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.
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Accidental 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
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Powerful Voice Is Stilled
It was Henry David Thoreau who said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” Harry Leslie Smith was not part of that mass of men. Harry, who I wrote about several times on this blog, has died at the age of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Chris Hughes discusses how progressive politics, including expanded social programs and more progressive taxes, are proving to be a winner for U.S. Democrats in both primaries and general elections. Jacob Bacharach writes about the myth of the U.S. as a particularly wealthy country
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Alex Morris writes about the barriers between the U.S.’ working class and any hope of financial stability and security: In 1960, the annual average health care costs in America were just $146 per person; in 2016, that figure had risen to $10,348.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Evening Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Nick Charity reports on the observations of the UN’s envoy on poverty and human rights that callous and cruel austerian political choices have caused harm to millions of UK residents. – Tess Kalinowski reports on the reality that Doug Ford’s move to remove
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Richard Waters and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson report that five large tech companies alone turned the Trump corporate tax cuts into tens of billions of dollars in share buybacks benefiting nobody other than those who already had the most. And Caroline Haskins writes about
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Trish Garner comments on the need to acknowledge the humanity of people living in poverty – which leads to the inescapable need to use readily-available resources to ensure a reasonable standard of living. And Arindrajit Dube studies the effect of an increased minimum
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Chris Turner rightly recognizes the urgency in implementing effective policies to avert climate breakdown – though he does set the bar too low in the process. The Star’s editorial board highlights how the latest IPCC report confirms the danger of politicians fighting against
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jim Stanford writes that the D-J Composites lockout should offer Canada a much-needed reminder as to the reality of labour conflict: Through 640 emotional days, the picket line has remained peaceful: the only injury was a union member hit by a vehicle charging
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Oliver Milman reports on new indications that we’re far beyond any reasonable pace in trying to rein in climate change. – The Star’s editorial board discusses why lower-income Ontarians are right to feel like they’re under attack from Doug Ford’s government. And Noah
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jean Swanson writes about the success of Vancouver tenants in pushing to limit the rent increases which can be forced on them. But any win for collective action will come attempts to stifle more of the same – and Dan Taekema reports on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Sam Pizzigati discusses the predictable social consequences of allowing inequality to grow: What sort of unintended consequences [result from increased inequality]? The British epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have some compelling answers in their powerful new book, The Inner Level. The more
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: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Stephen McBride offers some important lessons on austerity from government responses to the 2008 economic crisis. – Zoe Drewett reports on the rising level of poverty in the UK. Andrew Jackson points out how the Libs’ measuring stick for poverty seems aimed at
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Tracy Smith-Carrier comments on the importance of addressing poverty as an issue of human rights rather than charity: It is not a matter of being down on your luck or misfortunate, as if people are somehow fated to live a life of poverty.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Kelso reports on Public Health England’s findings about the connection between poverty and more health difficulties, with residents of poorer neighbourhoods facing twice the incidence of ill health. – Phil Whitaker points out the need to address the stressors causing childhood
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Jackson comments on the need for a national anti-poverty strategy which can actually meet its intended purpose: [The new Poverty Reduction Strategy] responds to progressives and anti poverty activists who have long called for a federal government led, broadly based initiative
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: When tenants ‘graduate’ from Housing First programs
Over at the Research Blog of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’ve written a ‘top 10’ overview of a study on which I’m co-author. It essentially asks the question: “When homeless people are placed into subsidized housing with social work support, for how many months/years do they require that social work
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
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