Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Larry Elliott writes that the public is rightly frustrated with an economic model designed to shift money to those who already have the most – and that progressive parties in particular need to offer a meaningful alternative: The belief on the left was
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – In The Public Interest studies how the privatization of services leads to increased inequality: In the Public Interest’s analysis of recent government contracting identifies five ways in which government privatization disproportionately hurts poor individuals and families… Creation of new user fees: The creation
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Lawrence Summers discusses the economic damage being done by a top-heavy income spectrum – as the effect of major stimulus programs may have been wholly outweighed by the decline in middle-class incomes. – Meanwhile, Canadians for Tax Fairness points out the impending tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.
– Andrew Jackson discusses how the rise of right-wing, prejudiced populism can be traced to the failures of global corporate governance. And Dani Rodrik argues that it’s time to develop an international political system to facilitate – rather than overriding – democratic action:
Some simple principles would reorient us in the right direction. First, there is no single way to prosperity. Countries make their own choices about the institutions that suit them best. Some, like Britain, may tolerate, say, greater inequality and financial instability in return for higher growth and more financial innovation. They will opt for lower taxes on capital and more freewheeling financial systems. Others, like Continental European nations, will go for greater equity and financial conservatism. International firms will complain that differences in rules and regulations raise the costs of doing business across borders, but their claims must be traded off against the benefits of diversity.Second, countries have the right to protect their institutional arrangements and safeguard the integrity of their regulations. Financial regulations or labor protections can be circumvented and undermined by moving operations to foreign countries with considerably lower standards. Countries should be able to prevent such “regulatory arbitrage” by placing restrictions on cross-border transactions — just as they can keep out toys or agricultural products that do not meet domestic health standards.…Third, the purpose of international economic negotiations should be to increase domestic policy autonomy, while being mindful of the possible harm to trade partners. The world’s trade regime is driven by a mercantilist logic: You lower your barriers in return for my lowering mine. But lack of openness is no longer the binding constraint on the world economy; lack of democratic legitimacy is.It is time to embrace a different logic, emphasizing the value of policy autonomy. Poor and rich countries alike need greater space for pursuing their objectives. The former need to restructure their economies and promote new industries, and the latter must address domestic concerns over inequality and distributive justice.
– William Lazonick and Matt Hopkins note that already-appalling estimates of the gap between CEOs and other workers may be severely underestimating the problem. And Iglika Ivanova laments British Columbia’s woefully insufficient changes to its minimum wage which will keep large numbers of workers in poverty.
– In one positive development for corporate accountability, Telesur reports that the International Criminal Court is now willing to take jurisdiction over land grabbing, environmental destruction and other corporate crime.
– Harry Stein writes that there are significant economic and social gains to be achieved by better funding social infrastructure.
– Finally, Jeremy Nuttall interviews Robert Fox, the NDP’s new national director, on the plan to building a more activist party – both in the sense of better engaging with existing activists, and developing a culture of ongoing action. And Robin Sears offers a long-term path for the NDP to once again lead Canada toward progressive policies.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- George Monbiot observes that while few people would want to drive animals to extinction directly, we’re all too often eager to settle for a consumerist culture which produces exactly that result. – Car…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Owen Jones interviews Ha-Joon Chang about the foreseeable harm caused by the UK’s austerity, as well as the false claims used to push it. – The Stoney Creek News rightly argues that Canada Post should move toward pos…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.- Larry Elliott discusses how the rise of Donald Trump and other exclusionary populists can be traced to the failed promises of neoliberal economics:The fact is that the US middle class, which in Britain we would c…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- David Dayen highlights the treatment of workers as the most fundamental difference between Scandinavian countries which have achieved both prosperity and social justice, and the U.S. and others which have sacrif…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Jeff Guo reports on Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson’s research showing how the U.S. went from standing out internationally for its relatively equal distribution of wealth, to being equally exceptional in it…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Albertans hear the same old same old as fast-food restaurant owners grow hysterical over minimum wage
PHOTOS: Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray, who is sticking to her guns on the provincial government’s plans to raise the provincial minimum wage to $15 by 2018. Below: Notable fair wage campaigners, Joe Ceci, finance minister of Alberta; Frankli…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your long weekend reading.- Marc Jarsulic, Ethan Gurwitz, Kate Bahn and Andy Green comment on how corporate monopoly power and rent-seeking produce disastrous public consequences:Income inequality is rising, middle-class incomes ar…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Minimum wages as economic stimulus?
The Alberta Federation of Labour has an excellent minimum wage campaign, called “15 is fair”. I provided some research support for a paper they produced on the positive economic impact of increasing minimum wages, which you can read in full here, but I wanted to share some of the key points. Increasing the minimum wage […]
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Oxfam points out the latest World Wealth Report showing that extreme inequality and wealth continue to grow around the globe. And AFP reports on the IMF’s warnings that inequality and poverty represent signific…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Andrew Coyne argues that the Senate’s role in overruling elected representatives – which only seems to be growing under the Trudeau Libs – represents an affront to democracy. And Duncan Cameron has some suggest…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on Shawn Fraser’s attempt to move Regina toward a living wage – and the the sad delay tactics in response from Michael Fougere and the rest of City Council.For further reading…- Fraser posted about the motion here. And Natascia Lypny reported o…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Murray Dobbin is hopeful that we may be seeing corporate globalization based on unquestioned neoliberal ideology come to an end: There is no definitive way to identify when an ideology begins to lose its grip on the…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Andre Picard writes about the widespread poverty faced by indigenous children in Canada – and the obvious need for political action to set things right: The focus of the [CCPA’s] report, rightly, is on the chil…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Who earns minimum wage?
Minimum wages have been getting a lot of attention lately. And for good reason. Workers earning minimum wage often struggle to get enough hours, don’t have predictable schedules or advance notice of shifts, and many don’t even have access to unpaid sick days. Alberta’s current government was elected on a plan to raise the minimum […]
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week.- Karen Palmer writes about a push by U.S. doctors to follow in Canada’s footsteps with single-payer health care – even as a few profiteers seek to tear our system apart:Global evidence shows that private insurance …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Ben Casselman writes that rather than looking to manufacturing jobs alone as a precondition to gains for workers, we should instead focus on the unions which helped to make the manufacturing sector the source of stab…
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