This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David MacDonald studies the increasing concentration of wealth in Canada, while noting the need for wealth-based taxes (and particularly an inheritance tax) to start building a more fair society. And Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley report on the Trump administration’s latest move
Continue readingTag: drug policy
Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Denise Balkissoon writes about the importance of ensuring a just transition for fossil fuel workers – rather than using their jobs as bargaining chips to preserve oil industry profits. And Andrea Olive, Emily Eaton and Randy Besco point out that there’s plenty
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Constant discusses a new study showing that the positive effects of minimum wage increases for low-income workers actually grow over time. And Sheila Block highlights how a $15 increased minimum wage stands to offer far more to workers than Doug Ford’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. -Tom Parkin laments the timidity of the Libs’ budget, while recognizing the opportunities it creates for the NDP: Over $7 billion in infrastructure investment, the cornerstone of the Liberals 2015 election appeal, was cut and pushed past the next election — despite the sorry
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ian Welsh neatly summarizes the rules needed to ensure that capitalism doesn’t drown out social good: Capitalism, as it works, destroys itself in a number of ways. For capitalism to work, it must be prevented from doing so: it must not be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Christopher Thompson highlights how the use of monetary policy to fuel economic growth rather than a progressive fiscal policy alternative has served largely to enrich the already-wealthy. Rachelle Younglai and Murat Yukselir report on Canada’s growing income gap, while Andrew Jackson points out
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Bruenig examines who is living in poverty in the U.S. – and how policy choices result in many people who can’t feasibly earn wages being stuck below the poverty line: (C)hildren, elderly, disabled people, and students make up around 70 percent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Phillip Inman discusses how austerity has proven to be an all-pain, no-gain proposition for the general public which is facing stagnant wages and higher consumer debt. – Pedro Nicolaci da Costa is duly skeptical of employer complaints about “skills gaps” which in fact
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Anatole Kaletsky discusses the gross failures of market fundamentalism. And William Easterly points out that the risks to democratic governance which now seem to be materializing can be traced to the lack of a values-based defence of empowering people to decide their own
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Choose your progressives
Choose your drug policy: harm reduction…#CdnPoli #HarmReduction “@VanAlias: #NDP2016 passed this. pic.twitter.com/D6nkKaTAi9″— Susan Gapka (@SusanGapka) April 9, 2016 …or harm retention.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frank Graves writes that we’re seeing the end of progress for all but the wealthiest few – and that we all stand to lose out if we come to believe that progress for the rest of us is impossible: There is a virtual
Continue readingCanada strikes out as a progressive nation
There was a time—long, long ago—when Canada had a reputation in the world as a progressive nation. Well … not so long ago actually. Only eight years in fact. It just seems like a long time. Now, in at least three areas we have joined the ranks of the reactionaries,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Michael McBane highlights one of the less-discussed changes in the Cons’ 2014 budget – as it officially eliminates the federal distribution of health care funding based on provincial need in favour of handing extra money to Alberta: The Harper government is eliminating
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The 1-2-3′s of EV market share in the US
My article on the 1-2-3′s of electric vehicle adoption in the U.S. went up on GreenCarReports on the weekend. The commentary went through a title change – a procedure familiar to many famous writers, and many more of us unknown mediocrities. 🙂 About fifteen years after a publisher’s first impression
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Alex Himelfarb and Jordan Himelfarb comment on Canada’s dangerously distorted conversation about public revenue and the purposes it can serve: As we argue in our new book, Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word, the Canadian tax conversation has become dangerously distorted. Any reasonable
Continue readingknitnut.net: Seamy Underbelly, Part II
Visiting the Downtown Eastside (DTES) has churned up some contradictions for me, and resolving those contradictions requires re-thinking some questions I thought I already knew the answers to: 1) To what extent do people choose to live in the DTES, and to what extent are they stuck there? 2) Does
Continue readingOlivia Chow as Toronto mayor?
God, weren’t we all thankful when we heard Rob Ford was finally given the boot? (Let’s hope it stays that way, anyway). Of course, before his appeal has even really begun, people (the media) have been speculating on his replacements. Many names hav…
Continue readingObama wins! Marijuana legalized?!?!
(On a quick side note, I’m going to start breaking up my posts into the different topics in the title, using red headings, as seen below – ‘Fiscal Cliff and American Political System’ – to make it easier for people to find what they really want…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Russell comments on how the Harper Cons are ready to impose exactly the kind of centralized and unresponsive decision-making they’ve long loathed – but only when it comes to favouring Alberta’s interests over B.C.’s real environmental concerns. But Michael Harris notes that
Continue readingknitnut.net: Safe injection sites: Treating people with addictions like they matter
Last October, the Supreme Court ruled that Insite, Vancouver’s safe injection site, could stay open despite the Harper Government’s objections. The arguments hinged on whether addiction was primarily a health issue or a crime issue. If it were a health matter it would fall under provincial jurisdiction; if it were
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