Pick your savings plan, pick your party

When a former contributor to the right-wing C.D. Howe Institute starts to agree with the critics of a federal program for which he advocated in its early years, you know the program has a problem.

A very large portion of Canadians will not benefit much from the proposed expansion of the Tax Free Savings Account. That's the nub of the agreement between economist and university professor Rhys Kesselman and critics of the program.

Is the fault for that on the program, or on us?

If raising the limit one can save through TFSA won't affect most of us why should we care about the rule changes? More, why should we care if one academic egghead or another switches sides on what for most of us is purely a theoretical debate?

Well, for one thing, the tools our government uses to encourage Canadians to save is a good meat-and-potatoes example of the policy differences of the federal parties. This may help you choose between them in the federal election coming this fall.

Which do you like better: a government that gives you tax incentives to save, or a government that just regulates a richer savings account for everyone through the Canada Pension Plan?

That's a pretty clear dividing line that may help you make up your mind on voting day.

Speaking now through a left-leaning think tank (the Broadbent Institute), Kesselman, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Finance at Simon Fraser University, says wealthy Canadians will gain more under the Conservative plan to boost TFSA limits. More than the rest of us. And more than previously thought.

Under the TFSA plan (I have one and in a previous life of full-time employment contributed the legal max), you buy the plan and generally put the savings in one of hundreds of group plans you can get through a financial advisor.

The benefit to you is that the money you put in is after-tax money, but the interest the investment earns comes out tax-free. That's unlike the good old RSP program, where the money you put in is tax-deductible, but taxed when you take it out.

If you plan to be in a lower tax bracket when you retire, RSPs are good. If you plan to be richer when you retire, a mix with a healthy TFSA component is good.

That's where the policy divide rests. The federal government stands to reap a huge tax harvest when us boomers cash in our RSP accounts in retirement (or dies before they empty out). The thought was that middle-class families would remain in middle-class incomes (and higher tax brackets) in retirement, allowing the government a good source of income-tax revenue from a demographic that is no longer working.

The government stands to reap a whole lot less in future years from the TFSA plan, because all that income is not taxable. Billions less, according to many estimates.

Good news for taxpayers. If they were rich enough to contribute to the limit for many years (which, alas, did not happen for me).

The Tories argue that TFSAs are for everyone, and point to stats saying 60 per cent of TFSA contributors who reached the contribution max in 2013 earned less than $60,000.

True enough, says Kesselman in his report. But that figure includes a lot of rich people giving money to a lower-income spouse or adult children.

A Globe and Mail news story adds that wealthy seniors max their TFSAs so that when the money is taken out (with tax-free interest), their taxable income stays low enough to get benefits from income-tested subsidies like Old Age Security.

About 17 million Canadians eligible to do so have not yet opened up a TFSA. Collectively, we have $600 billion in unused contribution room, says Kesselman.

Why aren't we all using this potential bonanza? Because millions of Canadians are paying off big mortgages, credit card loans, student loans and car loans, plus raising families right now. There's nothing left to put into savings, even if the benefit down the road might be huge.

Additionally, CBC reports there is a segment of seniors who are actually facing bankruptcy these days, because they're outliving their savings, and/or decided they wanted a more luxurious home to retire into, so they have another mortgage to pay.

This is where academic arguments and party election platforms meet the real world.

Do you think more Canadians would be better off long-term if the government forced greater savings through an expanded payroll deduction system like the Canada Pension Plan? This policy is favoured by the NDP and the Liberals.

Or do you think we have individual responsibilities to save, and the government should encourage individual imitative through tax-incentive programs? This is the Conservative Party's policy.

That might be the dividing line — one of them anyway — to help you decide how to vote in October.

Carbon levies can work, if they change our behaviour

There's a song with a line that goes: “Everybody want to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” You could add a verse to that which says: “Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to pay for it.”

Instead, I want to be paid. And so, I think, might you.

So pay me already.

Last week, the Alberta government announced it will double its levy on excess carbon emissions over the next two years. The Globe and Mail reported this is an attempt by the province to improve our credibility at the global conference in Paris in November pushing us all down the “decarbonization” path.

