Canada is in deep crisis. It’s unfashionable in centrist circles to say so, but it’s true. The country is literally on fire and facing extraordinary and growing threats from climate change. It is staring down rising extremism, creeping toxic polarization, and low trust. Wealth inequality is on the rise. Its federal system is showing cracks, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Alberta and the national government. Oligopolies and monopolies run wild, exploiting consumers.
There are plenty of other problems too. But of the lot, the confluence of a few major challenges scream, House of cards coming down! Those are the country’s housing crisis, consumer debt, and high — and potentially rising — interest rates. Taken together, they paint a picture of working people staring down lives they can’t afford in the day-to-day. This hellish scenario persists, no matter how hard people work, and no matter how rigidly they follow the rules of the game — rules they were told are fair and just.
We should all be able to thrive & earn livable wages. Your worth is not, and should not be, defined by how much money you make.
Digital illustration of a the back of a Black fem wearing a blue jean jacket. On her shoulder is a white rat holding a coin. There's text that reads, 'your worth is not defined by how much money you make.
working at a grocery store should be enough to radicalize anyone
when I worked at loblaws, which is owned by one of the wealthiest families in canada, we were not permitted to put baby formula on the shelves. it had to go behind the customer service desk, because too many people were stealing it. being that I'm of the opinion that no one should have to pay to eat, I pretended not to know store policy and put it on the shelves anyway. the cheapest of baby formulas cost more than a quarter of what I made in an 8 hour shift. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that pays minimum wage to the majority of their workers, and student wage to workers under 18.
I saw someone banned from the store for attempting to shoplift diapers, another for taking bread. you know the age old "would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family?"? yeah, a grocery chain owned by a billionaire family will ban you for that. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that admitted to a price fixing scheme based around the cost of bread.
the store manager instructed us to keep an eye out for people who "looked homeless", and to watch them while they were in the store to ensure that they didn't steal anything. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that denied drivers overtime wages unless they worked over 60 hours a week.
and we were unionized! imagine how they would have treated us if we weren't! and yes, this is the same grocery chain that blamed product theft on their workers.
basically, seeing the way that grocery stores underpay workers while boosting their prices and having over the top policies to prevent people from accessing basic human necessities should be enough to make anyone despise capitalism.
Any news article that lists worker demands without also listing CEO and executive pay is essentially propaganda for the wealthy.
There’s no justification for not including that information.
Take the UAW strike, for example. The union’s 40% pay raise demand is often painted as out of touch or too high, but it is based specifically on the average pay raise that their CEO’s got this past year. If you didn’t know that and you knew about the strike, then the articles you’re reading are nothing less than anti-union agitprop.
Because names are among the first things you learn about someone, they can influence first impressions.
That this is particularly true for names associated with Black people came to light in 2004 with the release of a study that found employers seeing identical resumes were 50% more likely to call back an applicant with stereotypical white names like Emily or Greg versus applicants with names like Jamal or Lakisha.
I'm a behavioral economist who researches discrimination in labor markets. In a study based on a hiring experiment I conducted with another economist, Rulof Burger, we found that participants systematically discriminated against job candidates with names they associated with Black people, especially when put under time pressure. We also found that white people who oppose affirmative action discriminated more than other people against job candidates with distinctly Black names, whether or not they had to make rushed decisions.
Remember: capitalism is working perfectly. You are supposed to be exhausted & worried you'll lose your income to die penniless. It makes it easier to take advantage of you & pay you less. If you're too busy worrying about rent, you don't have time to battle the unfair system.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh brings up that 25% of Canadians are going hungry because they can’t afford groceries and that he would tax corporations to fix this inequality, and members of the Conservative Party of Canada start laughing.