Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Meghna Charkabarti interviews Branko Milanovic about the destructive amount of inequality embedded in capitalism as it’s currently structured. Connor Kilpatrick and Bhaskar Sunkara argue that the corporate class has only tolerated an acceptable distribution of income and wealth when it’s been accompanied by
Continue readingTag: economy
Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Lily Patchelder and David Kamin study the policy options available to increase public revenue by focusing on the wealthy, and find that there are multiple viable options: The U.S. will need to raise more revenues in order to reduce these disparities, finance
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Taylor Scallon discusses how GDP numbers fail to capture the precarious circumstances facing far too many Canadians. Kerri Breen reports on Ipsos’ polling showing a majority of Canadians seeing the political system as being rigged in favour of a privileged few. But in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Derrick O’Keefe highlights how Canada’s election would look if coverage focused on the issues which feature strong public support, rather than the two painfully unappealing perceived front-runners who ignore them: (T)he Ipsos poll results released Thursday…show an enormous potential for class-based demands
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Giri Savaraman and Jim Stanford point out the importance of a more collaborative and inclusive economy, even as Australia’s right-wing government pushes in the opposite direction: The problem has not been an absence of productivity growth: our productivity can always be improved, but
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ian Welsh discusses the reality as to how economic decisions are made – and how we’ve allowed corporate control to remain in place even after it’s failed even on its own terms: All systems have to do only one thing: whatever is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Lazarus writes about the fundamental dishonesty needed to keep purveying trickle-down spin in the face of all evidence. And Richard Rubin discusses how U.S. Democrats are having a serious discussion about the merits of progressive income and wealth taxes – even
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Liaquat Ahamed writes about the pattern of wealth concentrating in the absence of a countervailing force – and the need for a political response. Linda McQuaig discusses how the media largely ignores the eminently popular prospect of raising taxes on the people
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Evening Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Binyamin Appelbaum discusses the folly of having turned economic decision-making over to people who somehow saw income inequality and the concentration of wealth as desirable ends. And Geoff Zochodne points out that Canada has been suffering from the “American disease” of having corporate
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Mr Kenney’s Announcements on TMX and KXL
This just in from the how-to-make-a-good-news-story-sound-bad department: Mr Kenney’s government issued two press releases this week, one about the restart of construction of the TMX pipeline project, the other about the favourable ruling of the Nebraska Supreme Court on Keystone XL. Both of these announcements are about a good result
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Montana’s Railway Canaries – The US Trade War With China
George Ochenski writes in Counterpunch on the US Trade War: “Those who have lived in Montana will well remember the hot controversy over the miles and miles of sidelined rail cars that appeared during the Great Recession a decade ago. They were stored by the thousands along unused rural tracks.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Alex Hemingway writes about the need for Canada’s federal election to include a discussion about democratizing ownership and control of our economy. Nicole Aschoff notes that any discussion about industrial policy needs to include a serious analysis as to who benefits from economic
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Recycling – The NIMBY Effect
Recycling isn’t really working. But was it working in the first place? When we in the Northern Hemisphere were shipping our garbage to China, they were just tossing most of it into a landfill or into the sea. Seems like a less than optimal solution to me. We kept the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Noah Smith comments that while we shouldn’t necessarily try to adjust GDP for other necessary elements of individual and social well-being, we should avoid treating it as a catch-all measure in assessing policy choices: GDP does have plenty of flaws, even as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – CBC News highlights how cost-of-living issues look to play a key role in Canada’s federal election. And Jerry-Lynn Scofield points out that current asset valuations and economic assumptions are based on an entirely unsustainable combination of public, private and corporate debt loads.
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Does Political Democracy flow From Economic Democracy?
Could this be a method to work within the system to change the system? This snippet from a Counterpunch article by Rob Urie is interesting because its hard to argue against the notion that sharing economic power *wouldn’t* be a benefit for a democratic society. Push-back for lightyears from those
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Osita Nwanevu describes the higher-brow forms of bigotry and wilful ignorance being pushed by U.S. Republicans for upper-class audiences. And Kate Aronoff discusses the racial undertones of yet another wave of red-baiting. – Meanwhile, David Climenhaga highlights how Canadian right-wing governments are
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Trump’s “Go Home” Tweet
Ms Soapbox found herself organizing the sock drawer this morning. She blames this burst of domesticity on Donald Trump. She’ll explain how this ties back to Alberta politics in a moment, but first a quick recap of the most recent Trump blowout. The Tweet Last week Mr Trump tweeted
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Cédric Durand and Razmig Keucheyan highlight the return of economic planning as a widely-recognized public policy option – while pointing out the need for our democratic systems to allow for public direction of the planning process. And Lauren Townsend writes about the importance
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Cowboys and Politicians
It’s the last day of the Calgary Stampede. It’s also the last day for politicians to dress up as cowboys for one last photo-op before getting back to business of politics. The issue we have with this photo isn’t that these men aren’t real cowboys but that they’re not
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