Otters

These two otters were at Clover Point in Victoria. Often see at least one otter in this vicinity.

Cover of my new book

Hummingbird

A male Anna's hummingbird in full plumage. A great deal of chasing and chittering going on between both males and females, and males and males. Since Anna's may nest as early as December or January, I assume these are mating activities.

Swans in Conflict

This picture is one of a series taken at Esquimalt Lagoon. The two swans fought and chased around for some minutes.

Public Wealth and Private Benefit

Because the B.C. Liberals are fixated on their deficit like a chicken with its beak to a chalk line, they're oblivious, both to the immediate harm they're inflicting on individuals, families, and useful institutions and organizations such as libraries, schools, and the arts, and to the longer-term damage they're wreaking on the economy by failing to invest in the healthy, well-educated citizenry we need to meet the challenges we face.

The first thing the Liberals should do after dropping the harmonized sales tax (HST), is to raise income taxes back to their pre-2001 level, thus restoring the $2 billion in revenue wasted when they first attained office.

If they still need to borrow money to invest in health, education, the arts, organic farming, and public transportation, the best way would be to issue B.C. Bonds dedicated to operating, maintaining, or building these essential elements of a civil society.

This would enable residents of British Columbia to invest directly and safely in our own province, something that would be welcome in today's uncertain economy. If the smallest bond was $50 or even $25, those with lower incomes could also participate.

The advantage of borrowing from ourselves is that our investments would work with our tax dollars to create both public wealth and a private benefit.

Thinking about Capital

My working definition is: Capital is a pool of money utilized to bring together raw materials, workers, energy, equipment, and so forth to produce the goods or services people want and/or need. There is more than one way to organize capital; it doesn't have to be the present stockmarket/free market model with greed as its driving force; it could be state capital--organized primarily by government for the public good, perhaps through Crown corporations; or co-operative capital, organized through co-operatives for both private and the public good, the most democratic form. If greed can be controlled, all three forms can co-exist and work together.

Ethical Capital

Regardless of how capital is organized, or owned, there are values to be applied all along the process of producing the good or service--for example, is energy being utilized to assist workers rather than replace them? Are the raw materials being extracted or refined in environmentally-friendly ways? Are the goods produced recyclable? Is the equipment safe? Are the workers well-trained? And on and on.

A basic value should be that it is not acceptable, or ethical, for investors to invest only to make money. Or for companies to put maximizing profits and increasing shareholder value ahead of every other consideration, regardless of the damage they may be doing to people or places.

To be ethical, an investment must lead to some useful or beautiful good or service, produced by the most environmentally-symbiotic processes possible. Ideally, the workers would own the company they work for, but where this does not apply, an ethical investment requires companies to pay and treat their workers well, to co-operate with their unions, and to ensure their workers' safety and well-being on the job.

The Role of Government in a Sustainable Economy--Part 1

This is the first part of an article which was published in this month's The Lower Island News. It appeared as one piece in the paper, but for the blog I've divided it into two parts.

In these days of climate change (however caused), 'peak oil', world-wide pollution of air, water, and soil, and countless other environmental ills and hazards, the concepts of 'sustainable economy' or 'sustainability' have become popular among environmentalists and the public alike. There are a number of definitions of 'sustainable'. The Brundtland Report, published in 1987, recommended that sustainable development should ". . . meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Unfortunately, the Report focused on 'sustainable development' which accepted growth; rather than 'sustainable economy', which doesn't.)


Herbert Daly, author of Steady-State Economics, first published in 1977, has defined sustainable development as development that doesn't lead to growth beyond the environment's carrying capacity, with 'development' meaning qualitative improvement, while 'growth' means a quantitative increase. The definition that I find the most satisfying is that attributed to various aboriginal cultures, "We do not inherit the earth from our parents; we borrow it from our children".


The role of a democratic government in a sustainable economy is to serve the public good; serving the public good requires government to approach citizens and their concerns with a co-operative philosophy and attitude that centres its attention on the well-being of individuals and their families, viewing them, not in isolation, but as members of one or more communities which overlap to various degrees.



