Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Mariana Mazzucato comments on the triple crisis facing our current economic system, and the importance of addressing health, environmental and economic disasters alike. – Shannon Daub writes that it’s entirely counterproductive to withhold coronavirus relief from charities and non-profits until their resources have
Continue readingTag: Neil MacDonald
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Crawford Kilian highlights how ongoing inequality is among the many factors leading to stagnant life expectancies in Canada. Jim Stanford points out that tax cuts don’t do anything to help workers facing stagnant wages due to policies designed to leave them under the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Frank reports on the latest galling threshold in wealth inequality, as millionaires consisting of less than 1% of the population now control effectively half of the wealth on Earth. And Steven Greenhouse asks why actual workers aren’t being included in talks about
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: In plain sight
Robyn Urback is rightly concerned about the lack of discussion of Quebec’s systematic discrimination by most of Canada’s federal parties – only to gloss over the strong position taken by Jagmeet Singh and the NDP. Matt Gurney laments the lack of a remotely reasonable climate debate between the Libs and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jerry Taylor writes that any reasonable evaluation of the risks associated with a climate breakdown demands that we transition away from carbon pollution as quickly as possible. Aria Bendix points out that multiple major U.S. cities stand to become uninhabitable over the next
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frank Clemente is the latest to point out how the Trump Republicans’ tax cut scheme served only to further enrich the already-wealthy. And Bess Levin discusses the average one-cent bonus to workers that resulted from billions poured into corporate coffers. – George Monbiot
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Neil Macdonald on the Fake Scandal’s Bullshit Theatre
As you know I have always felt that the SNC-Lavalin affair was an over hyped fake scandal.And that Andrew Scheer and his sleazy Cons were behaving like members of a third-rate circus.I'm sure you also know that I was also enraged to see our ghastly MSM media stumbling around in the ring
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Laurie MacFarlane writes that flows of income and wealth have everything to do with bargaining power and social decision-making, rather than productivity or merit: (A)ggregate wealth is not simply a reflection of the process of accumulation, as theory tends to imply. It
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David Ball offers a reminder that Canada’s immigration system includes the needless detention of children – and that we should be working on ensuring families can stay together, rather than claiming any virtue in merely falling short of the scale being implemented
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Suresh Naidu, Eric Posner and Glen Weyl highlight how the economy as a whole suffers when employers exercise too much control over wages and working conditions: In a competitive labor market, employers must vie for workers; they try to lure workers from other
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Council of Canadians sets out the key numbers in the Libs’ all-talk, no-action federal budget, while David Macdonald highlights its ultimate lack of ambition even when there’s plenty of fiscal room to work with. David Reevely focuses on the grand total of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Nathan Akehurst writes that the Carillion collapse was just the tip of the iceberg in the corporatization and destruction of the UK’s public services. And Neil Macdonald points out that the Trudeau Libs are pitching privatized infrastructure as easy money for investors
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Andrew Scheer’s Big Beyak Bigot Problem
As you know Andrew Scheer is now desperate to improve his image, and try to convince Canadians he is not a bigot.After the Globe editorial board questioned his commitment to tolerance.Mr. Scheer has apparently made it a priority to rebrand his party as a Canada's brightest beacon of tolerance. Based on
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Strong Evidence Of Trump’s Racism
The CBC’s Neil Macdonald has written a searing assessment of Donald Trump that leaves little doubt that the Americans elected a racist president. His starting pint is an interview conducted by the NYT of one Derek Black, a former white supremacist nurtured since childhood by a family that embraced racism;
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jonathan Sas highlights why we’re best off having public services delivered by the public sector: The three decades long bashing and diminishing of the redistributive capacities of the state has led to pronounced inequality, degraded infrastructure stock, and a blunted ability of government
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Peter Fleming writes that the promise of entrepreneurial self-employment has given way to the nightmare of systematic precarious work: (T)he move to reclassify people as self-employed follows a very simple formula: it helps reduce labour costs and maximise profits for businesses that would
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- The BBC reports that even UK business groups are acknowledging that excessive executive pay is leading to public concern and distrust in the state of the economy. And Alex Hern notes that Steve Wozniak for one isn’t …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- CBC and the Star have both started reporting on the Panama Papers – offering a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of international tax avoidance. And the Star also recognizes why we shouldn’t let grey-area tax…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Sean McElwee examines how the wealthy control the U.S.’ political system, while public opinion plays far too little role in policy choices:A comprehensive study by Grossmann finds that public opinion was a significan…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal’s decision (PDF) finding that the failure to provide equal child services for First Nations is a human rights breach which requires federal action at law – rather than merely a moral failure which has too oft…
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