Alberta merchants maintain $15 minimum wage

One of the first things the new UCP government in Alberta has done is lower the minimum wage for young workers from $15 to $13. Some Alberta merchants are having none of it. A growing group of companies has committed to paying their employees at least $15 an hour regardless of age.

Over 150 provincial businesses have joined a coalition titled Alberta 15 to show their support for their younger workers. The coalition ranges from a fast food chain to coffee shops to plumbing services to art studios. Sylvia Johnston, owner of Cornerstone Music Cafe, says she doesn't believe it's fair to pay her employees differently based on their age. "I've always paid my staff more than regular wage because I think they need it and deserve it." Alberta15 founder Brian MacKay echoes those remarks, saying, "I don't think giving any [other] Albertan a 13 per cent pay cut would fly very well." MacKay recognizes that even $15 may not meet an area's living wage.

Alberta15's intention is to provide workers and consumers with a list of businesses who treat their workers fairly, regardless of their age. Their website states:

Our government's announcement on May 27 impacts people that can afford it least. While Mr. Kenney claims it "allows" employees a chance to negotiate staying past the regular overtime hours to earn more tips, we know that employers will abuse this to keep minimum wage employees working without fair recompense. Young employees deserve to make the same wage as those over 18 and should not be asked to negotiate for a living because they are students. Employers that hire people should hire based on the job being viable, period.

If you would like to see which businesses are participating, Alberta15's website can be found at https://alberta15.ca/. Or if you would like to find out what the living wage is in your area, you can find that at http://www.livingwagecanada.ca/.

Alberta should learn from the Trump tax cuts

The new Alberta government has promised to reduce the corporate tax rate from twelve to eight per cent over four years. This may seem arbitrary considering the conservatives have complained loudly about the province's debt. Nonetheless, the UCP insists the cut is necessary to promote investment and create jobs.

This was the tune President Trump sang when the Republicans cut corporate taxes in 2017, promising wages would soar, investment would surge, and the cuts would pay for themselves. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has now taken a thorough look at the results and reports that the cuts haven't affected wages, haven’t caused a surge in investment, and haven’t come close to paying for themselves. Nor have they provided the average worker a tax cut.

What the tax cuts did do, according to the CRS, is contribute to a record-breaking surge in corporate stock buybacks. In other words, corporations used the windfall to buy up their own stock. Consequently, the prediction that there would be an increase in tax revenue from increased economic activity also proved false—overall government revenue fell.

The CRS pointed out that this was a case of history repeating itself. In 2004, in order to promote investment and wage growth, corporations were given a one-time tax holiday allowing them to repatriate earnings from abroad at a lower rate. Neither the investment nor the wage growth resulted.

Summarizing the Trump tax cuts, a Los Angeles Times article declared, "Wealthy Americans reaped the benefits of lower taxes and higher dividends. The cuts had a negligible effect on U.S. economic growth while depriving the government of revenue."

It's a good article, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik. I don't know if Alberta's finance minister reads the LA Times, but I would highly recommend this article to him, or indeed the full CRS report, before he proceeds with Alberta's corporate tax cuts. Unless, of course, the object is to achieve what the Trump cuts did, simply put more money into the hands of the rich.

The minimum wage creates jobs—who knew?

With the election of conservative governments in Ontario and Alberta, progress on minimum wages in those provinces came to a screaming halt. In Ontario, the planned increase to $15 an hour was cancelled and capped at $14. In Alberta the minimum wage of $15 an hour was reduced to $13 for young workers.

The main argument against raising minimum wages is that it discourages investment and costs jobs by causing businesses to lay off staff, defer hiring, or speed up automation. And indeed it may cause some loss of jobs in the short term (although those who are working are better off), but an American study suggests that in the longer term it may actually add jobs.

The worker advocacy group the National Employment Law Project (NELP) analyzed government data from 1938 to 2009, a period in which the U.S. increased the federal minimum wage 22 times. The analysis found that 68 per cent of the time the employment rate was higher a year after the wage hike than it was before. According to the NELP, there is "no correlation between federal minimum wage increases and lower employment levels." And that's over a 71-year period.