The citizenry, in our turn, needs to view government as a tool which enables us to provide ourselves with the means--education, transportation, medical care, a healthy environment, and so forth--which not only create opportunities for earning a reasonably comfortable living, but also lead to a higher quality of life--including, but not limited to, breathable air, drinkable water, wildlife and wilderness (which we may never see but which enrich our lives merely by existing); fewer material goodies, and more immaterial ones--time and leisure, more relaxed relationships, both professional and personal; altogether less stress, to name only a few examples of the improvements we could enjoy if the focus of the economy was taken off making money as an end in itself, and turned to satisfying our needs in the most environmentally-effective manner possible.

Government is an essential player in the complex interweaving of human, financial, physical, and political elements which result in the kind of economy and society we choose to live in. From the point of view of the individual, government, and business economic activities flow to and from each other. To be useful, money must be pooled--saved--in sufficient quantities to invest, when it flows out of one pool and into one or more other pools. But the economy doesn't care where the money comes from--public or private sources are all one to it; what matters is that the money keeps moving--pooling and flowing out, pooling and flowing out.


The capitalist economy that we operate in today is incapable of becoming a sustainable economy for three reasons. First, capitalists regard government as, at best, a necessary evil, to be minimized as much as possible. They ignore the fact that capitalists and their corporations depend on government for their very existence, from the laws creating limited liability, for example, to protection for intellectual property--copyrights, patents and trademarks--to the arbitration and enforcement mechanisms of the police and justice systems, and the negotiation of international trade treaties. Of lesser, but still considerable, value to business success are the benefits of various social programs, such as welfare (which helps support purchasing power), to a single payer health care system, (which minimizes a firm's health care costs for its workers).


Second, capitalism depends on ever-increasing growth to remain viable, and takes insufficient cognizance (to say the least) of the finite nature of the planet's resources, organic and non-organic, alike.



Third, capitalism cannot foster sustainability because it is focused--as business people never tire of telling us--entirely on making money, and increasing shareholder value, and nothing else. It is almost irrelevant to the true capitalist what product or service they invest in as long as they receive the expected return. As a corollary, capitalists regard making money as a sufficient excuse for foisting so-called 'externalities on the public--fish stocks depleted around the world by trawlers and other high-tech fishing boats; soil ruined and eroded through industrial farming; lakes destroyed to accommodate the toxic wastes of converting the tar sands into oil--are only a few examples of how capitalism encourages present generations to rob future ones of the planet's resources. But simply because we were born sooner does not give us the moral right to deplete the planet's wealth.


Unfortunately, far too many business people are proud of the fact that all they're interested in is making money, and non-business people have allowed themselves to be bamboozled into thinking this point of view is acceptable. It is not. Capitalism's buccaneering ways and Midas touch--which reduces all life to inedible gold--can no longer be tolerated in a sustainable society. If we are to evolve an economy which meets our real needs, other values must take precedence over mere money-making, which should be regarded as a means of achieving other ends, and not as a laudable end in itself.

The Role of Government in a Sustainable Economy--Part 2

How we make our money is equally, if not more, important than what we make it from. It can no longer be seen as admirable, or even 'good enough', to invest merely to earn a monetary return; the admirable investor must become someone who reaps monetary return from investing in goods and services which serve real needs. (One might think this would rule out investing in sin stocks, such as tobacco. However, since the legal production and sale of tobacco to adults serves the needs of nicotine addicts while returning taxes to government, and preventing the development of a black market in tobacco, one can morally invest in a tobacco company, but not in a company like Plutonic Power, which intends to carve roads and transmission lines through the British Columbia wilderness to make money by selling hydro-electric power to the Americans.)

