Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tom Parkin talks to Toby Sanger about the utter failure of corporate tax cuts to produce anything other than concentrated wealth and increased inequality. – Steven Greenhouse offers suggestions both as to how governments can level the playing field between workers and employers
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Nicholas Kristof writes about Donald Trump’s choice to put the most virulent anti-worker cronies imaginable in charge of U.S. labour policy. David Climenhaga weighs in on the UPC’s laughably biased committee charged with the task of driving down wages for service workers. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Richard Cannings comments on the need for governments to collect a fair share of revenue from wealthy individuals and corporations. And Erin Weir argues that Canada’s federal government shouldn’t subsidize Jason Kenney’s corporate tax giveaway with abatements on federal taxes. – Meanwhile, Paul
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Joel Connelly reports on a new B.C. study showing the breadth and depth of the effects of a climate breakdown. Reuters examines the threat of water bankruptcy looming over a quarter of the Earth’s population – including a substantial part of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ainslie Cruickshank reports on new polling showing that most Canadians support a transition to a clean energy economy even without having received much information about the path to get there. And Yvonne Hanson writes that a Green New Deal will only work if
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Kate Lyons points out the health effects of our climate breakdown, including childhood deaths and the stunting of growth. Pheobe Weston reports on research showing that new heat waves are pushing temperatures past what the human body can handle. And Matthew Yglesias
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – CBC News highlights how cost-of-living issues look to play a key role in Canada’s federal election. And Jerry-Lynn Scofield points out that current asset valuations and economic assumptions are based on an entirely unsustainable combination of public, private and corporate debt loads.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning LInks
This and that for your Sunday reading. – James Cairns discusses why socialism is seeing a resurgence in popularity, particularly among younger citizens who see little reason for hope in politics as usual: Occupy Wall Street popularized the language of the 99 per cent and the 1 per cent as
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Assorted content to end your week. – George Monbiot writes that the wealthiest few have responded to the rise of populism by funding their own killer clowns to assume power in place of anybody who might actually respond to the public interest. – And Chuck Collins calls for a 100%
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the dangers of accepting gross inequality based on the hope that billionaires will make up in charity what they fail to contribute in tax revenue: For the super-rich, giving is really taking. Taking power, that is, from the rest
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Erika Beauchesne discusses the benefits of a wealth tax as both a means of reducing inequality, and a source of revenue for public priorities: Canada’s NDP has proposed a one per cent tax on wealth over $20 million as part of its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Owen Jones offers a needed reminder that no matter how often it gets trotted out as a basis to ignore the ideological underpinnings of parties oriented toward the concentration of wealth and power, the concept of compassionate conservatism is nothing more than a
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Assorted content to end your week. – Mike Pearl discusses the climate despair of people understandably having difficulty working toward a longer term which is utterly neglected in our most important social decisions. But Macleans’ feature on climate change includes both Alanna Mitchell’s take on what a zero-emission future might
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Reich points out that the most significant political divide is the one between the wealthiest few and the rest of the population: In reality, the biggest divide in America today runs between oligarchy and democracy. When oligarchs fill the coffers of
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Canada: relatively equal in an unequal world
The world is a very unequal place. As can be seen graphically on the figure to the right. The world’s lowest ten per cent of income earners average $266 US per year, the highest 10 per cent average $89,703 US. The average wage in Canada is $51,000. Not only is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Susie Neilson discusses the growing health gap between the rich and the rest of the population in the U.S. And Ricardo Tranjan writes about the unfairness of an Employment Insurance system in which people with the most precarious work pay a higher
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress examines Statistics Canada’s latest research on the tens of billions of dollars in taxes being dodged by multinational corporations. And George Monbiot offers an inside look into the crushing power of billionaires once they sense a threat to their sources of wealth
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mark Rice-Oxley points out the observations of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Health as to the stress and mental illness caused by austerity. Robert Booth reports on the recognition that yet another round of giveaways to the rich and clawbacks from everybody
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Roberts writes about the developing recognition that we all bear responsibility for consumption emissions – though even better would be a focus on limiting emissions produced, consumed and exported alike. Daniel Masoliver examines some of the steps we can take as
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ten things to know about this year’s Alberta Alternative Budget
The Alberta Alternative Budget (AAB) is an annual exercise whose working group consists of researchers, economists, and members of civil society (full disclosure: I’m the Editor). Our general mandate is to create a progressive vision for Alberta to boost economic growth and reduce income inequality. This year’s document was released
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