Assorted content to end your weekend. – Nick Kristof writes that the growing gap in income reflects a similarly growing gap in social perception – and that there’s plenty of need to reduce both: There is an income gap in America, but just as important is a compassion gap. Plenty
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The New York Times editorial board points out that a higher minimum wage can produce clear economic benefits for businesses as well as for workers: One 2013 study by three economists — Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester and Michael Reich — compared the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jonathan Freedland discusses how the UK’s Conservative government is forcing its poor citizens to choose between food and dignity: Cameron’s statement rests on the repeatedly implied assumption that the only people going hungry are those who have opted for idleness as a lifestyle
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: If the 1% Has Russell Brand Killed…
If the 1% has Russell Brand killed, we will see it in the corporate media as a drug OD relapse, or a freak accident. Why? He is dangerous because he fearlessly tells the truth and challenges pretence. Let’s examine this in some detail here [with video]: His brain works twice
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Affordable Housing and Homelesness
This morning I gave a presentation to an church group in Ottawa on affordable housing and homelessness. My slides can be downloaded here. Points I raised in the presentation include the following: -Though government provides subsidizes to some low-income households for housing, it is important to be mindful of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Robert Reich comments on the concerted effort by the U.S.’ rich to exacerbate inequality – and points out how it’s warped their worldview. And Dean Baker criticizes the spread of inequality by design: And then there is the financial sector where Mankiw tells
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Alternative Federal Budget would lift 855,000 Canadians out of poverty: Think Tank
by: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives | Press Release CCPA Alternative Budget 2014 OTTAWA — The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) warns a so-called “do-nothing” federal budget is anything but, and is likely to worsen Canada’s slowing economy. The CCPA’s 2014 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) shows what the federal government could do
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford discusses how unions and collective bargaining improve the standard of living for everybody: The following figure illustrates the broad negative correlation between bargaining coverage and poverty: that is, the higher is bargaining coverage, the lower is relative poverty (and the more
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: SUPPORT: Auto Unions in the US and Canada are on a Roll
With all the union busting and union bashing going on by the 1% and their compradors in government, it’s nice to see the labour movement getting some traction. The next few days in Tennessee and Ontario could move workplace democracy and the 99% ahead significantly, with thousands of new unionized
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Collective Bargaining and Poverty Reduction: OECD Data
My union Unifor is currently undertaking an important “Rights at Work” campaign, which involves a national tour of meetings with our officers and local leaders and stewards, followed by a membership canvass and community outreach effort, all aimed at beating back the current attack on fundamental labour rights coming from
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Capitalism: Swing Your Sledgehammer
It’s all about vision and hope, in an effort to envision how economics and markets can exist after the toxicity of capitalism is gone, gone gone. Are you up for it? Last night, John Holloway, author of Crack Capitalism, was the SFU Institute for the Humanities‘ guest lecturer, skyped in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Angelina Chapin highlights the drastic impact a guaranteed annual income would have on Canadians currently living in poverty: To set and meet goals, you have to think long-term. When you’re poor, you can’t focus on the future (and Bill Gates wasn’t raised poor,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Robert Reich confirms the seemingly obvious reality that poverty and inequality are in fact major obstacle facing the poor. And Paul Krugman explains why any successful progressive movement in the U.S. will need to discuss inequality and the hoarding of wealth to challenge
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Eating the Poor
Do you look up to the 1%? How could you? Come, children, let’s take a look! Fact: The world’s 85 richest people hold the same amount of wealth as its 3.5 billion poorest. Opinion: “It’s fantastic, and this is a great thing because it inspires everybody, gets them motivation to
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: BC Is Actually “Missing” More Than 94,000 Jobs #SpinAlert
It’s not unusual to see unemployment rates of around 6-8% these days. But if you have always had the feeling that more than one in sixteen people is unemployed, you’re right. The capitalist machine likes to use that low number to avoid the greater reality that almost 30% of British
Continue readingLeDaro: World’s 85 people own the wealth equal to half of the population of the world
The combined wealth of the world’s richest 85 people is now equivalent to that owned by half of the world’s population – or 3.5 billion of the poorest people – according to a new report from Oxfam. The wealth of the richest 1% in the world is now 65 times
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Erika Shaker rightly questions why government policy toward business is based on a level of permissiveness which we’d recognize as utter madness in dealing with a child: Sure, all parents make mistakes, and all kids have meltdowns (some of which might have,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Bill Kerry writes that extreme inequality serves to reinforce itself – and points out what needs to be done to counter the temptation to kick others down: One of the major difficulties in tackling inequality is the way it coerces many people into accepting
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A World Badly In Need Of Inspired Leadership
Since he was elected to the position, I have written several posts related to Pope Francis; several of them express a renewed hope that the plain-speaking pontiff can generate some hope in a world badly in need of inspiring leadership, something almost wholly absent in our current crop of politicos,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Cassidy makes the case to call the U.S.’ war on poverty a success – pointing out that there has been a meaningful reduction in poverty over the past 50 years connected almost entirely to government programs. But lest that be taken as
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