Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Sunday, June 03, 2012

What Ontario’s oldsters can learn from Quebec’s youngsters

Welcome to the future. It’s not just for students.

Even if Ontario’s classrooms are untouched by Quebec’s student protests, there are bigger lessons to be learned. And if we don’t do our homework now on looming inter-generational tensions, we’re destined to fail future political tests.

No question, Quebec students enjoy Canada’s lowest tuition rates and the proposed fee hikes are modest. University students often come from better-off families, so it’s debatable whether they deserve more subsidies.

But tuition protests don’t tell the whole story. Even if similar grassroots protests haven’t spread to Ontario, we ignore Quebec’s upheaval at our peril.

Students clanging pots and pans are the canaries on campus. We should be keeping our ears to the ground, not wagging our fingers.

Much of the derision over their demands comes from self-satisfied boomers — people who benefited from lower tuition in their day, emerged with skimpy debt loads, and prospered in a booming economy. Today’s students can look forward to higher college debt, lower-paying jobs and vanishing pensions.

An old generation gap has become a new demographic gap, pitting affluent oldsters against disaffected youngsters — apprehensive, alienated, and disengaged from democracy: in Ontario, barely half of all eligible voters cast ballots in the last election; only one-third of young first-time voters turned out in the last federal election.

Even when it gets better, it gets worse. A young person lucky enough to land a solid job will pay far more in pension contributions than his older counterparts, with less likelihood that he’ll get his fair share upon retirement.

That’s the context: You can call students entitled, but when the entitlements of their parents disappear, expect a reaction — be it abstentions from elections or demonstrations on the streets.

The world is not standing still for boomers, either. Now, pension shortfalls and corporate failures are the new normal. Many private firms offer no pension at all, and those that do are phasing out defined benefit pensions for new hires (once again shortchanging younger workers).

While students squawk, we’re all being squeezed now. Even public-sector workers are not immune.

A report on Ontario’s finances by economist Don Drummond noted that when the Teachers’ Pension Plan (for which the province is also on the hook) faced a serious shortfall last year, the main solution was to boost the contribution rate — burdening younger teachers for years to come.

“The province should reject further employer rate increases and instead aim to reduce benefits,” Drummond urged. “The province should also consider raising the retirement age; the typical teacher retires at 59, having worked for 26 years, and then collects a pension for 30 years.”

In its March budget, the Liberal minority government took Drummond’s advice, proposing that future pension shortfalls be met by cutting benefits, while ruling out “further increasing employer contributions.”

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan insists he never expected much political pushback from unions, because there are limits to how much income a new teacher should set aside (now 13 per cent) to ensure older colleagues can cash in.

“There’s only so much a young teacher can be expected to put into a pension fund,” he told me. And it’s unrealistic to ask taxpayers to make up the difference, given that “70 per cent of Ontarians don’t have a pension.”

Spending on public-service pensions is growing by 13 per cent annually and will have tripled from 2005 to 2015 (reaching $3.74 billion), making it the fastest-growing government expenditure. Pensioners may feel entitled because “they’ve paid for them — they just haven’t paid enough,” Duncan points out. And there are limits.

The day of reckoning is fast approaching for public-service pensions, just as it has for workers in the private sector. Just as it is slowly dawning on students, at the dawn of their own working lives, that we are witnessing the end of an era of unfunded entitlements.

Arguments for cheap tuition may not add up, but neither did the entitlements enjoyed by their parents. No point blaming them for complaining. They’re just following their parents’ example.

Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Martin Regg Cohn

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