Particularly interesting was that in the retail and restaurant industries, two sectors whose workers are most affected by minimum wage hikes, the analysis showed that a year later they tended to see even greater job gains—82 per cent of the time in leisure and hospitality, and 72 per cent of the time in retail.

None of this is surprising. Economies are consumer driven. Sixty per cent of Canada's GDP derives from personal household consumption. Logically therefore if you want to improve the economy, put more money into consumers' pockets. And nobody spends like lower-income earners. They have to spend every penny they make just to get by. As
economist Armine Yalnizyan puts it, "If you boost minimum wages, you are boosting the economy from the bottom up."

A minimum wage raise may cause some negative effects in the very short term, but judging by the NELP study, within a year not only workers but the economy generally is better off. And that's good for all of us.

Let's hope Andrew Scheer is right

The highly controversial (at least in Alberta and Saskatchewan) Bill C-69, which overhauls the federal environmental assessment process for major construction projects, has finally passed the Senate. The Conservatives are not amused. According to Andrew Scheer. "With the passage of Bill C-69, Justin Trudeau finally has his law that will phase out Canada's oil and gas industry. This has been Trudeau's objective all along."

We must hope he is right. If we are to deal with the looming threat of global warming, we must eventually phase out the burning of fossil fuels. It is most reassuring if our prime minister really intends to do just that.

But what about Mr. Scheer? By lamenting Mr. Trudeau's intention, he implies he doesn't think the oil and gas industry should be phased out. This in turn implies he simply doesn't understand the urgency of dealing with global warming. Indeed, it tends to reinforce the lack of appreciation of the seriousness of the threat indicated by his party's climate change "plan." He seems more in tune with his colleague Jason Kenney's notion of producing more and more oil indefinitely.

It wasn't easy convincing conservatives that anthropogenic global warming is real. It appears that convincing them how overwhelming a threat it poses will be just as arduous.

Kenney's revealing prank

As a resident of Alberta, I am used to living under Conservative governments. Although I lean left, I can accept this with good grace. After all I am a democrat and therefor I accept the will of the people, even when I question their judgement. I accept that the government is my government and the premier or prime minister is my premier or prime minister, regardless of the party in power. Some Conservative leaders I have even quite liked, as individuals if not as politicians, such as Peter Lougheed and Joe Clark and, yes, I was charmed by Brian Mulroney's Irish malarky.

The only exception was Stephen Harper. I never felt that he was my prime minister. It wasn't me, it was him. To Harper, things were very black and white, you were either for him or against him, and if you were against him you were not simply a fellow citizen with a different point of view, you were an enemy. He was, to my knowledge the only PM who actually kept an enemies list. If I had been anybody important, I would likely have been on the list.

We now have a new premier of Alberta, and he shows the same disturbing tendencies. During a long debate on Bill 9, which will delay collective bargaining for 180,000 public sector workers until November, i.e. until after the federal election, Kenney played a little prank. He ostentatiously delivered neon-coloured ear plugs to his caucus members so they wouldn't have to listen to NDP members speak. Needless to say, the NDP caucus was outraged as were the civil service union leaders.

This show of contempt for the NDP and unions is not surprising for a conservative. The contempt for the legislature, for democratic debate, is. It may have only been intended as a bit of fun, but it is in fact revealing of Mr. Kenney. He does not brook dissent. Even oil industry leaders who support a carbon tax have met with his disapproval. Whatever his intention may have been, it reveals Kenney's scorn for anyone who disagrees with him. He is putting into practice in Edmonton what his colleague practiced in Ottawa. Harper had his enemies list, Kenney has his war room.

My philosophy of government is that when you are elected leader, you are no longer the leader of only those who support you. Your are leader—premier or prime minister—of every citizen, whether they agree with you or not. I believe most Alberta premiers and Canadian prime ministers have at least made an attempt to fill that role, some with greater success than others. Harper never did. It appears Mr. Kenney doesn't intend to either.

