This and that for your Sunday reading. – Laurie Macfarlane writes that contrary to the dogma of budget scolds, the truly reckless course of action is to fail to invest public money in state capacity: After four decades of neoliberalism, the state’s capacity has been drastically hollowed out. Key public
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – PressProgress highlights the latest example of the obscene concentration of wealth in Canada, as a mere 45 people own more than the GDP of over half the country’s provinces and territories. – Paul Precht dispels any myth that Alberta’s anti-tax ideology has anything
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Rick Salutin writes that Canada’s lack of accessible housing arises primarily as the result of general inequality. Derek Thompson notes that youth athletics are just one more sphere of activity in which concentrated wealth is driving out participation by people who don’t have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robin Sears writes that it’s long past time for Canada’s wealthiest people and corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. And Leo Gerard points out how the U.S. has gone in exactly the wrong direction by slashing its corporate tax rates
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Notice to public employees: Jason Kenney and the UCP are eyeing your pensions again
If you’re a public employee in Alberta and you’ve been deferring your salary for years to build a secure retirement through your modest pension, Jason Kenney would like to take it away. If he can’t do that, he at least wants to ensure no one else can have the same
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Larry Elliott reports on another of UK Labour’s proposals to democratize the economy, this time by giving consumers some say in executive pay. – Alex Paterson comments on the relationship between the housing market and the investments of many pension plans – though
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Ed Finn discusses how employment and unemployment rates are among the economic indicators which are all too often misleadingly substituted for shared prosperity. And Russell Robinson points out how the Libs’ poverty strategy is at best a first step toward eliminating needless
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Daydreaming in Technicolor’ … the Alberta Party and Derek Fildebrandt present alternative budgets
PHOTOS: The Alberta Legislature gets the Technicolor treatment with publication of two Opposition “alternative budgets.” There was nothing from the United Conservative Opposition, of course. Below: Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel and a costumed Derek Fildebrandt, the Independent “Liberty Conservative,” late of the UPC and Wildrose Party (Photo: Derek Fildebrandt
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dick Bryan argues that the minimum wage should reflect the financial risks faced by low-wage workers, while Nick Day offers some lessons in successful economic activism from the $15 and Fairness movement. And Yasemin Besen-Cassino points out that gender-based pay inequity starts
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – J.W. Mason reviews Yanis Varoufakis’ Adults in the Room with a focus on how damaging austerity was forced on Greece by other governments. And Jan Rovny comments on the need for Europe’s left-wing parties to adapt to the precarious economy and evolving social
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Noah Smith comments on the damaging effects of corporate concentration for workers, consumers and even the financial sector: The biggest threat from the increasing dominance of big companies isn’t to Goldman Sachs, or even to retirement plans; it’s to workers and consumers. When
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Harriet Agerholm comments on the connection between income inequality and a growing life expectancy gap between the rich and the rest of us. – May Bulman notes that after a generation of austerity, children of public sector workers are increasingly living in poverty
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Jago comments on an all-white jury’s acquittal of Gerald Stanley for the shooting death of Colten Boushie. Shree Paradkar notes that the issue of non-representative juries is far from a new one. Scott Gilmore recognizes that Boushie’s death and its aftermath
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Matthew Sears writes that we would be much better off prioritizing more than just cutting short-term costs and prices in making choices: Are we really unwilling to pay more for our coffee as we are on our way to our well-paid and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Noam Scheiber and Ben Casselman comment on the role of corporate consolidation in undermining pay and working conditions. And Meagan Day rebuts the claim that employers can be excused for ignoring not-yet-qualified pools of workers by pointing out that the same people
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jim Hightower writes about the importance of a popular movement to build the policy foundation for middle- and working-class prosperity. And Doug Henwood notes that the U.S. union movement managed to hold its ground in 2017. – Ellie May MacDonald points out
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Bernie Sanders comments on the need to take back political power from the wealthiest few: Now, more than ever, those of us who believe in democracy and progressive government must bring low-income and working people all over the world together behind an
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Gerald Caplan writes about the existential threats to humanity which are being either escalated or ignored: We are rapidly approaching the same kind of escalation that led the world to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, with humankind on the very brink of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Toby Sanger discusses how the Trudeau Libs’ obsession with privatized infrastructure only stands to put control over public services in the hands of corporate predators: Corporations are sitting on hundreds of billions of excess cash in Canada and trillions worldwide — money they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Matt Bruenig examines the multi-million-dollar increase in the household wealth of the U.S.’ top 1% over the past decade. And Ian Welsh discusses how the extreme concentration of wealth bleeds into political choices: The corruption of vast inequality is that it makes some
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