Policy Statement

For fifty years now, rapid economic growth has been the politicians' cure-all. Again and again, we have been told that growth is the key to full employment and prosperity. Over the past half-century, and particularly in the past decade, Canada's economy has experienced many years of solid growth. What has been the result?

The False Promises of Growth

Unemployment today is now double what it was 50 years ago. Fifty years ago, one breadwinner working 40 hours per week could support a family and save money; today's typical family has two breadwinners working a total of 90 or more hours each week, and saves almost nothing.

This doubling of the family employment load is particularly vexing when you consider that today's worker produces four times as much per hour as their 1950s counterpart. What kind of prosperity is this, when our reward for producing twice as much per hour is that we have to work LONGER?

In January, Statistics Canada reported that the hourly wages of Canadian workers have only barely kept pace with inflation over the past 25 years. During that period, the productivity of Canadian workers rose by about 40%, but none of that extra prosperity has gone to the people who produced it.

The idea that rapid growth is an engine of job creation also fails the comparison test. Over the past ten years, Canada's economy has grown by more than three percent a year, yet our unemployment rate has never fallen very far below 8%. Switzerland, on the other hand, saw almost no economic growth during those years -- less than one half of one percent per year -- yet it's unemployment rate has remained at an enviably low 4%.

Again and again the pro-growth politicians have tried to explain away the failure of growth to create either prosperity or full employment with excuses that we just haven't had ENOUGH growth or the RIGHT KIND of growth. There's a more elegant answer: growth is a make-believe solution that was never intended to succeed.

When unemployment is very low, workers' bargaining power increases, and wages rise in step with productivity. Moderately high unemployment makes it much easier for corporations to hold wages down, and to bully workers into unpaid overtime. High unemployment converts workers' increasing productivity directly into rising corporate profits.

The BC Liberal Party receives 70% of it's income from corporate sources precisely because the party serves the interests of big corporations AT THE EXPENSE of ordinary British Columbians.

The Human Cost of the Rat-race

Seeking the holy grail of rapid growth, we've had five decades now of stubbornly high unemployment. High unemployment has pushed up taxes and pushed down wages, but growth's failure does not end there. Pollsters also tell us that Canadians consistently self-report being LESS happy than we were a half-century ago. How do we explain that?

Psychologist Tim Kasser, in his book THE HIGH PRICE OF MATERIALISM, marshals a large body of scientific research which indicates that purchases of material goods result in surprisingly small -- and fleeting -- increases in personal happiness. Enduring and significant increases in happiness tend to come from four areas: friends, family, community, and service to others. The greatest sources of life satisfaction are the very things the modern rat-race doesn't leave you time for.

The Cost to the Environment

Our obsession with growth has also been hard on the planet: Canada's per capita use of energy and resources has doubled over the past 50 years. What was once just a bad bargain between time and money has now become a threat to our children's future.

Last month, in a report to the G8 summit, a task force of British, American, and Australian climatologists gave this grim assessment: If we do not radically change course, in just ten years global warming on a catastrophic scale will become inevitable and unstoppable. If we continue on the course we are now on, by the time your children are your age, life on this planet will be difficult and scary. By the time your grandchildren are your age, their lives will take place against the backdrop of a real-life disaster movie.

What Can We Do?

What is to be done? No one country - or Province - can solve the problem of global warming on it's own. What we can do, here in BC, is offer North America a new model for creating full employment - and a higher quality of life - in an economy that is stable or gracefully shrinking.

We have come to a fork in the road. Either we embrace now that Age of Leisure the futurists have so long talked about, or we have no future. We in the Work Less Party invite you to help us make the rat-race HISTORY:

1) WE WILL ENACT A 32-HOUR WORKWEEK STANDARD. Experience from other jurisdictions indicates that roughly one-third of the cost of a shorter workweek will be offset by higher productivity, and one-third will be offset by the tax savings that result from reduced unemployment, so the financial cost of going four-day workweek will be a 6% drop in your take-home pay.

2) Canadian corporations steal 175 million dollars in unpaid overtime from their employees every week. WE WILL OUTLAW THAT THEFT.

3) At the same time Canada has more than a million unemployed, several million Canadians are working more than they want to. The reason lies in our current system of payroll taxes, which rewards employers who overwork their employees and punishes employers who offer reduced and flexible working times. WE WILL REVERSE THAT PERVERSE REWARD STRUCTURE.

These three bold measures will create full employment in BC, and thus ensure that increases in our productivity are reflected in higher wages. They will strengthen our families, and strengthen our communities. They will make us happier, and the planet healthier. We could inspire the world with our example.

You could have a life again. You could have time, finally, for the things that really matter. Your kids could have a future.

Or you can stick with the old parties, and ride the rat-race straight into GLOBAL WARMING Hell.

Bruce O’Hara