Liberal Arts Degrees Are Not Worth The Money

[Anonymous]

Don't bitch about low wages or no jobs if you choose to waste your time and money pursuing a degree in English Lit. A degree in engineering, commerce, health care and the world is your oyster.



Always wondered how they can justify charging about the same for a liberal arts degrees as they do say a degree in physical therapy? On the other hand, if we charge less for liberal arts degrees it might encourage more people wasting their time and money getting one of those useless degrees.

Maybe you can't put a price on education but a new survey says you can establish a value and it's not as high as it used to be.



For all those student racking up debt, their degrees are increasingly worth less. The news is downright gruesome for fine and applied arts graduates who are earning 12% less than high school graduates once their education costs are factored in.



CIBC World Markets economists Benjamin Tal and Emanuella Enenajor note the cost of a bachelor's degree is 20% higher than it was in the late 2000s but the unemployment rate among university graduates is now only 1.7% percentage points lower than high school graduates.



The employment gap used to be much wider between university and high school graduates. University graduates also only have employment rate 0.7% percentage points better than college graduates.



"Higher education is a necessary condition for a good job in Canada. But it is no longer a sufficient condition," say the authors of the report. "Narrowing employment and earnings premiums for high education mean that, on average, Canada is experiencing an excess supply of post-secondary graduates."



The report notes that Canada has the highest proportion of adults with a post secondary education among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and the cost of those degrees is about double the OECD average. Yet the share of Canadian university graduates making less than half the national median income is the largest among OECD countries.



Despite the fact that it is well known that certain degrees pay more in Canada, there hasn't been any sort of gravitation towards those degrees among students to match the job market.



CIBC's study is clear on which jobs pay more. Engineering graduates have a 117% wage premium to high school graduates, even after paying for their degrees. Math, computer and physical science graduates are second with an 86% premium with commerce grads at 74%.

At the other end of the spectrum is the fine arts grad earning less than the high school graduate but a humanities degree doesn't do much better, only earning a 23% premium.



"If you have a B.A. in history and I graduate from high school. I can go work on an assembly line but you will not work on that assembly line. There is a negative premium," said Mr. Tal, in an interview. "That fact that you went to university, that assembly line job is simply not in you."



Part of the reason for the disappointing return on university degrees also seems to centre on degrees earned by immigrants. The unemployment rate for immigrants with post secondary education is higher than Canadian-born individuals with similar degrees.



The study found more than 50% of degree holders who earned their degree outside Canada earned less than the median income. It's only 30% for Canadian born graduates. A bachelor's degree earned abroad yields 40% less than a degree earned in Canada while the gap among engineering students is 70%.



"The troubling trend trend reflects many factors such as the low return on immigrants' foreign work experience, difficulties with foreign credentials, concerns about the quality of skills earned abroad and low proficiency in English or French," says the report.



But the authors say the field of study has been the more important driver of the low return graduates are getting. The underperforming sectors like humanities and social sciences still produce just under half of all graduates.

"Most Canadians are aware that on average, your odds to earn more are better with a degree in engineering than a degree in medieval history," say the authors. "But it's not clear that students, armed with that knowledge, have been making the most profitable decisions."

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/08/26/the-value-of-education-is-dropping-fast-for-university-graduates/">http://business.financialpost.com/2013/ ... graduates/">http://business.financialpost.com/2013/08/26/the-value-of-education-is-dropping-fast-for-university-graduates/

[Odinson]

Arts degrees... BWAH!

I´ve seen these low-life artists... Lazy scumback sponges whom deserve to be hanged.

[Anonymous]

I would not encourage my children to get a Bachelor of Arts degree.

[Obvious Li]

sort of along the same university theme.....



Freedom of Speech As Long As You Agree With Me

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh



"Die Gedanken sind frei." —"Thoughts are Free," famous German song about freedom of thought, 1810-1820, author unknown



Shortly after I arrived in the U.S., I realized that the freedom of speech Americans thought they had, was, let's just say, with no intention of offending anyone, a figment of their naïve imagination.



