This is just an off-the-cuff comment, but enduring a long wait in a crowded, infection-ridden emergency room just once should be enough to spur people into action – or at least into innovation. At the time of my first extended wait, I asked a nurse if I could just take
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Brian Bethune interviews Joseph Stiglitz about his longstanding recognition that an international economic system biased toward capital could lay the groundwork for Trump-style demagoguery. – Kristin Annable reports on the Manitoba PCs’ steps toward for-profit health care as an alternative to properly funding
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Larry Elliott suggests we shouldn’t be duped into thinking that policy biased in favour of the corporate sector is a necessity rather than a choice. And John Falzon notes that inequality too is the product of political decisions rather than an inevitability,
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS…and more!: Pill relief
I’m awaiting delivery of my next two weeks’ worth of medications with a major change in the blister packs. Gone will be Norvir, Prezista, Truvada and Nevirapine, all taken twice a day, and they’re being replaced with ONE pill, Genvoya, ONCE a day containing 4 new-to-me drugs in combination. What
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Gabriel Zucman discusses how the wealthy currently avoid paying their fair share of taxes – and how to stop them by properly attributing income and ensuring registers of wealth. And Micah White is optimistic that the public response to the Paradise Papers
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Wanda Wyporska writes that increasing inequality is the main factor behind public distrust and discontent with our politics: Rising inequality is not inevitable, it is largely a result of the political and economic decisions taken by governments. This is clear from the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andre Picard argues that Bernie Sanders’ trip to highlight Canada’s health care system shouldn’t be taken as an indication we lack plenty of room for improvement. And Margot Sanger-Katz writes that Sanders indeed learned lessons about the holes in our health coverage.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ashifa Kassam writes about the elements of Canada’s health care system which call for ambitious improvement rather than imitation: “I think privatisation is a major threat to public health care in Canada,” said Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition. Earlier this
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Richard Hill wonders whether neoliberalism is approaching its end, while noting the dangers of allowing progressive themes to be used to prop up elitist power structures. And Heather Boushey interviews Kimberly Clausing about the opportunity to raise revenue and reduce inequality by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Peter Whoriskey examines how inequality is becoming increasingly pronounced among U.S. seniors. And Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson discuss how inequality contributes to entrenching social divisions: The toll which inequality exacts from the vast majority of society is one of the most important limitations on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Michael Paarlberg discusses how the ratchet effect is making American health care far more durable than Republicans may have realized – while recognizing that there’s a lesson to be drawn for the design of other social programs as to the value of a
Continue readingwmtc: thoughts on the latest u.s. gun massacre
As part of my continuing efforts to post here rather than — or at least in addition to — Facebook, here are some thoughts on the latest horrific massacre in the US, the country music festival in Las Vegas. First, the inevitability of recurrence. When hearing about mass shootings in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Anushka Asthana, Jessica Elgot and Rowena Mason report on Jeremy Corbyn’s path as Labour leader – which include genuinely moving the UK’s political centre of gravity to the left while improving his party’s electoral prospects in the process. – Andrew Boozary and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Stephanie Blankenburg and Richard Kozul-Wright comment on the rise of rent-seeking as a driver of stagnation and inequality. And George Monbiot argues that we shouldn’t let our common wealth be used for the sole benefit of a privileged few: A true commons is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Naomi Klein examines how climate change has contributed to a summer of extreme weather disasters, while David Suzuki highlights how we can work with nature to respond to increased flooding. And Emily Atkin discusses the outsized damage 90 corporate behemoths have done to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On structural barriers
As the NDP’s federal leadership race approaches its conclusion, Tom Parkin has been doing some noteworthy writing on some of the issues which voters may want to keep in mind. And I’ll start with Parkin’s discussion as to how some of the systems which most deserve to be modeled may
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson write that equality of opportunity is an illusion if people don’t have the necessary equality of income to make meaningful plans: British social mobility is damaged by the UK’s high income inequality. Economists have argued that young people
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Noah Smith offers a reminder that market principles don’t work for everything. And Amelie Quesnel-Vallee and Miles Taylor note that in the health sector in particular, the use of private providers to supplement an underfunded public system is leading to inequitable disparities in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on Yvonne Boyer and Judith Bartlett’s report (PDF) on how Indigenous women were pushed toward tubal ligations within the Saskatoon Health Region – and how the now-departing Brad Wall bears responsibility to decide whether the system discrimination they identified will be dealt with. For further reading…– I’ve previously linked
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Paul Buchheit discusses the U.S.’ combination of increasing inequality, systematic tax evasion and false promises of social mobility. Michael Savage reports that even UK Cons are recognizing that a refusal to ensure that the rich pay their fair share makes for bad politics.
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