Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn’t provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits: Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital
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Writings of J. Todd Ring: Americans Now Primed for WWIII
(Gallup: Staggering 99 Percent of Americans See Iran’s Nuclear Program as ‘Threat’ Americans See Civilian Program as a Bigger Threat Than North Korea’s Actual Nukes by Jason Ditz, February 20, 2013) ”A grim new poll from Gallup shows an overwhelming majority of Americans, indeed 99 percent of them, believe
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Rising prices, falling wages, and the emerging economic trends: Currency wars, hyper-inflation, currency devaluation, and how to prepare for the coming storm
120% of the wealth created since the economic crisis began in 2007 has gone to the top 1% – meaning, the bottom 99% have fallen and have lost real income to the richest 1%. (Turn off “the news” and watch the Keiser Report for the real facts, or see Gerald
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your Family Day. – Gerald Caplan comments that it’s long past time to put the Senate out of its misery: Who knew that when well-known Canadians in 2011 begged old acquaintances now turned Conservative Senators to back a bill for cheap generic AIDS drugs for Africa,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellanous material for your Monday reading. – Will Hutton recognizes that an unregulated market can lead to disastrous results for everybody concerned – and that conversely, effective regulation can help to ensure the success of businesses which best meet the long-term needs of their workers and customers: What the Paterson
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Harris concludes that we’re currently stuck in a golden age for political falsehood and deceit: (T)here are problems with blotting out inconvenient truths with self-serving Newspeak. It’s catchier than a flu-bug in a pup tent. Quite a few pairs of pants are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Zoe Williams questions when being poor became grounds for deliberate discrimination and ritual public humiliation (h/t to Mound of Sound): What I cannot help noticing is a failure of normal human respect for the people at the bottom of the heap – Tuesday’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova offer up a framework for a more progressive and fairer tax system. – Andrew Hanon looks behind the Fraser Institute’s labour-bashing and finds that what it’s really criticizing is fair pay for women in the public sector.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Carol Goar discusses Canada’s broken fiscal stabilizers – as unemployment insurance and social programs intended to assure citizens of at least a reasonable standard of living have been cut to well below that level: Canada’s economic shock absorbers are badly worn. Employment insurance,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Yves Engler discusses the importance of a “social wage” – and how the minimum standard of living we’re prepared to tolerate affects the well-being of all kinds of workers: These attacks against the poor and unemployed should be opposed by anyone who
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Ian Lovett reports on the use of “capital appreciation bonds” in California to ensure that future generations pay an inflated price to private-sector developers for infrastructure today. – Justin Ling’s review of Joyce Murray’s message about electoral non-competition pacts is well worth a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – John Studzinski describes how a sense of social responsibility and a country-wide commitment to making jobs available have placed Germany in a better economic position than its European neighbours: Let me highlight some of the features unique to the Mittelstand model that
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Nobody Has Your Back Any Longer
If you have any faith in government you’re suffering from an affliction, a potentially dangerous malaise. Writing in this month’s Vanity Fair, Todd Purdom addresses the enormous changes underway, some of them quite possiblycivilization ending, none of which our leaders seem to take seriously. Purdom writes of his United States
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Democracy Has Been Hacked
In some circles the preferred term is “captured” but Al Gore chooses to argue that American democracy has been hacked by corporatism. Regardless of terminology, he’s right. And it’s a problem that’s not limited to the U.S. either. Offering a blunt assessment of the extent to which private companies influence
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday morning reading. – Sixth Estate is the latest to weigh in on Statistics Canada’s findings about inequality: Progressive taxes are based on the idea that the more money you earn, the more you spend on unnecessary luxuries. Poor people therefore have very low tax rates
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Saturday reading. – Hamida Ghafour writes about the effect of tax avoidance by the world’s wealthy on the lives of the rest of the population – particularly when coupled with austerity pushed based on a lack of revenue: The OECD is a fierce defender of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ray Grigg explains how Idle No More and other decentralized social movements may make for a crucial counterweight to the Harper Cons and their command-and-control philosophy: Systems are always bigger and more complex than the individuals who try to control them. So political
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Lawrence Martin questions the media’s obsession with fabricating stories out of imagined motivations and insignificant shifts in poll numbers: In the year before an election, the media’s heavy focus on tiny political twists and turns is understandable. Here in Canada, a federal campaign
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The CCPA looks at Statistics Canada’s latest income data and finds that inequality has been growing steadily across the country over the past few decades. The Canadian Labour Congress notes that corporate tax cuts have led to cash hoarding rather than increased
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Susan Delacourt comments on the role of robocalls in turning citizens away from politics – though it’s worth pointing out that the Cons may well see that as a desirable result to capitalize on a modest base of support: What may need more
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