This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mark Taliano discusses how corporatocracy is replacing democracy in Canada, while Jaisal Noor talks to John Weeks about the similar trend in the U.S. And DownWithTyranny reminds us how corporations came to be – and how radical a difference there is between
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lynn Stuart Parramore offers five convincing pieces of evidence to suggest that the U.S.’ plutocrats are losing their minds in their effort to set themselves apart from the rabble. Kevin Roose tells a story about some awful, awful (and disturbingly wealthy and powerful)
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Stench of Fear
The smell of fear is real. It’s detectable. It is said that higher predators can detect it and it triggers them to attack. Even if they can’t smell it, they can surely read it in how we behave. You encounter a cougar, turn and run, that cougar will be coming for you.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ian Welsh writes about the concentration of wealth and economic control: Money is permission: you can’t do squat in a market economy without it. Those who can create it, or who have excessive profits, control what other people can do. It is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Robert Reich writes about the basic economic lessons the U.S. has forgotten since its postwar boom: First, America’s real job creators are consumers, whose rising wages generate jobs and growth. If average people don’t have decent wages there can be no real recovery
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Robert Reich comments on the concerted effort by the U.S.’ rich to exacerbate inequality – and points out how it’s warped their worldview. And Dean Baker criticizes the spread of inequality by design: And then there is the financial sector where Mankiw tells
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Alternative Federal Budget would lift 855,000 Canadians out of poverty: Think Tank
by: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives | Press Release CCPA Alternative Budget 2014 OTTAWA — The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) warns a so-called “do-nothing” federal budget is anything but, and is likely to worsen Canada’s slowing economy. The CCPA’s 2014 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) shows what the federal government could do
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Income Splitting Déjà Vu
This blog’s unofficial slogan has been “Tomorrow’s conventional wisdom, today.” After this week’s Conservative backpedaling on income splitting, we may need to change it to “Today’s conventional wisdom, seven years ago.” Or we could just stick with “You read it here first.” My first-ever blog post, Income Splitting Redux, argued that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford discusses how unions and collective bargaining improve the standard of living for everybody: The following figure illustrates the broad negative correlation between bargaining coverage and poverty: that is, the higher is bargaining coverage, the lower is relative poverty (and the more
Continue readingthe disgruntled democrat: Inequality Is What America Is All About
Change you can believe in. Yeah right. There are some things that never change and one of them is the tendency for the rich to get richer at everyone else’s expense, especially in America. Since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, 95% of the gains have gone to
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Collective Bargaining and Poverty Reduction: OECD Data
My union Unifor is currently undertaking an important “Rights at Work” campaign, which involves a national tour of meetings with our officers and local leaders and stewards, followed by a membership canvass and community outreach effort, all aimed at beating back the current attack on fundamental labour rights coming from
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Do High Tuition Fees Make for Good Public Policy?
This afternoon I gave a presentation to Professor Ted Jackson’s graduate seminar course on higher education, taught in Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. The link to my slide deck, titled “The Political Economy of Post-Secondary Education in Canada,” can be found here. Points I raised in the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Luxury Index is through the roof
Numbers season is over but good inequality data is still missing. January sees us regularly bombarded with a whole range of economic statistics about the previous year. GDP growth: likely 1.7%, low but looking brighter for next year. Unemployment: 7.2%, low but lots of workers leaving the job market altogether
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Donovan Vincent reports on the Institute for Social Research’s study showing Canadians are highly concerned about income inequality: “People think the income gap has gotten worse. What was surprising to me was the universality of this belief. Younger people, older, higher levels
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World. – NYTimes.com
The Middle Class Is Steadily Eroding. Just Ask the Business World. – NYTimes.com. In Manhattan, the upscale clothing retailer Barneys will replace the bankrupt discounter Loehmann’s, whose Chelsea store closes in a few weeks. Across the country, Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants are struggling, while fine-dining chains like Capital
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Bigotry Against the Rich: Is That a Thing?
So apparently the rich are an oppressed minority now. Last month, in what is thought to have become the most widely read letter to the editor ever published by The Wall Street Journal, venture capitalist and former News Corp board member Tom Perkins writes, “I would call attention to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Justin Fox questions whether traditional studies tracking the distribution of wealth by quintiles do much good when the most obvious economic faultline is between the (give or take) 1% and everybody else: Something really dramatic is going on up there in the top
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ian Welsh discusses the nature of prosperity – and the illusion that it means nothing more than increased economic activity: All other things being equal more productive capacity is better. The more stuff we can make, in theory, the better off we’ll be.
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Being Rich Makes you a Dick
Tell me again about those so called charitable rich people…? Onwards brothers and sisters to the class war. This vid is pretty much everything I’ve said on the blog and what I rail against a on regular basis. Go Ted Talks Go. Filed under: Education, Politics Tagged: Being Rich Makes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Cassidy offers ten options to reduce income inequality. And Andrew Coyne concurs with the first and most important suggestion that income supports sufficient to provide a stable living to everybody would make for the ideal solution. – Meanwhile, Frances Russell is the
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