A serious problem for progressive people nowadays is that neoliberal discourse has become so established, so commonsensical, that it is difficult to publicly question, much less challenge it. How can one argue with claims that public institutions such as our universities should be more accountable, or provide more value for money, or enhance our nation's competitiveness?
Corporations and corporate power
When the U.S. Treasury last October lavished $700 billion on Wall Street banks with no strings attached, the Obama team gave the bailout a green light. A popular insurgence was soon silenced, with public wrath directed instead at the U.S. auto producers (and unions) who followed with a request for a relatively modest $25 billion. The auto companies ended up with a loan of about 1/50th the amount that went to Wall Street as a gift.
Corporations are different from other business entities because they attract capital investment by socializing a portion of shareholder risk. Investors are keenly aware that their investment returns are proportional to their investment risk, so their investment strategy aims at reducing risk while maintaining returns.
Canada is the world's leading mining nation. Sixty per cent of all public mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. About half of all mining capital is raised in Canada. Many Canadian mining companies have become notorious for damaging communities and the environment and fuelling wars and repression all over the world. The Canadian government has refused to hold these corporations accountable, leading to increased international criticism of Canada.
When we published the first of what we are beginning to call our “Iron Cage” series on the schooling of global capitalism, we were especially conscious of how the intensity of the privatization/cutback thrust of neo-liberal ministries of education had undercut organizing on the deeper issues of governance, curriculum and pedagogy.
Hugh Mackenzie, researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, gives you the dirt on the growing income gap between Canada's very rich and the rest of us.
http://www.youtube.com/v/WjRUwkt2vqs&hl=en_US&fs=1
Ralph Nader, the famous American consumer advocate and perennial presidential candidate, writing recently in The Nation, recalled sitting at the family dining table when he was growing up and listening to his father talk about capitalism and socialism. “Capitalism will never die,” his father would say, “because socialism will always be used to save it.”
A few years ago, former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed astonished us by denouncing what he called “the decline of collectivity” in Canada. “We are becoming increasingly Americanized,” he warned, “and this imposes an un-Canadian individualism on our ethic.”