Didn’t you know - everything’s fine here in Canada. The economic situation is rosy, we’ve recovered all the jobs lost during the 2008 recession, and the economy is set to grow - at least by some amount.
That means there’s no recession. It’s over - if it ever existed.
But why then does it feel like we’re not just in a downturn or a recession, but a full-blown depression?
CBC financial guru Kevin O’Leary summed it up when he said, it’s because people feel like they’re living in a recession - despite job numbers and growth statistics.
They haven’t seen an increase in salary, they’ve lost jobs, their friends have been downsized, and they’re bombarded by economic fearmongering about the size of personal debt, savings, the Eurocrisis, Greek bankruptcy, the “slide into recession.”
They’re still afraid they’ll lose their jobs - big companies continue to cut back and downsize. A major locomotive manufacturer has locked out its workers because they refused to accept “austerity” measures that would cut their wages in half. Rio Tinto, formerly Alcan, also locked out workers and is looking at cutting back production in Quebec. The city of Toronto is headed for a nasty wage dispute with its unionized workers over salaries, benefits and job security.
They hear that retail sales are down and people aren’t buying as much, and they worry about spending because prices are going up but wages haven’t kept pace - and there doesn’t seem to be any job security anywhere anymore.
Locally, food bank client numbers and Ontario Works cases haven’t dropped back to pre-2008 levels - which would suggest that whatever the economists and statisticians say, the actual economic situation remains depressed.
Business - especially big business - seems on the verge of collapse, barely managing to make any money at all. Certainly that’s the impression workers asked to take zero increases or outright pay cuts would get.
And yet, over the course of last year, while the average salary of Canadian workers went up just over one per cent, the average salaries of top CEOs climbed 27 per cent.
The average Canadian salary is about $44,000 a year, the average salary of the top 100 CEOs in the country, about $8 million.
Clearly, big business is not hurting - not that much, if it can afford to pay millions, and hefty increases, to its top executives.
It’s galling to think that some CEO who’s already so fantastically well paid it’s beyond the concept of most people living here, is rewarded with a 20-plus percent raise, while company employees are told there’s no money for raises, that they’re being laid off, that they’ll have to go to part-time hours and lose benefits.
It’s clear that there is money - it’s just going into the wrong pockets.
It seems we are developing a “two-tier economy.” At one level we have most of society, which even no feels mired in recession, afraid of losing jobs, some barely able to scrape by financially; and at the other level, a very small group of people who want for nothing, have no financial worries, and are raking in the vast financial benefits of the lower-tier “recession.”
The Fergus Elora News Express