The ever widening gap between Red and Blue America exists mainly among the wealthy.The New York Times reports that a study based on exit polls shows lower-income Americans, whether from Blue or Red states, tend to favour the Democratic Party. The…
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The Ranting Canadian: A claymation version of Ed Broadbent makes a clear and logical…
A claymation version of Ed Broadbent makes a clear and logical 3.5-minute presentation on income inequality and politics in Canada.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- Naomi Klein comments on how disaster capitalists have tried to turn Hurricane Sandy into a quick buck, while pointing out that there’s a far more rational public policy response available:The prize for s…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Rick Salutin offers an important take on the U.S. election by pointing out that the Occupy movement and its focus on inequality laid the groundwork for Barack Obama’s re-election:The aftermath to the bailouts was the…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Barbara Yaffe writes about the continual rise in food bank use and the underlying political choices which have brought it about:(I)n the last decade food banks have been helping Canadians through both good time…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Chanelling the Spirit of Posterity, Long Dead
For the five or six years this blog has existed I have strongly lamented the demise of posterity in our societies, our economies and our politics. In an era in which any perceived fetter on maximized production and maximized consumption was denounced as heretical, posterity was irrelevant, valueless or worse.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – Timothy Noah writes that since Republicans haven’t been able to convince the American public that inequality is desirable or acceptable, they’re taking another angle: engaging in inequality denialism to try to pretend a growing problem doesn’t exist. – Tim Harper discusses the importance
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Limits of Demography
Here is a piece I wrote for today’s Globe Economy Lab re the Department of Finance report on the costs of an aging society. The key point is that the mainstream doom and gloom projections of the costs of falling labour force growth ignore the positive impacts which can be
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Impoverishing States of America
Hard times for the working man, indeed. We’re familiar with statistics showing working class wages have stagnated, even declined somewhat, since Reagan waved his wand across the U.S. but it seems the figures we’ve been given are actually pretty rosey. This finding of stagnant wages is unsettling, but also quite
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Our Struggle to define Inequality – Doug Saunders’ Take
Doug Saunders In today’s Globe & Mail Doug Saunders has an interesting article on the difficulty we are having in defining exactly what inequality means: That’s why inequality has replaced poverty as the great political theme of the moment. Once upon a time, we might have believed the two were
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Friday reading. – In writing recently about employer efforts to intimidate workers into backing corporate-friendly candidates, I figured that the best examples we’d see would come from individual corporate magnates – as the candidates themselves would surely be smart enough not to state publicly that they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Annie Lowrey reports on the evidence showing that the perpetually-increasing inequality pitched by the right as an economic plan actually serves to damage economic development: The yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots — and the political questions that gap has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Crawford Kilian talks to Ed Broadbent about the effect of increasing inequality and the prospect of changing course: On how quickly things could turn around: “I’d like to see a strategic plan. We can’t change overnight after 20 years. We could take
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted material to end your weekend. – Chrystia Freeland comments on the self-destructive nature of elite protectionism: (E)ven as the winner-take-all economy has enriched those at the very top, their tax burden has lightened. Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been
Continue readingThe Deadly Myths of Globalisation
What follows is the introduction to a talk I gave at the 3rd Innis Christie Lecture & Symposium in Labour and Employment Law. My sister was educated at the Dalhousie School of Law and I was Lucky enough when visiting her to attend a lecture by Innis Christie. I am
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Bargain Basement Citizenship and the Decline of Democracy
We ought to be outraged. Just about every day our media provides a new account of the decline of our democracy: the inadequacies of our electoral system and allegations of electoral fraud; the high-handed treatment of our Parliament through inappropriate prorogations and overuse of omnibus legislation; a government ever more authoritarian and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – No, the aftershocks of an e. coli outbreak which has unfortunately given both Canadians and export markets reason for concern about the safety of some of our major food sources aren’t about to end simply because the Cons are again pretending everything’s fine.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Time to Rethink The Way We Fund Higher Education
This September, like every year, a new group of high school graduates headed to college or university to pursue higher education. But today’s generation of students is in for a very different experience from the ones their parents had. On campuses across the country shiny new buildings are popping up,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ed Broadbent and the Broadbent Institute are putting together a strong public push on the problem of growing inequality – featuring a video, op-ed and research paper (PDF). For more, see coverage from Rachel Mendleson, Natalie Stechyson, and CBC News. – Today’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michelle Ervin discusses Ed Broadbent’s ideas to start closing Canada’s yawning income gap: Broadbent outlined four broad prescriptions for bridging this gap, and ultimately, for creating a fairer society: investing in good jobs, strengthening income supports, increasing access to public services and reforming
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