Business people and other capitalists often assert that only the private sector creates wealth; by 'wealth' meaning a surplus or profits, the difference between costs and revenues. But this assertion is nonsense. First, the private sector creates nothing without the necessary government legislation, investments in essential infrastructure such as education, and services such as police and fire; and second, government enterprise can create as much monetary wealth as private, as its surplus is also the difference between its costs, and its revenues (taxes, fees, and royaltie)). At the same time, government investment creates real public wealth and human capital--a well-educated citizenry, flourishing arts and sciences, high quality medical care and the promotion of health, organic agriculture, public transportation, and public broadcasting, to name just a few of the basic elements of a civilized society which governments can provide, not only more efficiently, but also more effectively, than private enterprise, which really cares only for its balance sheet.

For example, investing in public transit systems which attract large riderships by providing a high degree of mobility and convenience, would in turn help to reduce air pollution, and traffic-related deaths, and injuries, thus generally increasing our health and well-being, and reducing our need to use expensive acute-care medical facilities. Similarly, government investments in small, locally-oriented, organic agriculture enterprises (including value-added activities), would help to reduce smog and greenhouse gases, as well as providing nutritious food, both of which, again, would increase health and well-being, and decrease reliance on medical care. These benefits do not accrue to private businesses because they do not have a sufficiently wide base of returns. Government, because it raises taxes and fees from many different sources, can benefit from revenue flows no private company, however large, can command. Furthermore, a large proportion of government expenditures eventually flows back to government in various taxes and fees.

Of course, it is the revenues from taxes that capitalists object to, since they view taxation solely as a burden, a diminution of profits, to be minimized for themselves as much as possible (preferring that individual citizens bear most of the burden, while corporations reap most of the benefits). Businesses tend to regard government investment and spending (much of which, in fact, goes for salaries and benefits, and for the purchase of goods and services from the private sector) as a nuisance, a burden, an endless imposition, as if the money vanishes like water down a drain. Of course, it does not. As previously discussed, government spending and investment circulate throughout the economy, supporting purchasing power, and thus a wide variety of economic activities, just as private sector spending and investment does. Taxes create pools, and government investments and expenditures create outflows. In the process, we get two bangs for our buck, the good or service itself--health care, public transit, wilderness--plus the attendant and consequent economic activity.

Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' of the market, if it ever operated as theorized even in Adam Smith's day, cannot be relied on to deliver a sustainable society, or an economy that does not depend on endless growth to prosper. The market, in addition to serving private, not public, goals, only works properly for those who have sufficient funds to make the choices economists theorize that we make, and very often does not provide the paid work that is necessary to support the purchasing power on which the market depends. Only government has the scope and the resources to establish and maintain the indispensable elements of a civilized life and human-centred economy--education, health, mobility. Markets alone cannot serve the public good because marketeers have neither sufficient means nor sufficient interest in serving any other goals but their own.

Government is not our master, our parent, or our guardian; it is an instrument of our will; 'us' not 'them', and we should not allow capitalism's frequent and self-serving attacks on government to deter us from making government a better and better instrument for our public purposes by taking it, and the politics involved in its functioning, seriously enough to become engaged in them at all the various levels, and in all the various ways, open to any citizen who cares.

B.C. Health Bonds: Public Investment in Public Health Care

Now that the election is over, the B.C. Liberals are no longer pretending to care about the welfare of British Columbians, as the current budgetary bloodletting by the regional health authorities demonstrates. The Liberals care only for money, and the wealthy men who control money, and they are much more worried about maintaining as small a deficit as they can (and keeping corporate taxes down), than about investing in health care. They are indifferent to the fact that their refusal to adequately fund operating rooms, and acute- and long-term-care beds (the latter being needed to free up the former) will, literally, hurt many individuals needing so-called 'elective' operations.

If the Liberals were sincerely concerned about health care, and if they also had any interest in easing the impact of the recession, they would address both issues by increasing funding for health care providers, instead of forcing the regional health authorities to cut both jobs and surgeries. By increasing health care budgets, the Liberals could tackle health and economic problems together, but their narrow, ideological view prevents them from seeing this. Instead, the Liberals are doing their utmost to undermine the public health system in order to create opportunities for private corporations to make a profit from the sick.

