One of the big bads from the 1980s is starting to emerge again in Alberta. Jingle mail — the act of walking away from an underwater mortgage by mailing your keys back to the bank — is a peculiarity of the Alberta residential market and an act of desperation. However, a combination of high debt … Continue reading It’s Time for a National Housing Strategy →
Tag: Poverty
Politics, Re-Spun: It’s Time for a National Housing Strategy
One of the big bads from the 1980s is starting to emerge again in Alberta. Jingle mail — the act of walking away from an underwater mortgage by mailing your keys back to the bank — is a peculiarity of the Alberta residential market and an act of desperation. However, a combination of high debt … Continue reading It’s Time for a National Housing Strategy →
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- Richard Eskow summarizes the basic facts about inequality in the U.S. Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that it’s impossible to fully explain or address that problem without factoring in ongoing racial disparities. And…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.- Heather Stewart discusses the possibility of a 20-hour work week to better distribute both work and income. And without going that far, Andrew Jackson suggests that our public policy priorities should include a n…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Ben Oquist laments the fact that trickle-down economics and destructive austerity remain the norm in Australia no matter how thoroughly they’re proven to fail. Alvin Powell discusses the burgeoning inequality of oppo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- PressProgress weighs in on the OECD’s findings that Canada’s income inequality is significantly worse than previously assumed. Didier Jacobs argues that our current economic system is anything but meritocratic….
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Homelessness in Canada: Its Growth, Policy Responses, and Advocacy
On February 1, I gave a guest presentation on homelessness to a graduate seminar class on housing policy taught by Steve Pomeroy at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. The focus of my presentation was the emergence of homelessness in Canada as a pressing public policy area in the 1980s. I discussed the […]
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Ben Casselman and Andrew Flowers discuss Raj Chetty’s research on the U.S.’ glaring lack of social mobility and fair opportunities:Children from poor families are much less likely to work in adulthood …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Julie Delahanty comments on Canada’s crisis of inequality and poverty. And Sean McElwee highlights how the ill-founded belief that income inequality is more a matter of merit than luck tends to lead people to ac…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading.- Lana Payne highlights how Kevin O’Leary’s obliviousness to inequality makes him a relic. But Linda McQuaig notes that however distant O’Leary may be from the public, he’s not that far removed from all too many Co…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Edgardo Sepulveda writes about the role of the federal government in combating inequality – while noting that Canada has gone in the wrong direction over the past few decades. And Michal Rozworski points out that we’…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Robert Kuttner writes about the increasing recognition that extreme inequality arises out of power imbalances rather than any natural state of affairs:(I)nfluential orthodox economists are having serio…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Simon Kennedy highlights another key finding in Oxfam’s latest study on wealth, as the global 1% now owns as much as the other 99% combined. And Dennis Howlett reviews Gabriel Zucman’s Hidden Wealth of Nations, …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
This and that to end your week.- Serina Sandhu writes that everybody is worse off when inequality is allowed to run rampant. And Danny Dorling highlights the principles we’ll need to follow in order to reverse the trend in that direction:There was a ti…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the appalling failure of both the province of Saskatchewan and the city of Regina to contribute a nickel to a long-overdue Housing First pilot project.For further reading…- D.C. Fraser reported on the project here, with this serving as the m…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Scott Santens discusses how a basic income could help to foster social cohesion. And Jared Bernstein confirms the seemingly obvious point that properly-funded social programs work wonders in reducing poverty. – …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.- In reviewing Gabriel Zucman’s new book, Cass Sunstein discusses the need to rein in tax havens and ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of the price of a functional society:(W)hatever your politi…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to start your new year.- Paul Krugman points out that as tends to be the case, the U.S.’ modest increase in high-end tax rates in 2013 managed to produce both more fair taxation and strong economic growth.- But Michael Hudson notes tha…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the kindness and compassion underlying our welcoming of Syrian refugees deserves a far larger place in a wide range of public policy decisions.For further reading…- Zack Beauchamp summarizes the exclusionary rhetoric that’s propelled Don…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Patrick Flavin studies (PDF) the direct benefits that flow from giving people secure access to health care. And Daphne Bramham writes that the damage done by child poverty can be directly observed in educational…
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