I'll Trade You a Jason for a Greta

I am a democrat and therefor I must accept the election of Jason Kenney and his United Conservative Party as government of my province. The UCP won convincingly, after all, with 53 per cent of the popular vote.

But it ain't easy. This is one of those times when accepting the will of the people is particularly hard. It's not living under a conservative government that's a challenge. I've done that most of my life and am quite accustomed to it. The difference this time is that we—and by we I mean everyone on planet Earth—face an overarching threat and our new government is on the wrong side.

The premier says he recognizes anthropogenic climate change but his actions suggest he is nowhere near recognizing the urgency of dealing with it. We had a reasonably good climate change program under the previous government (by reasonably good I mean by Canada's shabby standards) but the new guys are dismantling it and what they are replacing it with looks hopelessly inadequate. The premier has announced no more subsidies for solar energy even while we continue with generous subsidies for fossil fuels. In other words, we will not assist one of the real hopes for the future, but we will generously assist the producer of the main cause of the threat. It's madness.

The transition from a fossil fuel economy to a sustainable energy economy will be difficult. The problem with Mr. Kenney is that instead of putting all his government's energy into the transition, he is putting it into staying on the fossil fuel track. With the premier, it's oil all the way.

I cannot help comparing our 51-year old male leader with the 16-year old Greta Thunberg. Ms. Thunberg is the Swedish teenager who has gained a well-deserved reputation as a climate warrior. She recognizes the urgency of dealing with global warming and is campaigning hard to convince world leaders to take appropriate measures. "The climate crisis has already been solved," she has said. "We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change." All too true, Greta, but our leader is a heavy sleeper.

Must we be led by children? If only people were baseball cards, and we could swap a Jason for a Greta.

Global warming—the essential argument

The other day I had a conversation (argument) about global warming with my neighbour across the hall. He is adamant that we are not causing it. The science doesn't impress him. That climatologists are unanimous on the issue is, in his view, nothing but reason to be suspicious.

This denial of science is in the grand old tradition of denying that the Earth rotates around the sun or that evolution explains life on the planet. The difference is that it never really mattered how many people rejected those ideas whereas with global warming it matters very much. If not enough people recognize this reality and push their politicians to deal with it, humanity has a grim future indeed. And unfortunately there are powerful forces arrayed against the truth. The Trump administration continues to ramp up its attack on climate science; elements in Brazil's new government insist the global warming issue is a Marxist plot; the European far right, worried about the success of the Greens in the recent EU elections, doubles down on climate change denial; and right here in our heartland of Alberta, the new government busily dismantles one of the country's better climate change programs.

Trying to convince all these people that we should act on the best scientific advice is futile. The only approach that might work is to strip the issue down to its essence, down to the bare bones. Believe in anthropogenic global warming or don't. It doesn't matter. Flip a coin. Just recognize the essential truth. If we act on the warnings of the climatologists and they're wrong, there's little or no downside. We just wind up with a cleaner, greener planet. But if we don't act, and they are right, the downside is a cascade of catastrophes that could bring modern civilization down around our ears. Even the most zealous denier cannot sensibly ignore that logic.

Did the Chinese learn their trade antics from the U.S.?

The China/U.S. trade war heats up. The rest of us get dragged along willy-nilly. Nonetheless, there is a lot of sympathy for the American case. The Chinese have hardly walked their talk about being free traders. Ont the contrary, they have engaged in a number of nefarious trade practices. They have demanded technology transfers from foreign companies or harassed them, subsidized their own industries, exploited their cheap labour, erected trade barriers, and almost certainly spied on foreign firms to steal technology.

So what else is new? Countries who are industrializing have always engaged in a range of protective measures to protect their industries until they are competitive. And only then do they become advocates of trade. The British, for example, conquered foreign lands to provide both cheap resources for their industries and guaranteed markets for their products. And used the British Navy to prevent interference.

