Saturday December 23, 2017
Take it easy this holiday weekend, and Merry Christmas! – Graeme
consumerism
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, December 24, 2014
The Magic Of Christmas Eve Goes Beyond Religion
For all the crushing weight of consumerism and faux emotion to be endured each December, there is nothing that can touch late-night Christmas Eve. The tenderness of those hours, somewhere between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m., are without equal. It seems to me that, religious or not, in those few hours we collectively agree to something so valuable it almost makes two months of holiday carols worthwhile.
In that short window of late Christmas Eve, we see in each other the same vulnerabilities we know so intimately in ourselves. For those few hours, we let the charade and the walls drop and recognize each other for what we all are fellow travelers on a journey no one understands.
There is a great deal written about the science of altruism and the willingness of human beings to extend help to genetically unrelated strangers. But if you’re out late on Christmas Eve, you can often find something quite different from altruism. It’s a human attribute whose scientific explanation means a lot less than its direct experience. In the quiet of Christmas Eve what we can often find is a special kind of compassion and a compassion born of identity. (Source: Adam Frank, NPR)
Christmas, shopping, Christmas Eve, consumerism, peace, December
Friday, April 26, 2013
By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, April 26, 2013
What’s the real cost of a cheap $8 shirt?
Canadian consumers grappled with the guilt and confusion tied to that question Thursday as horror played out in Bangladesh. The sheer magnitude of the factory collapse outside Dhaka is unprecedented even in that poor Asian nation, where an estimated 700 people working in its booming garment industry have died on the job in the past eight years.
Experts on discount culture say that Westerners’ craving for cheap clothes does not have to come at the expense of worker safety, and angry consumers took up that call on social media Thursday, condemning the brands whose garments were made at the collapsed factory.
Those brands include Joe Fresh, the Brampton, Ont., based company that has been celebrated by fashion insiders and regular shoppers for providing the latest trends at bargain prices.
Hundreds of people wrote on the retailer’s Facebook and Twitter pages, saying that the company’s response to the disaster amounted to too little, too late.
Joe Fresh’s parent company, Loblaw Cos. Ltd., released a statement Wednesday that said a “small number” of Joe Fresh items were made at the Bangladeshi factory.
“What constitutes ‘a small number of … items?’ Does sourcing slave labour on a small scale make you less responsible than those who do it on a large scale? Put on your humanity hat, dig into those massive Joe Fresh profits, grab your corporate shareholders and head over to help the recovery,” wrote Kelly Penman of Brampton. (Source: Globe & Mail)
Tuesday June 15, 2010
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 15, 2010
Planning for the Future
For the past two years, the federal government and provincial finance ministers have been looking at what to do to help Canadians better prepare for retirement.
When the bottom fell out of the stock market in the financial crisis that swept the world in 2008, company pensions and registered retirement savings plans were hit hard. It was feared that some pension plans would not be able to meet their obligations to current and future retirees — and that some retirees would have no pension at all if the companies they worked for went bankrupt.
People who had to rely on RRSP savings faced the prospect of having to work several years longer than planned to make up for their losses.
While markets have recovered much of what they gave up and many plans that were at risk are solvent again, Canadians are still worried about what their retirements will look like.
An Ipsos Reid poll commissioned for the Canadian Institute of Actuaries suggests 42 per cent of Canadians over the age of 45 feel they are not financially prepared to live comfortably after they leave the workforce.
Seventy-two per cent said they were concerned about maintaining a reasonable standard of living in retirement.
A similar poll done by Ipsos Reid in November 2006 for BMO Financial Group suggested that 70 per cent of Canadians don’t feel they’re on track with their retirement savings — or don’t know if they’re on track. (Source: CBC News)