This and that for your Thursday reading. – Oxfam studies the spread of extreme inequality around the globe, as well as the policies needed to combat it: Oxfam’s decades of experience in the world’s poorest communities have taught us that poverty and inequality are not inevitable or accidental, but the
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Progressive Proselytizing: Government’s dominant role: redistributing wealth
The dominant effect of government on society is to redistribute wealth from the richer members of society to the poorer. One can support or oppose this idea, but as a simply descriptive point about what the effect of governments are, this is by far the dominant one. We live in
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Government’s dominant role: redistributing wealth
The dominant effect of government on society is to redistribute wealth from the richer members of society to the poorer. One can support or oppose this idea, but as a simply descriptive point about what the effect of governments are, this is by far the…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Government’s dominant role: redistributing wealth
The dominant effect of government on society is to redistribute wealth from the richer members of society to the poorer. One can support or oppose this idea, but as a simply descriptive point about what the effect of governments are, this is by far the dominant one. We live in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sarah Lazare reports on UNICEF’s research showing an appalling increase in child poverty in many of the world’s richest countries: “Many affluent countries have suffered a ‘great leap backwards’ in terms of household income, and the impact on children will have long-lasting repercussions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman look into the spread of wealth inequality in the U.S., and find that it may be worse than we already knew. And Paul Krugman discusses how toxic anti-government ideology is preventing the U.S. from both getting its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Erika Shaker points out how condescending attitudes toward public benefits are both making it unduly difficult to develop new programs which would benefit everybody, and threatening existing social safety net. Sean McElwee writes that inequality only figures to grow as an issue as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Tony Burman comments on the increasing recognition of the dangers of inequality even among corporate and financial elites: (I)t is significant that the policy debate among many decision-makers seems to be changing. Rather than the nonsense about “the makers versus the takers,”
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman writes that the ultra-wealthy’s contempt for anybody short of their own class is becoming more and more explicit around the globe – even when it comes to basic rights like the ability to vote: It’s always good when leaders tell the
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: On childcare in Ricochet
I forgot to post the piece I wrote on the NDP’s universal childcare proposal for Ricochet. Here it is belatedly. It was published last weekend and tries to situate the childcare proposal in the context of broader changes to the welfare state. Why the NDP’s childcare proposal has irritated all the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Thomas Frank reviews Zephyr Teachout’s Corruption in America, and finds there’s even more reason to worry about gross wealth buying power than we could identify before: We think of all the laws passed over the years to restrict money in politics —
Continue readingThings Are Good: Blog Action Day 2014: Examine Inequality
This year for Blog Action Day they are tackling inequality, which is great to see! Inequality manifests in various ways that aren’t alway obvious. By having so many global participants today it shows a diversity of thinking and approaches to providing solutions to this global problem. Be a part of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michal Rozworski responds to idealized views of Canadian equality with the reality that we fall well short of the Scandinavian model: Canada appears on many accounts much closer to the US than Sweden, the stand-in for a more robust social democratic and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Duncan Cameron discusses how Canada can respond to being stalled economically: In 2011 median earnings in Canada were $30,000. That means one-half of Canadian workers earned less than $30,000. What is more to the point is that earnings in 2011 were $1,800 below
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Is Canada the Sweden of anything?
There was an odd article last week on the explainer site Vox that argued Sweden doesn’t achieve its relative equality with very progressive, “soak the rich” taxation. While Matt Bruenig and Mike Konczal have already provided excellent, US-centred rebuttals to this argument, I thought this would be a good occasion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star points out what the Cons have destroyed – including public assets and program spending – in order to chip away at the federal deficit caused in the first place by their reckless tax slashing. And Thomas Walkom discusses how their latest
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses the radical difference between how Canadians want to see public resources used (based on the example set by governments elsewhere), and the determination of the Cons and their corporate allies to instead fritter away every dime of fiscal capacity the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ezra Klein discusses how a corporate focus on buybacks and dividends rather than actually investing capital leads to less opportunities for workers. Nora Loreto offers her take on precarious work in Canada. And Lynne Fernandez and Kirsten Bernas make the case for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Sean McElwee is the latest to highlight how only a privileged few benefit in either the short term or the long term from unequal economic growth: Milanovic and van der Weide decided to investigate how inequality affects growth across the income spectrum. They
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson takes a look at some dire predictions about the continued spread of inequality, and notes that we need to act now in order to reverse the trend. And UN Special Rapporteur Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona discusses how more progressive tax policies –
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