The environmentalist lobby took about 18 seconds to strip the credibility aspect off the announcement. Climate Action Network Canada said only a full stop of oilsands development will be acceptable. Greenpeace said the same, noting that you can't gain credibility by taxing heavy emitters as a sort of licence to export more and more fossil fuels.

No doubt both will book tickets on the solar airplane to Paris to make that point.

That is more or less a micro picture of humanity's effort to save us from runaway climate change. But as long as there's a gazillion barrels of oil in the ground, someone will want to buy it and burn it.

So rather than look at the appearances of last week's provincial announcement, let's look at its substance.

Already, Shell Canada and Capital Power are onside with the announcement. Oilsands giant Suncor is on record as supporting carbon pricing as a means to encourage reductions in carbon emissions.

That's good, because whatever people say about regulating emissions, pricing carbon, cap and trade systems or light bulbs in our houses, only dollars count.

This is a tweak of the system put in place by Ralph Klein. Ours was the first government in North America to put a price on carbon emissions, and to penalize heavy emitters financially.

The financial penalties were light enough to not inhibit energy development, and Alberta's total emissions have continued to rise since. The law is due for an update this year, so here's the update.

The Calgary Herald reports there are 103 facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. The old law said they must reduce that by 12 per cent, or pay a levy. The new law says they must reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2017, or pay a levy that's twice as steep as it was before.

That's the new law, in a nutshell.

The corporations spewing out all this CO2 have three options: reduce emissions by becoming more efficient; paying into a technology fund, or buying offsets. Myself, I'm becoming partial to the third option.

Businesses will naturally strive toward efficiency; it reduces costs and boosts profits.

The technology fund option is fine as far as it goes. I like to remember how the Alberta levy on rubber tires eventually produced some pretty interesting new ways of keeping tonnes and tonnes of rubber tires out of landfills. I have no doubt that a technology fund for carbon will eventually produce something useful as well.

But if you want faster results, I would emphasize the offsets option. Why? Because it makes dollars change hands, which is the only stick that works on the donkey of commerce.

Pay me to produce the offsets. Make it easier for me to invest in solar and wind power. Draft laws to make it simple for me to put solar panels on my roof, and see that I get paid for the power they would produce.

One article I found said industrial-scale energy storage will be widely available within five years, and cost-effective home off-grid storage sooner than that. Pricing carbon will help ensure that.

In the meantime, heavy industry will need to buy some offsets, creating two markets for each new green power installation.

If it's credibility we want, taking coal-fired plants offline as they age and replacing them with green power — financed by levies on the heaviest emitters (that includes our cars and trucks) — would be be a good result of last week's announcement.

The giant oil companies know this is going to cost them — and they're still on board. The price of gasoline is going to rise because of carbon pricing. But we can smooth that with reductions in other taxes, as B.C. has done.

And we should also be able to make some of that money back, by investing in wind and solar farms, storage banks, or just a few solar panels on our homes.

The carrots and sticks that move commerce are the only means proven to work to change human behaviour.

So, kudos for the upgrade to Alberta's Specified Gas Emitters Regulation. Next, please see that the money the levies raise are used by Albertans, in Alberta.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Trickle-down economics works: Just invert the income pyramid

Recently, Mike Milke of the Fraser Institute wrote, warning once again against government interference in wage levels, particularly against a minimum wage. In the past he has warned against the temptation to raise taxes on the most profitable businesses, and the top income-earners.

Higher wages don't just materialize, he says. They come from a finite (but very large) pool of capital that's better used to keep the economy growing.

Such warnings are regarded as gospel pretty well everywhere in the industrialized world. Everywhere but in the new Alberta.

Meanwhile, the real wage packets of 90 per cent of workers in the U.S. have fallen for 13 years, according to a Standard and Poor index. Incomes for the 10 per cent have ... well, you know. I doubt Canada's experience is much different.

Businesses taxes are rock-bottom, everywhere.

So if Milke has things right, we should be living in the best of all possible worlds right now. Just like the misinformed Dr. Pangloss was always saying in Voltaire's Candide.

But you don't need to be an economist to know it's not true. Rather, there's an argument to be made that Milke and his many friends have things upside down.

Big profits for big business do not grow the economy. Rather they grow off the economy. The “economy” is all of us. And if 90 per cent of us have less and less of it every year, that can't be good.