I was naïve too, having escaped a communist dictatorship, I felt free to speak my objective opinion, thinking that there would be no harmful consequences since my freedom of speech was guaranteed.



I felt elated. I did not have to fear the security police day and night; and I did not have to be mindful constantly of what I said around friends, co-workers, strangers, distant, and close relatives.



Anything that disagreed with the communist regime's tyrannical propaganda sent anyone to jail, a gulag, or worse yet, disappeared them permanently. If people had a strong constitution, when their jail or gulag time expired, they were set free and hopefully re-educated cheerleaders of the narcissistic president and his wife who thought themselves to be the grandiose parents of the nation. If people's constitution was weak, they expired in jail from malnutrition, verbal abuse, and daily beatings.



As soon as I came in contact with educators, I realized, there was a problem with freedom of speech. The freedom to speak was not really free. You could speak your mind but you were ostracized, ignored, marginalized, or fired.



First, you had to have a license to teach, a college degree in arts and sciences and professional experience were not enough. Economically speaking, every time someone needs licensure, that limits the number of approved and qualified people to perform a specific profession or trade. In this case, anyone could be a teacher as long as they were willing to go through the College of Education indoctrination program.



Interestingly, many licensed teachers were marginally qualified to teach their subject area of "expertise" and scored poorly on the National Teacher Exam, but passed.



Secondly, the teachers did not have the freedom to choose the curriculum; it was dictated by the Department of Education of each state, directly connected to the federal Department of Education.



In this system, teachers had to follow verbatim the liberal teaching method of the day, and use textbooks designed to help them achieve pre-set goals, very similar to the current Common Core nationalized education curriculum. Could they object to the directives? Yes, but their freedom of speech was neutralized by administrators and the fear of losing their jobs.



As a teacher, I objected to certain irrational methodology and rules, what I perceived to be socialized curricula, to which I got the same canned answer, "This is how we do things in the U.S., if you don't like it, go back to where you hailed from."



Later on, as political correctness became the number one weapon used by liberals to stifle freedom of speech, the answer became, "If you do it our way, you get to keep your job." Some more aggressive administrators said, since you are not a "team player," we will definitely not renew your contract next year. The threat never materialized. America is a very litigious society, lawyers are expensive, and schools are terribly afraid of being sued, particularly when they don't have a case.



At the college level, famous for academic freedom, conservatives did not dare express their objective and logical opinions, often contradicting the liberal talking points, lest they never make the tenured professor list. Some conservatives escaped the progressive scrutiny, thus receiving tenure, but it was a rare occurrence.



Conservative students suffered equally under the tyranny of outrageous liberal professors who demanded from their students nothing but total agreement with their belief system; if students were foolish enough to speak their minds and question the "settled" scholarly "authority" of their professors, they failed the class.



The current mainstream media talking heads read the identically-worded paragraphs received from the same source daily, not unlike the communist era radio and television reporters behind the Iron Curtain, broadcasting the daily script from the national newspaper called "Romania Libera," (Free Romania) which was a terrible contradiction, since we were such slaves. The paper reported as much truth as the Soviet era newspaper, Pravda (The Truth).



Politicians today regurgitate the positions fed to them by advisors and lobbyists. Liberal newspapers repeat the misinformation established by the Democrat Party, the union lobby, and the non-governmental organizations lobby.



Conservatives writers and radio talk show hosts self-censor their columns and shows for fear of litigation by powerful billionaires, ethnic lobby groups, and NGOs.



Employees hide their political views for fear of losing their jobs. Parishioners do not express their opinions in the ever more socialist churches because they don't want to lose their place of worship or the community they've grown accustomed to.



