Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Eugene Robinson writes about the need to respond to climate breakdown with ambition rather than undue hesitation. Martin Wolf rightly points out that pricing alone won’t get us anywhere close to reducing carbon emissions to a sustainable level in time to avert catastrophe.
Continue readingTag: Poverty
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robyn Allan reports that the Trudeau Libs’ set of Trans Mountain giveaways to the oil sector now includes billions to oil companies. And Sharmini Peries talks to Dimitri Lascaris about the Libs’ willingness to enable SNC Lavalin’s corruption, while Martin Patriquin notes the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Iglika Ivanova discusses how British Columbia can move toward eliminating poverty in its next budget. – Patrick Maze points out the need for Saskatchewan’s education system to be able to rely on stable and sufficient funding. But Alex MacPherson notes that Scott
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jason Hickel challenges the spin that poverty and inequality are being meaningfully reduced around the world as our global economy is currently structured. Sarah Marsh reports on the reemergence of “Dickensian diseases” as a result of cuts to social supports in the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Both Eric Levitz and Brian Beutler write that U.S. Democrats need to highlight and fight the class war being waged by the rich, rather than shying away from the real and justified anger it provokes among insecure workers. And Robert Benzie reports on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Chris Hedges points out how the obscenely rich few are trying to distract from their accumulation of wealth in order to avoid what would stand to be a massive public backlash. Emily Peck discusses the question of why our economic system is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Christo Aivalis discusses the lessons the Canadian progressive movement should take from the emergence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in shaping the U.S.’ political discourse: What is so crucial to Ocasio-Cortez’s potential—as well as the sheer hatred she inspires among the right—is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Penney Kome writes about the importance of treating poverty as a social disease rather than a purely individual circumstance. And Jackie Esmonde and Todd Gordon discuss how Doug Ford is using the social effects of poverty to force workers to put up
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Statistics Canada’s Ongoing Consultation about the Market Basket Measure Needs Recalibration
Things are moving quite fast, even too fast, since the federal government’s first poverty reduction strategy was published in August, at least for the aspects of this strategy which are problematic. The unilateral decision to consider the Market Basket Measure (MBM) as “Canada’s Official Poverty Line” is one of those.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Simon Ducatel discusses how wealth inequality is at the root of continued poverty and deprivation, while Charles Plante notes that anti-poverty strategies in Canada currently serve mostly to capture credit for existing policies rather than to guide the development of new ones.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Erlend Sandoy and Saskia Kerkvliet offer a graphic explainer of the causes and costs of high-end tax avoidance. And Eric Rankin reports on the scope of money laundering through casinos in British Columbia (which was ten times larger than official estimates), while ProPublica
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Talia Lavin writes about the value of shifting the Overton window to enable serious discussion of higher tax rates on the people who have far more money than they could possibly need: I think about how we view the rich, so often
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: An update on Canada’s National Housing Strategy
Steve Pomeroy, arguably Canada’s top affordable housing policy expert, has written a status update on Canada’s National Housing Strategy (NHS). His overview includes some great background material on Canadian housing policy generally. Points raised in his analysis include the following: -The Trudeau government’s much-anticipated NHS was unveiled in November 2017.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Gerard Di Trolio discusses the need for an active labour movement to respond to the contempt for collective action shared by the Libs and the Cons. And Nicole Goodkind reports on the Trump administration’s plan to deprive workers of billions in wages by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Trevor Tombe highlights how equalization actually works – and how the bleatings of Jason Kenney, Scott Moe and other demagogues would serve only to eliminate anything worthy of the name. – Mary O’Hara rightly argues that child poverty in the UK and U.S.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Guardian’s editorial board writes that there’s no excuse for political choices which leave people homeless – and no reason not to starting correcting ongoing breaches of the right to housing. And Emily Mathieu reports on the push for Toronto to declare a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Linda Solomon Wood writes that Canadians need to be wary of fake news being propagated in our midst: (W)e face a continuous, deliberate, planned assault on the truth. Not just on the facts themselves, but on truth as an idea. On truth
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ten considerations for the next Alberta budget
Over at the Behind The Numbers website, I’ve written a blog post titled “Ten considerations for the next Alberta budget.” The blog post is a summary of a recent workshop organized by the Alberta Alternative Budget Working Group. The link to the blog post is here.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Noah Smith writes that for all the recognition of poverty and precarity in the U.S., it may be home to even more material insecurity than normally presumed: Imagine a 55-year-old single woman with diabetes working a part-time job making close to minimum wage.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Stephanie Kelton, Andres Bernal and Greg Carlock highlight how a Green New Deal is entirely affordable south of the border. And Clayton Thomas-Muller examines what we could demand in a Canadian equivalent: (I)f we’re going to do what the science says we need
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