Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Gillian White highlights Peter Temin’s work on poverty and inequality – including the standard which a person trapped in poverty needs to meet in order to have any meaningful hope of escaping: Temin then divides workers into groups that can trace their family
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ben Kentish reports on the Equality Trust’s research showing that the poorest 10% of the population in the UK actually pays a higher percentage of its income in taxes than the top 10%. Dominic Rushe, Ben Jacobs and Sabrina Siddiqui discuss how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Christian Cooper discusses how poverty is like a disease in its effect on a person’s mental and physical well-being. And Andre Picard highlights the reality that in order to address the damage done by centuries of systematic discrimination against Canada’s indigenous people, we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Krugman notes that after promising to bring some outside perspective to politics, Donald Trump is instead offering only a warmed-over version of the Republicans’ typical voodoo economics. And John Cassidy highlights how Trump’s plan appears to be nothing more than to wage
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Nick Bunker points out that the worst of the U.S.’ growing inequality since 2000 has come from the growing share of income going to capital concentrated in the .01%. And Lynn Parramore highlights Peter Temin’s case that the U.S. is regressing into
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Eva Schaherl offers her take on how to fight against climate change: Stop being distracted by the “Sad!” theatre of the Greatest Show on Earth across our southern border. In Canada our leadership debates should be focused on how to save the world’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Andrew Jackson discusses the problems with increased corporate concentration of wealth and power – including the need for a response that goes beyond competition policies. In the 1960s, institutional economists like John Kenneth Galbraith described a world of oligopoly in which a few
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, pointing out that the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (PDF) serves no useful purpose even on the terms of its advocates following the unveiling of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (PDF) – and asking whether we’ll see any action to eliminate its downsides. For further reading…– I’ve previously discussed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your long weekend reading. – Cole Stangler interviews Raquel Garrido about the political critique behind Jean-Luc Melenchon’s emerging presidential campaign – and it sounds equally applicable in Canada: One of the reasons why the current regime is lacking consent in French society is because the process for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jordan Brennan and Kaylie Tiessen write that it’s long past time to set a level of federal revenue sufficient to support the social programs Canadians want: In the decades since [corporate-driven] reforms were undertaken, Canada experienced a significant deterioration in its macroeconomic performance:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, expanding on this post about New Brunswick’s failed attempt to become a corporate tax haven – and why Brad Wall’s attempt at a similar scheme for Saskatchewan is similarly doomed. For further reading…– Again, the outline of Shawn Graham’s scheme to win over corporations as a tax haven is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dani Rodrik argues that it’s too late to try to compensate the people being deliberately left behind by trade deals – and that instead, we need to make sure their interests are actually taken into account in how trade is structured: Today’s consensus
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Abi Wilkinson writes about the importance of making social benefits universal in order to reflect a sense of shared interests and purpose: Universal aspects of the welfare state tend to be thought of as the fruit of common endeavour. The NHS tops
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: The race to nowhere
Following up on in the Saskatchewan Party’s budget plan to benefit the rich with tax cuts (with the explicit aim of making corporate taxes lower than any other province) while soaking everybody else, it’s worth offering a reminder what happened to the last Canadian province to try the exact same
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – In advance of this year’s Progress Summit, Ed Broadbent writes that burgeoning inequality threatens our democracy: Inequality matters. Promises must be kept. It’s not enough for our government to celebrate the diversity of our country but not enact policies that head off
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Mark Holmgren writes that there’s no reason why we should allow poverty to continue in a country which has plenty of wealth to reduce it, while Patrick Butler notes that the conservative view of poverty as being solely the result of personal
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On incentive programs
Let’s add a couple more points to Brad Wall’s attempt to hand out freebies to corporations in which he owns shares while the rest of Saskatchewan faces grinding austerity. First, the Saskatchewan Party’s spin (claiming there’s no conflict of interest under current rules) is based entirely on an opinion from
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ed Finn reminds us how the economy as a whole – including the private sector – suffers when austerity is inflicted on public services: The public and private sectors have become so interdependent that one cannot be attacked or diminished without hurting the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Your money, his pockets
So much for the theory that Brad Wall’s handouts to the oil sector would merely help his donors. Instead, the Saskatchewan Party’s plan to pay off oil barons would also serve to enrich Wall himself by paying the salaries of employees working for companies in which he owns shares. But
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Nick Falvo, Janice Chan and Chidom Otogwu point out that housing is just one of the areas where federal action is needed to reduce poverty and its social harms in Canada. And Falvo also reviews Greg Suttor’s “Still Renovating” as a worthwhile look
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