Conservatives don't plaster cars with bumper stickers that reflect their world views for fear of having cars vandalized or destroyed. Liberals are proud to display all their causes on bumpers and car windows - they know the opposition is peaceful, tolerant, rational, and non-violent. Yet liberals label conservatives "racist" and "hate mongers" if they disagree with progressive points of view, thus shutting down any opposition.



Recently, Rush Limbaugh discussed on his August 27, 2013 show the case of Mike Adams, "the only tenured conservative professor at the University of North Carolina system, who simply said that marriage is a union between a man and a woman." Anger and outrage from the faculty ensued, demanding that Adams be fired because of his definition of marriage—so much for the world-famous academic freedom.



Mike Adams wrote a "Dear Edward" letter to the professor who wanted him fired and who called him "an embarrassment to higher education."



"While I respect your right to conclude that I am the biggest embarrassment to higher education in America, I think you're wrong. In fact, I don't even think I'm the biggest embarrassment to higher education in the state of North Carolina. But since you're a liberal and you support 'choice'—provided we're talking about dismembering children and not school vouchers for those who weren't dismembered—I want to give you some options. In fact, I'm going to describe the antics of ten professors, official campus groups, and invited campus speakers in North Carolina and let you decide which constitutes the biggest embarrassment to higher education."



The ten examples cited were approved forms of free speech in liberal academia.



A women's studies professor and a psychology professor at Western Carolina University co-sponsored in the early spring semester of 2013 a panel on bondage and S&M with the goal "to teach college students how to inflict pain on themselves and others for sexual pleasure."



At UNC Chapel Hill, "a feminist professor believes that women can lead happy lives without men. That's nothing new. But what's different is that she thinks women can form lifelong domestic partnerships with dogs and that those relationships will actually be fulfilling enough to replace marital relationships with men."



"At Duke University, feminists hired a 'sex worker' (read: prostitute) to speak as part of an event called the Sex Workers Art Show." I am too embarrassed to repeat what the male prostitute did after his speech. It involved the rectum, a burning sparkler, and the singing of the Star Spangled Banner.



"A porn star was once paid to give a speech at UNCG. The topic was 'safe sodomy.' After her speech, the feminist pornographer sold autographed butt plugs to students in attendance."



"A few years ago at UNC-Chapel Hill, a feminist group built a large vibrator museum in the middle of the campus quad as part of their 'orgasm awareness week.'"



"A feminist administrator at UNC-Wilmington sponsored a pro-abortion event. During the event they sold tee shirts saying 'I had an abortion' to students who... well, had abortions," a not so subtle way to "encourage students to boast about the fact that they had killed their own children."



"The same UNCW administrator sponsored a workshop teaching students how to appreciate their orgasms."



"A UNCW English professor posted nude pictures of under-aged girls as part of an 'art exhibit' in the university library. The Provost then ordered the nude pictures to be moved away from the library and into the university union." The incensed English professor asked the Faculty Senate to censure the Provost for violating her 'academic freedom.' The Faculty Senate sided with the feminist professor. The Provost was later pressured to leave the university."



"A different feminist professor at UNCW accused a male professor of putting tear gas in her office. She was later caught putting her mail in a microwave oven. She did this because she thought people were trying to poison her with anthrax and that the oven would neutralize the toxins. She was not placed on leave for psychiatric reasons. Instead, she was designated as the university's official 'counter terrorism' expert."



"And then there is Mike Adams. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman, and he is the biggest embarrassment on campus."

Mike Adams, a criminology professor at Wilmington, wrote a book entitled "Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things That You Don't Understand." I must hurry and order this book before it is censored and disappears off the shelves.



At the end of the day in America, I still have my freedom of silence and my thoughts are still free until they invent a computer that can read my mind. Have they?

[Obvious Li]

for her."



The problem isn't unique to those who have chosen to pursue so-called "soft" degrees. For years now, graduates of teachers colleges (especially in Ontario) have found themselves with few job openings, as have journalism grads, some business majors and a growing cohort of law school alumni. In some industries, such as teaching, there is an oversupply of labour and too few job opportunities. For other fields, such as journalism, the stream of grads remains constant even though the industry itself is shrinking. And as for those equity studies and philosophy majors — unless they can flip that paper into a PhD and teach the courses themselves — they've long been looking at a career behind the counter.