Last week, a group of experts wrote a discussion paper for the International Monetary Fund. The findings of their exhaustive study were so heretical, they could not be directly attributed to the IMF. So they were released for discussion purposes only.

Ok then, let's discuss.

Their basic thesis is a direct repudiation of that of the Fraser Institute, and all other right-wing think tanks.

Trickle-down economics does not work, the report says. When the rich get richer, they mostly just get richer. They do not invest in ways that benefit the rest of us. Who knew? We did. Welcome to the real world.

When the income gap between the powerful and monied minority and the rest of us grows too large, the economy suffers.

Why are corporations sitting on mountains of cash, not investing? Because we can't afford to buy more of their stuff. Essentially, consumers are tapped out, so there's less new profit to be made building more factories to produce more stuff.

I remember being part of the provincial discussion years ago in Alberta about raising the AISH allowance for the severely handicapped. My argument then — and it's still the same — is that when you give a poor person a dollar, a rich person will have that dollar soon enough.

AISH rates were raised — and lo and behold — landlords raised their rents soon after, making it more profitable to invest in rental housing for everyone. What AISH allowance is left after rent is paid (often forwarded to landlords right off the top) didn't disappear, it's spent.

Business groups worry that raising the minimum wage will hurt their members' bottom lines and/or hurt employment.

But when people have more money, what do they do with it? They spend it, every cent, as fast as it comes in. The money is taxed in every transaction, and the profits go to the businesses best able to compete for it.

You say higher wages just don't just materialize? Sure they do. They materialize into the profits of small and large businesses, when consumer traffic increases.

That's why I say trickle-down economics does work. You just need to invert your view the income pyramid. All the money in the vast base filters into the hands of the rich and powerful at the apex. Trickle-up economics, if you need to see it that way.

The rich need to be taxed a fair share, because the social contract needs to be upheld for a stable society to be able to produce a strong consumer economy.

Income redistribution has become a dirty concept in today's politics.

But I say — and international studies like that in the IMF agree — that where incomes are more equitable, you have a more stable, happy society. It takes fewer resources to police and suppress unrest in these places. Upward mobility is more achievable for the smart and the industrious, because the caste system that keeps the poor in their place is weaker.

That's why, at a certain point, governments need to intervene. They need to mandate a minimum wage, so that an honest day's work reflects the honest cost of living for the day.

They need to redistribute a negotiated portion of the top wealth into the vast and complex infrastructure of society that makes it possible for wealth to be accrued.

That's what our new Alberta government seems to be attempting.

Milke and all the right-wing think tankers that speak for the powerful just need to reverse their charts.

No justice but your own: If you don't find it, you die inside

I can connect with a part of what Amanda Lindhout is now facing, since RCMP told her that one of her terrorist kidnappers had come to Canada from Somalia, where he could be arrested, charged and tried.

It's been almost seven years since Lindhout had been freed from a 15-month hostage-taking in Somalia. Her captivity was marked by depravity and torture, physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

It's been almost seven years of hard work to move forward for her and her family. Seven years of reaching for “normal,” seven years of not letting the feelings of helpless rage and hate for her captors consume and ruin them.

That's the part that I relate to, if not for her, then for her family.

We lived through four years of that — the period of time between a vicious and violent attack on a family member and the news that the attackers had been caught.

You get your family member back, changed beyond return, and you begin what people call “moving forward.” You reach for “normal” and achieve it in your own way.

You cannot do that and keep your own personal integrity, unless you can put the senselessness, pain and anger behind you. Time helps in that regard. But then later, it's not over, because after all this time, you must confront the people who did these hateful things.

Ali Omar Ader was identified as part of the terrorist group that kidnapped Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan while they were working as journalists just outside Mogadishu, Somalia. Ader is said to have acted as the group's negotiator, demanding ransom, among other things.

How he came to arrive in Canada would make for a very interesting story — if it were to become public. What level of arrogance or stupidity would it take for a foreign terrorist to risk risk leaving his hiding place for a country where laws are actually followed and upheld?

Whoever convinced Ader that it would be safe for him to do so must be one heck of a salesman.

Maybe he was told that five years minimum in a Canadian prison is a better deal than an equitable length of time in his home country. (Assuming, of course, that the courts find that he did indeed confine, forcibly seize or detain Lindhout, and threaten death or bodily harm as per the Canadian Criminal Code.)