But while the British pioneered the strategy of protecting developing industry, the United States most ardently applied it. Economic historian Paul Bairoch referred to the U.S. as "the homeland and bastion of modern protectionism." During the latter part of the 19th century, U.S. tariffs were the highest in the world, much higher than other industrial countries.

Furthermore, the U.S. limited patent protection to their own citizens, in effect allowing American entrepreneurs to steal the inventions of foreigners. This is ironic considering that when the U.S. negotiates a trade agreement today, it tends to give its highest priority to protecting intellectual property.

And as for stealing technology, the Americans were pretty good at that, too. The British had laws against sneaking machine designs out of the country; nonetheless, American entrepreneurs advertised publicly for skilled Brits who would take the risk. The U.S. government even offered bounties to sellers of trade secrets.

The Americans enjoyed a major coup when a young Brit with an exceptional knowledge of mechanized spinning, Samuel Slater, emigrated under a false name to join an American firm. With his new partners he created a thread-making empire. President Andrew Jackson referred to Slater as the father of the American industrial revolution. To the British he was "Slater the Traitor."

The Chinese today are simply aping the antics of the Americans of the 19th century and stealing all the technology they can to catch up to their major rival. When the U.S. and other Western nations criticize developing countries for protectionism, they are exhibiting no small amount of hypocrisy, in effect saying that's how we did it but we aren't about to let you follow in our footsteps. The Chinese, it appears, have other ideas.

Tribalism and the global challenge

This, the 21st century, is a unique time in human history. It is unique in many ways, of course, but most importantly it is the first time in the history of our species that the greatest challenges facing us are not local, not national, but global. The most urgent of these is global warming. The others, like global warming all man-made, include species extinction and the exhaustion of the planet’s resources. None of these recognize borders drawn arbitrarily by Homo sapiens. Even war, at one time confined largely to the belligerents, if it progressed to nuclear weapons could engulf us all in catastrophic and universal destruction.

What this means is that if we are to deal with our greatest challenges, we must deal with them as members of humanity, not as members of our various tribes as we have been inclined to do in the past. Not as Canadians, or Americans, or Nigerians, or Japanese, but as human beings. This presents a very great challenge in itself because we have been designed by evolution to identify with small groups of others with whom we have characteristics, or behaviours, or beliefs, in common and in opposition to other groups with whom we differ.

This, in a world where our greatest problems confront us as a species, we can no longer afford. And yet, just as the need to overcome tribalism and turn our loyalty to humanity as a whole becomes essential to our future, we seem to be retreating into it. In the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, "Multilateralism is under fire precisely when we need it most." That masterpiece of unity, the European Union, is beginning to fracture, with the UK opting out and Eastern European countries retreating from its principles. Above all, perhaps, we have the United States elect a president who is not only intensely tribal to other nations but even within his own. And, at home, tribalism is usually on display among the provinces and regions of our own country.

Tribalism is defined simply as attitudes and behaviour that derive from loyalty to one's social group, and it is programmed into us. Evolution designed us to be a social species. We live in groups, from families to nation-states, and suffer psychologically when we are isolated. We need to belong, to be part of something larger than ourselves, whether as members of a religion or political party or profession, as patriots of our nation, or as fans of a sports team.

Our genes insist. Consider for example the OXT gene, involved in the production of the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin, found in almost all mammals, affects social behaviour in many species, including ours. It plays a role in sexual attraction and maternal affection, as well as social bonding generally, including promoting trust, empathy and generosity. Thus we are genetically programmed for loyalty to our family and even larger groups, to be compassionate toward and co-operate with our fellow members.

But what brings us together also drives us apart.

While one tribal imperative will cause a man to love his country, quite another will lead him to hate those of a different race or religion even though they are his fellow citizens. What can bring people together as a nation can also tear their nation apart as religious or political or ethnic groups embrace their own tribe over that of the larger society.

