Austerity, we have been told repeatedly by pundits and political leaders, is the defining issue in these uncertain times, the solution to our economic challenges. We have been given fair warning that the next federal budget will be first about cuts – cuts to government even as we continue to
Continue readingTag: Paul Krugman
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Roy Romanow, Linda Silas and Steven Lewis make the case for significant federal involvement in shaping health policy in Canada: Provinces can’t transform their systems on their own regardless of how much money they spend. The politics of health care are simply too
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne juxtaposes massive profits and public concessions for Caterpillar and Rio Tinto against their attacks on Canadian workers: (T)he demands by ElectroMotive, a subsidiary of equipment giant Caterpillar, are about as outrageous as they get, including a 50 per cent cut in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Stephen Maher and Barbara Yaffe have learned to be duly skeptical of the Cons’ motives when it comes to Senate patronage. But John Ibbitson still has a ways to go – as he’s apparently still buying Con spin about new provinces holding
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your day. – Yes, it’s blasphemy to point out the obvious returns on public investments. But let’s point out a couple more examples: Andrew Jackson wonders why we’re not looking to lock in low interest rates, while Paul Krugman points out that infrastructure investments will offer
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your year. – Paul Krugman once again laments the determination of anti-government fundamentalists to avoid learning the lessons that should have become glaringly obvious over 70 years ago: In declaring Keynesian economics vindicated I am, of course, at odds with conventional wisdom. In Washington, in particular,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Krugman comments on how Republicans’ cheerleading for total corporate control – which has of course been matched at every turn by Canada’s Cons – has resulted in their declaring war on any policy which could possibly result in environmental improvements: (T)he
Continue readingPolitifact RIP
Krugman is justifiably outraged over Politifact’s “Pants on Fire Lie of the Year”. Of course, the ‘lie’ chosen by the southern fact-checking company is attributed to Democrats, not to any Republican. Consider for a second the outrageous lies spewed over the past year by the likes of Bachmann, Gingrich, Boehner,
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: For many, this is a depression
Does living luxuriously in secure compounds and travelling the world first class, richly clothed and dining extravagantly in the company of hired sycophants, qualify a person to determine or advise on social and economic policy? Or, does it encourage the individual, convinced by material success, to join or fund those
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: descending down the pot-holed road of recession towards the sink hole of depression
These remarks of Paul Krugman could easily apply to Canada, for it is essentially homeowners with their massively extended debt load who have bumped our debt to GDP ratio up to 203%, and we too require expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to support the Canadian economy. We won’t be getting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On optimal choices
It’s a plus that we’re seeing some discussion in Canada as to the optimal income tax rate to maximize revenue. But Paul Krugman goes a step further in pointing out why that revenue-maximizing rate (however calculated) is the optimal rate period: In the first part of the paper, (Peter Diamond
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Krugman and Summers: A Reading of the Munk Debate
What happens to the U.S. economy, as we all know, will affect Canada profoundly – which is no doubt why this Munk debate garnered so much attention here. The debate is repeated several times on BNN.
Krugman has the edge for me since he has always reco…
Continue readingFive of Five: Five of Five 2011-11-10 02:39:00
"I promise to eliminate some important Government agencies whose names escape me right at the moment. " All the pundits I’ve been reading are saying this is the end of the line for the Hair from Texas. Time will tell, dumbness never rules anyone out of high office.
Krugram references Molly Ivan. I remember her column about Perry a few years ago.
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: The myth of democracy
Oligarchy, American Style, Paul Krugman, New York Times Op-Ed
“We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in nam…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Rick Salutin nicely describes what’s behind the “charity” model of top-end wish fulfillment that the Cons are pitching in place of actual social programs:The Old Philanthropy, aside from a few big foundations…
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Does Postmedia need paywalls or headstones
In his NY Times blog, economist Paul Krugman focused attention on one of the frequently repugnant think-tanks that serves America’s one-percenters. In Denial In Depth, Krugman applauds Ryan Chittum at the Columbia Journalism Review for:
“… a takedown…
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week.- Dan Gardner eviscerates the Cons for their stubborn insistence on mandatory minimum sentences in even the most ridiculous of cases:Imagine a university student living in a rented apartment with her boyfriend, sugge…
Continue readingNice Little ‘Manifesto’ You Got There, But, I’m Going To Burst Your Little Bubble–You ARE Part of the 99%
Boys ‘n’ girls, let’s give this college senior a big hand here! No, really! They’re making it on their own without any help from anyone on very little! Or so it would appear…
Oh, college senior, but you are very much part of the 99% ! Say it loud! Say it proud, . . . → Read More: Nice Little ‘Manifesto’ You Got There, But, I’m Going To Burst Your Little Bubble–You ARE Part of the 99%
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Panic of the Plutocrats
That’s the title of an excellent article by the New York Times’ Paul Krugman as he writes about the hysteria being elicited in the power elite over the implications of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. From Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, descr…
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Fiscal Austerity: Does it Work?
The Harper Regime is in the process of implementing some severe fiscal austerity measures. But does slashing spending and reducing deficits, as the advocates of such a policy claim, really restore confidence and drive economic renewal? It w…
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