It was yesterday that I expressed my thought to Timothy Shire, publisher of Ensign, that our conventional economists are producing researches to support the dogmatic economic stance of the people and agencies giving them money. And this is why we have expressed in a previous article the concern that the Fraser Institute is producing researches against the interest of the public.

This concern has become stronger as we have another crap from this institute. Rather than admit that poverty has been increasing with the amoral behaviour of our money driven elitist corporations and government, Fred MacMahon of the Fraser Institute wants to end the social circle of poverty by ending welfare and bringing back poor houses and homes for unwed mothers. MacMahon blames his friendly libertine government for perpetuating the cycle of poverty and he blames the poor for their own conditions. MacMahon says "The safety net makes the consequences of bad choices seem more tolerable. Anti-poverty programs all too often make poverty more acceptable and thereby perpetuate it." MacMahon concentrates his argument against the welfare system for the poor while ignoring the more encompassing corporate welfare. If we need reform, David Korten says that "welfare reform should give top priority to getting dependent corporations off the welfare."

And I reiterate that MacMahon is wrong, and I add that people like him are the culprits of the increasing poverty in our country, and in fact I question why we have our reductionist researchers at the Fraser Institute making bad policy advices affecting all of us.

Jeremy Rifkin proposes the end of the traditional political spectrum of marketplace versus government, and he includes the civil sector, what we have been calling social capital at large, to form a new kind of tripartite politics. We must change the reductionist mentality of the people working for the Fraser Institute, and we can rethink of our society as made up of market capital, public capital and social capital, and therefore create a new economic thinking where people are before corporations, and social values before money.

Some references

Related social and economic articles published by Ensign

Cure for poverty is to end welfare, economist argues, Mike Petrou, The Ottawa Citizen, August 9, 2001 http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/010809/5061927.html

Public institutions and civil society: How can we improve participatory democracy and active involvement of citizens? Rapporteur: Mrs Susan George http://stars.coe.fr/Dossiers/Societe/E_SusanGeorge.htm

A Citizen Agenda to Tame Corporate Power, Reclaim Citizen Sovereignty, and Restore Economic Sanity, David C. Korten http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/corprule/agenda.htm

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, writing in The Wall Street Journal and referring to the complicity of IBM with the Nazis, Wheatcroft stated "The capitalist free market is indeed amoral" http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2001-04-04.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/about/people/gwbio.htm

Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, by James K. Galbraith, December 2000. An extract from Kirkus' review "For Galbraith, the classical economics that underlies contemporary policy is only relevant once full employment is obtained; otherwise, market explanations constitute a self-interested (for those who benefit) or self-delusional (for those who theorize) walk through fantasy land with horrific consequences for the majority of people who live in the real world"

Market-oriented society, democracy, citizenship and solidarity: an area of confrontation? Work, Social Capital, and the Rebirth of the Civil Society: A Blueprint for a New Third Sector Politics, Rapporteur: Mr. Jeremy Rifkin http://stars.coe.fr/Dossiers/Societe/E_JeremyRifkin.htm

Short Biography on Fred McMahon http://www.aims.ca/People/mcmahon.htm 

Fred McMahon's thoughts on healthcare funding http://www.nextcity.com/cpi/healthcare/july700.html