Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ian Welsh discusses the connection between one’s view of human nature and one’s preferred social and economic policies – while noting that policies themselves serve to shape behaviour: The fact is this: incentives work. The second fact is this: using strong incentives is
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
This and that for your mid-week reading. – Erin Weir posts the statement of a 70-strong (and growing) list of Canadian economists opposed to austerity. Heather Mallick frames the latest Con budget as yet another example of their using personal cruelty as a governing philosophy, while the Star’s editorial board
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Cassidy offers ten options to reduce income inequality. And Andrew Coyne concurs with the first and most important suggestion that income supports sufficient to provide a stable living to everybody would make for the ideal solution. – Meanwhile, Frances Russell is the
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Cassidy makes the case to call the U.S.’ war on poverty a success – pointing out that there has been a meaningful reduction in poverty over the past 50 years connected almost entirely to government programs. But lest that be taken as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Broadbent comments on Parliament’s review of inequality in Canada: In a more encouraging vein, the majority report cautiously endorses some positive proposals. Given stated support from both of the opposition parties, these could, and should, move to the top of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot comments on the dangerous effect of agreements which place investors’ interests above those of governments and citizens: From the outset, the transatlantic partnership has been driven by corporations and their lobby groups, who boast of being able to “co-write” it.
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michael Den Tandt and Jonathan Kay both point out the willingness of conservative (and Conservative) supporters to brush off the obvious misdeeds of their political leaders. And Glen Pearson rightly concludes that the responsibility to elect deserving leaders ultimately lies with voters: We
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell finds that authoritarianism and bozo eruptions are two of the defining characteristics of right-wing politics in Canada: Put simply, the double standard states “ I can do it but you can’t because…” followed by a lengthy list of inequalities: because I’m
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Frances Russell discusses the dangers of Stephen Harper’s authoritarian democracy. And Michael Harris takes note of Harper’s decision to mete out career executions to his own Senate appointees based on exactly the same evidence he once declared to be fully exculpatory. – Dan
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Russell rightly asks whose freedom is supposed to be protected by free trade agreements such as CETA: Once Canada signs CETA (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) with Europe, federal, provincial and municipal governments will suddenly find their hands and feet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Glen Hodgson and Brenda Lafleur explain how Canada’s lower and middle classes alike have been left out of any economic growth as a result of increased inequality: We believe the more accurate interpretation is that after worsening in the 1980s and 1990s, income
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Today is of course voting day in Regina’s wastewater treatment plant referendum – and you can get voting information here. And Paul Dechene explains his personal Yes vote by pointing to the need for public control over our infrastructure, while Brian Webb highlights
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Assorted content to end your week. – There was never much doubt that the Cons’ demolition of Canada’s long-form census was intended to ensure that we lack data needed to develop evidence-based policies – and that the effects would be most significant among the most marginalized (or exclusive) groups. And
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell laments the state of Canada’s Potemkin Parliament (and the resulting harm the Cons are inflicting on our political system and our country alike): Poll after poll show a majority of Canadians regularly confuse their parliamentary system with the American presidential-congressional system.
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Assorted content to end your week. – Tim Harper writes that Stephen Harper’s “lone gunman” argument – already implausible in light of the number of Senators and staffers required to cover up the Clusterduff – is falling apart at the seams. But Gloria Galloway notes that the Senators can bail
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Bruce Livesey discusses how offshoring undermines government – and how it happens with the approval of those same governments claiming we can’t afford to provide for citizens: Today, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claims that offshore banks globally hide
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell discusses the inevitable collateral damage to our planet from the Cons’ war on science: Over the past 200 years, Canadians built on flood plains because “we thought we had relatively stable climate — the climate we experienced over the past century,”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee writes that there’s no magic involved in collecting fair tax rates from the rich – only a need for the political will to fund public priorities: Cutting the 50% top rate suggests no great enthusiasm for rigorous taxing. Last week’s ONS
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mike Fancie offers this year’s definitive response to the the misguided concept of “tax freedom”: The Fraser Institute’s math on income and taxation has been roundly criticized, including by a former Assistant Chief Statistician and by our Andrew Jackson for skewing numbers to make
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Russell makes the case for mandatory voting as an antidote to vote suppression: At first glance, entrenched opposition to mandatory voting in all the English-speaking democracies – Australia excepted – is puzzling. Given all the obligations of citizenship in a democracy
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