This and that for your Sunday reading. – Richard Hill wonders whether neoliberalism is approaching its end, while noting the dangers of allowing progressive themes to be used to prop up elitist power structures. And Heather Boushey interviews Kimberly Clausing about the opportunity to raise revenue and reduce inequality by
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Eaton discusses how some U.S. state governments are taking steps to fight inequality with taxes at the top of the income scale. – The Canadian Coalition for Tax Fairness is coming together to push for a tax system where everybody pays
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Leslie McCall and Jennifer Richeson offer another look at what happens when Americans are properly informed about the level of inequality in their country: What effect did this information have? First, more respondents came to believe that “coming from a wealthy family” and
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Cathy Crowe writes that there’s no excuse for putting off action to provide housing to people who need it – not only because of the inhumanity of waiting, but because there’s plenty of evidence as to what works: Over the years big
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Alex Collinson discusses how insecure work makes it impossible to reliably structure an individual’s life: Many respondents told us about how difficult it is to budget without knowing how much you’ll be earning from one week to the next. The number of
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Tom Parkin writes about the growing opposition to a Lib infrastructure bank designed to turn public needs into private profits at our expense: Paying higher fares, fees and tolls because of a political decision to use more expensive private capital would be
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Dean Baker notes that a reduction in required work time could go a long way toward ensuring that workers share in productivity gains. – Meanwhile, Max Ehrenfreund writes about new research on the state of the U.S.’ middle class – showing that lifetime
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The latest from the NDP’s federal leadership campaign. (As always, see the reference page for general information.) – Mylene Crete reports on Alexandre Boulerice’s endorsement of Peter Julian – which offers another important piece of evidence that the party’s contingent of Quebec MPs and organizers sees Julian as a viable
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Assorted content to end your week. – Jordan Brennan and Kaylie Tiessen write that it’s long past time to set a level of federal revenue sufficient to support the social programs Canadians want: In the decades since [corporate-driven] reforms were undertaken, Canada experienced a significant deterioration in its macroeconomic performance:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Ethan Cox reports on new polling showing that Canadians are highly concerned about inequality – even if our governments aren’t doing anywhere meaningful to address it: Of Canadians surveyed, 73 per cent said their and their family’s economic situation had stayed the same
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Owen Jones writes that excessive reliance on corporate profiteers is the reason why the UK’s trains don’t run on time. And Nora Loreto argues that postal banking is needed (among other reasons) to rein in abuses by Canada’s biggest banks. – Shannon Daub
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Heather Whiteside discusses how the privatization schemes being toyed with at all levels of government represent nothing more than reckless gambling with public money and goods: When a federal, provincial, or municipal government builds a bridge, a highway, a school, or a
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This and that for your Tuesday reading: – Percy Downe notes that both the Harper Cons and Trudeau Libs have stood in the way of identifying and recouping tens of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes – leaving everybody else to pay the share of tax evaders. And Riley Sparks
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading: – Percy Downe notes that both the Harper Cons and Trudeau Libs have stood in the way of identifying and recouping tens of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes – leaving everybody else to pay the share of tax evaders. And Riley Sparks
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Owen Jones writes that we should give credit for the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the popular opposition which will be need to push back against Donald Trump, rather than pretending it represents a win for Trump himself: That Trump has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Arancha González Laya distinguishes between international trade and corporatism – arguing that we should be looking to ensure people benefit from the former by reining in the latter: Making trade more inclusive requires action on three broad policy fronts: trade rules, domestic social
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Larry Beinhart argues that aside from the gross unfairness and economic harm from growing inequality, there’s a basic problem trusting the uber-rich to make reasonable decisions with massive amounts of wealth. And George Monbiot makes the case that even as he pretends
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Owen Jones highlights the toxic stress and other health problems borne disproportionately by members of the LGBT community who face systematic discrimination. And Tayla Smith and Jaitra Sathyandran discuss how temporary foreign workers (and others facing precarious work situations) tend to suffer
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joel Wood highlights the social cost of carbon as a crucial reason to work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions rather than insisting on doing the absolute least the rest of the world will tolerate. And needless to say, Brad Wall’s idea of an
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.
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