Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn’t provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits: Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital
Continue readingTag: regulation
Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellanous material for your Monday reading. – Will Hutton recognizes that an unregulated market can lead to disastrous results for everybody concerned – and that conversely, effective regulation can help to ensure the success of businesses which best meet the long-term needs of their workers and customers: What the Paterson
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The CP reports on the Canadian applicants rejected by HD Mining as it chose instead to staff its Murray River coal project solely with low-rights temporary immigrant workers: The unions, which are more broadly seeking a judicial review of Ottawa’s decision to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – There’s plenty of reason for concern about the departure of some of the few independent officers who have successfully held the Cons to account at times – with departing environment commissioner Scott Vaughan serving as only the latest example. – But the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Karl Flecker discusses how the Cons’ push to encourage employers to use temporary foreign workers will affect wages for everybody: In fact, what Kenney said was untrue. He has conveniently forgotten that his government significantly changed the wage rules for employers hiring
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: A Tragedy Should Make Us Want To Be Better
The world suffered a tragedy when a gun man went and killed 20 students and 6 adults. The world was made worse when out of this horror people called others whackos and nuts for merely having a different opinion. A tragedy should make us try to be better not worse.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Barrie McKenna discusses the cost of public-private partnerships: Disturbing new research highlights some serious flaws in how governments tally the benefits of public-private partnerships versus conventional projects. Too little is known about how these contracts work, who benefits and who pays. This week,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted material to end your weekend. – Chrystia Freeland comments on the self-destructive nature of elite protectionism: (E)ven as the winner-take-all economy has enriched those at the very top, their tax burden has lightened. Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – No, the aftershocks of an e. coli outbreak which has unfortunately given both Canadians and export markets reason for concern about the safety of some of our major food sources aren’t about to end simply because the Cons are again pretending everything’s fine.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Jim Stanford reviews the effect of NAFTA (and associated corporatist policy choices) on Canada’s economy: Quantity of exports: In the mid-1980s, before Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan inked their deal, Canada’s exports to the United States accounted for 19 per cent of Canadian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Murray Mandryk and Bruce Johnstone both thoroughly slam Gerry Ritz and the Cons for their food-safety negligence. But Johnstone hints at the larger issue: Ritz, for all his faults, is not the cause of this latest debacle. He’s merely a symptom of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mitchell Anderson’s final report on Norway’s highly successful management of its oil resources puts Canada’s current philosophy to the test: Seen through this lens, how is Canada doing? Abysmally…: 1. Dependency. Even with our vast oil wealth, Canada currently relies on other
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – For those wondering where progressive leaders are going with their policy proposals, the last week offered a couple of noteworthy examples. At home, Tom Mulcair’s Canadian Club speech commented on the importance of real roles for the government and the public in making
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Plenty of commentators are using the Labour Day weekend to discuss the place of workers in Canadian society. Sid Ryan notes that depressed wages are bad news for Canada’s economy generally. And Morna Ballantyne and Steven Staples point out the need for unions
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Fuel Economy Standards To Save U.S. Consumers Billions, Create Jobs, Yet Republicans Say Too Expensive
fuel economy standards.jpg A proposed rule by the Obama Administration to raise fuel economy standards for cars and “light-trucks” is facing mounting attacks by Republican lawmakers. The proposed rule would require all newly manufactured automobiles that fall under the car or light truck category to achieve a minimum gas mileage
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Canada’s Emissions Deception
The federal government released an updated Canada’s Emission Trends 2012 report today. In a remarkable shift in federal rhetoric just this past week, the Harperites now appear to be more sensitive to concerns about the Enbridge pipeline and climate change more generally. But appearances can be deceiving and there is good
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: House Republicans Sacrifice Human Health For Alleged Job Creation
redtape.jpg With July 2012 officially behind us, the U.S. jobs report for the month has economists and politicians concerned about the employment situation in America. And even though the economy added 163,000 jobs (economists had predicted only 100,000 jobs to be added for July,) the unemployment rate and the underemployment
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: White House Wants Industry Help To Choose Which Regulations To Kill
white house.jpg When the Obama White House begins adopting the same talking points as the dirty energy industry, something has gone horribly wrong with our government. But that is exactly what is happening today, with the White House apparently buying into the repeatedly debunked industry talking point that claims that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On default positions
Dan Ariely comments on how the normalization of cheating can produce a cascading effect: The consequences of this sort of cheating are even more severe when the network of contagion is larger. We see this when we look at Greece, where masses of people have been cheating a little bit
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Sid Ryan rightly criticizes Tim Hudak’s anti-labour plans as a push toward poverty rather than prosperity. – Via Climate Progress, Steven Mufson reports on the causes of Enbridge’s Michigan oil spill – with Enbridge’s complete failure to repair known defects over a period
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