Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman comments on the role of fear in boosting employers’ authority over workers: The fact is that employment generally involves a power relationship: you have a boss, who tells you what to do, and if you refuse, you may be fired. This
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman writes about the effect of a precarious labour market on even the relatively few workers who enjoy relatively secure employment: (T)hese are lousy times for the employed, too. Why? Because they have so little bargaining power. Leave or lose your
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Bill Moyers offers up a superb summary and reading list on inequality: Inequality in America: How bad is it? In 2011, Mother Jones published a series of charts capturing the depth of inequality in the US, which remains one of the best big-picture looks at the problem
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses the link between perpetually-increasing inequality and the loss of social trust: Unfortunately, however, trust is becoming yet another casualty of our country’s staggering inequality: As the gap between Americans widens, the bonds that hold society together weaken. So, too, as more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robert Reich laments the indecency of gross inequality (and the economic policies designed to exacerbate it): (F)or more than three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Broadbent comments on Parliament’s review of inequality in Canada: In a more encouraging vein, the majority report cautiously endorses some positive proposals. Given stated support from both of the opposition parties, these could, and should, move to the top of the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Beer Brings Bonus to Businesses
Something exciting is happening in Cleveland and it’s that beer is bringing a bountiful amount of success to a failing neighbourhood. Great Lakes Brewing Company (not to be confused with GLB in Toronto) is one of many brewers that are drawing people and jobs back into the core of Cleveland.
Continue readingIlluminated By Street Lamps: No Federal Childcare Program: An Exercise In Strengthening Hegemony
Canada, a nation among the wealthiest in the world, cannot meet its daycare needs. The problem has grown to crisis proportions in the country’s largest cities. In Toronto there are only enough daycare spaces for about one in five of the city’s children.[1] In downtown
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Bill Tieleman tears into James Moore for his callous disregard for child hunger, while PressProgress reminds us that plenty of the Cons’ policy choices reflect Moore’s complete lack of concern for his neighbours’ children. And Polly Toynbee looks in detail at the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Heather Mallick discusses what Canada stands to lose as Canada Post is made both more expensive and less functional. Ethan Cox suggests that what’s missing from Canada Post is a postal bank – which makes postal services elsewhere both more profitable, and more
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Conservatives Are Not Responsible
Conservatives are not responsible for your neighbour’s children. Your neighbour’s children will be paying off debts incurred by Conservative Ministers, however. Conservatives only feel responsible for your neighbour’s children when they street race, have sex, use drugs, or are bullied. Full bellies are definitely not their responsibility, unless it’s unsafe
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman highlights why inequality is indeed an issue which demands action – both for its own sake, and for its impact on other goals such as economic sustainability. And Bill Moyers discusses the difference between a government responsive to its people and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Thomas Walkom points to Ontario’s experience with Kellogg’s as yet another example of the dangers of basing economic policy on blind faith that handouts to big business will benefit workers and the general public: Like Kellogg, the auto companies justify their apparent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jim Stanford reminds us that even Statistics Canada’s already-galling numbers showing increased inequality in Canada understate the problem, as they fail to reflect capital gains (and the preferential tax treatment thereof): Yesterday’s release from Statistics Canada on the income share of the wealthy
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The rise of Bitcoin: and the challenge to the global domination of big money
The following article was written on October 25. I wanted to read it over once more before publishing it, then got busy with other things and forgot about it. In the roughly six weeks that have passed since the writing of this article, the Bitcoin prices have gone from roughly
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – In the course of grading Canada’s job market, Kayle Hatt traces the rise of precarious employment in both absolute and relative numbers – and notes that other countries haven’t seen the same type of move toward temporary employment encouraged by the Cons.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Grant Gordon rightly criticizes the “taxpayer” frame in discussing how public policy affects citizens: (T)here’s a difference between being smart with our money and just being cheap. Conservatives are fond of saying they wish government ran more like a business. Well, sometimes
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Why Poor People Make Bad Decisions
This piece from Linda Tirado – describes herexperience of what it is like to be poor and how that works into your life and your goals… go read the full article at Alternet.org. “I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that Canada needs far more investment in infrastructure – rather than the austerity that’s constantly being prescribed by the Cons: The fiscal policy choice we face is often miscast as one between austerity to deal with public debt and short-term
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Nick Cohen writes that the corporate sector is home to some of the most dangerous cult philosophy in the world: (T)he language of business has become ever more cultish. In the theory of “transformational leadership”, which dominates the business schools, the CEO is
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