Wall Street protestors amounted to something of a defence of the economic status quo in Canada. After years of encouraging this country’s leaders to shape up and draw closer to our more powerful neighbour to the south, he unfurled a series of reasonings stating the opposite – we are not America and because of our more sound fiscal protections we should keep our distance during turbulent times.In some senses it’s hard to argue with that logic. What strikes me though is how he completely misses the urgency of the Canadian context and thus the true essence of the Canadian protests. By terming it a “phony class war” he guaranteed himself a role as an apologist for the elites. Sensing this, one observer on Twitter named“canadiancynic” noted, “coyne doing his masters’ bidding. Good boy, Andrew … have a biscotti.”I often appreciate Coyne’s columns but this one is disturbing. He seems to think that the “Occupy” protesters are a fledgling group, disconnected from the larger Canadian picture and in so doing adroitly sidesteps the growing scepticism of citizens in general. I’m out and about a lot, in numerous venues and enjoying many interactions, and I can affirm a certain gloom that wasn’t present in the Canadian context only three years ago.When Andrew says that poverty isn’t as bad as we make it out be, what are we to say to that? The most recent national food bank report that came out just this week alluded to the fact that 50% of this country’s food banks have begun the painful process of rationing; and almost a third might not survive. I have never experienced that in my entire quarter-century of food banking, but Coyne tells me it’s not as bad as presented. To my knowledge, he doesn’t spend a lot of time acknowledging such community services so his opinion is more informed by his intuition than street level experience.He goes on to say that our banking system is sound – which is kind of like saying the financial elites are fine. Trouble is, I’ve met numerous small business owners in recent weeks that can’t get loans from those banks. So I guess it depends what level you’re on if you’re going to determine that everything’s good.Rather unfeelingly, Coyne maintains that unemployment isn’t rising in Canada. But there are jobs and there are jobs, and we are rapidly shedding the kind that provide adequately for the worker as well as the products required for employment to drive economic growth. We have an increasing number of service jobs at near minimum wage and he surely can’t expect us to be content with that.Then there are the major policy challenges that the protestors lay out but which, again, Coyne sidesteps. Our environmental record is, by almost universal agreement, leading us down a path where the cost of effective remedial effort becomes steep. The protesters speak of the rather severe costs emerging on healthcare but that doesn’t earn a mention from the Maclean’s writer. And the democratic deficit, with all time low voting numbers, is a front and centre point of concentration for the “Occupy” protesters but is again missing in action in Coyne’s analysis.The protesters deserved somewhat better than this, especially from one of this country’s more shrewd observers. They didn’t get it because the writer, like so many of us, hasn’t lived at such a level for years. That could have been true of me as well, but now that I am 60, unemployed, looking for work, with three kids to yet put through university, it does remarkable things to focus one’s thoughts.The real economy takes account of all economic levels of society and it feels the pain of those who are falling farther behind. It might very well be that we’ll get over the shock and dislocation of these last three years but it will not go away. Regardless of those who say the economy is already on the road to recovery, we will have years yet of high unemployment or under-employment. Wages will continue to languish. Growth will be sluggish and the eventual price we will have to invest to avert environmental disaster could prove threatening to healthy recovery. If the middle class can’t afford the products as they used to, then only those companies with global reach will be able to advance.We are entering an age when deficits and debts must be repaid and where services will be cut. But citizens are angry for having been thrust into this predicament and they will lash out against the cuts. It will be a difficult era for governing. People with two university degrees will experience increasing trouble finding work. Families will travel less.All of this had transpired before and we know the prescriptions that will be offered to come out of the doldrums – cuts, reduction of services, attacks on labour unions, the rollback of social services. It’s different this time, though, because people know there is a lot of money out there and that they’re just not getting an equitable share of it. Look for where that money went and you’ll find the focal point of anger by citizens. Coyne might think Canada’s wealthy are being improperly blamed, but his ambivalence towards the real pain people are feeling means we’ll have to look elsewhere for more understanding observation. The real economy senses the pain and reacts to it, unlike the false economy that says, “get a grip, it’s not so bad.” Increasingly, Canadians are aligning themselves with the former.