This and that for your Sunday reading. – Paul Barratt discusses the results of a roundtable addressing inequality in Australia – with plenty of lessons worth keeping in mind elsewhere: …(I)nequality is increasing significantly in Australia and, without a change in public policy, the problem will continue to worsen. Australia’s
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Wednesday reading. – Matt Bruenig discusses the many opportunities available to expand the reach of public ownership in the U.S.: The state can very competently own retail and manufacturing companies by simply buying up their stock and acting like an institutional investor. For instance, a social
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jeffrey Sachs writes that the fight against climate breakdown demands a concerted solution to global problem – rather than political wrangling over whether anybody will accept any responsibility for desperately-needed change. And Adam Tooze points out the foreseeable political threats posed by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Anis Chowdhury highlights how industry-wide bargaining which avoids a race to the bottom on wages produces improved efficiency as well as a better standard of living for workers. But Christopher Ingraham discusses the choice of U.S. policymakers to instead pull the rug
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz examine the source of a labour market which is offering little to workers, and conclude the issue is less increased employer power than the systematic destruction of workers’ bargaining power: The biggest change in relative power between typical
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: The Day the Market Broke
It finally happened. Someone broke the free market and the NDP government has to fix it. Weird, eh? Albertans spent the last few weeks being whip-sawed between companies (Cenovus) who said the market was broken and companies (Imperial, Husky, Suncor) who said the market was just fine, thank you very
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephanie Kelton, Andres Bernal and Greg Carlock highlight how a Green New Deal is entirely affordable south of the border. And Clayton Thomas-Muller examines what we could demand in a Canadian equivalent: (I)f we’re going to do what the science says we need
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Larry Elliott reports on another of UK Labour’s proposals to democratize the economy, this time by giving consumers some say in executive pay. – Alex Paterson comments on the relationship between the housing market and the investments of many pension plans – though
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Alberta Lurching Forward – The No Tide Water Problem
We have too much oil in Alberta. “The province’s landlocked oil is selling for a massive discount. The world price is hovering around $55 US per barrel. The price Alberta gets is called the Western Canada Select price — and that’s worth about $12 per barrel. The gap is called
Continue readingSusan on the Soapbox: Albertans Aren’t Feeling the Love
Last week Ms Soapbox wrote an article for CBC in which she called out the hypocrisy of the energy industry and various conservatives who want the Alberta government to impose temporary industry-wide production cuts to prop up oil prices. Isn’t government meddling in the free market a big no-no?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Katrina Miller writes that Canada’s economic future lies in developing equitable and sustainable growth, not following the U.S. in its race to the bottom: There is a growing body of evidence that rising inequality is threatening every aspect of our collective well-being
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Alex Morris writes about the barriers between the U.S.’ working class and any hope of financial stability and security: In 1960, the annual average health care costs in America were just $146 per person; in 2016, that figure had risen to $10,348.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Tom Kibasi writes that the UK’s best option in light of its impending Brexit is to develop a more active and entrepreneurial state: So in a sense, Brexit changes everything and changes nothing: it exacerbates the UK longstanding problem with an investment
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Guardian’s editorial board writes that stagnating and even declining life expectancies and nother indications of declining social health are the result of purely political choices: In 2010 a government-commissioned review looking at the relationship between health and wealth – only the
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: 12 Years Left and Over $200B to Fund
We have less than 12 years left to kick the oil bums out. The oil bums have left us with hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities, while claiming our economy would fall apart without their borrowing of money to destroy our climate and air quality.
Continue readingThings Are Good: These CEOs Want Basic Income
Ontario Premier Doug Ford was elected earlier this year and already started implementing his plan to increase inequality in the province. Obviously, this is a bad a plan. One of the things Ford cancelled thus far was the basic income pilot program which was praised around the world, and before
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Moscrop discusses the need for a more meaningful definition of “progress” which doesn’t hand-wave away the long-term harms and risks created by the single-minded pursuit of immediate gains in top-end wealth. – Rajeev Syal reports that the UK Cons pushed through public-sector
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Barry Ritholtz comments on Donald Trump’s choice to model his budgetary policy on the combination of freebies for the rich and attacks on everybody else that produced nothing but misery in Kansas: Kansas has been a disaster, with giant budget shortfalls, service cuts,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Kate Aronoff interviews Mariana Mazzucato about The Value of Everything, including some important discussion about the relationship between governments and markets: Aronoff: You talk a lot about the power of the state in shaping markets. What does the idea that the government
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Wallace-Wells writes that even “genocide” may be too gentle a word for the consequences of a climate breakdown. Josh Gabbatiss discusses the insanity of approving – and even subsidizing – fracking and other means of exacerbating the climate crisis. And the
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