[PEN-L:3392] Re: Re: Canada

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>I confess that I think that the NBER paper that Doug brought to our
>attention might be on to something.  I remember a time almost 20 years ago
>that I visited Toronto for the first time.  I did not see much poverty.
>The city seemed very well run.  Maybe I was naive, but it seemed a stark
>contrast from the US.
>
>I recall reading some papers around that time about the kind of
>concentrated ownership that Canada had.  It seemed that the Canadian
>capitalists were far more enlightened that the U.S. capitalists.  Canada
>seemed to evoke the Business Week version of capitalism rather than the
>more Hobbesian Wall Street Journal version.

Here's an idea - social democracy is more compatible with "monopolized"
ownership structures than most social democrats would like to admit, and is
undermined by U.S.-style financial and corporate governance arrangements.
It's probably very difficult for U.S. social dems to admit to this, given
this country's love of small business and populist, anti-centralizing
political traditions.

Doug