lol girlygirl...

Good to see you back...

I've been growing my hair out while building out this site... It's not really a fashion hairdo... more a "something to pull on when I'm frustrated hairdo"...

It's been a GREAT summer so far!!

I haven't been around for awhile, just quick pop in's. Just like PB, I'm enjoying the summer as well. It also looks like everyone else. You going to grow dreds monty?

I tried to log in to Toronto sun to see who Linda Leatherdale but woud have to pay a subscription fee in order to read her articles.

I also noticed that Linda Leatherdale writes for Canoe.ca

Is she controversial at all?

The June 2 article below is from "Money" by Linda Leatherdale, business editor of the the Toronto Sun. It discusses the same topic brought up in some of my earlier posts: the disappearing middle class due to the polarization of incomes. Each time, these articles are greeted with a yawn, but there could scarcely be a more important topic. Why is collections the hottest industry in the new economy? Why are so many "maxed out" or in collections and thus getting collection agencies (like TCR et al) fatter and fatter?

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It's called the Great Wage Gap, and it's growing.

I'm talking about CEOs getting fat-cat pay hikes, while lowly workers are lucky to get a raise at all.

To put it into perspective, 100 of Canada's highest-paid private-sector CEOs each earn an average salary of $9 million -- ranging between $2.8 million and $74.8 million a year.

So, by 9:45 a.m., Jan. 2, 2007, these executives had more than the average Joe or Jill earns in a year -- an average take-home salary of $38,010, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

And it's not just the CEOs raking in the big bucks. On Bay Street or Wall Street, where markets are hitting new record highs, the good times are rolling.

After sweet pay packages in 2006, investment bankers, traders and private equity workers will likely net even higher pay this year, with bonuses and incentive pay jumping another 10% to 20%, predicts Johnson Associates Inc.

Meanwhile, the world's richest 2% adults, led by Microsoft's Bill Gates, whose fortunes ballooned $6 billion in 2006 to $56 billion US, today own more than half the world's wealth.

Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the world's adult population own barely 1% of global wealth.

"Income inequality has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years," said James Davies, an economics professor at the University of Western Ontario, who co-authored a report by the World Institute for Development Economic Research.

So, is there any hope for lowly workers?

Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets, in his report Will Wages Wake Up?, agrees there's a mismatch between strong profits and sluggish labour compensation, with labour's share of national income at 40-year lows.

He also points out that despite the entry of billions of new people in the labour force, thanks to the supercharged economies of China and India -- jobless rates in Canada, Australia, Spain and Korea are at lows not seen in a generation.

One reason, he explains, is low wages may have discouraged people from searching for work.

There is some silver lining in the clouds, though. In the first quarter of 2007, average wage settlements rose to 3.1%, up from 2.5% in 2006. And Porter says wages should rise in the year ahead.

My comment is stop this greed, before middle classes are wiped out.

? You can call Linda Leatherdale at (416) 947-2332 or e-mail at linda.leatherdale@sunmedia.ca

I'm sorry Monty, but you missed the entire point of my posts.

You can't compare the present economy to that of the pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower in 1620!!

The thrust of my article has been the same as that of the recent Toronto Star multi- week series on the disapppearance of the middle class. I've been calling it the "wal-martization" of the economy for years, as you can see from some of my earlier posts.

The argument I was making to my buddy last night (who's a banker himself) was that Brenda Kelly is a poster girl used by business pundits to justify the inequitable distribution of income that capitalism must invariably create. Stick 20 people on a desert island (like Gilligan's Island), give everyone a million bucks or whatever. Come back in 10 years and 1 or 2 of those 20 people will have almost all the money. That's why, today, the top 1% of the population now holds 40% -50% of the wealth. Some people on that desert island will end up like Donald Trump and other people will end up sweeping Trump's hut floor.

All men are not created equal despite what the American Constitution says. That's absurd. For some will always be more intelligent, talented and fortunate than others.

Business leaders need the cheapest source of labour possible to maximize the return on equity for its owners. Stores and restaurants in our cities that were once elegant, are now almost indistinguishable from those of a third world country. Ditto for our hospital waiting rooms. Been to one lately?