Where is the money for investing in public health care to come from? One source could be B.C. Health Bonds--government bonds, the income from which would be reserved entirely for health care. We'd still be increasing our deficit and debt, but taxpayers could also benefit from such government borrowing even as we were paying for it. And if the price of the bonds were modest, say $50, or even $25 each, then those on lower incomes could also afford to buy them.

Some may argue that such bonds have been tried before, and found wanting. True, a previous issue of B.C. Bonds lost money. However, those bonds were offered when competition for savings was relatively high, and were therefore sweetened with a tax break in addition to an attractive interest rate. These days, when many investors are seeking safety for their capital above all else, a decent rate of interest in government-backed bonds (which could be purchased only by permanent residents of B.C.) would likely prove very popular with the B.C. investing public, and no tax break need be added.

Properly spent, temporary deficits in the provincial budget would enable British Columbians to better weather the recession, especially if the government borrowed from us instead of from the banks, which, whether national, or international, suck their profits from our debt out of the province to the benefit of shareholders elsewhere. As long as we borrow from the private banks, our debt is only a liability. By borrowing from ourselves through B.C. Health Bonds, our debt would be both a liability and an asset for B.C. taxpayers.

Blue heron landing

A different view of a blue heron. Taken at Esquimalt Lagoon just outside Victoria, B.C.

An Open Letter to Tzeporah Berman, David Suzuki, Dr. Andrew Weaver, and others

To all environmentalists who are speaking and acting as if the carbon tax were the only measure of the Liberal Government: You are examples of how a good end--dealing with climate change--has been corrupted by the bad means of lending aid and comfort to a political party which will always put saving or making money ahead of any other consideration.

I ask you: Do you support Bute Inlet and other massive run-of-river projects? Are you not aware that their production, depending as it does on spring run-off, when B.C. Hydro has all the power it needs, does nothing for B.C.'s requirements and is intended for sale in the U.S.? Have you no worries over the NAFTA implications for such sales?

Do you support salmon fish farms? (In addition to their threats to wild salmon, farmed salmon gobble up millions of tons of small fish that other species depend on.)

Do you support land being taken from TFLs and developed, with all the associated carbon emissions from construction and roads, and the destruction of more wilderness?

Do you support the Gateway Project and the South Fraser perimeter road, which will only encourage more car and truck use, and therefore more emissions?

Do you approve of the fact that the Liberals have not adequately supported those who are trying to turn the E&N Railway into a commuter service, nor shown any interest in building light rail transit on south Vancouver Island, while consistently underfunding the bus system?

However good an idea a carbon tax may be, it does not trump these other grievous environmental insults, perpetrated and supported by the Liberals.

And on other issues, do you not care that we have the worst child poverty rate in the country; that seniors' needs for housing, especially long term residential care, are being neglected, and that new agriculture regulations favour large food corporations at the expense of greener alternatives of growing more food locally, saving, among other things, on transportation costs and emissions?

So far. you have chosen to spend your considerable personal prestige on behalf of a party which, by their actions over eight long years, have shown they care only for money and big business, because it is big business's money which keeps the Liberals in power.

If the Liberals are returned to office on May 12th , you will have to bear your share of the responsibility and shame for the further destruction of forests, rivers, fish, farms, and people's lives in B.C.. If the Liberals are returned with your help, I wish you all long and miserable lives in which to repent, for you will assuredly have helped make many other people's lives worse while assisting in the further destruction of our environment.

A bushtit in a hurry

A pair of bushtits visit my suet-holder every day, and a larger group of bushtits comes by quite frequently. A great challenge to photograph as they're so quick moving, but a lot of fun for that very reason.

Letter to the Conservation Voters of B.C. re 'Anybody but Carole' campaign

I'm appalled at your organization's wholesale dismissal of Carole James and the NDP Caucus. It's simply untrue that the NDP campaign "...is positioned against world-leading climate policies while not putting forward improvements or better alternatives."

