Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Chris Walker discusses new research showing that over half of the increase in U.S. consumer prices over the past 6 months is pure corporate greedflation. And Michael Harris warns that Pierre Poilievre is planning to use discontent among Canadian voters as to a
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Cory Doctorow examines how private equity systematically loots both the pension funds which provide capital for its acquisitions, and the businesses which it purchases in order to extract transaction and management fees. And Nancy Fraser discusses how capitalism in any guise – not
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Alex Hemingway offers a reminder of the urgent need for a wealth tax – and the opportunity to fund important social priorities by implementing one. But Cory Doctorow points out how our economic system is structured to favour people seeking to get rich
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ed Yong discusses how we may have created a “pandemicine” era by fundamentally changing how viruses are able to mutate and spread. The Globe and Mail’s editorial board is rightly aghast that Canadian governments are doing nothing to respond to another approaching wave
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction highlights the fundamentally flawed evaluation of risk which is resulting in our suffering from far more disasters than necessary. But while recognizing the problems with misplaced optimism and obliviousness to danger, Talia Lavin discusses the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Eric Topol describes how COVID-19’s infectiousness has been steadily increasing with time even as so many governments have gone out of their way to declare it to be over, while Reuters reports on new research showing that the Omicron variant is no
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Nicola Davis writes about the large number of people getting reinfected with COVID in the UK, while Andrew Gregory reports on new research showing that vaccines offer protection to people who have had COVID before. Zak Vescera reports on the rising rate of
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Guest editorial: Homelessness in Canada
I’ve written the guest editorial for a special edition of the International Journal on Homelessness. The guest editorial provides a general overview of homelessness in Canada (and I believe it serves as a helpful stand-alone reading for practitioners, researchers, students and advocates). My guest editorial can be found here (in
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Minister of Housing’s Mandate Letter
On 16 December 2021, mandate letters for Canada’s federal ministers were made public. The letter for Canada’s Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion contains an important set of marching orders. I break it down in this ‘top 10’ blog post: https://nickfalvo.ca/the-minister-of-housings-mandate-letter/
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ed Yong writes about the damage to people’s health as care workers flee their jobs in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Kenyon Wallace and May Warren discuss how more infectious variants have made masks more important than ever as a form of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Institut economique Molinari studies how COVID Zero strategies have not only kept populations healthier, but helped to preserve higher levels of freedom than plans which instead allow for avoidable community transmission. And Andrew Conway-Harris et al. find (PDF) that air filtration is extremely
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Jenna Gettings et al. study the massive effect masking and improved ventilation have in reducing the spread of the coronavirus in elementary schools. But Sheila Wang reports on the outdated assumptions still being used to inform public health advice about COVID-19. And Michael
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rita Trichur writes that an attempt to boost the economy solely through monetary policy will predictably lead to even worse inequality – meaning it’s necessary for governments to instead intervene through fiscal policy to ensure that growth is shaped to be fair and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Angela Stewart interviews Malgorzata Gasperowicz about the potential for Alberta to eradicate COVID-19 with a seven-week shutdown, rather than letting new and more dangerous variants run rampant in the months before vaccines can be widely distributed. Jillian Horton observes that premiers who have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Damien Cave writes about the lessons Australia’s successful containment of COVID-19 offer to any other jurisdiction willing to listen and learn rather than recklessly endangering public health, while the Globe and Mail’s editorial board questions why Canada doesn’t fit that bill. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – George Monbiot writes that we shouldn’t let distractions about population divert our attention from the role the wealthiest and most privileged few have played in causing (and profiting from) our climate breakdown. – Kate Kelly writes that private capital is once again wringing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Sara Mojtehedzadeh reports on the severe uncertainty facing far too many as the CERB is set to wind down with nothing but vaporware to replace it. – John Paul Tasker reports on the Libs’ slow response to the obvious lack of personal protective
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Trudeau government should spend more on affordable housing and homelessness
On July 21, the Alternative Federal Budget Recovery Plan was released. The document aims to provide public policy direction to Canada’s federal government, in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. I was author of the Recovery Plan’s chapter on affordable housing and homelessness, which can be accessed here.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Macdonald notes that the federal government’s investments in the wake of COVID-19 have been necessary to keep intolerable burdens off of people who haven’t been able to bear them. Scotiabank weighs in (PDF) on the reality that the costs of inaction would
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: David Hulchanski class discussion
I recently participated in a panel discussion in David Hulchanski’s graduate-level social housing and homelessness course at the University of Toronto. Points raised in the blog post include the fact that all English-speaking countries of the OECD have relatively low levels of public social spending, relatively low levels of taxation,
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