But here he is, arrested, charged and soon to face trial. At which time Lindhout and her family will be expected to give evidence and testimony.

And be expected to deal with it all, again.

If Lindhout's recent public statement rings true, she's in a place were she can survive this.

“In the end, Ali Omar Ader's fate has nothing to do with mine,” was the final sentence of her written release. That's what moving forward means.

Whatever happens next is only between Ader and our justice system.

Years ago, when we were dealing with the trial around the events in our family, I rankled somewhat that we were so much left out of it. There was no chance to confront, to get something back. Well, there's nothing to get back.

It's over, the past is gone. You deal with your own life; you can't deal with the life of the criminal who harmed you. The consequences in our lives are all personal — and non-transferable.

Nobody can bring you justice, not the police, not the courts, not the prisons. Justice is something you find for yourself.

“Every day, I make the choice to move forward and to remember that true power is derived from kindness,” reads her second-last sentence. That is evidence that Lindhout knows she will never be the same as she was before, but that she will be OK from here on.

The kindness that Canada can do for Lindhout and her family is just to take it from here. Let the police, the laws and the courts deal with Ader. He will have to confront his own demons, in due time.

People asked if we found closure at the end of this process. There is no closure; there's just life. You live with integrity, or you don't.

That, I believe, is the justice you hold to, whether the world itself is just or not (hint: it isn't).

From here, it looks like Lindhout understands this. I hope she can handle the pressures from within and without, that might lead her to let go of the strength that got her this far.

To save the world, Stephen Harper must be defeated

A few years ago, our household took advantage of a federal/provincial tax rebate program to upgrade the energy efficiency of our old house.

The money we got back as tax rebates didn't come anywhere close to what we spent on a new high-efficiency furnace, plus other less costly improvements, but the reductions in our monthly gas bill were immediately noticeable.

But only for a short time. In successive winters, I was back to gasping at our utility bills. Only during an office gripe session about the rising cost of everything did I discover that work mates with far newer houses than mine were paying more than double our bills for winter heating.

The lesson being that whatever your situation, you get used to it. If I got my friend's gas bill in one month, I'd hit the roof. If I got them for eight months, I'd probably see it as normal.

The program I participated in was ended by the Harper government a few weeks after I got in. It was an election goodie, and there was no election forthcoming, so the goodie was withdrawn.

The program did create some short-term jobs and no doubt created a lot of sales of more-expensive gas furnaces. But without the promise of votes, being energy efficient has always been a non-starter for Stephen Harper.

Really, he couldn't care less about energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, and he couldn't care less if you, I or the whole world say so.

So you have to chuckle a bit watching Harper give the news conference committing Canada to total elimination of all fossil fuels by the end of this century. We have a new word: decarbonization.

He's probably the only national leader in the world who can be pilloried for agreeing to that. Chiefly because nobody believes Harper's promises on climate change.

Back home, Liberal critic John McKay said Harper “has embarrassed Canada on the world stage,” with his agreement with the other leaders of G7 countries recently reached in Germany on the need for severe reductions in burning carbon for energy.

You could not get a more lukewarm endorsement of an earth-changing, economy changing goal, than that given by Harper after the G7. He probably won't even refer to it again until forced to, at the next international conference on climate change to be held in Paris in December.

Nobody is going to shut down the Canadian energy industry and turn out the lights, said Harper. No indeed.

This is about “milestones over decades,” he said. Milestones he has no intention of reaching for.

After committing Canada to becoming a “clean energy superpower” in 2008, there has been no significant federal initiative on climate change since. Not one.

By dint of a deep economic recession, and technological improvements that were coming on the the market anyway, Canada achieved a 4.8 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005-2011.

What was the goal? Thirty per cent? Fifty per cent by 2050? Or was that 70 per cent? Who cares? Certainly not Stephen Harper.

Mark Jaccard is a sustainable energy professor at Simon Fraser University. He says if the feds showed leadership on pricing carbon, so that the process of producing less of it becomes feasible, the first steps to the milestones Harper spoke of would be taken.

Jaccard says if Canada were to reach the 70-per-cent reduction goal Harper agreed to last time he lied on the world stage, getting the rest could be done in a decade — 40 years ahead of the schedule he lied about in this latest commitment.

