The pandemic has exposed glaring inequalities in Canadian society. Susan Delacourt writes:
For the past year, Canadians have been forced to rein in a lot of their rights — their liberty, their freedom to assemble, to name just two.
But equality, or the lack of it, has continued to elbow its way into the existential conversations taking place in a year of pandemic living.
Canada may not be a more equal nation when the pandemic is over, but we’ll know a lot more about where inequality exists. Whether we do anything about it lies at the heart of all those promises to “build back better.”
“The legacy of the lost year will be devastating inequality,” Bloomberg news announced in a headline over a recent special to mark the first anniversary of the COVID-19 crisis. This past year, it said, “amplified every structural bias that exists.”
Those inequalities can no longer be ignored:
Across North America and many other parts of the world, people stepped out of pandemic isolation to say “enough” to racism in the wake of George Floyd’s death last spring. It was almost as if the hardship of pandemic living had sharpened awareness of racial inequality and lit a fuse that still burns.
Here in Canada, Black women made serious, historic strides in two leadership contests. The Greens elected Annamie Paul to lead them into the next election, and the Conservative leadership race was energized by the unexpected surge in support for Leslyn Lewis, who will be one of the co-hosts of the party’s big convention this weekend.
Those who chose to turn a blind eye to the inequalities have paid a price:
Politicians were punished most severely when they failed to be mindful of equality with their voters — travelling over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays while others were forced to stay home, acting as though they were above the limits that are supposed to be endured universally in a pandemic. Trudeau’s most serious ethical controversy over the past year touched on whether one charity was being singled out for special treatment.
The next federal budget will tell us if any lessons have been learned over the last year.
dchas.org
8 comments:
A number of economists are warning that inequality will worsen considerably in the post-pandemic rebound economy. More automation, less paid labour. This has been the reality of every setback, every recession in the neoliberal era. It has been the pump that has siphoned wealth out of the working classes straight into the pockets of the hyper-affluent.
People such as Robert Reich chronicle the many billions of dollars raked in by the Jeff Bezos types during the pandemic. This is driving the call for confiscatory wealth taxes by progressive economists such as James Galbraith.
If you want a much grimmer outlook you can read Yuval Noah Harari's "Homo Deus." He contends, rather convincingly, that, in developed nations, labour is becoming as obsolete as mechanized farming made the horse. One of the occupations he thinks particularly vulnerable is the family physician. He argues that robotic systems can track the individual's health better, provide more accurate diagnoses, and make fewer misdiagnoses and prescription errors. While the cost of producing an artificial intelligence medico would be enormous, it would be pocket change compared to global spending every year to educate thousands of MDs, nurses, etc.
Galbraith uses the example of today's smart phones to illustrate the redundancy of human labour. One little device has replaced the telephone, the fax machine, word processors, GPS, cameras and so many other items that once provided so many jobs. Even those made redundant benefit from these cost savings but they don't pay the mortgage, put food on the table, or plump up your kids'college funds. The salary that once provided those things is now in someone else's pocket.
If there is a movement to make family docs obsolete, Mound, it seems to me that the real goal is to make human beings obsolete.
Owen Gray said, " . . . it seems to me that the real goal is to make human beings obsolete."
Except as consumers. There is a built in contradiction, of course. If people don't have the means they can't spend.
In a world of automation, robotics, algorithms and artificial intelligence all combining to displace the role and significance of labour, Owen, we may be headed for obsolescence. Not all of us, to be sure, but a good many. What happens if you lose your value, your contribution to society? What happened to those millions of farm horses that once pulled ploughs, drew wagons and buggies? Suddenly we got our horsepower in liquid form and was it ever cheap!
James Lovelock foretold a future in which climate change had reduced humanity to a few hundreds of thousands. What prevents technology from creating that same end? The one snag, and it's huge, is the value of money.
A few years ago I came across an opinion piece by an American professor who had been booked for what he assumed would be a luncheon speech. He was an environmentalist/futurist. When he showed up to the venue, speech in hand, he was surprised to find his audience consisted for three hedge fund managers. They weren't interested in a speech. They wanted answers to their questions.
The fund managers could foresee a somewhat dystopian world. Their concern was what that could mean to the power of money. What happened if money became worthless? These men had security teams who would spirit them and their families to their luxurious retreats and keep them safe. What, they asked, would protect them from their protectors if society broke down and their money, fiat currency, became worthless? Why would their security not turn predatory?
I don't think he was able to conjure up an assuring response. The bottom line is that wealth exists on a foundation of labour. Get rid of the plebs and the rich cut their own throats. This reality seems to be sinking in with the Davos crowd but recognizing the problem and rectifying it are different matters entirely. One idea has been a universal basic income funded with the proceeds of automation. Then you can implement programmes to curb consumption and bring population to sustainable levels. Radical as these ideas may seem they could be our only hope of averting dystopia.
And economists for years have referred to us as consumers, Toby -- not human beings.
Henry Ford recognized long ago, Mound, that if he wanted to sell his cars, he had to pay his workers enough to buy them. Hoarding the wealth brings the house down.
A few millions of the millions of draught animals that, should they have survived, would have been displaced by mechanization died in the service of their various nations in the First World War. The human livestock expended in the effort was potentially more troublesome and hence even more expendable.
Some economists call this kind of thing "creative destruction," John.
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