Category Archives: To the streets

Education #5 – Student Loan Bubble and More Deflation

  By Richard from Canada | April 27, 2013 - 05:09 | , ,
2 Comments

According to the new study, student debt almost tripled between 2004 and 2012, and is approaching $1 trillion, while the percentage of borrowers who were more than 90 days delinquent had risen to 17 percent, from 10 percent in 2004. In addition, student loan debt was the only kind of household debt that continued to rise through the Great Recession, and it is now the second largest after mortgage debt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/student-debt-and-the-economy.html?_r=0

This is an interview with Michael Hudson.

Higher education has been a great money maker for the banks as they have turned universities and colleges into profit making machines.

How you make a profit from students who have no jobs and cannot pay back debts is hard to figure out until you realize that student loans are backed by the US government and relatively new laws prevent students from defaulting on their student loans, even if they declare bankruptcy.

How is this capitalism ? The end result is going to be billions in non-performing loans and those students who make an effort to pay back loans will not be spending on other stuff ! Do you smell more deflation in the air ?

 

Wages #20 – Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada Driving Wages Down

  By Richard from Canada | April 24, 2013 - 04:32 | , ,
4 Comments

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Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney warned the federal government not to allow temporary foreign workers to take jobs away from Canadians or drive down wages.

“One doesn’t want an over-reliance on temporary foreign workers for lower-skilled jobs,” the head of the central bank told the Commons finance committee.

Relying too much on temporary employees from abroad distorts wage adjustments that lead to Canadians getting better pay and delays changes that make companies more efficient, Carney said.

http://www.thestar.com/business/economy/2013/04/23/foreign_worker_program_must_be_temporary_carney.html

In 2007, for the first time in Canadian history, temporary resident applications outnumbered permanent.

In that same year, before the recession, there were about 200,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada. In 2011, despite tough economic times, that number swelled to over 300,000. Canadian businesses, enabled by the Harper government, have been happy to import cheap labourers. These numbers may come as a surprise to Canadians, who have seen persistently high unemployment, particularly among youth.

These temporary foreign workers are tied to their employer during their stay, their terms limited by their contracts and by the default legal limit of four years. And only a few of these workers can be nominated by the provinces for permanent residency. The vast majority will have to leave the country at the end of their contracts.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/daniel-tseghay/2013/04/temporary-foreign-worker-program-canadas-shame

Bouncing along the top

  By Mystic | March 14, 2013 - 03:04 | , ,
24 Comments

Many people stress the influence of `this or that` pressure group … I always insist that it is government that holds `all` the power.
So, what are the Western World’s power people going to be thinking about for the next ten years or so~?
Answer – `The economy, stupid`.
But what about the economy~?
Answer – `How to get growth`.
Why growth~?
Answer – So as to make past debts repayable.
Oh … Okay, carry on~!

A good question here is – `What have governments got to do with it~?`
The answer is; that, when things go `wrong`; people demand that government make them `right again`.
It is useless to ask if governments can actually do anything to `get growth going again` … the point is, that they will try and it will be that `trying` that will dominate the economic picture for the next ten years.

Recently, the political `right` and `left` have been clambering over each other to take the `center ground`.
We may see the end of this, as `centrist governments` fail to get growth going again.
Unsatisfied; the people will start voting for `extreme` factions … first within established parties, and then, if they fail (and they will); will turn to extreme independent factions.

It is unlikely that anyone will question whether the right question is being asked of the right people.
As time goes on, the people will get more and more invested in their pet political solution to `the problem`.
Political debate will, once again, become interesting (perfectly useless, but nonetheless, interesting).

We have got to where we are today by arbitraging cheap energy opportunities.
Find more cheap energy and there will be growth.
No cheap energy … economies will shrink (and the people will become increasing grumpy).

Wages #17 – Minimum Wages Are Evil and Keep People Unemployed ?!

  By Richard from Canada | March 1, 2013 - 17:45 | ,
48 Comments

This is a classic video of an interview many years ago with Milton Friedman.

This is his anti-labour trade union rant where he trashes the minimum wage as some type of union conspiracy which keeps the unskilled worker unemployed.

My view is that trade unions have their place but for him to use unions as an arguement to be against a minimum wage is not logical !?? It is some type of twisted thinking and appears to fit well into his arguement that labour, especially black labour at the time of the interview, is way over priced and should be closer to slavery rates !!? Help me on this one….

OK … I forgot .. this is capitalism! You know … whether labour is skilled or unskilled … as long as we have plenty of it … it will be cheap !

It is absolutely crazy to confuse a minimum wage with protecting overpaid trade union wages !? This guy lives back in the day when a dollar was a dollar (linked to gold). His views are no longer relevant because a declining wage is today hyper-deflationary and will kill the wage earner who is the consumer who is the economy.

 

Pawn people

  By Mystic | November 18, 2012 - 06:06 | , ,
25 Comments


First there was `Global Cooling`, then `Global Warming` … now, `Climate Change`. I have no doubt that the climate is changing, but then it always is. Is it is changing because of `man burning carbon fuels`~?
Probably, but do we think man is going to stop `burning carbon fuels`~? Stop no, but `slow down`~!
Is slowing down going to do anyone any good~? I doubt it. We would have to believe that the burning of the carbon fuels `would not be worth it`.
It may be the noblest enterprise that man has ever taken on … telling the emerging world economies that they cannot do as we did, and burn carbon fuels to drive their people into the consuming middle class of the world.
If I was Chinese, Indian or African, the whole idea would not `ring true` to me (although I may be may be making a shocking mistake). I would go ahead and burn the fuel, enrich the people and try and mitigate the consequences, should/when the arise.

After WWII American Corporations wanted to `get government off its back`, so … it clubbed together and pushed through and extensive business plan. It included getting economists to give their ideas `a practical foundation`.
Libertarianism was born … and has been used as a club to beat down government ever since.
There are now groups of people, who don’t have to be goaded on by Corporations. They will go freely into the streets and demand for the sort of things that the Corporations want.
They think they are doing it for themselves, but, in reality they are being mindless foot-soldiers for the Corporations and their on-going battle against `big government`.
(They even demand the end to `entitlements`, so that their fellow countrymen will be driven into desperation and take lower wages).
Libertarians are basically … fools~!


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Wages #14 – Wage Slavery

  By Richard from Canada | November 9, 2012 - 19:52 | ,
1 Comment

 

Well here is an overview of wage slavery.

Wage slavery refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary slavery,[1] where a person’s livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.[2][3]

It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor, and to highlight similarities between owning and employing a person.

The term wage slavery has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops),[4] and the latter as a lack of workers’ self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy.[5][6][7]

The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their “species character”[8] not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma and status diminution.[9][10][11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

From the linked article …..according to Friedrich Engels

The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence.

I guess that is one way at looking at my existence !

Basically the individual is a commodity in our corporate culture !   Global company, big company, medium size company, small company, family unit, commodity individual.

Have I missed something here ?