Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Benjamin Radcliff discusses the proven connection between progressive policies and a higher quality of life across all levels of income: Happier people live in countries with a generous social safety net, or, more generally, countries whose governments “tax and spend” at higher rates,
Continue readingTag: Poverty
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Dean Baker discusses the strong relationship between union organization and the elimination of poverty: A simple regression shows that a 10 percentage point increase in the percentage of workers covered by a union contract is associated with a 0.7 percentage point drop in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – There was never much doubt that the Cons’ demolition of Canada’s long-form census was intended to ensure that we lack data needed to develop evidence-based policies – and that the effects would be most significant among the most marginalized (or exclusive) groups. And
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Untangling the Temporary Foreign Worker Knot
Banks as predators? Surely, no! Temporary foreign workers have become a lightning-rod topic in Canadian labour in recent months with the high-profile news of the Royal Bank of Canada replacing staff with TFWs. But the issue is not about RBC, which is merely the latest flashpoint. The temporary foreign worker
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jordon Cooper writes about the dangers of growing income inequality in Saskatchewan and around the world: Income inequality is driven largely by market forces. Technology has changed the job market, and globalization has moved markets overseas or driven down wages. It’s also driven
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Labour Day 2013: Say Hello to the Pavement!
Workers in Canada and around the world have been under assault for decades, but most of our recent tactics to stop the bleeding have been ineffective. Are we lazy, complacent, overworked, obedient, compliant, subdued, afraid, docile, or fully tamed and intimidated by the one per cent? If we don’t get
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Emily Badger discusses how poverty affects people who are forced to use their physical and mental resources on bare survival: Human mental bandwidth is finite. You’ve probably experienced this before (though maybe not in those terms): When you’re lost in concentration trying to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Katie McDonough reports on new research showing the devastating effects of poverty on an individual’s ability to plan and function: According to researchers at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia, people living in poverty experience reduced cognitive functioning as a result
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee reminds us that a precarious living for much of the middle class is nothing new – and neither is a cacophony of reactionary voices claiming that a desperate struggle for survival is the natural and proper state for most of humanity.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Simon Enoch nicely challenges the City of Regina’s blind faith in “risk transfer” by pointing out how that concept has typically been applied elsewhere: So what price should we put on such a risk transfer? This is where things can get dicey. How
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne writes that it’s long past time for Newfoundland and Labrador to boost its minimum wage: Last year, a statutory review of minimum wage, conducted by a government-appointed panel, called for action to be taken on the minimum wage. The panel recommended
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Polly Toynbee discusses how the UK’s attacks on social programs are based on gross ignorance about what social spending does (and who it helps): The Citizens Advice Bureau reports a rise of 78% in the last six months in people needing food banks
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jenny Carson asks what governments are doing to lift poor workers out of poverty. (Spoiler alert: the Cons’ answer is “why would we want to do that?”). – Meanwhile, Kemal Dervis and Uri Dadush discuss the desperate need to rein in inequality
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Canada: Investment in Aboriginal Early Childhood Development Needed
Kathy Mallet says Indigenous peoples in Canada still suffer the effects of poverty, systematic racism, colonization, the sixties scoop and the residential schools experience, urges investment in Aboriginal early childhood development. The post Canada: Investment in Aboriginal Early Childhood Development Needed appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingLeDaro: Poverty in America – especially children
The U.S is one of the richest countries in the world but poverty is aplenty. I was in New York, Manhattan area, and I could not walk a street without being accosted by beggars. These beggars don’t ask for money, they demand it. If you don’t give them a quarter
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alison Bennett reports on the OECD’s work on offshore tax avoidance, highlighting the “stateless income” that’s shuffled around the globe so as to avoid contributing to social good anywhere: Policymakers around the world are stepping up efforts to tighten rules because a growing
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Chris Hedges on "Murdering the Wretched of the Earth"
There’s a reason the Muslim poor flock to radical Islam, several reasons in fact. They’ve been discussed at length before but Chris Hedges, in light of the massacres ongoing in Egypt, recaps: Radical Islam is the last refuge of the Muslim poor. The mandated five prayers a day give the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Hudson’s Bay Retail Sweatshop
Sweatshops ‘R Us! Ripping off employees by paying them less than a living wage [the Metro Vancouver 2013 living wage is $19,64], all to pad shareholder profits, is the glory of exploitative capitalism! Long live capitalism! Oh wait, what happens when your own employees can’t afford to shop at your
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Jacob Goldstein discusses how one-time, no-strings-attached funding for the poor in developing countries can produce lasting improvements in their standard of living – while also highlighting the need for longer-term development: A charity that gives away money, as opposed to, say, offering
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Occupy Movement Vs. Maquiladoras
Workplace justice: a pipe dream, or something to build solidarity to fight for? I had the distinct, and creepy, pleasure of sitting in front of a group of fellows yesterday in, ironically, the cheap seats at the Seattle Mariners game. They were discussing business. One fellow, who of course may
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