This and that for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that public investment is needed as part of a healthy economy, particularly when it’s clear that the private sector isn’t going to put massive accumulated savings to use. Bob McDonald notes that we’d be far better off using public
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jordan Brennan examines the close links between strong organized labour and improved wages for all types of workers: U.S. scholars have found that higher rates of state-level unionization help reduce working poverty in unionized and non-unionized households and that the effects of unionization
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Eve-Lyne Couturier discusses the rot in the state of Canadian labour negotiations, as workers outside of the 1% are being systematically denied any of the benefit of economic growth. – Meanwhile, Dean Baker points out that it’s only by choice that the vast
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Restoring the Vox Populi
Some thoughts for this, Labour Day.The voice of the people. Oh, how long has it been since that really meant anything? In Canada and many other advanced countries, polls show that people are being governed without much if any regard to their views, their concerns. It’s sort of like standing,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Labour Day reading. – Andrew Jackson discusses the future of Canada’s labour movement, while Gil McGowan highlights the fact that unionization can be no less important in Alberta and other booming areas than elsewhere. And Jerry Dias notes that there are some reasons for celebration this
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Eric Reguly examines Apple as a prime example of how supposed market successes actually reflect the private capture of public investments – and suggests the public should benefit financially from its investments which facilitate corporate growth: Apple is such a runaway success that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ralph Surette suggests that Nova Scotia’s tax and regulatory review pay close attention to the fact that it can do more than simply slash both: Nova Scotia already has relatively low corporate taxes and lower than average taxes for the highest earners. Yet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Buchheit highlights how inequality continues to explode in the U.S. by comparing the relatively small amounts of money spent on even universal federal programs to the massive gifts handed to the wealthy. Christian Weller and Jackie Odum offer a U.S. economic
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – David Reevely writes about the stench of corporate corruption hanging over a privately-sponsored premiers’ conference. And Paul Willcocks nicely contrasts the professed belief by politicians that campaign contributions don’t unduly policy against the expectations of everybody else affected by the political system –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – thwap nicely summarizes how we’ve allowed our economy to rely on (and feed into) the whims of a small group of insiders, rather than being harnessed for any sense of public good: (W)hat’s changed today is that the wealthy clearly have more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Matthew Yglesias writes that while increased automation may not eliminate jobs altogether, it may go a long way toward making them more menial. And Jerry Dias recognizes that we won’t see better career opportunities emerge unless we make it a shared public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
This and that to start your weekend. – Robert Reich discusses how the increasing concentration of corporate wealth and power is undermining the U.S.’ democracy, while noting that there’s only one effective response: We entered a vicious cycle in which political power became more concentrated in monied interests that used
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – David Leonhardt offers a revealing look at the relative priorities of wealthier and poorer regions of the U.S. And Patricia Cohen discusses the disproportionate effect of inequality and poverty on women: It’s at the lowest income levels that the burden on women stands
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – John Abraham and Dana Nuccitelli discuss the worrisome spread of climate change denialism, particularly around the English-speaking developed world. But lest we accept the theory that declining public knowledge is independent of political choices, Margaret Munro reports that the Cons are suppressing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bert Olivier is the latest to weigh in on Paul Verhaeghe’s work showing that the obsessive pursuit of market fundamentalism harms our health in a myriad of ways: What does the neoliberal “organisation” of society amount to? As the title of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot discusses how a market-based society makes people unhealthy in a myriad of ways – and how it’s worth maintaining our innate reluctance to value everything and everybody around us solely in terms of dollar values: The market was meant to emancipate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: History repeating
Shorter Joe Oliver: Sure, we’re getting thoroughly lousy results after years of setting our economic policy based almost exclusively on corporate interests, with special privileges for the resource sector. But I’ve got an idea: what if we instead based our economic policy even more exclusively on corporate interests, with even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jack Peat argues for trickle-up economics to ensure that everybody shares in our common resources (while also encouraging economic development): Good capitalism is the ability to promote incentives and opportunity in equal measure. Sway too far one way and the potential of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Green looks at Quebec as a prime example of selective austerity – with tax cuts and other goodies for the wealthy considered sacrosanct, and well-connected insiders being paid substantial sums of public money to tell citizens they’ll have to make do
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Monica Potts responds to the big lie that increasing inequality and perpetual poverty are necessary – or indeed remotely beneficial – as elements of economic growth: Hanauer and Piketty inspire these broadsides because they are challenging, in a far more aggressive way than
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