Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman highlights why inequality is indeed an issue which demands action – both for its own sake, and for its impact on other goals such as economic sustainability. And Bill Moyers discusses the difference between a government responsive to its people and
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Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Nick Cohen writes that the corporate sector is home to some of the most dangerous cult philosophy in the world: (T)he language of business has become ever more cultish. In the theory of “transformational leadership”, which dominates the business schools, the CEO is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom notes that the Harper Cons’ latest EI cuts look to amplify the pain of unemployment in Ontario while serving the broader purpose of forcing workers to conclude their federal government doesn’t care if they go hungry: The great irony is that
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Assorted content to end your week. – Glen Hodgson and Brenda Lafleur explain how Canada’s lower and middle classes alike have been left out of any economic growth as a result of increased inequality: We believe the more accurate interpretation is that after worsening in the 1980s and 1990s, income
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Assorted content to end your week. – Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford put to rest any attempt to minimize the growth of inequality in Canada: (I)ncome inequality has reached a historic extreme. Inequality was high during the 1920s and 1930s (the “gilded age”), but fell sharply during the Second World
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Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Krugman writes about the right-wing belief that “freedom’s just another word for not enough to eat”: (Y)ou might think that ensuring adequate nutrition for children, which is a large part of what SNAP does, actually makes it less, not more likely that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Carol Goar points out why Canada’s EI system is running surpluses (contrary to all parties’ intentions) – and notes that the result has nothing to do with the best interests of the workers who pay into the system: Flaherty’s explanation was true
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Advice for those awaiting ‘the Big One’ from the CFIB later today… have grain of salt at hand
A Canadian Federation of Independent Business technician puts the finishing touches on today’s “report” on retirement savings. (Photo grabbed from AstroTurf.com) Actual CFIB operatives may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: One of them, Dan Kelly. There really is a pension crisis in Canada, but it’s not the one the
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Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Patrick Wintour and Simon Bowers discuss the G20’s predictable finding that our global tax system isn’t set up to address the problem of offshore tax evasion: The long-awaited report, prepared for a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Moscow this weekend, says
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Murray Dobbin writes about the crisis of extreme capitalism: (T)he “free economy” romanticized by Friedman and his ilk is anything but. Completely dominated by giant corporations whose wealth outstrips all but the richest nations, economic freedom does not exist for anyone else, including
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Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Chris Lehmann discusses the destructive impetus behind the ever-present austerity scolds: In their new book The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, Stuckler and Basu show distressingly consistent increases in such key public-health indicators as suicides, heart disease, alcoholism and HIV infection in societies
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman writes that the only real difference between the latest global crisis and past depressions is that we’ve moved further and further toward a rent-based economy – meaning that aggregated growth doesn’t necessarily result in any benefit for the vast majority
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman points out that workers are receiving less and less benefit from technological advancements – and offers a simple policy prescription to ensure workers of all skill levels don’t suffer unduly based on forces far beyond their control: I’ve noted before that
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Cay Johnston and Miles Corak both discuss the results of a study which compares economic outcomes in technologically advanced countries, and shows that tax giveaways to the wealthy exacerbate inequality without doing anything at all to contribute to economic development. – And
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Krugman makes the case for significantly higher taxes on the rich: What would raising tax rates at the top accomplish? It would, to some extent, mitigate the rise in inequality, which some of us consider a good thing in itself: You
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Justin Ling writes that the Cons’ aversion to accountability isn’t limited to their own government, as they’re one of the few holdouts against transparency in resource-sector reporting of payments to governments abroad. – Meanwhile, Stuart Trew discusses an international citizens’ initiative to
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Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Krugman draws a much-needed connection between austerity politics and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through
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Assorted content to end your week. – Yes, it’s for the best that some of Canada’s pre-eminent scientists are offering to walk Joe Oliver through the realities of climate change. But Nik Beeson’s offer of political detoxification looks like the more important step for those of us who aren’t in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading… – Joseph Stiglitz discusses the abuse of intellectual property law to turn publicly-funded research into privately-held profit centres (no matter how many people die as a result): (A) Utah-based company, Myriad Genetics, claims more than that. It claims to own the rights to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Lynn Stuart Parramore discusses the epidemic of wage theft by U.S. employers: Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and
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