“The more important thing, though, is that he hasn't done anything to reach the 2050 target,” says Jaccard.

Canadian Press reported word from anonymous sources in the discussion rooms that Canada and Japan both worked behind the scenes to water down the G-7 agreement on climate change.

As of January 2014, climate models by researchers in Australia showed a variety of outcomes for the world, given certain levels of greenhouse gas emissions globally by the end of this century.

The worst, most catastrophic of the possible outcomes were predicted to be the most likely. A rise in global temperatures by four degrees will be bad, but the more likely models predicted a rise up to eight degrees. That's if no bold ventures are taken to reduce climate-altering emissions.

The scientists and bureaucrats say efforts toward even modest GHG reductions will require federal regulations and a national program of carbon pricing.

The only voice our government heeds is that of the next poll of voting intentions.

If voters do not tell their MPs they want leadership on climate change, and convince them they are willing to pay an up-front cost to help save the planet, all our international commitments are just wind.

Either that, or Canadian voters must defeat this government.

Surprises in store from city trails survey

I'm betting there will be quite a few surprised people in Red Deer, when the results from this summer's trails use survey are made public. Considering how little hard information we have on trail usage, I'll admit that one of the surprised people might be me.

But I doubt it.

Right up front: In addition to writing a blog and column for our daily newspaper, I'm also president of the Red Deer Association for Bicycle Commuting, and a recently-elected board member of the Central Alberta Regional Trails Society. So my bias should be obvious. I believe the future of city and regional transportation includes a big increase in non-motorized travel.

But how big a change would that be? Nobody knows, and nobody can ever measure it. Red Deer has no historical baseline for the number of Red Deerians who travel by bike, therefor, nobody can give you a percentage increase in numbers that would result from building more (or more useful) community trails, or from building dedicated cycling infrastructure.

All we've got is a bunch of people who say they never see a cyclist, another bunch who say they ride almost every day and see plenty of other riders, and another group that says they want to ride more, but their particular commutes are too inefficient on the trails system and too unsafe on the streets.

Hardly a foundation on which to build a transportation plan.

So better late than never, the city is measuring trails use. This summer, six small counters will be placed at various locations on the trails to count the people who go by. I'm told there is a way to interpret the numbers to determine how many of the “hits” on the counters are by walkers, joggers or cyclists.

The city hasn't determined the locations as yet, but the counters are easily moved — and better — they can be used for years to record changes and build a database. Hopefully, also to be useful year-round.

We already know the old train bridge over the river downtown carries the heaviest traffic on our trails system. The closer you get to that bridge, the more people you will see on the trails.

Academically, it might be interesting to to track where the flows of people go out from there. Nice to know, but as a planning tool it's less useful than knowing how many people in our residential neighbourhoods use the trails — perhaps even to get down to the bridge as part of their trip.

Myself, I am more interested the numbers on four sections of our trails network that are designed for actual commuting as well as being regional connectors for recreational use. They are: the sidewalk/trail along 30^th Avenue; the asphalt trail along 32^nd Street; the trail along the west end of Taylor Drive that goes nowhere; and the trail north from the Dawe Centre all the way to Hwy 11A, which is the link to the TransCanada Trail to Blackfalds and Lacombe.

There are other spots that need a monitor, but these, in my opinion, should be the top priorities.

The multi-purpose routes along 30^th Avenue, 32^nd Street and Taylor Drive became the “least bad” solution to public opposition to separated bike lanes. They are designed to make lawbreakers of every cyclist that uses them, and will eventually kill some of them.

Think about the route that includes the sidewalk/trail on 30^th Avenue, from the new residential areas along 67^th Street, south to the high schools and the Collicutt Centre (a very flat and easy commute, if it could be made safe). Seriously, who would expect a cyclist to dismount and walk across every intersection along that route, as traffic laws require?

I've heard it suggested that it's just as logical, on a safety basis, to require every driver to exit their vehicles and push them through the intersections. Injury collisions would drop to zero — and we're all about safety, right?

Yet cyclists, with every legal right to the road, must push their bikes through these intersections as if they were pedestrians. Folks, that just isn't going to happen. Not here, not along 32^nd Street, nor any other of the “sidewalk” routes the city has built or planned.

