Posted below is my column from today’s Globe & Mail regarding this nefarious practice of providing “priority lanes” for higher-income customers — even (in the case of airport security screening) for a PUBLIC service that we all pay the same for! And if you wonder why you get so pissed
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Labour Day Links
Assorted content for your Labour Day reading. – The Star comments on the place of the union movement in the face of a determined push to silence workers: Given the challenges ahead, and all the ground that’s been lost so far, it remains to be seen if the new union
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Why Fair Taxation Is Crucial
Now here is something everyone who wants to be well-informed should watch. Part of TVO’s Big Ideas series, it is a talk entitled How Did Taxes Become a Bad Word? by Alex Himelfarb, Director of the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs at York University, former Clerk of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that to start your long weekend. – Antonia Zerbisias and Thomas Walkom both discuss the connection between organized labour and the very existence of a substantial middle class. And Janice Kennedy worries about the all-too-prevalent trend toward worker-bashing. – But Andrew Jackson nicely points out why attempts to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig highlights how attacks on workers are used to distract attention from the systematic transfer of wealth to those who need it least: As long as the right can keep workers envious and suspicious of each other, the focus won’t be on
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: North America’s North Koreans
When I see Tea Party rank and file interviewed on television I’m often struck by how thoroughly indoctrinated they are. They’re sort of the white bread equivalent of North Koreans only obviously much better fed. They’ve been taught things that they come to firmly believe and it seems they’re programmed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Pratap Chatterjee discusses our new age of robber barons – and how the wealthiest CEOs get out of paying any tax at all on massive sums of money: The Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington DC thinktank, says that a chunk of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Toby Sanger discusses how wealthy Canadians – especially in the financial sector – are making more and more use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share: The latest Statistics Canada figures show 24% of Canadian direct investment overseas in 2011
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Andrew Jackson thoroughly demolishes the argument that after three decades of wage stagnation and soaring corporate profits, Canada’s economy somehow needs to see workers suffer even more: The reality is that the pay of most workers has stagnated in real terms over the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – While a misleading “wealth equals health” headline seems to have been the main take-away from the CMA’s health polling, Iglika Ivanova frames the issue more accurately in pointing out that the non-wealth determinants of health are the areas where Canada has far
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: To address health inequalities, look beyond the role of individual responsibility
A new report by the Canadian Medical Association provides a timely reminder that money buys better health, even in a country with a universal public healthcare system. A poll commissioned by the CMA found a large and increasing gap between the health status of Canadians in lower income groups (household
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Moira Herbst is the latest to comment on the connection between the lack of good jobs and an excess of corporate cash hoarding: (I)t would be refreshing if the pundit-political class considered a radical but obvious idea: tapping the multitrillion-dollar stockpiles of corporate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jonathan Chait points out how the gap between the citizens hardest hit by a weak economy and a political class which faces virtually none of its effects explains the lack of urgency in dealing with mass unemployment: The political scientist Larry Bartels has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot discusses the effect of inegalitarian and austerian policies imposed by the UK Conservatives: (T)he neoliberal programme has closed down political choice. If the market, as the doctrine insists, is the only valid determinant of how societies evolve, and the market
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rick Salutin discusses the link between parity of wealth and democratic participation, while pointing out why there’s reason for people to engage much more in the latter (W)hy didn’t the majority ever vote to expropriate the rich and take all their stuff? Perhaps
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Lana Payne criticizes two forms of cash hoarding: both the assets sitting idle in corporate coffers, and the money that’s been funneled offshore by wealthy individuals: By the end of each episode (of “Hoarders”)…the audience finds out if the featured hoarders have been
Continue readingCanadian Progressive World: Statistics Canada: Crime rate reached its lowest level in 40 years in 2011
The evidence on the crime rate in Canada is out! Statistics Canada reported yesterday that rate of crimes reported to Canadian police forces across the country reached its lowest level last year. The incidents of serious crimes also dropped. By six per cent. That’s for most offences, including attempted murders,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Zach Carter shines a spotlight on the few types of interests who stand to gain from austerity: But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Joe Stiglitz discusses the link between increased inequality and the U.S.’ economic frailty: Any solution to today’s problems requires addressing the economy’s underlying weakness: a deficiency in aggregate demand. Firms won’t invest if there is no demand for their products. And one of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – The Guardian reports on the Tax Justice Network’s study on offshoring which finds tens of trillions of dollars to have been funneled to tax havens: Using the BIS’s measure of “offshore deposits” – cash held outside the depositor’s home country – and
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