This and that for your weekend reading. – Matthew Yglesias writes that while increased automation may not eliminate jobs altogether, it may go a long way toward making them more menial. And Jerry Dias recognizes that we won’t see better career opportunities emerge unless we make it a shared public
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Deirdre Fulton discusses the UN’s 2014 Human Development Report, featuring recognition that precarious jobs and vulnerable workers are all too often the norm regardless of a country’s level of development or high-end wealth. And as Dylan Matthews points out (h/t to David Atkins),
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This and that for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz wraps up the New York Times’ series on inequality by summarizing how the gap between the rich and the rest of us developed, as well as how it can be reduced: The American political system is overrun by money. Economic
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne discusses the need to address inequality through our political system. But that will require significant pressure from exactly the citizens who have decided they’re not well served by today’s political options – and Trish Hennessy’s look at Canadian voter turnout reminds
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This and that to end your weekend. – Lana Payne challenges the Big Lie that right-wing politics are anything but antithetical to broad economic growth. Dennis Howlett weighs in on the Cons’ choice to make the rich even richer through their tax policy. And Daniel Tencer juxtaposes the boom in
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Bill Moyers interviews Richard Wolff about inequality – featuring Wolff’s observation that anybody trying to justify inequality as an inevitable byproduct of unregulated markets manages only to make those markets indefensible: Bill Moyers: When you say that there’s no economic argument that people
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Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – D.L. Tice writes that it’s becoming more and more difficult for the right to ignore the spread of income inequality – and the reality that only public policy, not faith in the market, can produce a more fair distribution of income. Which is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Yves Smith notes that a short-sighted focus on returns for shareholders generally represents a poor allocation of resources even on the level of a single corporation – while also pointing out what that mindset does when shared across the business sector: As the
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Assorted content to end your weekend. – Lana Payne highlights the Harper Cons’ culture of hate with just a few recent examples: Veterans. Informed-debate. People’s right to a union and free collective bargaining. Voting rights. These are all under threat in Harper’s Canada. This really is a government that hates;
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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
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne writes that Canadians care plenty about the well-being of hungry children even if the Cons don’t: After a firestorm of shocked responses from Canadians, Mr. Moore apologized for his “insensitive comment” uttered days before Christmas. What he did not apologize for
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Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joan Walsh discusses how employers are exploiting the U.S.’ wage supplement policies by taking the opportunity to severely underpay their employees – resulting in both insecure income and employment, and significant public expense to reduce the poverty suffered by full-time workers. And Lana
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Miscellanous material for your Sunday reading. – Sean McElwee highlights the fact that inequality is an avoidable result caused by policies oriented toward rewarding greed: The problem, then, is not machines, which are doing a great deal to boost productivity; the problem is that the benefits from increased productivity no
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This and that for your weekend reading. – In case anybody hasn’t yet seen Andrew Coyne’s takedown of anti-intellectual populism, it’s well worth a read: (T)here Mr. Ford sits, immovably: disgraced, largely powerless, but still the mayor. Is that his fault? The city’s? Or is it the fault of those
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This and that for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom notes that the CETA isn’t particularly about trade, but instead serves to enshrine yet again the principle that investors come before citizens. – Lana Payne highlights the contradiction between the promise that giveaways to the corporate sector will lead to
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The National Post offers an excerpt from Susan Delacourt’s Shopping for Votes discussing the role branding played in the election of John Diefenbaker. And Jeffrey Simpson discusses the continued drift toward consumer politics.– But in commenting on the Nova Scotia provincial election, Ralph
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson discusses why attacks on Old Age Security – including the Fraser Institute’s calls for increased clawbacks – serve no useful purpose: The principled argument for not clawing back OAS benefits is that all seniors should be entitled to a bare-bones public
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Dechene interviews Maude Barlow about the downside of privatizing public infrastructure: Somebody asked me to point blank explain the difference between private and public and I said, profit. That’s the difference. In a public system, it’s the same amount of money; you’re
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne discusses Unifor’s goals in the wake of its founding convention: The hope is that, collectively, working people can push back in new and profound ways against what has been a decades-long, anti-worker agenda perpetuated by both governments and corporations. But just
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Assorted content to end your week. – Tim Harper writes that Stephen Harper’s “lone gunman” argument – already implausible in light of the number of Senators and staffers required to cover up the Clusterduff – is falling apart at the seams. But Gloria Galloway notes that the Senators can bail
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