Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes that corporate power is the greatest threat to our health and well-being – and reminds us that government focused on the public interest is a necessary counterweight: The revelations of the Paradise Papers, the earlier Panama Papers and numerous articles
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jeremy Nuttall interviews Nelson Wiseman about the Libs’ attempts to spin their way out of a trumped-up tax controversy – and how they’re making matters worse in the process. And Murray Dobbin points out that there’s a long way to go in making
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman discusses how the Republicans’ latest attempt to undermine U.S. health care is built on a foundation of cruelty and lies – and is entirely consistent with their usual modus operandi. And Joe Watts reports on new polling showing how popular Jeremy
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Rozworski discusses the importance of workers exercising power over how our economy functions. Robert Booth reports on a forthcoming UK study showing the desperate need for improved quality of work and life among low-income individuals. And Lana Payne writes that a strong
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Star offers some lessons from the UK’s election, including the powerful appeal of unabashed social democratic policy. Aditya Chakrabortty discusses how Jeremy Corbyn has changed his country’s politics for a long time to come. And Gary Younge observes that the gains achieved
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2017 Links
The latest from the federal NDP’s leadership campaign… – Charlie Angus has made his pitch for a national pharmacare program as one way of reducing health care inequality. – Guy Caron’s proposal for tax reform features plenty of progressive ideas to bring in more public revenue, including through inheritance and
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The latest from the federal NDP’s leadership campaign. – Sid Ryan’s endorsement of Niki Ashton both answers one of the more persistent questions as to possible additional entries into the race, and offers some helpful institutional support for Ashton’s campaign. – Mick Sweetman interviews each of the MPs in the
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Assorted content to end your week. – Rutger Bregman writes that the most extreme wealth in our economy is based on rents rather than productivity: In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Murray Dobbin highlights how our political and economic discussions are poorer for the dominance of neoliberalism: That’s it? That’s the best the economics profession can come up with to explain Canadians’ indebtedness catastrophe? It’s all about human behaviour, written in stone, so I
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, a rare Saturday column on the lessons we should draw from the election of Donald Trump in how we organize and work within our political system. For further reading (beyond the writing already linked here)…– Others offering similar thoughts include Murray Dobbin, Rick Salutin, Kai Nagata and Robert Reich.–
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Assorted content to end your week. – George Monbiot discusses the importance of recognizing our social connections in making our political choices, rather than treating the world as merely a collection of unconnected individuals: It is not hard to see what the evolutionary reasons for social pain might be. Survival
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.
– Joseph Stiglitz discusses how entrenched inequality and unearned income hurt the economy for everybody:
We used to think of there being a trade-off: we could achieve more equality, but only at the expense of overall economic performance. It is now clear that, given the extremes of inequality being reached in many rich countries and the manner in which they have been generated, greater equality and improved economic performance are complements.
…
(A) key factor underlying the current economic difficulties of rich countries is growing inequality. We need to focus not on what is happening on average— as GDP leads us to do— but on how the economy is performing for the typical citizen, reflected for instance in median disposable income. People care about health, fairness and security, and yet GDP statistics do not reflect their decline. Once these and other aspects of societal well-being are taken into account, recent performance in rich countries looks much worse.The economic policies required to change this are not difficult to identify. We need more investment in public goods; better corporate governance, antitrust and anti-discrimination laws; a better regulated financial system; stronger workers’ rights; and more progressive tax and transfer policies. By ‘rewriting the rules’ governing the market economy in these ways, it is possible to achieve greater equality in both the pre- and post-tax and transfer distribution of income, and thereby stronger economic performance.
– David Macdonald discusses Canada’s growing consumer debt levels, and notes that matters figure to get worse before they get better. And the CP reports on Canada’s high gender wage gap as another area where we’re lagging even on an international scene where there’s far more work to be done.
– Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood examines the economic fallout we could expect from the CETA, while the Canadian Labour Congress suggests a few ways to minimize the damage. But Murray Dobbin asks why we’re wasting any time on corporate power agreements when they’ve so thoroughly failed to live up to any promises to the public.
– Juha Kaakinen writes about the success of Housing First in alleviating homelessness in Finland. And Gary Bloch and John Silver point out how encouraging people living in poverty to file tax returns (and thus receive available benefits) can produce positive outcomes all around.
– Finally, PressProgress discusses Wayne Smith’s resignation as Chief Statistician of Statistics Canada due to a lack of meaningful change from the Cons’ attempts to politicize data collection and management.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- France St-Hilaire, David Green and Craig Riddell offer some needed policy prescriptions to fight inequality in Canada:As first steps toward expanding the share of the economic pie going to workers, the minimum wage …
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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…
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This and that for your Sunday reading.- Murray Dobbin argues that the Trudeau Libs’ response (or lack thereof) to wealthy tax cheats will tell us what we most need to know about their plans for Canada.- Meanwhile, Tonda MacCharles reports on Justin Tru…
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Assorted content to end your week.- Michael Klare writes about the future direction of the oil industry – which looks to involve cashing out quickly than building anything lasting:At the beginning of this century, many energy analysts were convinced th…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Alice Martin offers three basic reasons why unions are as necessary now as ever, while PressProgress weighs in on the IMF’s findings showing the correlation between unions and greater equality. And David Ball po…
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Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Andrew Jackson offers his prescription for Canada’s economy in the face of plunging oil prices and a sinking dollar. And Murray Dobbin argues that the Libs’ handling of trade agreements reflects a fundamental…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- In reviewing Gabriel Zucman’s new book, Cass Sunstein discusses the need to rein in tax havens and ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of the price of a functional society:(W)hatever your politi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Carolyn Shimmin discusses the connection between inequality and social ills, while Sarah Khapton reports on new research showing part of the biological explanation.- Rachelle Younglai documents the growing nu…
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