Through this design, cyclists must choose between an absurd legal requirement, or the risk of “right hook” and “left cross” collisions with vehicles. Which, by the way, are the top causes of injury and death to urban cyclists, along with dooring, where bike lanes run too close to parked cars.

Cyclists are faster than pedestrians, and drivers who see no pedestrians often are not looking for cyclists when they turn right or left on a green light. That's when they sideline the cyclist suddenly crossing on the Walk signal.

Red Deer has been fortunate to have avoided a rash of these collisions, and I wonder if it's because cyclists simply do not like and therefor do not use these routes. If so, they are a waste of tax dollars on non-car infrastructure.

Trevor Poth, Red Deer's parks superintendent, says trails use has grown more or less evenly with city growth. If he's right, I say that's a sign of failure.

I have asserted for years that Red Deer's cycling community is growing, despite the shortcomings of our infrastructure. We know from the experience of nearly every city in the industrialized world that the proportion of commutes taken by bike is rising.

If the numbers from this Red Deer study do not match that of the whole world, I will be surprised. If they do not show a growth significantly in excess of population growth, that will signal that as popular as they are, our trails are not a useful means for people to travel in the city — and something else needs to be found.

Who would be surprised in that case?

A precarious future bodes poorly for us all

I learned a new word this week: precariat. It was referenced in a news story I read on the CBC online news feed reporting that the world's total jobless rate has passed 200 million, according to the United Nations.

As it stands, we are told that fewer than one in four workers in today's world has a steady, predictable and reliable job. Think about that: think about the insecurity of millions upon millions of families whose welfare rests on part-time, on-call, sporadic employment, with periods of unemployment between cheques. Mix with that an alarming rise in child labour.

Even assuming the numbers the UN study reported may not be completely accurate, it is unsettling. Welcome to the new environment of work in a globalized economy that has nearly completed its race to the bottom.

Welcome to the precariat.

A bit of research tells us the term began to grow in usage following a 2011 book by British economist Guy Standing. His book is called The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class.

The year it was published was the same year the Occupy movement was born. That movement brought the world's attention to the inequality of income in the triumph of capitalism. (I don't think you can call an economy “free market” anymore, when the majority of workers in it have little or no freedom within it. So the old term capitalist will have to serve.)

But the concept of the “one per cent” or “10 per cent” the Occupy movement talked about is not just a theory. It's a real, growing uncertainty for more and more people whose only asset is their labour, in a world where business owners feel no compunction against “hire and fire” tactics and the reminder that whatever anyone does, someone else more desperate can be found to do it for less.

The connections carry forward from the book.

Two years later, 1,129 Bangladeshi slave-wage garment workers perished when their ramshackle factory caved in on them. Six months after that, 10 more were killed when their sweatshop factory caught fire. Their products have been profitably sold in stores everywhere.

A year after that, when police in the U.S. were beginning to be accused of racially-profiled violence, academics began to pontificate on what America would do with its restless “excess labour.” These are people and entire communities where one cannot find a reliable sustained job, much less a career, no matter how skilled, unskilled or educated you are.

To use another term: the precariat.

Lest we think this is a problem for somewhere else, Wayne Lewchuck of McMaster University reminds us that precarious employment is becoming the rule in Canada as well.

“GDP per capita keeps going up. The problem is we're not sharing the wealth equitably,” he said in a news report. “In many ways, we've gone back to the 1920s.”

Ah, yes, the 1920s. The good old days. The decade that turned into the Great Depression, where Canada's “excess labour” went off to be cannon fodder in the Second World War.

A huge portion of Canada's well-paid careers are “gated” by professional associations that more and more require costly post-graduate degrees.

The result is increasing job encroachment by aides or licensed practitioners, who will do much the same job, but for less money — or in the case of intern trainees, for no pay at all.

The threat, I believe, is not to the money economy, but to the social fabric of our country as a whole.

A growing precariat must eventually become restless. The forces of “law and order” will need to use more and more brutal force to maintain the status quo.

We may blame and distrust the police who even in Canada have been given the tools to spy on us and even profile our very thoughts, but they are working for an elite whose luxuries depend on precarious labour.

It's not a very hopeful picture. But perhaps, one time in history, we will be able to use the information we have to create a solution to a problem, not just to learn to endure it.