Here is the NDP platform; looks pretty green to me.
---Introduce BC Green Bonds to stimulate jobs and investment in green infrastructure while reducing greenhouse gases.
---Fight climate change by setting hard caps on greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, to achieve a 33% reduction by 2020.
---Build on the work of leading climate change experts to develop a continental cap and trade plan, such as the plan proposed by US President Obama.
---Adopt California's tough vehicle tailpipe emission standards.
---Continue the moratorium on coastal drilling and crude oil tanker traffic on the BC coast.
---Immediately expand transit and alternatives to car use.
---Protect endangered wildlife with BC's first species at risk legislation.
---Restore Gordon Campbell's cuts to water, air and land protection.
---Increase support for our parks.
---Stop Campbell's gutting of the environmental land reserve.
---Restore independence to the Agricultural Land Reserve.
---Protect endangered rivers and watersheds.

By coming out against the NDP you are giving aid and comfort to the Liberals, and if they are re-elected we're going to get: More privatization of B.C. rivers for massive for-profit run-of-river projects like Bute Inlet (how green is that?); expanded fish farms that gobble up millions of tons of small fish that other animals in the sea depend on (how green is that--or don't you care about the rest of the world?); the Gateway Project and the South Fraser perimeter road which will encourage more car and truck traffic (how green is that?); a continuing lack of support for the E&N Railroad, or light rail transit, on Vancouver Island (how green is that?). Frankly, I think you are being totally irresponsible.

And really, you can't have it both ways--you can't say that NDP candidates who haven't been previously elected are okay while their colleagues who are incumbents are not; they are all part of the same party, and they all support Carole James as leader.

Apparently you're willing to sacrifice every other issue--such as the new agricultural regulations which have hurt small, local farmers for the benefit of large corporate farms and food organizations; the closing of schools and the loss of arts and music programs because of provincial underfunding of education; the increasing privatization of health care, and the neglect of seniors' need for extended care--to the carbon tax (and whatever else it is you don't like about the NDP's environmental platform. In doing so, you are, essentially, cutting off your nose to spite your face--or more accurately, cutting off your face to spite your nose. Which would be okay, if it weren't for the fact that the rest of us will suffer for it, if the Liberals get back in.

Shame on you; you are obviously not an organization which can be taken seriously.

Two gulls in conflict

The white gull attacked the juvenile gull when it flew over to check us out, and eventually drove it far over the bay, and presumably, out of the white gull's territory. A few minutes later, the white gull flew back, and once more stood on the sand near-by, watching us intently as we ate our lunch. I threw it a peanut from time to time.

Re the Ministry of Heritage Destruction

This is the slightly-edited text of a letter I e-mailed to James Moore, the Minister of Heritage, regarding funding for the CBC and literary magazines.

Why don't Conservatives actually conserve instead of constantly destroying?

You say, "If the CBC is in a position where there's not a return of ad revenue and then there are increasing demands on the CBC in order to fulfill its mandate and on top of that they're in a position where they have to now repay a loan, you'll see a real cannibalization of the CBC services across the country and that's not in the best interest of the broadcaster or taxpayers."

If, if, if--IF you would do your job and increase the CBC's funding to adequate levels, there would be no need for a loan in the first place.

At a time when the pathetic excuse for a government to which you belong is bullying Parliament to get your alleged stimulus budget passed, you stand by and watch 800 vitally important jobs disappear. What kind of stimulus is that?

In addition to starving the CBC you are now attacking those small literary magazines who don't meet your arbitrary quota of annual sales of 5,000 copies. For the sake of saving a few paltry dollars, you'll oversee the demise of one of the most important factors in Canada's development as a nation of internationally-recognized writers, many of whom got their start in the little magazines you obviously despise because they're not money-makers.

The love of money is the root of all evil, and you Conservatives love money above all else, except power.

But your actions, or lack of them, prove that you're not fit to govern, and the sooner we have an election and get rid of the lot of you, the better, before you destroy the country altogether.

Gull with crab

This gull landed right in front of me and ate the crab, leg by leg. Easier to watch a crab being demolished in this fashion than a mammal.