There has been some structural movement to try to shrink the gap between available and in-demand skills among university grads. Ontario, for example, will soon halve the number of students accepted into teachers college programs and double the amount of time it takes to complete the degree. The University of Alberta  announced last month that it will be closing 20 of its arts programs. And the University of Ottawa and Mount Royal University in Calgary recently said they will suspend admissions to their journalism programs. These changes may nominally affect the numbers of grads serving you your morning latte. But it won't give the post-secondary system the shakeup it needs.



One often-touted option by educational reformists is to change the nature of government subsidies so that the industries in demand receive the highest subsidies. In other words, create incentives for high school grads to enter nursing and skilled trades, while leaving poetry majors to foot the majority of their higher education bills themselves. It's not a terrible idea, but it is an extraordinarily complicated one, especially considering that social science and humanities programs are glistening cash cows for universities. Administration certainly won't appreciate government tampering with a good thing.



A more practical option is to reach kids before they're at the point of deciding between that poetry degree or teachers college. Sure, most kids understand that finding a job may be difficult in certain industries, but 17-year-olds rarely appreciate the extent of that reality. Schools should make them. Teach high school students, though mandatory financial planning or personal finance courses, what it means to be 21-years-old, out of school, out of work, and $30,000 in debt. Give them employment numbers for various fields for grads five years out of university, and let students draft up education plans (and better yet, backup plans). Help them to work out how long it'll take before they can buy their own home. Or finance a car. Or get off the supply teachers' list. Many will still want that teaching certificate or history degree anyhow. But some won't. And no one will be surprised when feminist studies doesn't get them on the payroll at Merrill Lynch.

[Anonymous]

^^Funny, but still illustrates the sense of silly entitlement that some people have. Not grounded in reality at all.

[Odinson]

We need a bit entertainment and I doubt oilsands are that entertaining.

"viewer discretion is advised" is the best.

[Odinson]

"Here´s Shen li dunking stick into oil..."



"Here´s Jupe itching to pull the trigger to blow that shitty tower up to clear more room for new buildings."



That´s reality TV.

[Anonymous]

for her."



The problem isn't unique to those who have chosen to pursue so-called "soft" degrees. For years now, graduates of teachers colleges (especially in Ontario) have found themselves with few job openings, as have journalism grads, some business majors and a growing cohort of law school alumni. In some industries, such as teaching, there is an oversupply of labour and too few job opportunities. For other fields, such as journalism, the stream of grads remains constant even though the industry itself is shrinking. And as for those equity studies and philosophy majors — unless they can flip that paper into a PhD and teach the courses themselves — they've long been looking at a career behind the counter.



There has been some structural movement to try to shrink the gap between available and in-demand skills among university grads. Ontario, for example, will soon halve the number of students accepted into teachers college programs and double the amount of time it takes to complete the degree. The University of Alberta  announced last month that it will be closing 20 of its arts programs. And the University of Ottawa and Mount Royal University in Calgary recently said they will suspend admissions to their journalism programs. These changes may nominally affect the numbers of grads serving you your morning latte. But it won't give the post-secondary system the shakeup it needs.



One often-touted option by educational reformists is to change the nature of government subsidies so that the industries in demand receive the highest subsidies. In other words, create incentives for high school grads to enter nursing and skilled trades, while leaving poetry majors to foot the majority of their higher education bills themselves. It's not a terrible idea, but it is an extraordinarily complicated one, especially considering that social science and humanities programs are glistening cash cows for universities. Administration certainly won't appreciate government tampering with a good thing.



