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Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bob Lord discusses how the concentration of wealth in the U.S. has pushed beyond even the obscene levels of the Gilded Age. Sunil Johal and Armine Yalnizyan examine (PDF) both Canada’s inequality and polarization of wealth, and a few of the options
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. -The UK’s Association of Directors of Public Health speaks out (PDF) about the importance of giving children the best possible start in life – including through security in the essentials of life. – But Christina Gibson-Davis and Christine Perchenski write about the increased inequality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Victor Cyr discusses the problems with a public policy focus on capitalism without any concern for human well-being. And Ann Pettifor highlights the concentrated wealth and power arising out of corporate monopolies, while noting that political decisions are behind those realities. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mark Karlin interviews George Monbiot about the prospect of politics based on empathy, sharing and belonging. – Andrew Jackson and Kate McInturff each offer their take on the federal fiscal update – with both lamenting the Libs’ lack of ambition. – Karl
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ian Welsh neatly summarizes the rules needed to ensure that capitalism doesn’t drown out social good: Capitalism, as it works, destroys itself in a number of ways. For capitalism to work, it must be prevented from doing so: it must not be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Wells writes about Justin Trudeau’s natural affinity for the rich and privileged, while the Star remains unduly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to fulfilling promises of Indigenous reconciliation and tax fairness. And Chantal Hebert discusses
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alan Freeman discusses the real costs of ideologically-driven deregulation: The idea that “the market” will root out bad actors in any industry and that regulations are just a hindrance to economic vitality is a dangerous concept. Companies, like individuals, will do what they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Katie Allen reports on the growing gap between the privileged few and the working class in the UK. And Frank Elgar highlights how we all pay the price of inequality, even as our governments can’t be bothered to rein it in: For decades,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Chrystia Freeland should not be punished for her grandfather’s sins, but for misleading Canadians about them
PHOTOS: Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland during her visit to Edmonton in the midst of the 2015 federal election. Below: Former Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Who would ever have imagined major Canadian media companies would conclude collaborating with the Nazis when they were on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Wells notes that the Trudeau Libs are having trouble keeping their story straight in pretending to appeal to Canada’s middle class. And Brent Patterson writes that the renegotiation of NAFTA is just one more area where the Libs aren’t interested in hearing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Wells notes that the Trudeau Libs are having trouble keeping their story straight in pretending to appeal to Canada’s middle class. And Brent Patterson writes that the renegotiation of NAFTA is just one more area where the Libs aren’t interested in hearing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Wells discusses how the Justin Trudeau Libs have been reduced to bluster and reannouncements as a substitute for their promise of improved equality. And Michael Harris notes that some of the people who were crucial to Trudeau’s election in B.C. are seeing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Paul Wells discusses how the Justin Trudeau Libs have been reduced to bluster and reannouncements as a substitute for their promise of improved equality. And Michael Harris notes that some of the people who were crucial to Trudeau’s election in B.C. are seeing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Justin Trudeau is about the least plausible possible advocate as to the importance of building trust in leaders and public institutions. For further reading…– The text of Trudeau’s Hamburg speech is here. And both Paul Wells and Susan Delacourt wonder whether it signals a shift in the
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Notley NDP’s latter-day conversion to Keystone XL boosterism
It has been fascinating to watch the Alberta New Democratic Party transition from being skeptical of oil pipelines as opposition to fairly effective advocates for pipelines as government. While the approval of the Trans-Canada Keystone XL Pipeline from Hardisty to… Continue Reading →
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
– Paul Wells argues that climate change and First Nations reconciliation – two of the issues which the Libs have tried to turn into signature priorities – look set to turn into areas of weakness as Justin Trudeau continues his party’s tradition of dithering. And Martin Lukacs writes that Trudeau’s handling of continuing injustice facing First Nations has involved an awful lot of flash but virtually no action:
The extractivist worldview—bent on treating everything as a commodity—that lay behind Stephen Harper’s resource agenda just as powerfully shapes Trudeau’s. In fact, the Liberals’ attempt to wrap themselves in the UN Declaration without embracing its central right may constitute a new, more subtle form of extraction: the extraction from Indigenous territory of consent itself.
Liberal moves to extract and manufacture consent and support for outdated policies are evident elsewhere: restoring funding to the Assembly of First Nations, a government-dependent organization that has since plumped frequently for them; appointing an Indigenous Justice Minister, even though Indigenous critics argue she has sided with the government agenda throughout her political career; and agreeing to call an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, but with a mandate far short of what impacted families wanted. As the weight of reality presses against Trudeau’s rhetoric, the ability to generate consent is crumbling.
Reconciliation is a powerful hope, an uplifting prospect, a deeply desired new relationship that Trudeau has compellingly invoked. But if reconciliation does not include the restitution of land, the recognition of real self-government, the reigning in of abusive police, the remediation of rivers and forests, it will remain a vacant notion, a cynical ploy to preserve a status quo in need not of tinkering but transformation. It will be Canada’s latest in beads and trinkets, a cheap simulation of justice.
– Guy Caron discusses the CRA’s role in Canada’s two-tier tax system. Stephen Punwasi comments on the connection between Canada’s willingness to facilitate tax avoidance, and the real estate bubbles driving housing prices far beyond what working-class Canadians can afford. And Marc Lee then highlights the connection between soaring urban real estate prices and increased inequality.
– David Ball notes that many municipalities are retaking control over their own services after learning that the promises of efficiency through privatization are entirely illusory.
– Richard Orange points out Sweden’s intriguing idea of reducing taxes on repair services to discourage people from throwing out consumer goods. But I’d wonder whether that step alone would make a dent if it isn’t paired with a concerted effort at training potential repair workers for a job which the corporate sector would prefer to eliminate.
– Finally, Paul Mason makes the case for economics to be based on real-world observations of human behaviour, rather than insular mathematical models whose assumptions about market efficiency bear no relationship to reality. And Branko Milanovic discusses the need to measure and reduce inequality as part of a global development strategy.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Alan Freeman is duly appalled by Apple’s attempt to throw itself a pity party with the money it’s hoarding rather than paying in fair corporate taxes. And James Mackintosh reports on Jeroen Dijsselbloe…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.- James Stewart examines how Donald Trump could be paying zero taxes using shelters designed specifically to enrich real estate developers while serving no social purpose. And Alexandra Thornton and Brendan Duke po…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Jim Tankersley interviews Joshua Bivens about the relative effects of economic growth and income inequality – and particularly his evidence showing that more people are far better off with more modest growth fairly d…
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