This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Woolley points out how the coronavirus pandemic is exposing the effects of decades of austerity on Canada’s health care system. Martin Regg Cohn discusses how the spread of the coronavirus is requiring us to seriously rethink how much of our society
Continue readingTag: frances woolley
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Andrew Jackson discusses a few of the choices the Trudeau Libs need to get right in order to actually set Canada on a more progressive fiscal path: Progressives who worry about growing income inequality will note two key features of the new government’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Greg Keenan exposes how corporations are demanding perpetually more from municipalities while refusing to contribute their fair share of taxes to fund the services needed by any community. And Sean McElwee points out how big-money donations are translating into a warped U.S.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Frances Woolley reminds us of some of the hidden advantages of the rich, and suggests that they point toward the fairness of taxing wealth in addition to consumption: The greatest freedom money offers is the freedom to walk away. Your bank doesn’t offer
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On youth outreach
David Akin claims that Canada’s political parties should ignore youth turnout in an election year and focus on older citizens who are more likely to vote. But it’s worth taking some time to examine the issue in a bit more detail. At the outset, I’d think there’s little doubt Canada’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Harvey Kaye discusses how the rich’s class warfare against everybody else has warped the U.S. politically and economically. And PressProgress observes that the Cons’ reactionary politics have produced miserable results for Canadian workers. – Which isn’t to say the Cons plan to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson link inequality and climate change as massive problems which are generated by political choices (and thus amenable to correction through the political system): Rising inequality is no more natural than global warming. And just as with global
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robin Sears offers his theory that the upcoming federal election could represent a meaningful referendum on competing visions for Canada – and Paul Wells seems to expect much the same. But while that might make for a useful statement of the actual consequences
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Woolley rightly challenges the conventional wisdom that there’s no such thing as a popular and efficient tax: Few taxes generate enthusiastic popular support, but some are more popular than others. Those are the ones that fill the red circle. The area labelled
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction – while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Sunday reading. – Daniel Kaufman notes that the EU is on the verge of implementing new standards for transparency in oil extraction – while recognizing that big oil has fought the effort every step of the way in an effort to keep its activities secret. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom highlights the lesson we should draw from the economic devastation caused by the shutdown of an Electro-Motive plant which was supposed to serve as a poster child for corporate giveaways: Using tax breaks to encourage domestic production is a standard prescription.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Alex Himelfarb nicely summarizes the price of austerity: Let me be clear that I share in the broad consensus that we must be fiscally prudent. But let’s pause on what fiscal prudence really means: It means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Glen Pearson follows up on the importance of organized labour – particularly as a desperately-needed counterweight to the pressures faced by public officials which may not be obvious to anybody less connected to the political scene: I often thought about this during
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Frances Woolley points out just how much more efficient public-sector health services are compared to private-sector alternatives by contrasting the cost of surgery on people with the far higher rates charged to priv…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading.- As I’d suspected, the Cons are making clear that the kind of behaviour that would get any mere civil servant fired on the spot will be treated as entirely unobjectionable in a parliamentary secretary like Bob De…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.
– Carol Goar asks whether the Harper Cons learned anything whatsoever from a recession which they first deemed impossible, then minimized before acting only under political duress:
We have less manoeuvring room today…