B.C. businesses advocate against their own best interests

The ads that the Independent Contractors of B.C. and the Coalition of B.C. Businesses were running, supporting the B.C. Liberals, and claiming an NDP government would threaten jobs and incomes, are examples of a profound misunderstanding of business's own best interests.

Aside from being misleading--it was NDP deficit spending in the '90s that kept the economy functioning during the Asian meltdown, by building schools and providing other public services which supported people's jobs and purchasing power--these ads attacked the party which would actually do the most for business. In addition to being more attentive than the Liberals, who tend to take business support for granted, the NDP's policies in themselves are good for businesses, especially smaller ones.

For example, the tourist industry often expresses concern about the bad impression the homeless make on visitors. The homeless are there because the Liberal Government refuses to provide the supportive housing and other services the mentally ill and addicted need. Why do B.C. businesses support a party whose parsimonious ways make conditions worse for business?
It's not as if the Liberals were good fiscal managers. On the contrary, their propensity for saving a few dollars in the short-term almost invariably leads to greater spending later on. For example, after refusing to pay $18 million to bury a high-powered hydro cable, the Liberals are now on the hook for upwards of $70 million to buy out the very home-owners the government fought against for so long.

Or how good was it for B.C. businesses when the Liberals shovelled over half-a-billion dollars into the German ship-building industry for boats that would have been better built in B.C.? Why do B.C. businesses support a government that wouldn't even allow B.C. shipbuilders to bid on the ferry contracts?

Similarly, every dollar the Liberals 'save' by refusing to adequately fund child care and by keeping welfare rates at punitively low levels, not only means less money is available to help keep local economies stable, but this cheese-paring policy also ends up costing us large sums down the road in lost productivity, property crimes, violence, police, courts, and prisons. For every dollar invested in children when they're young, we stand to save many more dollars when they're older, but the Liberals prefer to boast about being 'tough on crime' instead of doing something useful to prevent it.

Another example, are the vicious cuts to hospital and homecare workers' pay executed by the Liberals in 2002 to cover their $4.4 billion deficit (largest in B.C.'s history), due in great part to a previous $2 billion tax cut (most of which went to those who needed it least, while the rest of us paid for it in cuts to public services). If the Liberals had invested that $2 billion in improved training and higher wages for hospital and home-care workers, the money would have flowed through the economy from the bottom up (with nearly half of it being paid back to governments at all levels through various taxes) while tax-payers would have benefitted from improved access to better services. Furthermore, our tax dollars wouldn't be wasted in paying the profits of foreign companies, but would remain circulating throughout B.C..

Again, why do business people persist in supporting a government that costs them more money that it saves them? Do they not realize that the first people (after the recipients themselves) who would benefit if welfare rates were raised to a livable level, and if enough affordable housing were funded, would be local businesses? Not only would communities no longer have people living on the sidewalks, or camping in parks, welfare payments would immediately be spent into the economy, maintaining businesses all over the province. What use is a tax cut to a business, if its revenues are falling like a stone?

Business people love tax cuts (businesses can't function without government legislation, regulation, and spending, but they don't want to pay for it; they want citizens to pay), but tax cuts simply divide dollars into small, useless sums that together could be more constructively invested on projects that are useful in themselves, as well as creating or maintaining jobs. To take just one example, the $440 million the Liberals frittered away in 2008 on individual rebates to off-set the carbon tax, could have been much more fruitfully invested in green infrastructure such as the E&N Railway on Vancouver Island. But the Liberals preferred to try to bribe B.C. voters, and in exchange for a minor shot of cash, individuals and businesses alike now suffer from the lack of improved public transit.

Businesses prosper in Canada in large part due to the fact that we have a peaceful, orderly country with well-regulated financial institutions, and social programs such as health care and EI. The proposal that we need to lower business taxes to attract more investment into the country is nonsense. Taxes are only one, and far from the most important, of the factors considered when investing in a plant or company in Canada. To name only one business-friendly condition, single-payer public health care relieves business of much of the cost of providing health insurance for their workers.

