Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Patrick Wintour and Simon Bowers discuss the G20’s predictable finding that our global tax system isn’t set up to address the problem of offshore tax evasion: The long-awaited report, prepared for a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Moscow this weekend, says
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that to end your Thursday. – The Huffington Post discusses a study showing how poor Canadians pay the highest marginal tax rates on income that pushes them over benefit thresholds. But it should be fairly obvious that the solution is to set up rational models for social programs
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Upworthy and the Equality Trust both provide fascinating examples of greed in action. – Rank and File discusses the relentless wage-slashing that has led to a perpetually smaller number of workers with sole responsibility for dangerous cargo, while Leo Panitch makes a similar
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes about the crisis of extreme capitalism: (T)he “free economy” romanticized by Friedman and his ilk is anything but. Completely dominated by giant corporations whose wealth outstrips all but the richest nations, economic freedom does not exist for anyone else, including
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Martin Lukacs offers up the definitive response to the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy: The deeper evidence about this event won’t be found in the train’s black box, or by questioning the one engineer who left the train before it loosened and careened unmanned into
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot rightly challenges the attempt of corporate interests and their political sock-puppets to demonize anybody concerned about our planet’s future: Exotic invasive species are a straightforward ecological problem, wearily familiar to anyone trying to protect biodiversity. Some introduced creatures – such
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Richard Eskow offers up some ugly facts about corporate wealth accumulation and tax avoidance. – David MacAray writes about the challenge facing labour activists when much of the public has been trained to engage in gratuitous union-bashing even while fully agreeing with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson rightly questions Greg Mankiw’s faith-based assertion that increasing wealth accumulation is based solely on merit and contribution to society rather than hoarding and rent-seeking. And Martin Lobel highlights a few of the distortionary policies that have served to exacerbate inequality in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin highlights the dangers of relying on bulk data collection and algorithmic analysis as a basis to restrict individual rights: The National Post’s Jen Gerson interviewed a U.S. privacy expert. She asked about the PRISM program, by which U.S. agencies spy on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Chris Lehmann discusses the destructive impetus behind the ever-present austerity scolds: In their new book The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, Stuckler and Basu show distressingly consistent increases in such key public-health indicators as suicides, heart disease, alcoholism and HIV infection in societies
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Chrystia Freeland writes about the dangers of increased concentration of wealth – particularly when it bears at best a passing relationship to any worthwhile contribution to society at large. And CBC’s report on Peter Sabourin’s investment fraud highlights the fact that the tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Eric Dolan discusses Paul Piff’s research showing that wealth tends to lead to antisocial behaviour – and that even the beneficiaries of a rigged Monopoly game are quick to take on an air of entitlement: Across multiple studies, researchers at the University of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman writes that the only real difference between the latest global crisis and past depressions is that we’ve moved further and further toward a rent-based economy – meaning that aggregated growth doesn’t necessarily result in any benefit for the vast majority
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee writes that there’s no magic involved in collecting fair tax rates from the rich – only a need for the political will to fund public priorities: Cutting the 50% top rate suggests no great enthusiasm for rigorous taxing. Last week’s ONS
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Half of First Nations children in Canada live in poverty, study finds
By: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives | Press Release: OTTAWA – Indigenous children in Canada are over two and a half times more likely to live in poverty than non-Indigenous children, according to a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) and Save the Children Canada.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman points out that workers are receiving less and less benefit from technological advancements – and offers a simple policy prescription to ensure workers of all skill levels don’t suffer unduly based on forces far beyond their control: I’ve noted before that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – David Miller makes the case to take aim at inequality in Canada: With globalization being the holy grail of efficiency, it became a race to the bottom as international capital sought the lowest cost and the lowest wages. The result in Canada and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the recent Munk Debate has helped to highlight Canadians’ preference for a fairer, more progressive tax system – and on a couple of the most important steps we can take toward that end goal. For further reading…– Ipsos Reid’s polling on public views toward taxing the rich
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Cay Johnston and Miles Corak both discuss the results of a study which compares economic outcomes in technologically advanced countries, and shows that tax giveaways to the wealthy exacerbate inequality without doing anything at all to contribute to economic development. – And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – A new Ipsos-Reid poll shows that nearly 90% of Canadians support higher taxes on the rich generally, and million-dollar incomes in particular. And there’s an obvious need for change based on how distorted tax systems already are – as Reuters reports on a
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