Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz examine the source of a labour market which is offering little to workers, and conclude the issue is less increased employer power than the systematic destruction of workers’ bargaining power: The biggest change in relative power between typical
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Joe Pinsker offers a reminder that the wealthiest individuals are primarily concerned with positional rather than absolute gains – meaning that nothing useful is accomplished by diverting wealth toward them other than to drive up the price of status symbols. And Thomas Piketty
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Think rail cars, guns and Liberals, this stuff will hit the fan!
Having bought Canada a pipeline it may or may not want at considerable expense, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to spend political capital on Alberta as well, now saying the federal government is prepared to help the province finance the purchase of additional railroad tanker cars to raise the volume
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 readingPolitics and its Discontents: Alberta Dishonours Itself
As much as I may strive to be a critical thinker, sometimes things happen that tempt me to succumb to certain stereotypes. Take, for example, the notion that many Albertans are rednecks. As you will see in the following, some are certainly sending that message to the rest of Canada.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrea Germanos discusses the problems with relying on the charity of the uber-wealthy rather than stable and sustainable public revenues to meet the needs of the people with the least. – Dan Fumano reports on the City of Vancouver’s call for a shift
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Author Andrew Nikiforuk tells a bleak tale of squandered opportunities, wilful blindness on energy policy
By adopting an energy policy founded on low royalties and pipeline development, the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley squandered an opportunity to implement a program that could have strengthened Alberta’s economy while preparing it to deal with the inevitable decline in fossil fuel demand, author Andrew Nikiforuk told the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lana Payne offers a reminder (with reference to Lars Osberg’s new book) that extreme and growing inequality is a choice rather than an inevitability – but that it also represents a self-reinforcing trend: “The Age of Increasing Inequality: The Astonishing Rise Of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Matt Bruenig discusses how UK Labour’s plans to ensure workers have an ownership stake in major corporations fits into the wider principle of common wealth: The Labour Party’s John McDonnell recently unveiled a policy that would require large corporations with more than 250
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Skidelsky warns that having failed to learn crucial lessons from a 2008 economic crash caused by a reckless financial sector exploiting inequality and austerity for short-term profit, we may soon be doomed to more of the same. And Riley Griffin reports
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 readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Thomas Walkom reminds us that the Libs’s supposed tradeoff of climate policy for pipelines is failing as much in producing the former as the latter: For almost two years, the Trudeau government has tried to finesse the contradictions of its climate-change policies.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lana Payne’s column for the Labour Day weekend comment on the role unions play in pushing for advancements for everybody. – Paul Krugman offers a reminder that a focus on GDP alone as a measure of economic development misses the issue of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jagmeet Singh observes that much of the festering hate stoked by right-wing parties can be traced back to economic injustice and insecurity: (I)f we really want to stop hate, we need to do more than just call it out. We need to recognize
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – David Moscrop makes the case for a long-overdue inheritance tax in Canada: Over time, if left unchecked, capitalism facilitates the pooling of wealth — cash, property, business ownership, investments — among a select few. This is as true in Canada as anywhere else.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – David MacDonald studies the increasing concentration of wealth in Canada, while noting the need for wealth-based taxes (and particularly an inheritance tax) to start building a more fair society. And Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley report on the Trump administration’s latest move
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joel Achenbach and Angela Fritz discuss how climate change is amplifying all kinds of extreme weather (with severe heat as only the most obvious example). And Umair Irfan examines some of the dangerous economic and social side effects of unprecedented heat waves. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jon Stone reports on Jeremy Corbyn’s message to progressive parties that voters have had enough of being told there is no alternative to austerity and corporatism: On a visit to the Netherlands on Thursday the Labour leader said socialists and social democrats risked
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Richard Partington reports on new OECD data showing that wages are continuing to soar for the lucky few in the developed world while stagnating for everybody else, as well as on the Rowntree Foundation’s observation that single-income families in the UK have fallen
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Katrina vanden Heuvel discusses how the Trump tax giveaway to the rich will exacerbate class and race inequality in the U.S. And David Climenhaga offers a reminder that Alberta’s budget crunch remains a product of its failure to collect a reasonable level of
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