Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Simon Wren-Lewis nicely describes the austerity con (coming soon in extreme form to an Alberta near you): ‘Mediamacro’ is the term I use to describe macroeconomics as it is portrayed in the majority of the media. Mediamacro has a number of general features.
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Accidental 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: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Both Richard Bilton and Matthew Yglesias discuss Le Monde’s reporting on HSBC’s active participation in widespread tax evasion. And James Bloodworth rightly argues that we should see tax avoidance as socially unacceptable even if governments fail to do their job in ensuring
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Scott Santens links the themes of health and equality by suggesting that we treat a basic income as a needed vaccine against poverty and all its ill effects. – Erika Eichelberger and Dave Gilson highlight how U.S. corporations are siphoning money offshore
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – John Hood discusses how the privilege of the political class makes it difficult for elected representatives to understand, let alone address, the problems of the precariat. And Lawrence Mishel and Will Kimball document the continued connection between the erosion of unions and income
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: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Elizabeth Stoker Bruening discusses the effect of poverty at the family level, particularly when coupled with policies designed to force workers to chase jobs far away from home and family: If you want to see the right-wing denuded of its usual bluster
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Mason discusses the effect a guaranteed annual income could have on individuals’ choices about labour and employment: A true, subsistence level basic income would close to double [existing social spending in the UK]. But it is imaginable, in the short to medium
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: 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: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Will Hutton writes about the connection between inequality and the loss of any moral or social purpose in public life: Britain is beset by a crisis of purpose. We don’t know who we are any longer, where we are going or even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Larry Elliott writes that at least some business leaders are paying lip service to the idea that inequality needs to be reined in. But Alec Hogg points out that at least some of the privileged few are using their obscene wealth to remove
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – Nicholas Kristof writes about the empathy gap which causes far too many wealthier citizens to devalue those who don’t have as much. Jesse Singal observes that the primary effect of wealth on well-being is to reduce downside rather than improve happiness – signalling
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne writes that by finally recognizing the unfairness and ineffectiveness of Alberta’s regressive tax system, Jim Prentice may be starting a needed national debate: Alberta Premier Jim Prentice talks up taxes for individuals including a sales tax (Alberta is the only province
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Crawford Kilian writes that growing inequality has been largely the product of deliberate engineering rather than any natural process, while Paul Krugman focuses on the preferential treatment of capital income in particular. And Simon Barrow discusses the sources and beneficiaries of the increasing
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: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell writes that NAFTA and subsequent trade agreements are designed to make it difficult for democratic governments to exercise any meaningful authority. And Rowena Mason discusses how the EU-US TTIP is particularly directed toward throwing the public to corporate wolves, while Glyn
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Rosenberg writes about the high-priced effort to undermine public institutions and the collective good in the U.S. And Paul Krugman highlights how the Republicans’ stubborn belief in the impossibly of good government (regardless of large amounts of evidence that such a thing
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’
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Oliver Milman reports on research showing how humanity is destroying its own environmental life support systems. And our appetite for exploitation is proving a failure even from the standpoint of the pursuit of shortsighted greed, as David Dayen considers how the recent drop
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