Yes, there’s no doubt that Kevin O’Leary’s suggestion of selling off Senate appointments is nothing short of asinine. That’s not so much because the idea is inherently unconstitutional, but because of its substantive implications. The sale of Senate seats it would involve institutionalizing the worst aspects of the Senate’s historical
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dean Baker discusses some of the myths about the effects of corporate globalization – with particular attention to how our current trade and immigration structures are designed to provide easy profits for capital at the expense of labour around the world. And Jason
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Alex Hemingway highlights the similarities between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump in pushing infrastructure plans designed primarily to turn the promise of public services into long-term corporate profit centres: But as I described recently in the Canadian context, these “partnerships” have proven
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Here, on how a change in government hasn’t done anything to slow the spread of Canada’s surveillance state – both in terms of intrusive new legislative proposals, and a continued determination to operate even outside the law. For further reading…– Again, Dave Seglins and Rachel Houlihan reported on the Cold
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jesse Ferreras reports that Canada’s supposed job growth has included almost nothing but part-time and precarious work. And Louis-Philippe Rochon points out how the influence of the financial sector has led to economic choices which serve nobody else’s interests: What makes governments
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Sean McElwee offers his take on the crucial failings which have led the U.S. Democrats to their current nadir in which principles and values have been discarded in the pursuit of power they’ve failed to secure. – Mike Konczal and Marshall Steinbaum highlight
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Colin Busby and Ramya Muthukumaran offer some suggestions as to how to ensure there’s an adequate social safety net to support people stuck with precarious work: Federal and provincial governments, acting in concert or independently, should reduce the uncertainties of a volatile labour
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Anis Chowdhury refutes the theory that top-heavy tax cuts have anything to do with economic development: Cross-country research has found no relationship between changes in top marginal tax rates and growth between 1960 and 2010. For example, during this period, the US
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jared Bernstein highlights how a generation of public policy has systematically transferred risk from the wealthy who claim to bear it, to the general public which can’t afford to do so: Back in the late 2000s, two authors — the economics journalist Peter
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Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Krugman offers a warning about Donald Trump’s immediate moves to normalize corruption and cronyism as the foundation of his administration. And the New York Times’ editorial board points out that corporations are enabling Trump’s false claims with the expectation that they’ll be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that to start your 2017. – Ideas examines how the assumptions underlying far too much economic theory have produced disastrous real-world results. And Harold Meyerson writes that research is proving that skeptics of corporate-driven free trade have been right all along. – Gary Younge writes that the rise
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your year. – Michelle Chen writes that wealth inequality and social stratification are only getting worse in the U.S. And Edwin Rios and Dave Gilson chart the diverging fates of the top .01% which is seeing massive gains, and the rest of the U.S.’ population facing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Sam Gindin discusses the future of labour organizing in the course of reviewing Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Guilded Age: (W)e have been struggling with how to combine building the union with raising larger, more political questions. One
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jonathan Chait sees Larry Kudlow’s claim that “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption!” as an all-too-accurate statement of the belief system underlying Donald Trump’s presidency: What has been exposed is not only the lie at the heart of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
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
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Vincent Bevins interviews Branko Milanovic about the economic roots of the working-class revolt against neoliberalism, while pointing out that there’s nothing inevitable about globalization harming large numbers of people in the developed world: Let’s start with the obvious question. Does the elephant graph
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ben Tarnoff discusses the two winners – and the many losers – created by the spread of neoliberalism: Neoliberalism can mean many things, including an economic program, a political project, and a phase of capitalism dating from the 1970s. At its root,
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Dani Rodrik writes that today’s brand of trade agreement has little to do with economic theory as opposed to political power: What purpose do trade agreements really serve? The answer would seem obvious: countries negotiate trade agreements to achieve freer trade. But
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Simon Enoch and Christine Saulnier examine how P3s are used to privilege corporate profits over the public interest: The CCPA has published numerous publications on the question of P3s because they have been so pervasive and so riddled with problems. There have
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
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