This and that for your Thursday reading. – Duncan Exley points out that the UK has nothing to be proud of when it comes to income inequality. And Bill Curry reports on the Cons’ full awareness that the temporary foreign worker program was both taking jobs away from Canadian youth,
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Sam Pizzigati interviews Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett about the fight against inequality and the next piece of the puzzle to be put in place: [Pickett:]…In The Spirit Level, we have all these correlations between inequality and social problems, and we have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Mariana Mazzucato discusses how inequality and financialization have teamed up to create an economy with little upside and serious risks for most people: (W)hat should we do in 2015? Financial reform–aimed at bringing finance and the real economy together again–must thus critically first
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Alex Himelfarb and Jordan Himelfarb write about the growing appetite for stronger public services and the taxes needed to fund them in 2014 – even if we’re a long way from having that translated into real policy changes: Certainly tax phobia has framed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Kevin Page points out a few of the issues which should be on the table when Canada’s finance ministers meet next week: Our finance ministers are smart. They know that faster growth is going to require higher investment rates and sustainable public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – George Monbiot opines that curbing corporate power is the most fundamental political issue we need to address in order to make progress possible on any other front: Does this sometimes feel like a country under enemy occupation? Do you wonder why the demands
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Aditya Chakrabortty contrasts the myth of the free market against the reality that massive amounts of public money and other privileges are shoveled toward the corporate sector: Few conceits are more cherished by our political classes than the notion that this is a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The OECD reports on the relationship between equality and growth, and concludes that rising inequality is as toxic for economic development as it is for our social fabric. And David Rider discusses how increasing inequality is manifesting itself in several Toronto neighbourhoods.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Walden Bello discusses the need for our political system to include constant citizen engagement, not merely periodic elections to determine who will be responsible to implement the wishes of the elite: Even more than dictatorships, Western-style democracies are, we are forced to conclude,
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: In the Time of the "Official Truth" There’s No Room for Journalism
John Pilger looks at what the Western media offer up as journalism and sees instead propaganda. He sees the essence of the mainstream media as not information but power. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Manuel Perez-Rocha writes about the corrosive effect of allowing businesses to dictate public policy through trade agreements: (C)orporations are increasingly using investment and trade agreements — specifically, the investor-state dispute settlement provisions in them — to bring opportunistic cases in arbitral courts, circumventing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Monica Pohlmann interviews Armine Yalnizyan about the undue influence of our corporate overlords in setting public policy: What’s your sense of the state of our democracy? We have a troubled relationship with our democratic institutions. We need to get over the idea
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee writes about the unfortunate agreement among the UK’s major parties not to talk about the real effects of gratuitous cuts for fear that the public won’t abide honesty in politics. And George Monbiot discusses how the UK’s tax system favours rents
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Martin O’Neill and Rick Pearce interview Thomas Piketty about possible policy responses to growing inequality: [Martin O’Neill]…(D)o you think that the response to the increase in inequality might be one that explores the sorts of avenues that Meade opened up, and doesn’t
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes about the damage caused after decades of allowing the corporate elite to dictate economic policy – and notes that the Cons are determined to make matters all the worse: However you see it — as separate from society or integral
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Mark Gongloff takes a look at social mobility research from multiple countries, and finds that there’s every reason for concern that inheritance is far outweighing individual attributes in determining social status. And Left Futures notes that the problem may only get worse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jeremy Warren reports on the latest Canadians for Tax Fairness events working to ensure that Cameco and other megacorporations pay at least their fair share. And Sheila Block and Kaylie Tiessen point out that Ontario could do plenty to reduce its deficit by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood discusses the close connection between the energy sector and inequality in Canada – with the obvious implication that policies dedicated to unduly favouring the former will inevitably produce the latter: (T)he real story from last week’s Stats Can report isn’t that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Daniel Tencer reports on a couple of important recent warnings that Canada is in danger of following the U.S. down the path of extreme corporatism and inequality: Speaking at a fundraiser for the left-leaning Broadbent Institute, Reich said Canada is facing the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lynn Stuart Parramore writes about our increasingly traumatic social and political culture, along with the response which can help to overcome it: A 2012 study of hospital patients in Atlanta’s inner-city communities showed that rates of post-traumatic stress are now on par with those
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