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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The Progressive Right: Tim Hudak’s Right-to-Work Gambit ( #pcpo #onpoli )
It would appear that the Ontario Conservative Party’s support for right-to-work legislation is costing them support and costing them candidates. Ontario Conservatives are concerned how the labour policy messaging is looking. Forum — grain of salt alert — shows support for the Ontario Conservatives down. You can read the Wikipedia entry to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David MacDonald studies the effect of the Cons’ income-splitting scheme, and finds that it’s oriented purely toward funnelling money toward the top of the income scale: “Income splitting creates a tax loophole big enough to drive a Rolls Royce through. It’s pitched
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Jeremy Nuttall discusses why the Cons’ temporary foreign worker program is ripe for abuse, as it ensures workers have every incentive to avoid reporting employer wrongdoing since the employer can singlehandedly ship the employee out of Canada in retaliation. – But the good
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne calls out Stephen Harper’s hypocrisy in paying lip service to the problems with the use of disposable temporary foreign labour while expanding exactly that policy throughout his stay in power: The program was supposed to be a last resort for employers
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Pierre Brochu and David Green study the effect of minimum wage rates, and find a connection between a higher minimum wage and greater employment stability. But if there’s a choice between stable, well-paying work and precarious employment where job churn and wage
Continue readingwmtc: all working people must mobilize against right-to-work laws. but will we?
It’s no secret that Tim Hudak, who wants to be Ontario’s next premier, wants to break every union in the province. So-called right-to-work legislation – the name has been a persistent and successful piece of propaganda, used everywhere without quotes – is at the centre of Hudak’s campaign agenda. Will
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Erika Shaker rightly questions why government policy toward business is based on a level of permissiveness which we’d recognize as utter madness in dealing with a child: Sure, all parents make mistakes, and all kids have meltdowns (some of which might have,
Continue readingwmtc: james frey: author, liar, sweatshop boss
Today I break one of my own rules, and write about a book I didn’t enjoy. Not only that, but I trash the author, too. But perhaps author is the wrong word. Maybe I should call him the factory boss. I know something about how difficult it is to write
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Bill Kerry writes that extreme inequality serves to reinforce itself – and points out what needs to be done to counter the temptation to kick others down: One of the major difficulties in tackling inequality is the way it coerces many people into accepting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich (via GlenInCA) points out the connection between a strong middle class and curbs on corporate excesses – with may go a long way toward explaining why the business lobby is working so hard to eliminate the concept of a secure livelihood
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jo Snyder discusses how poverty makes everybody less healthy, and recognizes the need for higher basic wages as a result. And Laurie Penny highlights the futility of trying to badger young adults into service jobs which offer no opportunity for personal, professional
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your weekend. – Paul Luke comments on the general stratification of workers into three groups: professionals facing extended hours and stress at a single job, service-sector workers juggling multiple jobs at more than full-time hours, and people struggling to find work at all. But it’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On consistent preferences
Stephen Gordon (among others) took the time to point out that Jim Flaherty’s attacks on the Bank of Canada are both unwise in general, and wrong in terms of economic theory. But even setting aside those critiques, the mot important message to be taken from Flaherty is that he’s once
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – In keeping with the theme of this week’s column, the Star-Phoenix questions the Wall government’s choice to neglect existing school infrastructure. And Lana Payne’s message about how leaders react in a crisis also looks to be closely intertwined with the need to plan
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford writes about the myth of a labour shortage in Canada: In this context of chronic un- and under-employment, it is jarring that so many employers, business lobbyists, and politicians continue to complain about a supposed shortage of available, willing, and adequately
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom points out that many Canadians can expect to lose jobs without any social supports due to the Cons’ focus on political messages over real-life impacts. And Blake Zeff offers a reminder that while progressive economic policy may be receiving more attention
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tim Harper and the Star’s editorial board each offer up some hope that 2014 will be a more productive year in politics than 2013 was. And Nora Loreto offers a suggestion as to how to make that happen: Young workers, like all workers,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – The Star offers an editorial on the continued increase in wage inequality in Canada, highlighting the complete lack of any connection between accomplishment and executive compensation: (T)he country’s economic performance has changed dramatically. In 2007, when Mackenzie began, the Canadian economy was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Juxtaposition
The Cons can’t wait to lock up any refugee who might arrive in Canada on the wrong ship: Immigration Minister Jason Kenney insists Canada’s new measures [including mandatory detention for every single passenger on a designated ship] will provide a strong deterrent to anyone thinking of paying a human smuggler
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