Haaretz.
It's not all Putin, Erdogan and book bans. Will this new wind find its way here too?
Nitzan Horowitz
There’s a new prime minister. An open-minded, progressive fellow who has a sense of humor. He’s not bad-looking, either. In Canada. Justin Trudeau won a landslide victory over incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a good buddy of Benjamin Netanyahu. Harper’s rightist party lost nearly half its seats, and also failed to carry many of its traditional strongholds.
Nine years of Harper were more than enough for Canadians. They realized that his inhibitory budgetary policies and blind reliance on energy companies had led them to the brink of disaster. Sound familiar? Government funding for public services was reduced, but the private sector did not make up for this. The ineffectualness of Netanyahu’s trickle-down theory became apparent in Canada too: Energy, food and media tycoons rapidly got rich, but the money they sucked from the public did not trickle back to it. It stayed in their pockets, and Harper paid the price.
A look at the list of Canada’s billionaires reveals some startling figures: Of the country’s 25 wealthiest people and families, 20 got even richer in the last few years, while only five saw their assets decrease slightly – just the opposite of what happened to most Canadian companies and households. Canadians came to see that if their country’s wealth remained concentrated in the hands of a few, it would ultimately lead to neo-feudalism. Trudeau – and a large majority of the public – wants a welfare state and a closing of economic gaps. Therefore he supports raising taxes on the very rich, and lowering taxes for everyone else.
Justin Trudeau is on the right side of history – as are Pope Francis, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant, who pushed through an unprecedented minimum wage hike in the city to $15 (almost NIS 60) an hour, more than double the federal minimum wage. In the United States, states and cities have the authority to set a higher minimum wage than that set by the federal government in Washington, and it applies to all workers in that locality. For Israelis, who earn a minimum wage of just NIS 25 ($6.35) per hour, the new minimum wage in Seattle is the stuff of pure fantasy.
The trend is spreading like wildfire in America. Seattle was followed by San Francisco, and then by Los Angeles, California’s largest city, which doubled the minimum wage. New York and Chicago are next in line. De Blasio has already promised to do his utmost to advance this issue. And before all sorts of analysts chime in with warnings not to be fooled by all this and insist that it’s actually good for you to earn a very low wage, take note that over the last months hundreds of thousands of people across America have demonstrated in favor of the $15-per-hour minimum wage. Many of them work for huge corporations like Walmart and McDonald’s, two of the world’s biggest private employers, which rake in huge profits but pay a meager wage. It’s the largest protest movement in American history by low-wage earners.
No matter how low it is set, right-wing politicians and economists always argue that raising the minimum wage will lead to layoffs and economic collapse. But field experiments prove the opposite. For example, a study of hundreds of restaurants in New Jersey following a 25-percent hike in the minimum wage there did not find any evidence that employment was negatively affected. On the contrary. Raising wages increases a worker’s disposable income, so he buys more and also goes out to restaurants. Everyone gains.
In a video that quickly went viral, Trudeau is seen presenting his new government that has an equal number of men and women. “Why does gender equality matter so much to you?” he is asked. “Because it’s 2015,” he replies with a smile, to great cheers from the crowd. So simple, and so right.
In stark contrast to the bleak feeling in Israel, to the despair propagated by Netanyahu, a different wind is blowing in the world. It’s not all Putin, Erdogan and the ban on Rabinyan. Will this new wind find its way here too? It’s already 2016.