I'm a senior who is deeply concerned about my future under a Liberal Government which intends to leave me at the mercy of private care I can't afford. The Independent Contractors of B.C. and the Coalition of B.C. Businesses, by running ads supporting the Liberals, are working directly against me and every other aging person in the province, as well as against children, the mentally-ill, and the unemployed. That's shameful.

But when they are simultaneously working against their own best interests, that's just plain stupid.

What to do about a recession--Part II

In their article, "Don't Fix The Economy - Change It", published in December , 2008 by The Toronto Star, Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver offer "...six steps we can take toward a truly balanced budget that will allow Canadians, and all people on Earth, to live fulfilling, healthy, yet more ecologically compatible, lives."

The six steps are: Recognize that the economy is part of the biosphere; acknowledge that we need new institutions; acknowledge that unlimited growth on a finite planet makes no sense; expand the discussion; look beyond technological fixes; and greatly increase investment in educational and civic institutions.

To me, the two most important steps are to "recognize that the economy is part of the biosphere," and to "acknowledge that unlimited growth on a finite planet makes no sense", the second following naturally from the first. They lead also to a fundamental question: How are we to make a decent living while cutting back on consumption? My job so often depends on your consumption, at least under the present economic system.

Having used the term twice, what do I mean by a 'decent' living? It includes personal basics--shelter, food, clothes, mobility, and communication--within a context of clean air, water and soil, meaningful work, beauty, and leisure, which together constitute a civil society.

Many of these goods can be provided through education, health care, public transit, waste management, and other public services, which do not require individual entrepreneurship, or wealth (in fact, the private provision of public goods too often see service to the public sacrificed for profits for shareholders) but rather collective financing, co-operation, ingenuity, and use. There is still a place for private enterprise and profits, but they should be legally required to put service to the community on an equal footing with, or even ahead of, enriching their shareholders (which is their current legal obligation). In a highly civil society, investors would be motivated more by the desire to create some good--some useful product or service--than by merely the desire to make money. Money-making may be a necessary component of economic activity, but it should be regarded as a tool, a means to other, better, ends, and not as an end in itself. And let us not forget that it is the love of money which leads to all evil, not money per se.

But perhaps, the first step of all is to "expand the discussion" to introduce, and keep re-introducing, these concepts in order to bring about the recognition that our economy is utterly dependent on the biosphere, as are we all, and that we cannot have an infinitely expanding economy on a finite planet.

Since the West initiated much of, and has benefited the most from, the present lethally unrealistic economic system, it is up to us to begin the change, and not demand that China and India and others make sacrifices that we are unwilling to make ourselves. With regard to developing countries our aim should be to work with them to leap-frog over our mistakes and achieve a decent living without indulging in the orgy of consuming selfishness, led by the West, the planet is currently suffering from.

Therefore, what we should do about the recession is to use it as an opportunity to begin to take these six steps--which obviously must begin at the bottom--with the 'feet', the 'grassroots', most of us--and work its way up to the leaders who are still enmeshed in old-style, combative, money-worshipping capitalism. Stephen Harper, for example, may be relatively young chronologically but he has an old mind, aged in the brine of the love of money and ideology, and the hatred of opposition. He is capable of changing his tactics only when he thinks it will win him the next election, but has so far not shown any capacity for accepting that the old doctrines of competition and profit-maximization (which have always been injurious to many), are now outmoded, obsolete, useless, and incapable of benefitting anyone for longer than the shortest of short terms.

To enable the 'feet' to walk, we must first maintain and increase the purchasing power of those with the lowest incomes and those who have lost their jobs, including support for both renters and mortgage-payers. Government shouldn't give a penny to banks or credit unions but only to their customers and members.

Government and citizens alike must jettison the paralyzing and false dichotomy between the environment and the economy. The best way to ensure sufficient and sustainable economic activity is through investments in eco-friendly sources of energy, small-scale organic farms and local distribution channels, in increasing the wages and training of home support workers to keep as many elderly people out of institutions as possible, and to boost investments in students and post-secondary institutions, and in scientific research and the arts, to name only a few practical policies which will both support the economy and save money in the long run, giving tax-paying citizens a double benefit for each tax dollar invested--the services we need and a productive economy. Infusing as much cash as possible at the bottom will achieve, by 'trickle up', what 'trickle down' has never done, provide people with the resources they require to meet their needs, while beginning to lay the foundation for a less consumer-driven, more humane, more environemnt-aware, and sustainable economy.

