Assorted content to end your week. – Polly Toynbee looks at how the UK is now treating children in need as investment opportunities to be exploited by investors, rather than people to be assisted. And Mark Taliano writes that privatization is a problem rather than a solution when it comes
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – George Monbiot writes that contrary to the theory that wealth is a precondition to environmental standards, increased consumption tends to correlate to disregard for the our impact on the environment: For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, looking at one of Thomas Piketty’s findings about the self-propagation of wealth which has received relatively little attention – and pointing out how the a pattern of greater wealth grabbing higher returns can both be managed in order to reduce undue concentration of wealth, and even turned to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Doug Saunders interviews Thomas Piketty about the need for checks on the undue accumulation of capital, and the readily available means of achieving that end: To solve the problem of rising inequality, you propose small worldwide taxes on capital transfers and on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich calls out four fundamental lies used to push corporatist policies. But perhaps more interesting is the truth which no amount of concentrated wealth seems to be able to suppress: But the more interesting thing here is the memo’s concession of a hurdle
Continue readingIlluminated By Street Lamps: Temporary Foreign Workers: What Canada Must Do To Protect A Vulnerable Labour Class
By Joe Fantauzzi @jjfantauzziKey Findings and Recommendations:– Between 2003 and 2012, the number of temporary foreign workers admitted to Canada jumped from 102,932 to 213,573 — a difference of 107.5%.– Inquests are mandatory in Ontario when an on-the-job accident kills a worker employed at “a construction project, mining plant or mine, including
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – D.L. Tice writes that it’s becoming more and more difficult for the right to ignore the spread of income inequality – and the reality that only public policy, not faith in the market, can produce a more fair distribution of income. Which is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Crawford Kilian discusses the growing influence of Thomas Piketty’s observations about wealth inequality and the unfairness of a system which inherently perpetuates privilege: What I take away is this: We are playing in a rigged game. The deck has always been stacked
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joe Conason discusses the increasingly widespread recognition that inequality represents a barrier to growth. And Heidi Moore takes a look at Thomas Piketty’s place in making that point: This is a deep point. Many American households, if they are lucky, will grow their
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Brothers in Weyburn
Brothers restaurant owner in #Weyburn says he can't comment on TFW controversy due to employee privacy. #yqr #sask http://t.co/l6GwqSj5G5— Kim Smith (@KimSmithGlobal) April 22, 2014 Then this: #Weyburn restaurant releases statement: 'entirely their choice to reject our offer of employment…' #sask #yqr #TFWP http://t.co/Ioh4c0C5u9— Kim Smith (@KimSmithGlobal) April 23, 2014
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Duncan Cameron writes that Canada needs a new political direction rather than just a new government – and offers some worthwhile suggestions as to what that might include: The inter-generational bargain needs to be renewed. Today’s workers pay for their past studies
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Michael Harris writes that the Cons’ primary purpose while in power has been to hand further power and wealth to those who already have more than they know what to do with: These corporations and their political mouthpiece, the Republican Party, are Stephen
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Robert Kuttner discusses Karl Polanyi’s increasingly important critique of unregulated markets and corporatist states. Sarah Kendzior writes about the latest cycle of workers stuck in poverty who are striking back against a system designed to suppress their standard of living. And Michael Rozworski
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Ontario’s neoliberalism: Coercive, Intense
Do you ever wonder why policing budgets rise in Ontario when the crime rate falls? At Illuminated By Street Lamps, I argue Ontario has been, and remains, among the jurisdictions at the forefront of a business-friendly neoliberal agenda in Canada, despite rising structural unemployment, major challenges in the core manufacturing sector
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Ontario’s neoliberalism: Coercive, Intense
Do you ever wonder why policing budgets rise in Ontario when the crime rate falls? At Illuminated By Street Lamps, I argue Ontario has been, and remains, among the jurisdictions at the forefront of a business-friendly neoliberal agenda in Canada, despite rising structural unemployment, major challenges in the core manufacturing sector
Continue readingIlluminated By Street Lamps: Ontario: A leading jurisdiction for intense, coercive neoliberalism
By Joe Fantauzzi@jjfantauzzi Global capitalism has liberalized incrementally since the end of the Second World War. As the Keynesian welfare state fell out of favour in the late 1970s amid a stagnating economy and rising government spending, a new business-friendly approach dubbed neoliberalism (literally, “new liberalism”), emerged and ushered in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Angella MacEwen takes a look at the large numbers of unemployed and underemployed Canadians chasing a tiny number of available jobs. And Carol Goar calls out the Cons and the CFIB alike for preferring disposable foreign workers to Canadians who aren’t being offered
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Timothy Shenk discusses Thomas Piketty’s contribution to a critique of unfettered capitalism and gratuitous inequality: Seen from Piketty’s vantage point, thousands of feet above the rubble, the fragility of this moment becomes clear. Economic growth was a recent invention, major reductions to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Will Hutton writes about Thomas Piketty’s rebuttal to the false claim that inequality has to be encouraged in the name of development – and the reality that we have a public policy choice whether to privilege returns on capital or broad-based growth: It
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ezra Klein comments on the U.S.’ doom loop of oligarchy – as accumulated wealth is spent to buy policy intended to benefit nobody other than those who have already accumulated wealth: On Thursday, the House passed Paul Ryan’s 2015 budget. In order to get
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