Capitalism will truly be tested in 2020

This will be the year that our capitalistic system is truly tested. It has to be in light of the climate change emergency and news that CEOs are raking in 940 per cent more than they did four decades ago.

Surely the American working classes, whose pay has increased by a measly 12 per cent in 40 years, will signify their disgust. Indeed all workers have to find a way to stand up.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average CEO pay in 2018 at the 350 biggest U.S. companies totaled $17.2 million. So chief executives at large companies make roughly $278 for every $1 a typical worker earns, CBS has reported. How can these honchos see themselves as that worthy?

I read about those contrasting numbers about the same time as I came across two fascinating quotes from a Canadian prime minister. In 1919, before MacKenzie King came to power, he said, “management, however wise its genius may be, can do nothing without the privileges which the community affords.”

Concerned about social welfare issues as a university student, King became an early expert in the new field of industrial relations. When he reached cabinet, King ensured that legislation like the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, to create the labour department and help solve conflict, was passed.

During the Great Depression, many Canadians had to rethink their values. Several years after the Stock Market Crash, a Toronto conference of the United Church of Canada put this vision into words: “We believe that the social realization of the Kingdom of God is not compatible with the continuance of the capitalistic system, and we think the Church should now uncover fearlessly the anti-social and unchristian basis of that system and declare unremitting war upon it.”

It would seem that King, who was our dominant political leader for three decades, had similar views. He stated in 1933 that, “whatever comes of the phase through which we are now passing, I am sure that the world will be richer in the belief that industry is not for the enrichment of a few but rather for the betterment of the many.”

The leaders who followed the well-educated King continued his social welfare agenda, but I think since Brian Mulroney and later Stephen Harper, Canada has lost that focus and climbed in bed with the corporate crowd. Look at Jason Kenny in Alberta…

Economist Lawrence Mishel and research assistant Julia Wolfe, who wrote that report from the Economic Policy Institute, suggested that, "CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills."

Meanwhile, Canadian Mark Carney, the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, has warned that climate breakdown could make the investments of millions of people “worthless.”

Carney, who is going to become the UN special envoy for climate action and finance in February, told the BBC recently that the financial sector needs to wake up to this looming crisis and divest itself of fossil fuels. I hope his words will register across the planet.

Going back to King’s concept of community, it is important to remember that our civilization will not survive unless we find a way to prioritize family, work, social values and the environment.

“One of the things about deregulated capitalism is that it is a crisis-creation machine. You take away all the rules and you are going to have serial crises. They may be economic crises, booms and busts. Or there will be ecological crises. You’re going to have both. You’re just going to have shock after shock after shock,” Naomi Klein said in 2012. “And the way we’re currently responding to it is that with each shock, we become more divided.”

We’ve witnessed that in the rise of the right with both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

Guardian columnist George Monbiot calls capitalism a weapon pointed at the living world. He says we urgently need to develop a new system that dispenses of the ambition of "perpetual growth on a finite planet."

A friend of mine says that while people are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to buy the most perfect environmentally-friendly items, they should put half that energy into engaging with policy and decisions makers, so we’d all be farther ahead.

Our choices today have to be the right ones to allow for the right circumstances for a bright tomorrow.