Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Joe Pinsker offers a reminder that the wealthiest individuals are primarily concerned with positional rather than absolute gains – meaning that nothing useful is accomplished by diverting wealth toward them other than to drive up the price of status symbols. And Thomas Piketty
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Trish Hennessy discusses the connection between child care deserts and child poverty, while pointing out the importance of eradicating both: While the evidence shows the importance of greater learning and socialization opportunities in the early years, it also shows that Canada is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – In the wake of GM’s abandonment of Oshawa, David Olive suggests that it’s time for Canada to work on developing its own signature automaker. Sara Mohtehedzadeh writes that the Oshawa closure should serve as a warning for anybody who believes that big business
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrea Germanos discusses the problems with relying on the charity of the uber-wealthy rather than stable and sustainable public revenues to meet the needs of the people with the least. – Dan Fumano reports on the City of Vancouver’s call for a shift
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Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Owen Jones writes that a four-day work week being developed by UK Labour could represent an important step toward genuine personal freedom: (I)t is extremely welcome that Labour’s John McDonnell has approached eminent economist Lord Skidelsky to head an inquiry into potentially cutting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Gavin Kelly writes that the UK’s welfare state has been shaped by the Cons to prevent working households from being able to aspire to anything better than precarity: According to a recent analysis for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the combined effect
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ann Pettifor discusses the need for a Green New Deal to build an economy that’s both socially and environmentally sustainable. And Sharon Riley writes about the economic and environmental implications of impending public hearings into what might be the largest tar-sands mine
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Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Colby Smith writes about the changing role of public stock markets, which are serving primarily to allow already-wealth investors to cash out rather than to fund the growth of expanding businesses. And the Equality Trust examines the growing gap between the CEO class
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The Economist discusses how income and wealth inequality lead to disproportionate influence on the part of the rich: The relation between concentrated wealth and the political power of the rich is scarcely limited to political spending, or to America. The rich have many
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Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress highlights the Canada Revenue Agency’s long-overdue estimate of the public costs of offshore tax evasion, as well as other new data on the money being withheld through corporate tax non-compliance: On Thursday, Canada’s tax collection agency published its first ever estimate of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Matt Bruening comments on the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s research showing that minimum-wage workers are unable to afford basic housing across the U.S. – Sarah Butler reports on the UK’s latest parliamentary study of precarious work. Jordan Press reports on the state
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joel French discusses the need for Alberta to implement a more thorough and progressive tax system in order to ensure it has the revenue to support its residents. – Meagan Day highlights how Bernie Sanders’ new labour bill would empower workers and
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Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress crunches the numbers on tax loopholes and finds that more and more revenue is being lost to the most glaring loopholes every year. And Andrew Jackson hopes for a sorely-needed response from the federal government to rein in tax avoidance by the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on Canada’s failure to live up to our self-image as a generous and compassionate country – and the reality that we have plenty of fiscal capacity to close the gap. For further reading…– The abstract for the JAMA article referenced in the column is here, and has already been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Evening Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andre Picard notes that contrary to our self-image, Canada actually lags behind international peers in health and social spending. And PressProgress points out the same conclusion in new OECD research. – Andrew Mitrovica writes that Doug Ford’s ascendancy in Ontario politics suggests that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Amir Sufi and Atif Mian discuss how household debt tends to drive both the booms and busts of the business cycle. Which means there’s plenty of reason for concern about a Canadian economy reliant on household debt to paper over income insecurity and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Barry Eidlin and Micah Uetricht offer a reminder that the role of unions goes beyond securing higher wages, to giving workers a voice in workplace governance. And Eric Blanc interviews Jay O’Neal about the sorely-needed sense of agency earned by West Virginia’s teachers
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Larry Elliott discusses how the stock market is reacting with disgust against rare good economic news for workers and the general public. Asher Schechter interviews Angus Deaton about the connection between monopolies, rent-seeking and burgeoning inequality. And Bill Kerry writes that we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, expanding on this post as to how the promises which won Scott Moe the Saskatchewan Party’s leadership will leave him with some difficult decisions to make in a hurry. For further reading…– Tammy Robert’s coverage of the leadership campaign features this gem about Moe’s substance-free campaign: Moe’s campaign is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Wanda Wyporska discusses why we can’t expect a group of cloistered elites to do anything to solve the changeable dimensions of inequality. – Jonathan Ford and Gill Plimmer write that the UK is beginning to learn its lesson about the dangers of privatizing
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