The PC Government in Ontario has introduced Bill 87 which would eliminate the rate-based borrowing to subsidize electricity prices and replace it with Government borrowing. Last week’s Provincial Budget estimates that the required borrowing to subsidize electricity prices for 2018/19 was $2.8 billion. It is likely to exceed $3 billion
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The Progressive Economics Forum: Low taxes are nothing to brag about
I’ve written an opinion piece that appears in today’s Regina Leader-Post. The piece argues that the Saskatchewan government shouldn’t brag about the province’s low-tax climate (which it recently did). Rather, I argue that taxes serve important functions. The link to the opinion piece is here.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot contrasts the message of neoliberalism as freedom against the reality that it imposes severe corporate control on anybody short of the billionaire class: (N)eoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms
Continue readingIn-Sights: Contractual obligations
Retired economist Erik Andersen presented a paper about contractual obligations to the legislative budget committee 2 years running and was met with stony silence from all MLA committee members.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Larry Elliott reports on Oxfam’s latest study on wealth inequality, showing that 26 extremely rich people now own as much as half of the world’s population. And Ronald Quaroni notes that half of Saskatchewan families are on the brink of insolvency –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Simon Ducatel discusses how wealth inequality is at the root of continued poverty and deprivation, while Charles Plante notes that anti-poverty strategies in Canada currently serve mostly to capture credit for existing policies rather than to guide the development of new ones.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jonathan Malesic writes that while millennials may be facing the worst of an economy set up to push workers into precarity, the workforce as a whole is dealing with high levels of burnout. And Jacques Marcoux and Katie Nicholson report on research showing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Gary Younge discusses how regardless of the outcome of the U.S.’ midterm elections, democracy is on the defensive against a Republican attack on voting rights. Janet Reitman goes into detail about the consequences of the U.S.’ law enforcement system failing to do
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
Book Review Adam Tooze. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. Viking. New York. 2018 The global economic crisis is now more than a decade old, and is far from definitively behind us. Indeed, many fear, with good reason, that the recent, uneven and lethargic global recovery
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rupert Neate reports on new research showing that the world’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by 20% in 2017 alone. – Pete Evans discusses the increasing debt facing most Canadians as ever more net wealth is diverted to the extremely privileged few. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Thom Hartmann writes about the billionaire-funded push toward outright fascism in the U.S. as a response to the growth of the middle class in the 20th century: (U)nregulated markets—particularly markets not regulated by significant taxation on predatory incomes—invariably lead to the opposite of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Charles Smith writes about the importance of a living wage as a matter of fairness and justice. But Stephanie Taylor reports on Regina City Council’s lamentable vote against ensuring that the people who make the city function are able to earn enough
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Skidelsky warns that having failed to learn crucial lessons from a 2008 economic crash caused by a reckless financial sector exploiting inequality and austerity for short-term profit, we may soon be doomed to more of the same. And Riley Griffin reports
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson comments on the need for a national anti-poverty strategy which can actually meet its intended purpose: [The new Poverty Reduction Strategy] responds to progressives and anti poverty activists who have long called for a federal government led, broadly based initiative
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman writes that progressive voices need to reclaim the theme of freedom as it becomes increasingly obvious how deprivation and precarity deprive people of meaningful choices: (L)arge economic players are dominating more and more of the economy. It’s increasingly clear, for example,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Gary Mason discusses how politicians are fiddling while our planet burns. And Jonathan Watts reports on the strongest sea ice in the Arctic breaking up for the first time in recorded history, as well as the likelihood that Arctic warming bears part
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frank Rich writes that the lack of a meaningful response to the 2008 financial crisis has understandably undermined public confidence in the U.S.’ future: Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Hugh MacKenzie comments on the continued need for an adult conversation about public revenue, including the importance of bringing in enough in taxes to fund the services which serve everybody’s best interests: The disconnect between public services and the taxes we pay to
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: An Analysis of Financial Flows in the Canadian Economy
An essential but perhaps overlooked way of looking at the economy is a sector financial balance approach. Pioneered by the late UK economist Wynne Godley, this approach starts with National Accounts data (called Financial Flow Accounts) for four broad sectors of the economy: households, corporations, government and non-residents. Here’s how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Callahan writes about the U.S.’ billionaire-dominated political system – and why nobody should be satisfied merely with having an ideologically-agreeable set of tycoons buying elections: Depending on your politics, you may either cheer or fear the influence spending of specific top
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