Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Annie Lowrey highlights how low-income households are bearing the brunt of unequal inflation, as prices are increasing more quickly for their needs than for the luxuries bought by wealthier households. – Paul Krugman comments on the delicate sensibilities of billionaires who refuse to
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Accidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Stephen Mihm writes that among other positive outcomes, wealth taxes and other progressive tax options reliably produce a boost in life satisfaction for a large number of people (while having little impact on the positional interests of the ultra-rich against each other). And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the problems with the Saskatchewan Party’s mismanagement which deserve far more attention than Scott Moe’s attempts to pick fights with the federal government for show – including the need to plan for a future in which fossil fuel extraction won’t be the basis for a viable economy. For
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Can Trudeau Make a Future with Alberta?
Life is full of little surprises. Often pleasant ones. I encountered such a surprise this week reading the Calgary Herald, not a paper usually on my wave length. And yet here was this op-ed saying some of the most sensible things about Alberta’s aversion to anything Trudeau I’ve heard to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alexandra Zannis discusses the need to treat the end of poverty as a core policy goal. Peter Gilmer highlights how voters motivated by Christian ethics should be particularly focused on improving the condition of marginalized people. And Lynn Giesbrecht reports on Cindy Blackstock’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joao Medeiros writes about Mariana Mazzucato’s push to have governments use collective wealth and power for the common good. – Matt Elliott wonders why the Libs and Cons have nothing meaningful to say about housing or transit in an election where those
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Scott Schmidt highlights how the wealthy have seized any gains in economic growth over a period of decades. Michael Hobbes discusses the “glass floor” keeping the children of rich families from facing any risk of failure. And Crawford Kilian discusses Thomas Piketty’s observations
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Moscrop writes that the Libs’ choice to break the promise of electoral reform to instead lock in an unfair and unrepresentative electoral system fits with their pattern of action: What of the strategic questions? Do the Liberals regret their decision to
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Scapegoating the oil industry
I always admired that great philosopher Pogo. I still remember the picture of he and a friend looking out over their polluted swamp as he uttered those immortal words, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” No scapegoating. It was their swamp and they had messed it up.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Sometimes There Really Is A Conspiracy
Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell: names that are familiar to almost all of us. What we might be less familiar with is both the role they and about 16 other fossil fuel giants have played historically in ignoring the denying the climate crisis that has come to engulf the world.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins interviews Eugene McCarraher about the cultivation of capitalist greed as a new religion. And Annie Lowrey writes about the value of cancelling the concept of billionaires: (T)here are far more urgent reasons than poverty to get rid of billionaires and reverse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – In an excerpt from his new book, Martin Lukacs examines the disappointment Justin Trudeau has inflicted on anybody who thought his carefully-cultivated progressive image would be matched by action: Long before photographs of Trudeau partying in black-face and brown-face in his twenties
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jeff Spross discusses the effectiveness of a wealth tax both in generating revenue, and in reducing inequality. David Leonhardt notes that a wealth tax will actually boost the economy by putting to use assets which are otherwise idle (if not being used for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Suzanne Moore is encouraged that Greta Thunberg is challenging – and upsetting – a privileged male ruling class. Jennifer Ellen Good picks up on Thurberg’s theme that an obsession with growth at the expense of sustainability can only lead to disaster. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Martin Regg Cohn writes that Doug Ford’s brutal austerity against the people who most need social support has been based on entirely made-up numbers. And David Climenhaga points out that Alberta’s civil service has been shrinking over the past decade, showing that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Kerri Breen reports on the public’s understandable frustration with Canada’s political system. Don Martin offers a prime example as to why that’s justified, as Justin Trudeau has cynically concluded that it would be counterproductive to stand up for people facing religious discrimination
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: The ghost of Bible Bill Haunts us still
In the late ’30s and early ’40s Alberta’s premier was the colourful William Aberhart, known as “Bible Bill” for his bible studies classes and radio sermons. Founder of the Social Credit Party, Bible Bill introduced a variety of legislation during his term, some good, some not so much. An example
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Giri Savaraman and Jim Stanford point out the importance of a more collaborative and inclusive economy, even as Australia’s right-wing government pushes in the opposite direction: The problem has not been an absence of productivity growth: our productivity can always be improved, but
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Ed Whittingham seeks energy/environment middle ground
Alberta lives with two conflicting facts: first, humanity is faced with its greatest crisis ever—global warming—caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels; and second, humanity will have to rely on fossil fuels for the indefinite future and production of fossil fuels just happens to be Alberta’s major industry. The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Alex Hemingway writes about the need for Canada’s federal election to include a discussion about democratizing ownership and control of our economy. Nicole Aschoff notes that any discussion about industrial policy needs to include a serious analysis as to who benefits from economic
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