A more practical option is to reach kids before they're at the point of deciding between that poetry degree or teachers college. Sure, most kids understand that finding a job may be difficult in certain industries, but 17-year-olds rarely appreciate the extent of that reality. Schools should make them. Teach high school students, though mandatory financial planning or personal finance courses, what it means to be 21-years-old, out of school, out of work, and $30,000 in debt. Give them employment numbers for various fields for grads five years out of university, and let students draft up education plans (and better yet, backup plans). Help them to work out how long it'll take before they can buy their own home. Or finance a car. Or get off the supply teachers' list. Many will still want that teaching certificate or history degree anyhow. But some won't. And no one will be surprised when feminist studies doesn't get them on the payroll at Merrill Lynch.

Maybe it is a good idea to create incentives for high school grads to enter nursing and skilled trades, while leaving poetry majors to foot the majority of their higher education bills themselves..



As the article says, the reality involved in doing that might be difficult.

[Obvious Li]

Claims that wage hikes will bring growth are questionable at best[/b

 By Terence Corcoran, National Post September 6, 2013



It's been a grim Labour Day season for the union movement. In the run up to the weekend, unions in Canada and the United States tried hard to extract some positive energy from the annual holiday that was founded by union activists more than 130 years ago. Trying hardest was the U.S. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as it promoted a national strike against McDonalds and other fast food chains, demanding $15 an hour to replace current wages of about $8 an hour.



The headlines looked good. "Fast-Food Strikes Expand Across U.S. to 50 states," said Bloomberg News. Salon.com called it the "largest fast food strike ever." But on the ground the union effort failed to stop one hamburger from being flipped as workers kept working and 99% of fast-food consumers never noticed, which helps explain why only 7% of private-sector workers in America are unionized.



Canada's unions have a larger 17% share of the nation's private sector workers, but that number has been in steady decline, forcing major union consolidation (see graph). At a convention on Saturday, former members of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union elected the first president of Unifor, their new merged union. After the vote, the new president — former CAW executive Jerry Dias — pumped up the rhetoric, taking aim at the Harper Conservatives and promising to change the national agenda. "Unifor is here because it's time to stop playing defence and it's time we started to play offence."



Meanwhile, just before the Labour Day weekend, two other Canadian unions joined forces. The small and struggling Telecommunications Workers Union was gobbled up by Leo Gerard's United Steelworkers — another indicator that the private-sector union movement is losing ground and clout. Post-merger, the new Unifor union and the expanded Steelworkers operation will collectively account for less than 600,000 workers or barely 4% of the 15-million total Canadian workforce and less than 7% of the private sector workforce.



In the public sector, unions are holding their own. Across Canada, about 73% of 3.4-million government workers are unionized, a number that's unchanged over the last 25 years. Unions therefore seem to have something of a hammerlock on the public sector, despite growing awareness among many Canadians that government workers enjoy wages and benefits, including major pension plans that often seem out of line with the Canadian majority.



Mergers won't solve the union crisis. To help revive itself, the union movement in Canada and the United States has been promoting another campaign aimed at rebranding unions and high wages as an economic growth strategy. The idea, imported from the same American unions that are now attempting to organize McDonalds and other fast food chains, is to portray unions as all-round wealth creators. The slogan: "The Union Advantage."



Ken Georgetti, head of the Canadian Labour Congress, trumpeted the union advantage in a recent commentary: "Average unionized workers in Canada earn $4.97 an hour more than do other, non-union workers. That extra money in the pockets of the country's 4.67-million unionized employees translates into an added $785.8 million every week in the national economy."



Never mind the preposterous implication that the Canadian economy would be $785.8-million poorer every week if the CLC's member unions did not exist. Equally implausible is the idea that, because union worker earns $27.05 an hour, or 22% more than non-union workers, the Canadian economy would receive a multi-billion dollar shot in the arm if all workers were paid 22% higher union wages.



In the United States, the SEIU launched The Union Advantage in 2009 with similar claims. "Greater unionization could pump billions into the U.S. economy," said the SEIU. If unionization rates were the same as they were in 1983, said the SEIU, wages would rise to $28 an hour and the U.S. economy would be $49-billion richer.