Let me say this again: the median wage in this counrty is steadily falling. The 50% of the population falling on the wrong side of the income curve will inevitably include a distrubution of individuals who have not been able to make the wisest of choices in life. It will also include people who have gotten ill, widows who have lost their husbands, new immigrants driving a cab for 12 hours to take home 80 bucks a shift, workers who have become sick and disabled and on and on). The idea behind Lewis' indignant pharisaical adjuration is that everyone who's in Brenda Kelly's position is there because they're as lazy a moral profligate as she is. (Maybe she isn't.)

While Lewis is busy giving thanks, that "he's not a lazy parasite like her, it would be well to remember there are a myriad of guys who have gotten women like Brenda Kelly pregnant and then deserted the women. I'm not saying that upright citizens like the Lewis clan have ever done such a thing, and Lewis doesn't volunteer the information.

But it's totally irrelevant to business whether the cheap labour supply it needs is composed of moral profligates or paragons. The only quality that is relevant is that it be cheap. Were society filled with Harvard MBA's, the majority of them would still have to work at Home Depot. Otherwise, the economy would collapse because there would no demand for the great majority of their services.

After a certain point in the dynamics of the economy, the goods and services (like a small home) necessary for the maintenance of a minimum quality of life become increasingly hard for workers on the wrong side of the median curve to obtain. You eventually get to the point where no amount of hours worked by someone who's making a minimal wage will cover the costs of living. For example, the price of even staple items, like bread and milk for chidren, have gone up almost 25% in the last 2 years.

Many working poor have already arrived at the state where they can't afford to live on a modest income. Brenda Kelly was trying to support 7 people on a take home pay of probably less than 30K a year. Good luck. Now with government assistance, she's scraping by on a similar amount when topped up by government subsidies. Maybe, she's even ahead because there are medical and dental benefits now available for her kids that may not have been provided by her previous job at the gas bar.

The crux is this: whether or not Brenda Kelly is morally responsible for her dismal situation in life, from an economic perspective, is completely unimportant. She could just as easily have been a single married mom who's husband deserted her for the young chick at the corner gas bar. She would still be making 6 bucks an hour. The economy needs a supply of workers who will work for 6 bucks an hour and that's all it will pay. However, Brenda's kids still need the necessities of life and 6 bucks an hour just ain't gonna do it. Because justice is distributive as well as commutative, there needs to be supplement given in some form. No point in telling Lewis though, he's gotta get back to the local watering hole and pontificate to his drinking buddies.

Still, why not give Brenda a living wage instead of making her undergo the humiliation of being on government assistance. No way, can't be done - it would take away from the money the head honchoes make. Such is the situation the dynamics of capitalism leads to.

Ray

DON'T SHOOT THAT ELEPHANT.

Re: "You are poor because you want to be poor."

I had a chance to discuss the "Brenda Kelly" video over a pizza last night with a credit policy analyst at one of the major banks.

He sems to agree in large part with my remarks, and takes as additional evidence, the ever growing percentage of the working poor in the cities who are dependant on food banks.

He also feels it's like the elephant in the living room no one wants to talk about. We were looking at some economic data and the elephant shouldn't always be getting the bad rap.

Ray

EASTER, 2007

Re: Lewis' U Tube condemnation of Brenda Kelly of Charleston, West Virginia, "You are poor because you want to be poor,"

Well, Brenda sure is a Wayne Macleod, Deanna Natale poster girl alright - a complainer hater's perfect complaint.

Lewis berates, summoning up his most pharisaical intonation, that he comes from a family of 5 brothers; 2 have made it, 1 is still fighting the good fight, and 2 are "bums." He leaves to his viewers the task of discerning which of the 3 groups he's from. Whichever one, he lets us know in no uncertain terms that he's a damn sight better than Brenda Kelly.

Lewis also leaves little doubt, that were the video, oh say, 06:53 in length, instead of 06:51, he'd really start telling us what gulag sterilization camp he'd ship Brenda off to, if he were given half a chance.

Like most imprecations of this ilk, more is revealed by what is not said than by what is.

First, Brenda makes 6 bucks an hour. At 4 1/3 weeks per month, that works out to a gross pay of $1039 a month for a 40 hour week. Add in her $300 food stamps and $1000 child allowance and Brenda grosses $2339 per month or just over $28,000 per year. Net for her is probably in the 26K range.

Of course, were Brenda paid a more humane wage of $13.50 an hour, then she would be earning about the same as she gets now. But that's not feasible, because it could only occur if we raised the minimum wage to 10 or 12 bucks an hour. Were that to happen, it would make the condition of the working poor, paradoxically, worse. So we're told by legions of business pundits such as Andrew Coyne, son of James Coyne, former governor of the Bank of Canada in his recent National Post column.

