More from the sunny Gulf….
Like a great many members of Congress I’ve neither read nor understand the strategy underlying Obama’s Stimulus deal.
But I did pick up on a recent study which reports the fastest and best kick-in-the-shorts for the economy is….food-stamps, which immediately inject $1.73 into the economy for every buck spent by government.
Next best is Unemployment benefits at a buck sixty-four.
Not rocket-science. If you’re hungry and don’t have a job, the first thing you do with money is spend it on food and urgent bills.
Among the worst are payments for equipment upgrades of any sort which take forever to show up in the economic food-chain, and no doubt even worse is cash towards the disgraced executive level of industry.
Doesn’t this show that injecting money into the have-not level of society is the smartest thing a government can do?
And if you raise the ante just a little bit you enter the twilight minimum-wage world.
Millions of decent people, overwhelmingly women, diligently working away every day with their hopes on hold, or more likely dwindling because they know no matter how high they jump they can’t grasp the lowest rung on the ladder.
I see them all around me here, in laundries, restaurants and hotels.
My thinking on the STIM has been…. for Washington to engage with small businesses everywhere, identified as the backbone of the US economy, and offer legislation whereby these employers can substantially increase wages of loyal low-paid staff.
The employers obligation in return would be to demonstrate that ther bottom rung CAN be
reached.
Impossible? Not a bit.
If Obama engaged US Labour with this direction …in return for proposed auto-sector bail-outs… they already have all the necessary skills and templates.
It is time for unions to step up to the plate and help the little guys who largely constitute the parents, sisters and brothers of their rivileged memberships.
Absolutely fantastic idea!!
Well said Jim. I’ve been a union supporter all my working life (now 61 and retired) but I always felt that the big unions should be doing more for low wage unprotected workers including helping those in third world countries. It will be a long hard fight to improve the lives of those working in sweatshops in countries where workers have been and are being exploited by corrupt governments, irresponsible corporations and the complicity of first world buyers looking for cheap goods.
Our own stimulus should have included increasing the OAS and the supplement to the poorest seniors, encouraging-no-demanding- (and helping) the provincial governments to raise minimum wage immediately, providing food stamp subsidies to the poor, increasing welfare payments esp. for single parent families, and providing help for social infrastructure permanent jobs in the social services- nursing homes, rest homes, community living programs, hospital care, low cost housing, shelters, etc. Sewers and bridges are all very important no doubt but provide short term jobs, and do little for the most desperately poor.
And we need unique made in Canada for Canadians solutions, not just carbon copies of what the yanks are doing- bailouts to big business- or riding on their coat tails hoping if we suck up to them enough we’ll get some of the scraps. Add to that aggressively going after European and Asian markets to wean ourselves off being so dependent on the U.S.- we can see where that’s got us- they’re going down the drain and taking us (and much of the world) with them.
And some school lessons in Mandarin might be useful.
Great comment Bill…Jim here…I wish I could take credit for this piece but I must defer to our resident expert on social conscience and equity, namely Lord Anthony, who, I am sure is grateful for your comment.