Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Naomi Klein writes that Donald Trump’s cabinet represents a direct takeover of the U.S. government by the corporate oligarchy – and comments on what the progressive movement needs to do to fight back: Let us be clear: This is not a peaceful transition
Continue readingTag: inequality
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Rahul Kalvapalle reports on the latest Ipsos poll showing how younger Canadians expect to lead a worse life than the generations who went before them. – PressProgress examines how inequality has been burgeoning under Christy Clark’s B.C. Lib government. And Maimuna Majumder notes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bessma Momani writes that Donald Trump’s plan to leave the U.S. at the mercy of unregulated financial markets figures to cause another crisis comparable to – or worse than – that of 2008: Nearly 10 years ago, the U.S. financial industry was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Linda McQuaig discusses the hollow promise of “populist” billionaires who ultimately serve only to enrich themselves and their class. And Lana Payne writes about the growing protest movement which culminated in massive rallies around the world this weekend – as well as the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Liam Byrne argues that it’s long past time to reevaluate an economic framework which has produced only highly concentrated wealth for a lucky few at everybody else’s expense. And Graeme Wearden reports on Oxfam’s call to rein in both firm-level tax avoidance, and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Peter Goodman observes that any meaningful action to build a more equal economy needs to involve bolstering wages and workers’ rights – meaning that the elites-only musings in Davos miss the point entirely: Davos is — at least rhetorically — consumed with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Star argues that a crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance is a crucial first step in reining in inequality. Susan Delacourt wonders when, if ever, Chrystia Freeland’s apparent interest in inequality will show up in her role in government. And Vanmala Subramaniam
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tom Parkin points out that neither austerity nor isolationism offers any real solution to improve Canada’s fiscal and economic standing. And Rob Carrick highlights what should be the most worrisome form of debt – being the increased consumer debt taken on to allow
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On corruptible structures
Yes, there’s no doubt that Kevin O’Leary’s suggestion of selling off Senate appointments is nothing short of asinine. That’s not so much because the idea is inherently unconstitutional, but because of its substantive implications. The sale of Senate seats it would involve institutionalizing the worst aspects of the Senate’s historical
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Per Molander examines new research on the sources of inequality which concludes that massive gaps in wealth and income inevitably arise purely out of chance rather than any individual merit: Differences in income or assets that are based on differences in capabilities or
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jesse Ferreras reports that Canada’s supposed job growth has included almost nothing but part-time and precarious work. And Louis-Philippe Rochon points out how the influence of the financial sector has led to economic choices which serve nobody else’s interests: What makes governments
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, starting from the justified criticism of corporate-friendly “privatize the gains, socialize the losses” economic policy by noting that some genuinely socialized risks would represent a substantial improvement in equity. For further reading…– Again, Jared Bernstein discusses the shift in overall risks toward the people who can least handle them
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jared Bernstein highlights how a generation of public policy has systematically transferred risk from the wealthy who claim to bear it, to the general public which can’t afford to do so: Back in the late 2000s, two authors — the economics journalist Peter
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joachim Hubmer, Per Krusell and Anthony A. Smith, Jr. study the causes of wealth inequality in the U.S. and find one clear explanation for the stratification between the rich and the rest: There is one main finding: by far the most important
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Efficiently Grinding the Precariate – Scheduling Efficiencies – Weapons of Math Destruction
I’m currently reading a book called Weapons of Math Destruction, inside Cathy O’Neil details how ‘Big Data’ (via the use of opaque algorithms) is increasing inequality and threatening democracy in the industrialized world. About half-way done and the sad word of the day that I’ve learned from the book
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your year. – Michelle Chen writes that wealth inequality and social stratification are only getting worse in the U.S. And Edwin Rios and Dave Gilson chart the diverging fates of the top .01% which is seeing massive gains, and the rest of the U.S.’ population facing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Jared Bernstein argues that the limited stimulus provided by tax cuts for the rich is far from worth the overall costs of exacerbating inequality and damaging public revenues: I’m encountering progressives who are compelled to be at least somewhat supportive of wasteful, regressive
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Vincent Bevins interviews Branko Milanovic about the economic roots of the working-class revolt against neoliberalism, while pointing out that there’s nothing inevitable about globalization harming large numbers of people in the developed world: Let’s start with the obvious question. Does the elephant graph
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ben Tarnoff discusses the two winners – and the many losers – created by the spread of neoliberalism: Neoliberalism can mean many things, including an economic program, a political project, and a phase of capitalism dating from the 1970s. At its root,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Murray Dobbin highlights how our political and economic discussions are poorer for the dominance of neoliberalism: That’s it? That’s the best the economics profession can come up with to explain Canadians’ indebtedness catastrophe? It’s all about human behaviour, written in stone, so I
Continue reading