Our economic model’s fatal flaw

Re: Loblaw can afford a living wage — Aug. 14

Pardon me for not shedding a tear at Galen G. Weston’s apparent hubris and myopic concerns as he frets about “a significant set of financial headwinds” when it comes to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, which is currently proposed and under review by the Ontario government for possible implementation in 2018.

Poor Galen surely doesn’t appear to be concerned about his front-line worker who is trying to balance an ever increasing demand against a relentless attack on his or her pay package. Therefore, I can only deduce that Galen’s concerns are directed toward the shareholders, of which he is a major owner.

Perhaps now is the time for us as a society to re-evaluate the basic economic model that forms one of our fundamental cultural underpinnings and how it operates and serves us all.

By his own admission, if one reads between the lines, what he is really alluding to is that the capitalist economic model he champions is no longer economically sustainable in its present form, nor is it now able to serve and support the participant. How is anybody going to be able to afford to pay for any goods or service if they are all deemed redundant has he replaces workers with self-serve checkouts as he threatens to do?

Most disconcerting, however, is Galen’s apparent refusal to admit this is not the most pressing concern we all are facing as a society, because to do so would bring to light a glaring weakness in the system he champions.

What he is refusing to admit, openly at least, is there is a suicide clause attached to the economic system in which he plays. In its present form, the fatal flaw is an economic model that demands an infinite growth requirement to make it sustainable. This wouldn’t be a problem if we had a system in place which could support such a lofty and demanding requirement, but as you probably are beginning to realize is the system that is responsible for the carrying capacity of such a demanding economic model is none other than planet Earth, a system, I might add, which is both finite and closed.

Isn’t anybody at least a little bit concerned the economic system we have created is in itself untenable and frankly suicidal? Dave Thaler New Hamburg