Assorted content to end your week. – Hassan Yussuff and other labour leaders offer their take on how we can develop a more equitable global trade system: The next challenge before us is to build on and improve all post-CETA trade and investment deals to ensure they meet a progressive
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Eshe Nelson interviews Richard Baldwin about the future of globalization and the possibility that the worst disruptions to workers are just beginning: What happens to the chart on global income distribution during this phase of globalization? It keeps going down. It will be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – David MacDonald examines how Canada’s tax expenditures systematically favour higher-income individuals over the people who actually have a reasonable claim to public support: This study finds that Canada’s personal income tax expenditures disproportionately benefit the rich and cost the federal treasury nearly as
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Frank writes that a progressive party can only expect to succeed if it places principles of equality and workers’ interests at the core of everything it does – rather than serving mostly as the voice of a wealthy professional class: Somewhere in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Miles Corak asks how we should see the growing concentration of income at the top of the spectrum, and concludes that we should be concerned mostly with the breakdown between personal merit and success among the extremely privileged: Connections matter. And for the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Janice Fine discusses how the decline of organized labour as a political force has opened the door for the likes of Donald Trump: Just when we need them most, the main institutions that have fought for decent jobs are a shadow of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne comments on the importance of the labour movement in ensuring that economic growth translates into benefits for workers: The findings of a study released this month by the Canadian Centre for Study of Living Standards, an Ottawa-based think-tank, reinforces why there
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Star argues that Canada can’t afford to leave tax loopholes wide open for the rich – as the Libs are doing in violation of their campaign promises. And Martin Lukacs notes that obscene giveaways to the rich seem to be the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Young workers: An “entitled” generation without entitlements
Photo by Fred Chartrand/CP Every generation seems to think that those who come after are broken in some way: that they are disrespectful, lazy or aimless. But such comments on young Canadians todays are taking place in the context of a notable societal shift, where many expect lower standards of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Piketty discusses our choice between developing models of global trade which actually produce positive results for people, or fueling the fire of Trump-style demogoguery: The main lesson for Europe and the world is clear: as a matter of urgency, globalization must be
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Ford Unifor Agreement Ratified: Voted Down at Oakville Unit, Local 707
Photo from Windsorite.ca As bargaining between Unifor and the Canadian branches of the Detroit Three automakers came down to the last company, Ford, the signs were pointing to an emerging resistance to decades of concessions. Amid general opposition on the shop floor, leaders at the biggest Ford local were openly
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Karl Nerenberg examines new research from the Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards showing how workers have seen hardly any benefit from four decades of productivity gains which have filled corporate coffers: (I)n Canada, the productivity of labour — the amount
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Arancha González Laya distinguishes between international trade and corporatism – arguing that we should be looking to ensure people benefit from the former by reining in the latter: Making trade more inclusive requires action on three broad policy fronts: trade rules, domestic social
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Robert Reich Calls For a What? A "New Democratic Party" Whatever That Is.
During the campaign, Robert Reich urged American progressives to hold their noses and vote for Hillary. He also said that, the day after the election, they should mobilize, perhaps around Bernie Sanders, to create a new progressive movement, one that could challenge both the Republicans and the Democrats in 2020.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Anthony Hilton writes that stronger protections for workers tend to increase productivity. And Fiona McQuarrie makes clear that we don’t have to settle for an economy where workers face constant fear and insecurity as a result of precarious work: (J)ob churn and precarious
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Orgreave: Winning the battle means winning the war
Photo by Rex Shutterstock Last week, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd dismissed a thirty-year campaign for an official inquiry into the events of the 1984 Battle of Orgreave, where police violently clashed with picketing miners at a coking plant in the north of England. Despite evidence that the violence was
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Basic income: libertarian wedge or a plank towards a socialist future?
Photo from BasicIncome.org In recent years, the popularity of a basic Income (BI), has grown. Fittingly, the topic has garnered thoughtful debate and analysis from across the Canadian left, including in the Summer 2016 issue of Canadian Dimension, where the concept was explored both as potential policy, but also as
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that the Libs’ fall economic statement represents a massive (and unjustified) shift away from promised infrastructure funding even while planning to privatize both existing operations and future developments. And Joie Warnock highlights why it would represent nothing short of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Neil Irwin examines one of the key ideas underlying the U.S. Democrats’ economic plans, being that workers need to have meaningful choices rather than being trapped by a limited and slanted set of available employers and work structures: Labor market monopsony is the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – John McDonnell outlines a progressive alternative to neoliberal economic policy: The increasing automation of jobs, reduced dependence on carbon fuels, artificial intelligence and the so-called gig economy have provoked understandable anger among many workers whose jobs are under threat. More generally, concerns about the effect
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