What to do about a recession--Part I

A common government response to a recession is to cut taxes (and consequently, spending, wherever it is deemed politically acceptable). Tax cuts, however, in addition to depleting the government's resources, benefit only those who have incomes large enough to be taxed, and ignore many of those most in need of support. Instead, the government should ensure that the purchasing power of those with the lowest, and/or the most jeopardized, incomes is maintained or even augmented. The Federal Government should, for example, make access to Employment Insurance much quicker, easier, and last longer (the fund has generated enormous surpluses while only 40% of those who have paid into it are able to obtain benefits from it; this number should be materially increased); introduce a negative income tax, and a refundable tax credit for volunteer work; and invest significant funds in affordable housing, public transit, local agriculture, and alternate sources of energy. These investments would not only address immediate needs, but also form part of changing the basic concepts and practices of our economy.

The Federal Government should also increase purchasing power by granting the provinces funds to increase welfare rates. These grants should be protected by contracts which stipulate that these funds are to be added to provincial payments, and expressly forbid the provinces from using them as a substitute for their own welfare funding (which would keep recipients on the same inadequate stipend). As a federal taxpayer (except for equalization payments), I don't want the provinces handed my tax dollars to spend as they wish (on a tax cut, for example, instead of welfare), but to receive them for specific purposes protected by contract. If a province, be it B.C. or Quebec, or any other, doesn't like the conditions, it can refuse the money and face the consequences from their respective taxpayers.

The policies suggested above would not only address people's immediate needs, but would also be effective in stabilizing the economy. When people's incomes are adequate for their basic needs--shelter, food, mobility, and communications--they are in a position to benefit from low prices on the expense side of their budgets, even though they may suffer from them on the income side.

From a certain perspective, it doesn't matter whether the interest rate or the dollar is rising or falling; or whether the price of wheat or gas or housing is falling or rising; whether we are in an inflationary phase, or a depressing one, or whether it is my price and your cost, or your price and my cost--these are all opposite sides of the same coins. This means that, whatever is happening, some people are going broke, while others are amassing fortunes--in either case, often through no particular fault or virtue of their own. Therefore, regardless of what the government may do to 'correct' the economy, some people will benefit, and others will be hurt. Usually, under present circumstances, it is too often the well-off who benefit from a tax cut, while the less well-off--particularly low income earners and the chronically un- or under-employed, who generally have the fewest monetary resources to cope with economic adversity--suffer from cuts to government services.

In the long run, however, taxpayers also suffer from service cuts, because social problems, when unattended to, don't go away, but grow worse and more expensive--witness the growing number of homeless people, and their associated growing costs, because governments simply will not fund sufficient affordable housing, or raise welfare rates to adequate levels. (To digress a bit, in this province, the B.C. Liberal Government's penny-saving/dollar squandering habits have led to the offer to buy out homes along the Tsawwassen power line for $70 million when the line could have been buried for $18 million, and the whole long, expensive wrangle with homeowners, and its even more expensive outcome, avoided.)

The economy does not need the government's attention and care; people do, and when their needs are addressed, the economy will improve. 'Trickle up' is the key; not 'trickle down', for not enough resources ever trickle down to make a real difference to those at the lower end of the income scale.

Beyond such immediate short term concerns, however, is the larger issue of humans learning to live within the finite restrictions of the earth's resources. In my next blog, "What to do about a recession--Part II", my starting point will be an article by Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver called "Don't Fix The Economy - Change It", published in the Toronto Star in December, 2008, which suggests a number of concepts which need to be brought into play to bring about the fundamental changes required for humans to live within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Wet Wren

This Bewick's wren looks as bedraggled as many of us feel after an unusually snowy and cold and wet December and early January for Victoria.