Travelling the world recently again, I am struck by the staggering ignorance among the great majority of people in the world, as to what Canada is like today. All of them, with rare exceptions, seem to think this is 1974. They think of Canada as a rich, First World country,
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Writings of J. Todd Ring: The Big Picture: Markers Of The Global Tectonic Shift, Now Underway
Or, The Big Picture: Economic Strength vs Economic Insolvency: US, Canada and Uruguay compared Uruguayan national debt in 2023:$40 billion USD(52% of GDP) Canadian national debt in 2023:$1.4 trillion USDOr$1,400 billion USD US national debt in 2023:Roughly $30 trillionOr$30,000 billion(Not including corporate and household debt, which brings the total to
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: G77+China: Should we care?
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez delivering a speech during the G77+China Summit at the Convention Palace in Havana, September 15, 2023. Photo courtesy President of the Argentine Republic/Flickr. It seems to be the season of international summits. But which ones will matter most to the future of the planet? Last month
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Inflation: austerity is not the solution, it’s the problem
SURELY WE HAVE ENOUGH TO worry about without renewed warnings about runaway inflation. But even amid all our various crises, inflation continues to make its way into the headlines: “Canada’s inflation rate hits a three-decade high”; “Is Canada’s inflation rate out of control?”; “Trudeau must act to ease worsening inflation.”
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Leashing the corporations with the Biden tax
There was a period following WWII when we approached utopia. Well, OK, maybe that’s overstating it, but we had created probably the finest society, in terms of the economic welfare of ordinary people, that humanity has ever managed. We had for some time enjoyed the benefits of capitalism but in
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Biden admin getting it right on taxes
For some time, corporations have had things their way. With globalization, which was largely designed by and for them, they were able to slip the leashes that nation states had imposed on them and move wherever labour was cheapest and taxes lowest. And, in effect, blackmail governments for favours. Now
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Decentralization Or Collapse
To halt the decline of our civilization and stop our race toward ecological, economic and social collapse, we must sow and create a paradigm shift, a shift in the dominant world view, a shift in consciousness. That requires consciousness raising, media activism, and education. But we also need a fundamental
Continue readingScripturient: The Imperialist Economics of Blueberries
There was a cooler right at the front of the fruit and vegetable section of the local Walmart store packed with clear plastic containers of blueberries. Plump, dark, fresh-looking berries. And value-priced at $2.87 a container. I love blueberries on my morning cereal; these looked inviting, and so inexpensive! Who
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jeff Rubin writes that the hoarding of supplies over the course of the coronavirus pandemic has provided compelling evidence that globalization falls apart just when it’s needed most. And Amir Attaran warns that the Libs’ failure to recognize that reality may leave
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Neoliberalism & The Death Of The Middle Class
The death of the middle class is due to a very conscious, four decade class war, known as neoliberalism. (See Chomsky, Profits Over People, and, Requiem For The American Dream. See also, The Crisis of Democracy, the very first publication of the Trilateral Commission.) Offshoring of production, or corporate globalization,
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Step Number One
Stephen Toulmin’s proposal of a return to a modest Renaissance humanism sounds wonderful (as a fresh start, so to speak, and only a start) compared to dogmatic ideology-fetishizing modernism on the one hand, or the arguably even worse alternative of polysyllabic post-modernist nihilism on the other. But when the people
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Coronavirus and the Death of ‘Connectivity’
A Chinese worker looks on as a cargo ship is loaded at a port in Qingdao. Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images. The COVID-19 pandemic is the second major crisis of globalization in a decade. The first was the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, from which the global economy took years to
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: COVID-19: Why we need a rethink on population density and disease
The threat of coronavirus, currently inspiring mass hysteria around the globe, focuses attention upon the role of population density in disease transmission. The World Health Organization (WHO) may be the single greatest threat to human survival. Its mission to promote health around the world encourages population growth in a reality
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Central Challenge Of Our Time
What is the central challenge of our time? It is not what most people think it is. It is not race or gender, or climate change, or the environment broadly, or issues of war and peace, or poverty, or justice, or equality, or fighting terrorism, crime or violence, WMDs and
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Collapse of Modern Civilization
More than 150 years ago Thoreau commented, “Our sills are all rotten.” He was right. It is for that reason that Western, and Westernized, “modern” “civilization” is collapsing. This could be cataclysmic, of course, (as in, an ecological holocaust), or relatively peaceful, (akin to the Maya abandoning their great cities
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: US 2020 Election: One Choice Only – The Oligarchy
Chris Hedges states there is no choice in the 2020 US election if it is a choice between Trump and Biden: both are a vote for the consolidation of the oligarchy. Now that sums it up perfectly well. Mind you, it was the same in 2016. People in Germany felt
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Globalization: Killed By Coronavirus?
Globalization was already a dying ideology and socio-economic-political order, program, or pattern, by 1999, twenty years ago. The defeat of the MAI and the Seattle World Trade Talks made that clear. As economic analyst Max Keiser has said, de-dollarization and de-globalization are two of the major on-going patterns or trends
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Importing From China: A Virus? Or A Totalitarian Model Of Elite Control?
Someone prescient once said, “Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for a little security, deserve neither, and will lose both.” We would do well to remember those words now. And we are most definitely in the process of losing both, as we speak. But maybe we aspire to be
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Degeneration, Collapse, and Rebirth
What we are facing is systemic degeneration: ecologically, culturally, spiritually, intellectually, psychologically, socially, and biologically in terms of degenerating health and shortening life spans. This is the slow-motion collapse of a civilization. What is needed is not to self-medicate or mask the symptoms, or to manage the symptoms of degeneration,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dion Rabouin offers a reminder that corporate tax giveaways don’t do anything to help the economy beyond the interests of wealthy shareholders. And Nicole Aschoff discusses the importance of building a model for progressive globalism to counter the reach of international capital. –
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