For an explanation of this dichotomy, we may once again look to our genes, and once again to oxytocin. Oxytocin is a Jekyll and Hyde hormone. It leads us to love our family, clan and tribal fellows, but it can also alienate us from those of other tribes. It causes us to be more defensive of our tribe, increases our desire to protect those we see as vulnerable members of our in-group, and causes us to align more closely with our tribe’s beliefs. What is powerfully beneficial within groups can be powerfully destructive between groups.

We cannot escape our tribal instincts. We are all prejudiced in favour of our group and against the outsider. We can't help it. What we can help is what we do about it. We can and must recognize its reality and its power and what it does to us.

The irony is we overcome it every day even as we allow it to tear us apart. In Canada a multitude of races, religious groups, professions, sports fans—tribes of all kinds—maintain loyalty to their groups while getting along remarkably well in the larger tribe of Canada. Other countries do the same. And countries, too, often overcome their selfish instincts to their mutual benefit. At this, the most critical moment in human history, we must conquer the tribal imperative as never before.

We must choose our leaders on the basis of their capacity to think outside the bounds of tribalism and reverse the current trend toward increasing nativism and xenophobia. The trend in this country, if recent elections are any measure, is not encouraging. In Alberta, for instance, we now have a premier who is threatening to go to war against pretty much anybody who disagrees with him from David Suzuki to oil company execs who support a carbon tax. The tribal drums are beating.

The federal election this fall offers us an opportunity to get it right, keeping in mind that the Conservative leader, Mr. Scheer, supported Brexit, one of the most tribal exercise in recent history. The stakes are high—there is no bigger issue.

Open letter from an Albertan to his government

14 June 2019

The Honourable Sonya Savage, Minister of Energy

Government of Alberta

324 Legislature Building

10800 - 97 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB

Dear Minister:

Recently I read in the news that you are establishing a “war room” to defend the oil and gas industry from criticism. I urge you to abandon this misguided project.

We are facing the greatest threat humanity has ever had to deal with—global warming—and you are defending production of the major source of the threat. This is perverse. Climatologists, i.e. the experts on global warming, tell us that if we don’t deal with it with great urgency, it may become irreversible. If that happens, it will bring global civilization down around our ears.

In the 1940s, we threw everything we had at the Nazi menace because it threatened European civilization. Global warming is much worse—it threatens global civilization. We must use every tool at our disposal.

And yet you reject carbon taxing even though almost all economists including this year’s two Nobel Prize winners, both specialists in climate change, believe it is one of our best instruments. Furthermore, your policies seem to suggest we should continue to produce fossil fuels indefinitely even though that will accelerate the threat. And you are even going to war against David Suzuki, a man who has committed his life to promoting respect for the natural world, the source of all our wealth. The idea of my tax dollars being used to hound such people is profoundly unsettling. And I am not surprised that we earn the censure of outsiders when we engage in such regressive actions.

I am 84 years old and have no children, so why do I care if humanity’s future is ruined? I will not suffer from the coming societal collapse, so perhaps I should simply sigh and pass on into the great beyond. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, I am fond of the human race, and I would like to see it prosper for many generations after I am long gone. That will not happen if we do not deal urgently and forcefully with global warming.

I realize we cannot phase out fossil fuels overnight, but we must at least set ourselves solidly on that course. I beg you to rearrange your priorities and become leaders in our species’ overarching challenge.

Sincerely,
Bill Longstaff

cc. The Honourable Jason Kenny, Premier of the Province of Alberta

      Joe Ceci, MLA, Calgary-Buffalo

Still here!

I must apologize to readers of this blog for allowing my posting to come to an abrupt end a couple of years ago without explanation. I got caught up in writing a book and I'm afraid it absorbed all my writing energy. Happily, the book is written and I can now get back to blogging.

In fact, I have started a new blog to supplement this one. It's titled Notes on Democracy, the same as my book, and is intended to be an extension of it. The intent of this blog is to discuss self-governance in the full range of our institutions, commenting on issues and events that range from peripheral to democracy to those central to it, from theory to practice.

Again, I apologize for my disappearing act and I hope you too will return ... and maybe give Notes on Democracy a look as well.