This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Krugman highlights the policy areas where we need to look to the public sector for leadership – including those such as health care and income security where we all have a strong interest in making sure that nobody’s left behind. And
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Lonnie Golden studies the harm done to workers by irregular schedules. And Matt Bruening comments on how Missouri, Kansas and other states are passing draconian restrictions on benefits by trying to get the middle class to envy the poor. – Meanwhile, Scott Santens
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – PressProgress documents how the Cons are driving Canada’s economy into the ditch. And Michael Babad reports that economists with a better grounding in reality than Stephen Harper are begging the provinces not to impose the austerity demanded by the Cons. – Kara
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress exposes the Cons’ utter detachment from the realities facing Canadian workers. And Kevin Page, Stephen Tapp and Gary Mason all expose their balanced-budget legislation as being at best a distraction tactic, and at worst an incentive for governments to do exactly what
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Jim Prentice’s Budget: The Not-So-Subtle Language of Money
“There is no fortress so strong that money cannot take it.” — Cicero On Mar 24, 2015 Jim Prentice sent Albertans a message of such heartless cynicism that only the most naïve amongst us would fail to understand. Money talks. Here’s what Jim Prentice’s Budget 2015* told Albertans. Corporations matter,
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Assorted content for your long weekend reading. – Jim Buchanan comments on the mountain of inequality looming over all of our political choices. Laurie Posner interviews Paul Gorski about the need for a vocabulary which accurately portrays inequality as the result of social conditions rather than merit or culture. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Margot Sanger-Katz writes about the connection between inequality and poor health. Nicolas Fitz reminds us that even people concerned about inequality may underestimate how serious it is. And BJ Siekierski asks what will happen to Canada’s economy in terms of both growth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On value assessments
The Great Budget Debate at the Progress Summit of course reflected a thorough clash in values. But there was one note of obvious agreement which makes the conservative position untenable once its implications are drawn out. All four speakers spent plenty of time talking about the fact that some investments
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the Saskatchewan Party’s choice to turn the graduate retention credit into a purely political goodie rather than a program which could conceivably retain Saskatchewan graduates, while at the same time devaluing the very concept of education for its own sake. For further reading…– The province’s explanation (such as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – In advance of this weekend’s Progress Summit, Robin Sears comments on the significance of the Broadbent Institute and other think tanks in shaping policy options: The Center for American Progress was the wakeup call for progressives around the world. Independent-minded, massively funded,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Danyaal Raza highlights how Canadians can treat an election year as an opportunity to discuss the a focus on social health with candidates and peers alike: Health providers are increasingly recognizing that while a robust health care system is an important part of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Stanford highlights the fact that a deficit obsession may have little to do with economic development – and calls out the B.C. Libs for pretending that the former is the same as the latter: I found especially objectionable the article’s uncritical cheerleading
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jacques Peretti discusses how corporate elites rewrote our social contract in a concerted effort to the inequality we’re fighting today – and suggests it’s well past time to push back in the name of moral economics: Politicians have now, as then, conspired in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Elizabeth Renzetti makes clear that we can’t count on one-time crowdsourcing to perform the same function as a social safety net: This is the problem with the wildly popular new online world of what you might call misery fundraising: It semi-solves one small
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Gregory Beatty reports on Saskatchewan’s options now that it can’t count on high oil prices to prop up the provincial budget. And Dennis Howlett writes about the need for a far more progressive tax system both as a matter of fairness, and as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress notes that the Cons’ economic track record is one of eliminating well-paying jobs in favour of lower-wage, more-precarious work. And Jim Stanford follows up on why we shouldn’t believe the Cons’ spin about deficits: I think that a more fruitful and principled
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jim Stanford reminds us that any drama as to whether Canada’s budget will be balanced this year is entirely of the Cons’ own making through pointless tax slashing: Running spending cuts since 2011 now total more than $14-billion a year. Canadians experience
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Kate McInturff and David Macdonald address the need for an adult discussion about how federal policies affect Canadian families. And Kevin Campbell writes about the importance of child care as a social investment. – Vincenzo Bove and Georgios Efthyvoulou study how public policy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the now-infamous story of Eric and Ilsa bears a disturbing resemblance to how Brad Wall has handled Saskatchewan’s finances. For further reading…– Again, the original Eric and Ilsa story is here, with Rob Carrick following up here. And the story was picked up (with appropriate criticism) here,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tasini at Daily Kos discusses the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy’s finding that every single U.S. state has a regressive tax structure in the taxes imposed at the state and local level. And John Cassidy examines the Center for American Progress’
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