There is supposedly good news about the economy (if you're a rat in a maze like most economists seem to be), that it's going to grow next year.

Lest we forget what condition we were in before Wall Street's 'the parents are away, let's have an open house party' deregulated greed fiasco thrust us into this recession. This idea of bank deregulation, coupled with powerful private money too cozy with government officials meant that the 'crony capitalism' and bad lending that was behind the unproductive bursting bubble of the Asian crisis were lessons not learned at all. Well maybe now there's something, Alan Greenspan, the guy in charge and veritable god of finance until recently actually admitted he was wrong. It's insane to keep doing the same thing, when you get disaster over and over again.

But anyway, before the recession.

Real wages have stood still against inflation since the 1970s.
EI benefits were tightened along with eligibility.
Social assistance in Ontario was slashed during the 1990s recession. OW by 26% and never again indexed to inflation, disability indexation against inflation was frozen.
Action 2000, to end child poverty made no progress.
Homelessness growth was more dramatic than that of GDP, despite prosperity. 740% over 12 years in Calgary.
Canada nowhere near hitting Kyoto targets, emissions rising instead.

Tar Sands were creating an environmental disaster, the recession has taken a little heat off that.
Gas last summer was $1.40
Tuition keeps going up, student debt got worse and worse.
The rich got richer, the poor got poorer.
The MDGs were and still are way off track.
The energy crisis has only cooled off somewhat with the recession. The problem of energy, water, oil and other natural resources driven by growth was worsening, pushing the value of resources higher, and people took more risk, including violent conflict. Some of this war of resources is over need and sovereignty, and other is for consumption, the rest for greed, all these problems get bigger with growth.
We had, and probably still do, have a craxy debt to income ratio, that is the outcome of 'consumer confidence' whereby by personal savings and security and transferred to firm profits and we call that the basis of the economy. There's an oversupply of goods, which is why your spare room is fool of junk, your local landfill is overflowing, and we regularly throw electronics from cell phones, to computers to stupid things we just buy impulsively, in the garbage.
And so, we have pollution. Western countries even dumped hazardous waste on the Somalian coast, as a cheap and convenient place to put since there was no government to protect human life, and people were poisoned by that. All driven by our belief that spending our private borrowed money on toys is a better way to have a good economy, than say putting the money up that's needed for the infrastructure for all the wait-lists, for hip surgery, addiction treatment, social housing, for a doctor, for a psychiatrist, to end child poverty, to commit to real development and trade rules that are fair to the poorest countries in the world.

Commodity prices fell drastically in the liberalization period, and have never really recovered, throwing millions of farmers off their land and heading towards cities. Rural poverty is a problem in Canada, and many of today's family farmers feel they are the last of their generation.
Our consumption is eradicating biodiversity and there is a huge problem of species loss, rainforet loss, all driven by growth.

Apparently, the president of Nike became so rich he could purchase a Lincoln every day, stay at the best New York hotel every night, and travel constantly around the world for the next 140 years before he ran out of money.
Some kids in Western Kenya are so poor, they sniff glue to take away the pain of hunger.

There were 900 million people hungry in the world, now there are a billion. Food and fuel price crises, the erosion of local food security, migration, the dependence on food imports, the destruction of agricultural land, displacement that are the cause are all driven by growth as we see it in the West.

To keep this illusion of progress we call growth we're killing quality of life. We're working all the time to finance this. We don't feel good about ourselves unless we're moving towards the next income bracket and we're busy all the time, We don't see our children, and they grow up messed up. We're not present for life, because we show up to work all but two weeks a year. We're burnt out, and we're unhappy. Many of us don't eat well, for stress, for time, for convenience and maybe we've forgotten how. We used to talk about 'selling out', when we trying to be cool about music as teenagers. Man, when it comes to the real deal in life. We have been selling out. We blame and blame governments and the UN, but we have failed as societies in the West to live up to the ideals we brought forward after the Second World War. No greatness in the last twenty years.

All of these problems grow bigger with growth, and are tied to the way we are growing. We are growing without human progress on the essential and basic evolution of our humanity, where we were, in the 20th century meant to have become aware of the equality in value of each human life, and the need to live with human rights, peace and stability, and sustainability on this planet, the only planet we know of in the universe containing life that can have this level of awareness.

The most recent spate of public policy and global governance failures are not unrelated to the illogical, ill-advised,ill-conceived approach to the economy and to growth that reared its ugly head in the last quarter of the 20th century - call it neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, call it what you will - BUT, if the game is to get on back to how we were, we are in for a world of hurt - literally. Inhabited islands have already sunk in recent years, due to rising oceans. China will use nearly all of its available water by 2030 due to its massive industrial complex which we consume

It's not that these problems have gone away, we've been distracted by the financial crisis and Michael Jackson. The recession, as I'm pointing out, has only taken some of the steam out of the high-speed train headed for brick wall after brick wall of real (not just financial) economic problems.

The answer, of course, is to use these challenges, and all the amazing knowledge and communicative capacity we've gained to actually solve problems. Make the changes needed to make deep emission cuts, for instance. That would be significant stimulus with returns. Build housing to the level of need that exists to chip away at homelessness until its gone. Since homelessness costs more than housing, every dollar spent to deficit will bounce back in savings over the long-term. The problem we have today, is the utter complacency of the middle class in North America particularly. These ordinary people do not have to lift a finger to inherit nearly all the attention of all political parties, while other gruops have to work like crazy to get an ear. Change happens when this group is either led and manipulated by these parties, or when this group demands it. Problem is, this group more than any other, has been reduced to individuals and reminded daily by marketing and by politicians that their responsibility is to themselves and their immediate family.

Now, the World Bank says that a big enough economic shock can push a middle class family into destitution. That hasn't happened often here, it's not what I want. I want us to finally, for once, learn from past mistakes, grow some balls, have some compassion and some sense and look at the writing on the wall. If we do not, there will be a day when the middle class' problems of today will look tiny, and we will look to those in the future as those who squandered the chance to change when they were prosperous, and squandered the chance to change when they got clear signals.

We are not ready to go back to normal, there is no going back. So, we need, especially from those younger folks coming up - NEW IDEAS. We need powerfully to get a grip on reality, we need to take seriously the evidence around us, we need to take seriously our democratic rights, we need to dig deep to figure out how we are going to live in the future. We need to succeed individually, but know that we have a civic, social, global responsibility, lest we live a life just for self, just for material comfort, a life without purpose, a generation that missed its chance to take its place. We live in one of the most democratic market societies, we cannot claim powerlessness because we have choices, and our choices have great impact - our consumption, our policies, on the world.

Let's take our place, we can do it, and in many ways we must because we know today the real consequences of what we do. The integrity, the promise and the very survival of our species may rest with the decisions we make collectively, in this century. given the stakes, we have a calling, we have the freedom of no choice.

We will face more recessions because of the multiple sets of structural brakes on the economy to come, but we have to take these periods where the heat and the speed of growth is reduced to take a bite out of our failures, and clean up the mess. I just don't see it yet, here in Canada.

stand up and be counted!!!

ae jinha