Market economies are amazing things, but not that amazing. Few American's seem to be buying the argument, perhaps because they can see through empty sloganeering behind the union advantage campaigns.



Mr. Georgetti's Union Advantage campaign is borne out of the same sense of decline and is based on the same economic theories that animate the U.S. union movement. The basic concept, now a staple of leftish ideology and widely promoted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva and others, is that growth can be created by simply forcing wages higher. In a paper last year for the ILO, Marc Lavoie of the University of Ottawa and Engelbert Stockhammer of Kingston University in Britain trotted out the idea that economic growth could be bolstered by increasing wages. "Wage-led growth," as they called it, is an "alternative to neoliberalism" that required major government action to strengthen union power and weaken investor capitalism.



A wage-led growth plan is to replace investment-driven market economics with pro-labour distributional policies, including "increasing or establishing minimum wages, strengthening social security systems, improving union legislation and increasing the reach of collective bargaining agreements." President Obama, parroting his SEIU backers, has supported the need for higher wages. So far, however, such policies have not taken hold in the U.S. or Canada, leaving the union movement fighting an uphill battle.



Even workers can figure it out. Doubling wages at McDonalds from $8 to $15 an hour would cause havoc at the company by forcing higher prices and likely rendering parts of the franchise-based corporate structure unprofitable. Better to be employed at $8 an hour that unemployed at $15. Nor is it economically feasible, on a national basis, to impose massively higher wages to union levels and expect more growth — as Mr. Georgetti has suggested. Canada has already lost thousands of jobs because higher labour costs prompted Canadian companies to shift jobs overseas or stop production in Canada.



To argue that mandated higher wages and expanded unionization promote economic recovery is a great perversion of economic theory. It wouldn't work in practice, and seems unlikely to succeed as a union growth strategy either.

[Anonymous]

Claims that wage hikes will bring growth are questionable at best[/b

 By Terence Corcoran, National Post September 6, 2013



It's been a grim Labour Day season for the union movement. In the run up to the weekend, unions in Canada and the United States tried hard to extract some positive energy from the annual holiday that was founded by union activists more than 130 years ago. Trying hardest was the U.S. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as it promoted a national strike against McDonalds and other fast food chains, demanding $15 an hour to replace current wages of about $8 an hour.



The headlines looked good. "Fast-Food Strikes Expand Across U.S. to 50 states," said Bloomberg News. Salon.com called it the "largest fast food strike ever." But on the ground the union effort failed to stop one hamburger from being flipped as workers kept working and 99% of fast-food consumers never noticed, which helps explain why only 7% of private-sector workers in America are unionized.



Canada's unions have a larger 17% share of the nation's private sector workers, but that number has been in steady decline, forcing major union consolidation (see graph). At a convention on Saturday, former members of the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union elected the first president of Unifor, their new merged union. After the vote, the new president — former CAW executive Jerry Dias — pumped up the rhetoric, taking aim at the Harper Conservatives and promising to change the national agenda. "Unifor is here because it's time to stop playing defence and it's time we started to play offence."



Meanwhile, just before the Labour Day weekend, two other Canadian unions joined forces. The small and struggling Telecommunications Workers Union was gobbled up by Leo Gerard's United Steelworkers — another indicator that the private-sector union movement is losing ground and clout. Post-merger, the new Unifor union and the expanded Steelworkers operation will collectively account for less than 600,000 workers or barely 4% of the 15-million total Canadian workforce and less than 7% of the private sector workforce.



In the public sector, unions are holding their own. Across Canada, about 73% of 3.4-million government workers are unionized, a number that's unchanged over the last 25 years. Unions therefore seem to have something of a hammerlock on the public sector, despite growing awareness among many Canadians that government workers enjoy wages and benefits, including major pension plans that often seem out of line with the Canadian majority.



