Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star’s editorial board calls for a reworking of Canada’s tax system to make sure businesses pay their fair share: The tax bills of most big companies have declined significantly both as a proportion of their profits and as a proportion of Ottawa’s
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Maia Szalavitz writes that the atmosphere of competition and status signalling which prevails in unequal societies is directly connected to increased homicide rates: While on the surface, the disputes that triggered these deaths seem trivial – each involved apparently small disagreements and a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Rick Salutin writes that Ontario’s provincial election shows that nobody is prepared to defend neoliberal ideas on their merits – which should provide an opening to start challenging them in practice. And Alice Ollstein examines how Donald Trump’s corporate giveaway looks like an
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz writes about the need to learn from past mistakes in order to build a sustainable economy for the future: To someone like me, who has watched trade negotiations closely for more than a quarter-century, it is clear that US trade
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes that corporate power is the greatest threat to our health and well-being – and reminds us that government focused on the public interest is a necessary counterweight: The revelations of the Paradise Papers, the earlier Panama Papers and numerous articles
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s newly-unveiled National Housing Strategy
Over at the website of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’ve written a blog post about the Trudeau government’s recently-unveiled National Housing Strategy. Points raised in the post include the following: -One of the Strategy’s stated objectives is to reduce chronic homelessness in Canada by 50% over 10 years. -The Trudeau
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ten considerations for the next Alberta budget
On November 17, the working group of the Alberta Alternative Budget (AAB) sponsored a one-day workshop at the University of Alberta. The event’s main purpose was to discuss recent developments in Alberta public policy, as well as expectations for the upcoming Alberta budget. Twenty speakers presented in total. In light
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Gimme shelter: is Core Housing Need a useful measure?
For a new CCPA blog post on housing (un)affordability, I dove into the latest Census data for Metro Vancouver. I used two series on shelter cost and shelter-to-income ratio, and found that 32% of households were paying more than 30% of income on shelter (all households, owners and renters) and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Larry Elliott interviews Joseph Stiglitz about the rise of Donald Trump and other demagogues in the wake of public anger over inequality and economic unfairness. And Stiglitz also joins a group of economists calling for an end to austerity in the UK. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Laurie MacFarlane points out how increases in land values have resulted in massive and unearned disparities in wealth. – Kevin Page, Claudette Bradshaw, Geoff Nelson and Tim Aubrey write that a national housing strategy needs to focus on the availability of both affordable
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Canadians for Tax Fairness discusses the appallingly small tax contributions made by Canada’s largest companies, the vast majority of whom have foreign subsidiaries to avoid paying their fair share. – Meanwhile, Robert de Vries and Aaron Reeves point out the unfortunate reality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Rupert Neate reports on a new Credit Suisse study showing that the 1% owns half of the world’s wealth. And Heather Long notes that hundreds of U.S. millionaires are pushing not to have their taxes cut when it will only serve to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Abacus Data has polled the Canadian public on climate change, and found far more appetite for meaningful action than we generally hear from the political class (and particularly right-wing parties): Twenty years ago, when the world’s leaders were debating the Kyoto Accord,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Why Toronto needs a national housing strategy
Dr. Colin Phillips is an up-and-coming scholar in Canada’s homelessness sector. He has an opinion piece in today’s Toronto Star titled “Why Toronto needs a national housing strategy.” Points made in the opinion piece include the following: -The City of Toronto has worked hard to develop good practices on the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jonathan Ostry comments on the emerging recognition that inequality represents a barrier to economic development: I argue that greater attention should be paid to the consequences that economic policies have for income distribution (inequality). The reasons are four-fold. First, excessive levels of
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: New column day
Here, on the growing gap between the Trudeau Libs’ “middle class” messaging and the self-perception of a growing working class in Canada. For further reading…– Ekos’ polling is discussed here, with detailed tables here (PDF).– The Libs’ 2015 platform is again here (PDF). And again, PressProgress discussed Bill Morneau’s message
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Stephanie Levitz reports on new polling showing an increasing number of Canadians self-identifying as part of the working class or poor, while also seeing little room for optimism about their futures. And Jared Bernstein offers his analysis as to why wages are remaining
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Christopher Thompson highlights how the use of monetary policy to fuel economic growth rather than a progressive fiscal policy alternative has served largely to enrich the already-wealthy. Rachelle Younglai and Murat Yukselir report on Canada’s growing income gap, while Andrew Jackson points out
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Reuters examines how well-being improves when people live in urban areas rather than suburban ones. But Tannara Yelland reminds us that we can’t pretend for a second that people will have the opportunity to do so when there’s more immediate money to
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