This and that to start your year. – Ian Welsh comments on the challenges we face in trying to turn wealth increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few into a better world for everybody: The irony is that we have, again, produced a cornucopia. We have the potential to
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Alex Himelfarb and Jordan Himelfarb write about the growing appetite for stronger public services and the taxes needed to fund them in 2014 – even if we’re a long way from having that translated into real policy changes: Certainly tax phobia has framed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – David Foot and Daniel Stoffman discuss Thomas Piketty’s role in highlighting the need to work toward greater equality, while pointing out a few options to increase public revenues from people who can afford to pay them. And Ezra Klein interviews Paul Krugman about
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne discusses how we can bring about change in the new year by demanding that our political leaders recognize and use the power of collective action: Social justice requires a collective response and political action. It is at the root of wonderful
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses why politicians have thus far failed to take any meaningful action on climate change. But it’s also worth noting that the question of whether voters are pushing for change may not be the only determining factor in government decision-making. Most
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on this week’s confirmation from the Broadbent Institute that Canadians severely underestimate wealth inequality – as well as the strong popular support to reduce the wealth gap. For further reading…– The Norton/Ariely study of the views of Americans on wealth inequality is found here, and discussed further here, here
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Will Hutton compares the alternative goals of either shrinking government to the point where it does nothing or harnessing it to meet everybody’s basic needs, and explains why we should demand the latter: A financial crisis has been allowed to morph into a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee writes about the unfortunate agreement among the UK’s major parties not to talk about the real effects of gratuitous cuts for fear that the public won’t abide honesty in politics. And George Monbiot discusses how the UK’s tax system favours rents
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Assorted content to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes about the damage caused after decades of allowing the corporate elite to dictate economic policy – and notes that the Cons are determined to make matters all the worse: However you see it — as separate from society or integral
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jeremy Warren reports on the latest Canadians for Tax Fairness events working to ensure that Cameco and other megacorporations pay at least their fair share. And Sheila Block and Kaylie Tiessen point out that Ontario could do plenty to reduce its deficit by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Robert Reich discusses the right’s utter lack of – and aversion to – empathy as either a personal or political value. Bob Norman reports on a particularly galling example of that phenomenon, as Fort Lauderdale has begun arresting people for feeding the homeless.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tony Burman comments on the increasing recognition of the dangers of inequality even among corporate and financial elites: (I)t is significant that the policy debate among many decision-makers seems to be changing. Rather than the nonsense about “the makers versus the takers,”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Meesha Nehru reminds us of the importance of fair taxes (and tax authorities capable of ensuring they’re paid). And Fair Tax Mark notes that for the first time, a company on the U.K.’s main stock exchange has made the effort to be accredited
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star points out what the Cons have destroyed – including public assets and program spending – in order to chip away at the federal deficit caused in the first place by their reckless tax slashing. And Thomas Walkom discusses how their latest
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that public investment is needed as part of a healthy economy, particularly when it’s clear that the private sector isn’t going to put massive accumulated savings to use. Bob McDonald notes that we’d be far better off using public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ralph Surette suggests that Nova Scotia’s tax and regulatory review pay close attention to the fact that it can do more than simply slash both: Nova Scotia already has relatively low corporate taxes and lower than average taxes for the highest earners. Yet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – thwap nicely summarizes how we’ve allowed our economy to rely on (and feed into) the whims of a small group of insiders, rather than being harnessed for any sense of public good: (W)hat’s changed today is that the wealthy clearly have more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – David Leonhardt offers a revealing look at the relative priorities of wealthier and poorer regions of the U.S. And Patricia Cohen discusses the disproportionate effect of inequality and poverty on women: It’s at the lowest income levels that the burden on women stands
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Leo Panitch questions the “responsible capitalism” theme which is being used by Ed Miliband in lieu of a more significant alternative to unfettered market dogma: It is most unlikely that Miliband’s call for “responsible capitalism” will refresh genuine political debate let alone galvanise
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – John Millar writes that a determined effort to eliminate poverty would be a plus as a matter of mere public accounting (even without taking into account the improved lives of people avoiding the burden of poverty and income insecurity): According to many
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