This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Brin examines the crucial role the public sector plays in driving economic development – as well as the disturbingly large movement seeking to end any further progress – Anna Gorman reports on California’s ambitious plans to improve the health and social
Continue readingTag: Basic Income
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Danielle Martin highlights how investments in ending poverty including a basic income can improve health outcomes among other key social indicators: Far more than consumption of medical care, income is the strongest predictor of health. Canadians are more likely to die at an
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jonathan Sas highlights why we’re best off having public services delivered by the public sector: The three decades long bashing and diminishing of the redistributive capacities of the state has led to pronounced inequality, degraded infrastructure stock, and a blunted ability of government
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephen Hawking discusses the urgent need to address inequality and environmental destruction as people are both more fearful for their futures, and more aware of what’s being taken away from them: (T)he lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Star argues that Canada can’t afford to leave tax loopholes wide open for the rich – as the Libs are doing in violation of their campaign promises. And Martin Lukacs notes that obscene giveaways to the rich seem to be the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michal Rozworski writes that the Trudeau Libs’ economic model has come into view, and that we should be fighting back against what it means for the public: I’ve long argued that the Liberals are at the leading edge of rebuilding a centrist, neoliberal consensus for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Neil Irwin examines one of the key ideas underlying the U.S. Democrats’ economic plans, being that workers need to have meaningful choices rather than being trapped by a limited and slanted set of available employers and work structures: Labor market monopsony is the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ben Casselman points out how corporate consolidation can produce harmful results for consumers and workers alike. Guy Standing discusses how we’re all worse off for the spread of rentier capitalism. And Mariana Mazzucato reminds us that an entrepreneurial government is a must if
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Cindy Blackstock offers a reminder of Canada’s long and shameful history of discrimination against First Nations children. And Donna Ferreiro takes a look at some of the faces of the Sixties Scoop which saw Indigenous children separated from their families due solely
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Basic Income
The Ontario government has committed to test the idea of a basic income. Over the next week or so Hugh Segal will release a discussion paper intended to guide the experiment and that will be followed by public consultations. The idea of unconditional income has a long history with supporters
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alex Himelfarb and Trish Hennessy offer their take as to what we should expect out of Ontario’s basic income experiment: Critics rightly argue that basic income is no magic bullet, that indeed there are no magic bullets. The history of the idea of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.
– Scott Sinclair, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood and Stuart Trew study the contents of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. Sinclair and Trew also highlight why Canadian progressives should oppose the deal, while Howard Mann notes that the same criticisms, including a gross transfer of power to the corporate sector and the absence of any concern for developmental and environmental issues, apply to all of the new generation of corporate rights agreements. But the Council of Canadians notes that not only are the Trudeau Libs pushing ahead with every single trade agreement currently on the table, they’re also trying to lay the groundwork for a similar deal with China – even if it comes with both a blind eye to human rights violations, and an obligation to approve a tar sands pipeline.
– Bill McKibben examines how new climate data shows that we need a nearly immediate transition away from dirty energy in order to meet the Paris conference commitment to rein in global warming. And Seth Klein and Shannon Daub call out the new form of climate denialism – which pays lip service to the science of climate change, but attempts to detach it from any policy steps to improve matters.
– Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson argue that there’s no reason to keep hewing to neoliberal orthodoxy when decades of evidence show how it exacerbates inequality and harms health:
Even before the 2008 global financial crisis, neoliberalism was causing what the University of Durham’s Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra have called “neoliberal epidemics.” As Schrecker and Bambra and many others have shown, income inequality has profoundly damaging and far-reaching effects on everything from trust and social cohesion to rates of violent crime and imprisonment, educational achievement, and social mobility. Inequality seems to worsen health outcomes, reduce life expectancy, boost rates of mental illness and obesity, and even increase the prevalence of HIV.
Deep income inequality means that society is organized as a wealth-based hierarchy. Such a system confers economic as well as political power to those at the top and contributes to a sense of powerlessness for the rest of the population. Ultimately, this causes problems not only for the poor, but for the affluent as well.…Careful analysis of statistical data debunked the idea that stressed executives are at a higher risk for heart attacks. Now, it has debunked the 1980s myth that “greed is good,” and has revealed the extensive damage inequality causes. It was one thing to believe these myths decades ago, but when experience and all the available evidence show them to be mistaken, it is time to make a change.“Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error,” said the Roman philosopher Cicero. Now that we know how inequality harms the health of societies, individuals, and economies, reducing it should be our top priority. Anyone advocating policies that increase inequality and threaten the wellbeing of our societies is taking us for fools.
– Finally, Thomas Walkom rightly notes that a federal crackdown on extra-billing under the Canada Health Act is long overdue.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Chris Hamby’s brilliant series on the effects of investor-state dispute settlement continues with articles on the shift in power from governments to corporations, as well as the developing market in settlement …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Chris Hamby’s brilliant series on the effects of investor-state dispute settlement continues with articles on the shift in power from governments to corporations, as well as the developing market in settlement …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Owen Jones discusses the importance of the labour movement in ensuring that workers can get ahead in life, rather than drowning in debt:Nights spent staring at the ceiling as worries dance manically around the …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Paul Krugman rightly points out that it’s to be expected that Republican establishment figures would line up behind Donald Trump since he shares their top priority of handing still more money to the richest f…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Lana Payne comments on the combination of low wages and nonexistent security attached to jobs for younger workers. And Catherine Baab-Muguira examines the spread of the side hustle economy as a means of bare sur…
Continue readingThings Are Good: How a Universal Basic Income Might Work in the USA
This year the idea of a basic income is growing in popularity, it’s even going to be tested in Ontario. The core concept that every citizen should be able to make a living regardless of their job (or lack thereof) is not new but it has never been done on a mass scale. A new […]
The post How a Universal Basic Income Might Work in the USA appeared first on Things Are Good.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Armine Yalnizyan points out the choice between a basic income and the provision of basic services, while making a strong case to focus on the latter: At the federal level, the cost of raising everyone’s incom…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Reuters reports on Tidjane Thiam’s recognition that inequality and underfunded education likely played roles in the Brexit vote’s outcome. And David Blanchflower rightly argues that the UK will need economic st…
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