Half of the world’s people live in the countryside. Three quarters of the people living in poverty live in the countryside. Two-thirds of the income of the rural poor comes from small-scale farms and peasant agriculture. Meanwhile, peasant farmers and the rural poor produce two-thirds of the world’s food. Something
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The Progressive Economics Forum: The 2021 federal budget
I’ve written a ‘top 10’ overview of the recent federal budget. The link to the post is available here:Â https://nickfalvo.ca/ten-things-to-know-about-canadas-2021-federal-budget/
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Andrew Nikiforuk calls out the premiers who continue to spout talking points about “balance” while failing utterly to control the spread of deadly COVID-19 variants. Jillian Kestler-D’Amours discusses how Ontario’s medical calamity was entirely preventable, while David Moscrop makes the case for Doug
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada: Ten things to know about the federal role in housing policy
I’ve written a 750-word overview of the federal role in housing policy. The English-language version is here: https://nickfalvo.ca/canada-ten-things-to-know-about-the-federal-role-in-housing-policy/ The French-language version is here: https://nickfalvo.ca/canada-dix-faits-saillants-sur-le-role-du-federal-en-matiere-de-politique-du-logement/
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Don Pittis writes about Janet Yellen’s work to ensure that corporations pay their fair share, rather than being able to structure and artificially locate operations in order to exploit countries without contributing to them. And David Paddon discusses how Canada would stand to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jim Stanford weighs in on the need for increased worker input into economic decision-making – particularly as change is otherwise imposed by management with little regard for the people most affected. – Nathaniel Erskine-Smith makes the case for a wealth tax to recoup
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Mariana Mazzucato responds to Boris Johnson by recognizing that capitalism has no viable answers for collective action problems such as the ones posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. – Scott Schmidt discusses how the familiar right-wing attempt to squeeze the wages and working conditions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jason Hickel writes that on a global scale, poverty is the result of inequality and the misallocation of resources rather than underdevelopment. And Brittany Andrew-Amofah makes the case for a wealth tax to both reduce the existing concentration of wealth and power, and
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: A primer on supportive housing and Housing First
I’ve written a 900-word primer on supportive housing and Housing First. Here’s the link to the English-language version: https://nickfalvo.ca/a-primer-on-supportive-housing-and-housing-first/ Here’s the link to the French-language version: https://nickfalvo.ca/une-introduction-au-logement-supervise-et-le-logement-dabord/
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Duncan Cameron writes about the fundamental choice between austerity and full employment in developing the 2021 federal budget. And Noah Smith points out that while pipeline cancellations signal the imminent end of fossil fuels, they don’t need to have any impact on job
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Andrew Nikiforuk takes a look at two proposals to get to COVID Zero – including one from Canada and one from Germany. – Mickey Djuric reports on Saskatchewan’s deceptive COVID-19 reporting – which results in a public announcement that people have “recovered” no
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Damien Cave writes about the lessons Australia’s successful containment of COVID-19 offer to any other jurisdiction willing to listen and learn rather than recklessly endangering public health, while the Globe and Mail’s editorial board questions why Canada doesn’t fit that bill. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jerusalem Demsas discusses the strong popular support for affordable social housing even as governments continually fail to provide it. Daphne Bramham rightly asks why we haven’t seen far more of a move toward the Housing First models (including both secure housing and the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Grace Blakeley comments on the connection between neoliberal ideology, and the replacement of even the possibility of collective action with an assumption that we’re only in it for ourselves. – Aditya Chakrabortty writes about the need to eliminate poverty in all of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Fran Quigley interviews Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox about the entirely feasible steps which could be taken to eliminate poverty in the U.S.: FQ You devote a good deal of the book to reviewing the data and the stories that describe US
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Happy New Years
Community My New Years Resolution for our society is to no longer worship at the twin altars of individualism and technology but rather to embrace the saviour of community. From the industrial revolution to the high tech revolution we have deluded ourselves that technology would solve all our problems. While
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Owen Jones writes that the oft-repeated message that the public is responsible for the control (or spread) of COVID-19 serves mostly to deflect from gross failures of government. Grant Robertson reports on the deterioration of Canada’s capacity to respond to a pandemic.
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: The Pensioner and the Pandemic
This is the post I was going to write before I was rudely interrupted and told to lock myself in my room. I may indeed be the least affected person on the planet by this pandemic, and the only one that it seems to be not such a big deal,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Paul Wells writes that the Libs’ latest climate announcement represents at least some break from their tendency to take the easy way out on tough policy choices, while Canadians for Tax Fairness offers a thumbs-up to the first national plan to meet any
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: the recession’s likely long-term impact on homelessness
I’ve just written a report for Employment and Social Development Canada on the current recession’s likely long-term impact on homelessness in Canada. An overview of the report can be found here.
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