Mergers won't solve the union crisis. To help revive itself, the union movement in Canada and the United States has been promoting another campaign aimed at rebranding unions and high wages as an economic growth strategy. The idea, imported from the same American unions that are now attempting to organize McDonalds and other fast food chains, is to portray unions as all-round wealth creators. The slogan: "The Union Advantage."



Ken Georgetti, head of the Canadian Labour Congress, trumpeted the union advantage in a recent commentary: "Average unionized workers in Canada earn $4.97 an hour more than do other, non-union workers. That extra money in the pockets of the country's 4.67-million unionized employees translates into an added $785.8 million every week in the national economy."



Never mind the preposterous implication that the Canadian economy would be $785.8-million poorer every week if the CLC's member unions did not exist. Equally implausible is the idea that, because union worker earns $27.05 an hour, or 22% more than non-union workers, the Canadian economy would receive a multi-billion dollar shot in the arm if all workers were paid 22% higher union wages.



In the United States, the SEIU launched The Union Advantage in 2009 with similar claims. "Greater unionization could pump billions into the U.S. economy," said the SEIU. If unionization rates were the same as they were in 1983, said the SEIU, wages would rise to $28 an hour and the U.S. economy would be $49-billion richer.



Market economies are amazing things, but not that amazing. Few American's seem to be buying the argument, perhaps because they can see through empty sloganeering behind the union advantage campaigns.



Mr. Georgetti's Union Advantage campaign is borne out of the same sense of decline and is based on the same economic theories that animate the U.S. union movement. The basic concept, now a staple of leftish ideology and widely promoted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva and others, is that growth can be created by simply forcing wages higher. In a paper last year for the ILO, Marc Lavoie of the University of Ottawa and Engelbert Stockhammer of Kingston University in Britain trotted out the idea that economic growth could be bolstered by increasing wages. "Wage-led growth," as they called it, is an "alternative to neoliberalism" that required major government action to strengthen union power and weaken investor capitalism.



A wage-led growth plan is to replace investment-driven market economics with pro-labour distributional policies, including "increasing or establishing minimum wages, strengthening social security systems, improving union legislation and increasing the reach of collective bargaining agreements." President Obama, parroting his SEIU backers, has supported the need for higher wages. So far, however, such policies have not taken hold in the U.S. or Canada, leaving the union movement fighting an uphill battle.



Even workers can figure it out. Doubling wages at McDonalds from $8 to $15 an hour would cause havoc at the company by forcing higher prices and likely rendering parts of the franchise-based corporate structure unprofitable. Better to be employed at $8 an hour that unemployed at $15. Nor is it economically feasible, on a national basis, to impose massively higher wages to union levels and expect more growth — as Mr. Georgetti has suggested. Canada has already lost thousands of jobs because higher labour costs prompted Canadian companies to shift jobs overseas or stop production in Canada.



To argue that mandated higher wages and expanded unionization promote economic recovery is a great perversion of economic theory. It wouldn't work in practice, and seems unlikely to succeed as a union growth strategy either.

That's a very interesting article Mr. Obvious Li, thank you for posting it..



That's a big divide when you have a largely non-unionized private sector workforce and largely unionized public sector workforce.

[Romero]

McDonald's made $1.4 billion profit in just the second quarter of this year. God forbid they pay anyone a living wage.



The company got a lot of laughs recently when it created a website teaching its employees how to budget. Turns out McDonald's employees need at least $12/hour just to scrape by.

[Chickenfeets]

A degree in engineering, commerce, health care and the world is your oyster.

Except that the people without a liberal education have fracked that oyster out of existence.

[Anonymous]

A degree in engineering, commerce, health care and the world is your oyster.

Except that the people without a liberal education have fracked that oyster out of existence.

My husband is an electrician and his company is always looking for skilled workers.

[Chickenfeets]

But Fashionista, no use being a skilled worker if you're not a skilled human being first.