--- CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS ---
Large political groups, such as the nations of Canada and the USA, have national identities which are the extension of their founding principles and constitutional laws. Each culture is obligated to exercise their choices and utilize their powers accordingly. The traditions (historical practices & status quo expectations) of each form characteristics which enable outsiders to perceive them, in general terms, as separate "personalities". Below in one outline of the differences between Canadians and Americans.

AMERICAN
========
ego
participants
want
risk
individualism
pioneer
investor
empire-builder
survival
freedom
sexuality

CANADIAN
========
SuperEgo
voyeurs
wish
wait
orderliness
follower
employee
colonist
acceptance
equality
domesticity

Prosumer populations are rapidly increasing in both countries.
Proportionally, as a section of their population, Canadian prosumers will represent a higher proportion of their population (~80%) by the year 2003, than American prosumers (~65%). The American population is 10 times the size of the Canadian. In a "personality" style, it is also much more independent of action on an individual participant basis.

That is, Americans are more likely than Canadians to risk trying a new alternative as a solution than Canadians ... who typically wait until Americans have "tested" and "embraced" a solution before opting to try it. Increasingly, American workers are becoming "Prosumerized" by their exclusion from the benefits of their economy, and their choice to put limits on the obsessiveness of their participation. For both reasons of size and "personality", the American market is the primary Prosumer market to be targeted.

The Australian market represents a close second focus. With those founding markets involved, British, Canadian, German, Japanese, and Chinese markets will show an interest ... and will typically become involved at a faster rate than the introductory markets.

• Prosumer INDEX

If the economy is so rosy, why are things so grim ?
--- TWO ECONOMIES ---
July 6, 1999 -- by Thomas Walkom.

The economic boom, we are told, continues. Production continues to grow; the stock market is rocking. Asia is bouncing back and the big, powerful U.S. economic engine chugs along in one of the longest periods of continuous growth since 1945.

But at ground level, where most of us live, the world still seems a precarious place. Wages lag. Big, profitable companies continue to lay off staff. The unemployment rate is falling but good jobs are still hard to find. The Kingston Rd. motel strip is chockablock with homeless families.

How can things be so rosy yet so grim ?

Jim Stanford proposes an answer to this question (in) .. a book called "Paper Boom". Its central argument is that there are two economies in Canada: a real one which produces the things that people use --- such as homes, cares, health care, roads; and a paper, or financial one. ...

But in practice, the real economy finances itself. ... The stock market, he points out, ends up financing not real productive investment but get-rich-quick schemes, particularly mergers and acquisitions. ...

.. the beneficiaries are the high rollers in the financial industry, corporate captains paid in stock options and the still tiny percentage of people who own most of Canada's wealth.

In fact, the very success of the financial economy has hindered the real economy. ...

The Prosumer market share will continue to expand until the financial (paper) market implodes. Since prosumers do not yet understand the creation of and the influence of the "paper" market, they are helpless in being continually exposed to workplace uncertainty and a decreasing standard of living. Losers in the paper market have no credibility. They have bought the paper market myth along with the envious and dependent status quo --- leaving them too ashamed, and too confused --- to mount a defence and change the direction of an economy which is slowly burying them.

• Prosumer INDEX

Lack of will sapping Canada 's incomes
Entrepreneurial spirit is lacking, and Ottawa won't face the problem.
--- WORKERS ---
July 2, 1999 -- by Marie-Josee Kravis.

What will it take to rouse Canadians from their resigned acceptance of declining standards of living? During this past decade, personal income per capita rose 13.8% in the United States, but it increased only 0.6% in Canada, excluding the effects of the declining Canadian dollar. ....

A recent study published by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce economist Benjamin Tal ... shows that jobs created in Canada were markedly different from those created in the United States. Self-employment accounted for 60% of jobs created in Canada during the past decade. ... Most of Canada's self-employed were one-person so-called businesses, with earnings roughly 75% of those of paid employment. In the U.S., only 10% of new jobs were in the self-employment category ... Almost all American self-employed were new business owners who created jobs for others, and paid competitive wages to their new employees. ... Why are Canada's self-employed accepting lower incomes, and why are they unable to grow and create jobs? ...

Canada's egalitarian credo has prevented enthusiastic support for and extolling of the trappings and benefits of success. The rich and successful are almost suspect. Big is not better -- it's worse.

The lack of attractive rewards and the failure to celebrate success have undoubtedly had a detrimental impact ...

... the jobs created in Canada during the past decade have tended to be concentrated in low-paying industries such as retailing and personal services. In fact, 70% of new Canadian jobs were created in these weaker sectors. The comparative statistic for the U.S. is 55% ....

Canada has always been a colonial economy. For the past 30 years the majority of Canadian businesses have either been owned by or financed by foreign investors. Most Canadians and most Canadian companies and governments in the 1990s have been totally debt laden leaving outside investors in control of their jobs and incomes. Canadians sell themselves on living the American lifestyle of luxury which daily advertises itself in the majority of television programs they view in their homes and the majority of movies that entertain them.

Canadians fall short of sacrificing their "personality" to that of their envied though "crude" neighbors. And when they are laid off by their American employers, abandoned by their government's restrictive employment insurance and social assistance practices, and abused by their lending and investing authorities --- they are too proud to admit openly their poverty and despair. Self-employment, for most Canadians and many Prosumers, is a way of coping with chronic unemployment.

• Prosumer INDEX