Yep, Yep, darn right, myriads of businesses would go under and instead of all those losers making 6 or 8 bucks an hour, they'd be making nothing. See how they'd like it then. Naturally, business leaders have been peddling this prognosis since the time Ebenezer Scrooge reviled Bob Cratchett's entreaties for a raise due to Tiny Tim. Unfortunately, Brenda's got 6 tiny (and not so tiny) Tims and Tinas.

Coyne's supply and demand labour analysis is a lot more sophisticated than Scrooge's parsimonious rebuff; nonetheless, both remain unconvincing. Coyne is perspecatious enough to realize the inherent dynamics of capitalism have resulted in the disappearance of the middle class as we have known it due to the polarization of incomes.

Possibly, Coyne recollects that, once upon a time, a construction worker could buy a house, send his kids to college and buy a new car every 4 years, but no longer can. Or perhaps it's because he recently stopped off at the local Swiss Chalet. Whatever, we now have a situation where the median income (in adusted for inflation dollars) is constantly falling. Consequently, we have an ever increasing number of working poor.

Coyne's bromide is that we implement a system of tax credits and subdidies to compensate for such inequities instead of raising the minimum wage. I'm not sure if good ol' Lewis would approve as the bulwark of his diatribe is devoted to railing against such correctives.

Coyne is a lot more intelligent than Lewis, but neither one raises a murmer about the other end of the renumeration scale. When the recently removed head of Home Depot received a $210,000, 000 US severance package, after a short tenure, Coyne's eyelashes scarcely budged. No guffaws ensue when executive CEO salaries go up 100% per year squared. Who pays for all that? Well, the guy making 6 bucks an hour. General executive salaries increases have been 10 to 25 per cent per year forever, but the GDP just keeps on getting bigger. But ask about giving your average Wal - Mart shopping cart jockey an extra buck an hour and the the whole economy is going to collapse.

Of course it will, Business leaders have to tell you that because they need a cheap labour supply to add to the bottom line to get themselves a 6 or 7 figure Christmas bonus. Same reason why the wages of your average truck driver have been decreasing for 20 years.Or why, with the present oil boom in Calgary, they can't get anyone to work for 12 bucks an hour. It's simply not a living wage in that inflated economy - whether one earns it at Tim Horton's or gets it in the form of subsidies. The problem isn't that the minimum wage is too high; it's that it's too low to be functional enough to garner a cheap labour force.

What's that you say? Brenda was making 35K or 40K as a gas jockey manager and she quit. Turns out she is making as much now at 6 bucks an hour with subsidies, only Lewis has gotta pay for it. We don't know if, or why, she quit, but it couldn't have been for reasons of hours of work as she still has to work full time.

But even if Brenda did leave her job voluntarily, there's an ever increasing number of working poor who are trapped and pounding away at one or two jobs, only to fall further behind. Their culpability isn't due to some failure to sterilize themselves, abort or contracept their offspring, but far more attributable to the inevitable consequences of the dynamics of competitive capitalism.

Both Communism and Capitalism have promised a "workers' paradise" in this world, but both ultimately, replace a utopian vision with a dystopian disillusion. Inevitably, "a tale of 2 cities" reveals to us that "the poor ye shall always have wth you." And collection agents.

Ray

Let's continue that discussion here.

There's many different ways of looking at Brenda Kelly's case.

Society has changed so much with regards to available credit, consumerism and bad management.

We're a very consumeristic society. We love to buy things and to have things and to keep up with the Jones'.

The settlers came over on the Mayflower in 1620 ( http://pilgrims.net/plymouth/history/ ) . They were a humble folk who weren't load up with credit cards and drunk with all of the retail options they have today. They weren't used to consuming like we are today.

I believe that we're at the maturity end of the consuming cycle. People have consumed themselves into a coma and are now seeing that maybe it isn't what they thought it would be.

Millions of people have a credit hang over, from all of their big box store binges and are getting tired of trying to manage the load.

Brenda Kelly is a person who wants the lifestyle but didn't manage properly in order to be able to afford the life style. I'll venture to guess that her problems stem from the basis of which she's educated and the environment she grew up in. IE sometimes you just don't know any better.

People need to get back to more and more of a basic life style. Be happy with more basic things. I think that's where the new consuming cycle is going to take us in the next ten years.