Stalled. Michael Hlinka

      Introduction

      Canada has been very good to the Hlinka family.

      My grandfather was born in Litminova, Czechoslovakia, a tiny village in the Tatra Mountains, in the year 1900. Litminova was then part of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. My grandfather came to Canada in 1926 when his first-born son, my father, was three years old. He made a difficult decision and left his family behind to come to the New World. His plan was to take all the risk, establish something, then reunite his family. It took nine years for him to make his dream come true. He brought his wife and two children over and he never looked back.

      My father was born in 1923, and came to Canada in 1935 when he was twelve years old. It was in the midst of the Great Depression. Several years ago, I asked him what his first impression of his new home was and he replied: “I couldn’t believe that there was so much wealth in the world.” That tells you everything about where he came from. My grandfather came to Canada when he was twenty-six years old. He grew to a height of just over five feet tall. My father arrived in Canada at the age of twelve. My father stands about five feet, six inches tall. I was born and raised here and I’m almost six feet, average height for a native-born Canadian. If that isn’t a metaphor for what Canada has provided people from all over the world, I don’t know what is. This was the Land of Opportunity, and everyone, recent immigrants and the native-born alike, have shared in the country’s success and grown, both figuratively and literally, in this great land.

      However, I believe that something has happened. Something regrettable. The Land of Opportunity has transformed itself into the Land of Outcome. Canada has lost the pioneering spirit and appetite for risk that made it so worthwhile, trading the certainty of mediocrity for the possibility of excellence. We’re seeing this in many different facets of life but most obviously in the Canadian economy.

      There were fifty extraordinary years, from approximately the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the current millennium, where the average citizen — the average — enjoyed a quadrupling of his or her standard of living. And I’d argue that the quality of life grew even more exponentially. This was something the world had never seen before, a truly remarkable transformation. Yet, in the past fifteen years or so, the economy has more or less stalled — something that I never thought would happen when I was growing up.

      This is a big problem for Canada. But it’s one that has a solution. In this book I’ll be looking at Canada’s stalled economy and suggesting what can be done to fix it.

      I will attempt to explain three things:

      I hope that readers note these words carefully. This is not a doomsday tract, warning that the end is nigh if we don’t change our ways. Rather, what I think far more likely is that if we proceed in the current direction (and there’s no indication that we’re not going to, at least that I can see), most of you reading this book will lead good lives. Older Canadians — and here I include myself — will guarantee that our comforts are provided for, at the expense of younger generations if need be. And to many of my fellow citizens, this might be acceptable.

      To me, it’s not.

      When I undertook this project, there were a couple of questions that I was asked frequently:

      The “why” is easy. I’ve had a lifelong love affair with reading, and several different books have had a profound impact on my life, fundamentally shaping who I am and the roads I’ve travelled. It may be optimistic to think that this book could have a similar impact on others and I understand that in this desire I may flatter myself … but if I don’t, who will?

      There’s another reason why I’m writing this book. And it’s the Number One Reason, hands down. I want Stalled to be a bestseller. Or perhaps more accurately: I want it to be a runaway bestseller.

      To be considered a bestseller in Canada, five thousand copies must be sold within twelve months of publication. Keep in mind that more than two million people watch Jerry Springer daily. That provides some context about what being a Canadian bestseller signifies. I’ve been told by industry people I trust explicitly that twenty-five thousand is huge.

      I’ve got my own number in mind … and we’ll get to it … in a moment.

      As for the question of who this book is aimed at, let me answer that in a somewhat roundabout way.

      Throughout this book, I’m going to demand more of my readers than most authors. On numerous occasions, I’ll be asking you to join me in working through some basic math and exercises in probabilities to illustrate different points.

      Here’s our first go at it.

      Canada’s population is approximately thirty-five million. I’m not sure that Stalled is suitable for young Canadians (fourteen and younger). That knocks off about 5.5 million people. Let’s round things off and say the market is thirty million. My hunch is that if everyone were forced to read Stalled through to the end, at least 33 percent of the population would bemoan the fact that capital punishment was abolished years ago. Perhaps 17 percent would go so far as to write their MP and see if Canada couldn’t put public stoning to a vote of conscience in the House of Commons. (Stalled will ruffle some feathers.) But I’ve got an even stronger belief that there is a significant number (my hunch is that it’s about 33 percent of adult Canadians) who will read Stalled and think: Finally! This is the book I’ve been waiting years for. Finally, someone has made sense out of what I’ve been seeing around me, someone has the guts to say what has to be said and state the obvious!

      Warning: There will be a great deal of stating the obvious. In numerous conversations I’ve had about the book I’ve found general agreement with my thesis that the economy has gone nowhere lately. There will certainly be less agreement with my recommendations for getting us out of the rut we find ourselves in. But I can live with that, if you can.

      As for my target market: anyone who is interested in understanding what turns the economy’s wheels. This could include people with “formal” training in economics, either from a college or university. But Stalled will have a very different focus than traditional economics courses, because it will stress the importance of microeconomic decision-making and how values impact behaviour and how behaviour in turn fundamentally drives economic performance.

      A quick note here: Economics has two branches. Microeconomics, to paraphrase Investopedia, looks at individuals and firms to understand their decision-making processes. Macroeconomics deals with the aggregate economy. But without microeconomics, there is no macroeconomics.… If we understand the former, the latter falls neatly into place.

      Stalled might be particularly appealing to those who have a general interest in economic matters but whose life journey hasn’t allowed them the leisure to think about these issues as much as I have. People whom I consider experts (here I think of fellow early-morning YMCA-ers like Jay and Bill) will at least appreciate some of the legwork I’ve done, even if the conclusions are self-evident to them, while others with seemingly superficial knowledge (this includes every Canadian politician I’ve heard speak over the past thirty years and Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz) might at least be enlightened, should they stumble upon a copy.

      My belief is that economics is singularly easy to understand. Its basic operations are understood intuitively. I hope to provide