This and that for your Sunday reading. – Franklin Foer writes that young climate activists are right to be anxious about the future that’s being imposed on them – and that it’s long past time for earlier generations to stop being comfortable with leaving wreckage in our wake. – Bill
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Emily Stewart reports on Elizabeth Warren’s message about the need to end corruption and corporatism in order to make U.S. politics work for people. Martin Wolf writes that a rigged economic system is undermining the prospect of viable democracy. And Andrew MacLeod examines
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress digs into Statistics Canada’s findings about precarious work in Canada, highlighting the connection between temporary work and subpar pay and working conditions: According to a report by Statistics Canada, published Tuesday, the percentage of Canadian workers hired on temporary contracts increased from
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: "We’ve Run Out of Elections to Waste" – McKibben
Bill McKibben has a warning – “We’ve run out of elections to waste – this is the last chance to make a difference on climate change.” McKibben, of 350.org, has been waging a war against climate change and the political caste that ignores it since his first book was published
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ethan Cox reports on the massive public support in Canada for a wealth tax. David Hetherington writes that the wealthy few go out of their way to avoid any personal interaction with the realities of economic inequality – making it absurd to accept
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, pointing out how Drawdown‘s list of emission reductions which are possible based on peer-reviewed research into current technology (which received recent attention thanks to a CNN quiz and Vox update) only makes all the more clear the political divide on climate change. For further reading…– Bill McKibben highlights the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Derrick O’Keefe, Robert Hackett and Shane Gunster highlight how the TransMountain pipeline bailout and SNC-Lavalin scandal have cemented Justin Trudeau’s status as a Potemkin progressive just in time for voters to hold him to account. And PressProgress offers a reminder that the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robin Sears writes that it’s long past time for Canada’s wealthiest people and corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. And Leo Gerard points out how the U.S. has gone in exactly the wrong direction by slashing its corporate tax rates
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Chris Hedges points out how the obscenely rich few are trying to distract from their accumulation of wealth in order to avoid what would stand to be a massive public backlash. Emily Peck discusses the question of why our economic system is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Nick Charity reports on the observations of the UN’s envoy on poverty and human rights that callous and cruel austerian political choices have caused harm to millions of UK residents. – Tess Kalinowski reports on the reality that Doug Ford’s move to remove
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jovanka Beckles writes that the housing crisis in California – like those elsewhere – needs to be addressed through public investment in social housing rather than giveaways to private developers. – Sharon Riley discusses Alberta’s gigantic problem with unfunded oil production liabilities.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Judy Paul discusses how everybody benefits from the fight against inequality: Also of interest is the levels of trust and community life were stronger in more equal societies. There is more mixing of people from various socio-economic groups in more equal countries and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lambert Strether points out that standard estimates of income inequality (jarring though they are to begin with) tend to ignore the capital gains which accrue disproportionately to those who already have the most. – Scott Alexander makes the case for a basic income
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: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Andrew Jackson, Tavia Grant et al, Kate McInturff and Trish Hennessy each look at Statistics Canada’s new income data which shows worsening inequality and persistent poverty over the past decade. – Jordan Brennan offers a needed response to a Financial Accountability Office
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Bill McKibben highlights Justin Trudeau’s disingenuousness in pretending to care about climate change while insisting on exploiting enough fossil fuels to irreparably damage our planet. – Juliet Eilperin examines how Donald Trump is letting industry lobbyists trash any protections for U.S. workers.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jake Kivanc points out that what little job growth Canada can claim primarily involves precarious work. And Nora Loreto discusses the crucial link between labour and social change: (T)o confront climate change, we must imagine the role of workers in the transition
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Libs’ carbon price rollout managed to maximize the resulting sound and fury while signifying little actual progress. For further reading…– Marc Lee offered a reality check on the minimal effect of Justin Trudeau’s price announcement, with reference to Marc Jaccard’s study here (PDF). And Karri Munn-Venn
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dani Rodrik suggests that instead of engaging in extended hand-wringing over the collapse of public interest in corporate trade deals, we should instead be working on strengthening domestic social contracts: The frustrations of the middle and lower classes today are rooted in the
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.
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