This and that for your Thursday reading. – Patrick Kingsley points out how children are feeling the effects of the UK’s austerity, including by being driven into avoidable poverty. And Michelle Bellefontaine reports on the predictable damage to Edmonton’s schools even from the cuts being bandied about by Jason Kenney
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Skidelsky warns that having failed to learn crucial lessons from a 2008 economic crash caused by a reckless financial sector exploiting inequality and austerity for short-term profit, we may soon be doomed to more of the same. And Riley Griffin reports
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Emily Atkin offers a reminder that the people with the least stand to face the most severe costs of climate change. But lest we take that as a signal that there’s an irreconcilable gap between countries, Eric Levitz writes that even in
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman offers a reminder that the great global policy failure following the 2008 finance-driven crisis was to bail out bankers alone, while leaving people to fend for themselves in the face of subsequent austerity. And Wayne Swan highlights how the continued
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Finn discusses how employment and unemployment rates are among the economic indicators which are all too often misleadingly substituted for shared prosperity. And Russell Robinson points out how the Libs’ poverty strategy is at best a first step toward eliminating needless
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Brian Nolan examines the relationship between inequality and median incomes in developed countries, and concludes that there’s little basis to view inequality as an inevitable outcome of international forces: Globalisation and technological change are often portrayed as exogenous forces sweeping across the rich
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Value Creation vs Value Extraction in Today’s Economy
Book Review Mariana Mazzucato. The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. Allen Lane. 2018. The playwright Oscar Wilde quipped that a cynic is a person who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” As Mariana Mazzucato argues in her important and stimulating new
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Brett Scott pulls back the curtain on the cashless society, and notes that it (like so many “financial innovations”) is largely the result of banks seeking profits with no interest in how they harm people who don’t have money to burn: Financial institutions,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: An Analysis of Financial Flows in the Canadian Economy
An essential but perhaps overlooked way of looking at the economy is a sector financial balance approach. Pioneered by the late UK economist Wynne Godley, this approach starts with National Accounts data (called Financial Flow Accounts) for four broad sectors of the economy: households, corporations, government and non-residents. Here’s how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – James Galbraith reminds us of the danger extreme inequality poses to any social bonds – and the need for political action to counteract the current momentum toward further concentration of wealth: Controlling inequality—like controlling blood pressure—is good for your economic health. Economies with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Don Reisinger reports on Capgemini’s latest research into the continued concentration of wealth at the extreme top end. And James Galbraith comments on the instability which arises inevitably out of extreme inequality: Controlling inequality—like controlling blood pressure—is good for your economic health. Economies
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Assorted content to end your week. – Harry Leslie Smith reiterates his determination to make sure that new generations don’t face the poverty and deprivation that marked his childhood. And Beverly Gologorsky discusses the rise of extreme poverty in the U.S. and its lasting effects on its victims: In the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – CBC talks to Robert Frank about the role of luck and privilege in generating concentrated wealth. And Kate Bahn highlights the reality that collective action is needed to help level a playing field currently tilted to benefit those who already have the most.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Dru Oja Jay points out the connections between improved public services, decreased inequality and meaningful action to fight climate change. – Adam Corlett challenges spin from the UK Conservatives intended to mislead voters about the relative tax contributions of the wealthy as opposed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Alex Boutilier discusses the glaring gap between hype and reality when it comes to tech sector jobs. And Virgina Eubanks writes about the futility of expecting miracles from algorithms in allocating grossly insufficient funding for social programs. – Meanwhile, Dean Baker argues
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Scott Gilmore discusses how Canada is actually backsliding in some crucial development goals. And Colin Gordon writes about the inequality growing on multiple fronts around the globe. – Kathy Tomlinson uncovers a Vancouver real estate market rigged to benefit developers and speculators.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Martin Wolf reviews Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, including its distinction between value creation and value extraction. And Yvonne Roberts points out how millenial workers are being left with little but large debts as a result of inequality between classes and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robert Costanza reviews Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, and highlights its focus on attaching proper importance to priorities that aren’t reflected in prices: (T)he current mainstream ‘marginalist’ concept bases value on market exchanges: price, as revealed by the interaction of supply and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ann Pettifor discusses the trend toward financialization which has led to regular economic disasters – and suggests the public is well aware it’s getting left behind in the policy choices which have created it. – ScienceDaily takes note of the strong connection between
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Krugman writes that a transition to a clean energy economy is well within reach – as long as politicians don’t put the interests of oil money over our economic and environmental future. But Gordon Laxer notes that NAFTA already limits Canada’s
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