This and that for your Thursday reading. – David Macdonald comments on Statistics Canada’s latest wealth survey, with particular emphasis on the continued gap between a privileged few and the vast majority of Canadians: (T)he top 20% of families have twice as much wealth as the bottom 80% of families
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Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Robert Reich comments on the concerted effort by the U.S.’ rich to exacerbate inequality – and points out how it’s warped their worldview. And Dean Baker criticizes the spread of inequality by design: And then there is the financial sector where Mankiw tells
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Murray Dobbin points to the oil sector’s utter domination of Canada’s federal political scene. And Dr. Dawg sums up the problem: Briefly, the Harperium has now taken to grossly misusing the state apparatus to spy upon and intimidate citizens who dare to disagree
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Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford discusses how unions and collective bargaining improve the standard of living for everybody: The following figure illustrates the broad negative correlation between bargaining coverage and poverty: that is, the higher is bargaining coverage, the lower is relative poverty (and the more
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Leo Panitch reminds us that the term “reform” was once understood to represent efforts to bolster the public interest against unbridled market forces – and suggests it’s well past time to take the word back from the business interests who have turned
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Costas Lapavitsas discusses the disproportionate hold finance has over the global economy: Financialisation represents a historic and deep-seated transformation of mature capitalism. Big businesses have become “financialised” as they have ample profits to finance investment, rely less on banks for loans and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman comments on the role of fear in boosting employers’ authority over workers: The fact is that employment generally involves a power relationship: you have a boss, who tells you what to do, and if you refuse, you may be fired. This
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Assorted content to end your week. – Bob Hepburn writes that more Canadians approve of the idea of a guaranteed annual income than oppose it – even as the concept is all too frequently dismissed as politically unpalatable. And Stuart Trew points out that a majority of Canadians disagree with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – In the course of grading Canada’s job market, Kayle Hatt traces the rise of precarious employment in both absolute and relative numbers – and notes that other countries haven’t seen the same type of move toward temporary employment encouraged by the Cons.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that Canada needs far more investment in infrastructure – rather than the austerity that’s constantly being prescribed by the Cons: The fiscal policy choice we face is often miscast as one between austerity to deal with public debt and short-term
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Stephany Griffith-Jones points out the lack of any coherent argument against a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions – and the public support when political parties actually raise it for debate: Major financial sectors such as the United States, Hong Kong and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Taibbi discusses how public pension funds are being looted for the benefit of a few well-connected banksters: Hedge funds have good reason to want to keep their fees hidden: They’re insanely expensive. The typical fee structure for private hedge-fund management is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On questions of trust
I’ll give Deputy City Manager Brent Sjoberg credit for at least partially answering one of my long-standing questions about a privatized water treatment plant: namely, who’s going to be left with the job of making sure a private operator lives up to its promises? Q8. What are the contractual terms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Christopher Ragan writes about the lessons we should be drawing from the 2008 financial meltdown – as well as so many similar bubbles before it: Contrary to what many people seem to believe, financial crises like the one that began five years
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alison Bennett reports on the OECD’s work on offshore tax avoidance, highlighting the “stateless income” that’s shuffled around the globe so as to avoid contributing to social good anywhere: Policymakers around the world are stepping up efforts to tighten rules because a growing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Globe and Mail weighs in on the Lac-Mégantic tragedy by pointing out that we should be far more concerned about public safety than technical defences and excuses. Saskboy notes that as soon as a corporation’s business choices lead to a massive public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Scott Sinclair discusses how CETA could create extreme and unnecessary risk in Canada’s banking and financial system: The failure of a single company (such as Lehman Brothers in October 2008) or unchecked growth in markets for high-risk financial products (such as sub-prime
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Sadly (if perhaps unsurprisingly), the Trudeau Libs’ vote with the Harper Cons against civil rights has received relatively little notice compared to the two parties’ attack ad posturing. But there’s still plenty worth reading on the subject – including another post from pogge,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the CFIA’s inability to do anything about tainted horse meat exemplifies the problems with weak and under-resourced regulators. For further reading…– Again, Mary Ormsby’s original story is here. – Andrew Nikiforuk’s take on the appointment of oil lobbyist Gerald Protti to set up Alberta’s new regulatory system
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bill Curry reports on Jim Flaherty’s arbitrary choice to declare that Canadians can’t have any more CPP retirement security than the most callous provincial government in the country is willing to grant them. And Martin Regg Cohn rightly responds that our reaction
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