Month / June 2020

by admin

Pandemic is not the main problem

Unpublished letter submitted to the Toronto Star

Re: Class action alleges care homes failed in virus response. April 27, 2020.

While the pandemic has exposed serious weaknesses in our public and private care homes from staffing, the type of care patients receive and PPE, the problem is much, mch larger than this. From our hospital infrastructure and the required integration of staffing and resources required to keep people well from doctors and nurses to laundry workers and the cleaning staff to our city infrastructure of roads, sewers, sanitation services and everything related to it to retail grocery clerks risking their lives for minimum wage these are all symptoms of a much larger problem – the ongoing damage that capitalism is doing to our societies around the world. Every problem that exists in the world can be traced back to capitalism in one form or another. In the drive for profits and cost-cutting capitalist private sector owners of long-term care homes have slashed the staffing and the protective equipment to the bone while telling us they know what they are doing – the private sector knows best leading to the horrendous damage and death that is occurring presently. In the drive to lower costs it has driven governments to cut the funding to hospitals and long-term care public facilities leading to the disaster we are now experiencing. All through society jobs have been cut back and their wages cut to the quick by a greed and profit mentality that knows no limits. As long as this philosophy is dominant in our society we will get sharply reduced quality and service in every aspect of our lives while paying ann increasingly premium price for it.  Profits should be taken after all the things that they have not done are covered – god wages with benefits, full-time work, pensions and well-funded infrastructure and equipment – similar to the kind of society we had before globalization. If we do not come to our senses and see where the root causes are for this pandemic’s impact on our society we will continue to pay more and get less. The answer is to get more and pay less for a quality society that we deserve. Only then should the private sector allowed to take a small profit.

by admin

Elder care symptomatic of economic Darwinism

Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to the Toronto Star

The recent COVID-19 pandemic is ripping through world economies and revealing its weaknesses. It is laying waste to the concept of globalization that was touted by large corporations as the next wave of the new Darwinian capitalism. Cheap global supply chains and markets ramped up profits by cutting costs sharply while adding usurious profits to the price of goods. China became the darling of this economy with a massive population like India’s, an authoritarian social structure and workers who were paid pennies on the dollar. The workforce was globalized as well ripping communities and families apart as workers were required to go where the jobs were – anywhere in the world. Corporations emptied out of the U.S.A. and went offshore. Globalization destabilized the world’s economy in twenty years. Corporate profits went through the roof while worker’s wages and standard of living languished. Continue reading →