Well, it’s that time again: Foundation Skills Assessment in BC. There are so many things wrong with the FSA tests. I won’t go into them here, but you can read about many of them in these places: Foundation Skills Assessment: Another Dirty Trick The BCTF on the FSAs. And so
Continue readingTag: Privatization
Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Sam Pizzigati interviews Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett about the fight against inequality and the next piece of the puzzle to be put in place: [Pickett:]…In The Spirit Level, we have all these correlations between inequality and social problems, and we have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On limited victories
Truly, I wish Andrew Coyne’s latest actually described policy-making in Canada, and not merely the state of theoretical political debate. But in fact, we live in a country where “let’s consider whether a trade agreement actually has benefits, rather than signing whatever gets shoved in front of us” has been
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Beyond social democracy: new institutions, new subjects
So many of the debates on the contemporary left come back to the legacy of social democracy. The Swedish experience came closest to fulfilling social democratic ideals in the post-war era and so speaks to these debates in a unique way. Earlier this year, I talked to Petter Nilssen of Sweden’s
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: No to pipelines, yes to Site C?
Peace River Valley No to pipelines, yes to Site C? Here’s a piece I wrote for Ricochet after getting riled up by *some* of the arguments against Site C. The full piece is here. To shift off fossil fuels we’ll need more large scale, public energy infrastructure As the movement
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Mariana Mazzucato comments on the role of the innovative state – and the unfortunate reality that we currently lack anything of the sort due to corporatist thinking: (T)hanks in part to the conventional wisdom about its dynamism and the state’s sluggishness, the private
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Barrie McKenna comments on how far too many governments have bought into the P3 myth with our public money: Governments in Canada have become seduced by the wonders of private-public partnerships – so-called P3s – and blind to their potentially costly flaws. In
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Kevin Page points out a few of the issues which should be on the table when Canada’s finance ministers meet next week: Our finance ministers are smart. They know that faster growth is going to require higher investment rates and sustainable public
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Ontario Auditor’s damning report on P3s
The Ontario Auditor General’s 2014 Report includes a chapter on Infrastructure Ontario’s P3 program that is particularly damning–and corresponds with many of the criticisms made on this blog and elsewhere by myself and others. While the headlines were that P3 projects cost the province an additional $8 billion than if
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Some thoughts starting from a Fraser Institute graph
I’ve been meaning to post something on a chart from a Fraser Institute report for a while but slept on it. The chart comes from Fraser’s annual Consumer Tax Report and is supposed to show the different paths taken by how much households pay in taxes and how much they spend
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Wray Herbert examines Lukasz Walasek and Gordon Brown’s work on the psychological links between inequality, status-seeking and reduced well-being. And Linda McQuaig writes about the harm increasing inequality has done to Canada both economically and socially: (The OECD’s recent) report puts actual
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Scott Clark and Peter DeVries remind us that any fiscal problems Canada has faced under the Cons have been entirely of Stephen Harper’s making: Harper needed a deficit problem; the fact that the previous government neglected to leave him one was just a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Will Hutton compares the alternative goals of either shrinking government to the point where it does nothing or harnessing it to meet everybody’s basic needs, and explains why we should demand the latter: A financial crisis has been allowed to morph into a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Walden Bello discusses the need for our political system to include constant citizen engagement, not merely periodic elections to determine who will be responsible to implement the wishes of the elite: Even more than dictatorships, Western-style democracies are, we are forced to conclude,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Reviewing Darrell West’s Billionaires, Michael Lewis discusses how extreme wealth doesn’t make anybody better off – including the people fighting for position at the top of the wealth spectrum: A team of researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 43,000
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: No thanks Uber, I’m not signing your petition
So the ride-sharing app Uber is urging Vancouverites to sign a petition on its site to put pressure on the City to allow Uber to operate. An ad for the petition invaded my Twitter feed and I decided to take a closer look. Here’s the petition with my commentary. Spoiler:
Continue readingOPSEU Diablogue: Today’s big demonstration at Queen’s Park
Today will likely be the biggest Ontario Health Coalition demonstration at Queen’s Park since 2008. Across Ontario seniors groups, union activists and family members frustrated with their own access to care will be boarding more than 40 buses, some in … Continue reading →
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jenny Uechi and Warren Bell expose Canada’s embarrassing place as the only government participating in a climate-denial group pushing for a dirty war against the planet. But despite the Harper Cons’ worst efforts, there’s some good news on the climate front – as
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Robots, migration and the future of work (Briarpatch Magazine)
I have a longer read in the newest issue of Briarpatch Magazine, which is dedicated to the world of work. If you don’t know Briarpatch, be sure to check out the other articles in this issue and consider subscribing; this is one of Canada’s oldest independent left publications and definitely
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Rob Nixon’s review of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything nicely sums up why the book – and the fundamental clash it documents between corporate profit-seeking and the health of people and our planet – should be at the centre of our political
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