Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ann Pettifor rightly questions the supposed gains from austerity in belatedly balancing budgets only at the expense of avoidable social devastation. And the CCPA documents the billions of dollars in lost assets and thousands of jobs slashed in Saskatchewan even when Brad Wall
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Alberta Politics: Third quarter financial results released by Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci suggest NDP economic strategy is working
PHOTOS: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci, basking in the fiscal sunshine. Below Joe: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, like Mr. Ceci, a New Democrat; Opposition UCP Leader Jason Kenney; and Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel. In one regard, Alberta’s NDP Government and its principal Opposition parties are in agreement about how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Council of Canadians sets out the key numbers in the Libs’ all-talk, no-action federal budget, while David Macdonald highlights its ultimate lack of ambition even when there’s plenty of fiscal room to work with. David Reevely focuses on the grand total of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Zoe Williams highlights how misleading framing has caused far too many people to accept destructive austerity and inequality: Not unreasonably, given the financial crash and its worldwide consequences, the economy was seen as intensely volatile, susceptible to grand forces whose actual nature
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Assorted content to end your week. – Harriet Agerholm comments on the connection between income inequality and a growing life expectancy gap between the rich and the rest of us. – May Bulman notes that after a generation of austerity, children of public sector workers are increasingly living in poverty
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On stopping the cuts
I’m less surprised than some by Scott Moe’s ascent to the Saskatchewan Party’s leadership in an extremely close, four-way leadership race. But it will particularly be worth keeping an eye on one aspect of the campaign which looks to have been crucial in propelling him into the Premier’s office. Unlike
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David McGrane writes about Jack Layton’s five great fights – and how they continue to provide an essential framework for social democrats. – Rupert Neate reports on London’s “ghost towers”, which include tens of thousands of high-end homes sitting empty in a city
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Elizabeth Kolbert comments on the psychology of inequality, and particularly how the current trend in which a disproportionate share of gains goes to a small number of wealthy individuals produces no ultimate winners: As the relative-income model predicted, those who’d learned that they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Bernie Sanders comments on the need to take back political power from the wealthiest few: Now, more than ever, those of us who believe in democracy and progressive government must bring low-income and working people all over the world together behind an
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Blockbuster’ job creation in Alberta leaves UCP in search of new talking points about ‘job killing’ carbon levy
PHOTOS: The Calgary skyline in 2016. After a bad patch, the city is now back in the BMO Capital Markets’ Top Ten performance list, thanks in part to falling unemployment rates. (Photo: Kevin Cappis, Wikimedia Commons.) Below: Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci, Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips, and Calgary Chamber
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Bruenig proposes a social wealth fund as a fix for the U.S.’ burgeoning inequality and income insecurity: We seem stuck in the same policy equilibrium we have been in for decades, with conservatives denying that there is a problem and pushing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – David Climenhaga comments on the tendency of even progressive governments to unduly accept neoliberal frames and theories – with Rachel Notley’s talk of “compassionate belt tightening” sadly serving as the latest example: Premier Notley told reporters that her government spent money on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Larry Elliott interviews Joseph Stiglitz about the rise of Donald Trump and other demagogues in the wake of public anger over inequality and economic unfairness. And Stiglitz also joins a group of economists calling for an end to austerity in the UK. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Laurie MacFarlane points out how increases in land values have resulted in massive and unearned disparities in wealth. – Kevin Page, Claudette Bradshaw, Geoff Nelson and Tim Aubrey write that a national housing strategy needs to focus on the availability of both affordable
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Stephanie Blankenburg and Richard Kozul-Wright comment on the rise of rent-seeking as a driver of stagnation and inequality. And George Monbiot argues that we shouldn’t let our common wealth be used for the sole benefit of a privileged few: A true commons is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ed Finn discusses how corporate giants exert far more influence than we generally know – or should be willing to accept. And Joseph Schwartz and Bhaskar Sunkara comment on the difficulty in achieving durable social-democratic policies while economic power is concentrated in
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Assorted content to end your week. – Alex Himelfarb writes about the need to expand our idea of what’s possible through collective action: Is Trump the product of over forty years of attacks on the very idea of government, of decades in which government seemed to back away from our
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star’s editorial board offers a needed response to the Fraser Institute’s tired anti-social posturing: The study’s greatest failing, however – the omission that ultimately renders its statistics meaningless – is that it makes no mention whatsoever of what we get in return
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Owen Jones points out Portugal’s example as a demonstration that that there is indeed an alternative to austerity – and that it’s better for public finances as well as for social progress: During the years of cuts, charities warned of a “social emergency”.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephen Metcalf discusses the meaning and effect of neoliberalism: “(N)eoliberalism” is more than a gratifyingly righteous jibe. It is also, in its way, a pair of eyeglasses. Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most
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