Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot discusses how a market-based society makes people unhealthy in a myriad of ways – and how it’s worth maintaining our innate reluctance to value everything and everybody around us solely in terms of dollar values: The market was meant to emancipate
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Trish Garner highlights the futility of trying to answer poverty, equality and other social issues with the empty promise of low-paying “jobs! jobs! jobs!”: The central “solution” in the government’s action plan is jobs. The little money dedicated to this initiative is all
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz writes that while we should expect natural resources to result in broad-based prosperity, Australia (much like Canada) is now turning toward the U.S. model of instead directing as much shared wealth as possible toward the privileged few: There is something deeply
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Buttonwood weighs in on the disproportionate influence of the ultra-rich when it comes to making policy choices which affect all of us: But the analysis backs up earlier work by Larry Bartels of Princeton, author of a book called “Unequal Democracy”, and the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that to end your weekend. – Lana Payne challenges the Big Lie that right-wing politics are anything but antithetical to broad economic growth. Dennis Howlett weighs in on the Cons’ choice to make the rich even richer through their tax policy. And Daniel Tencer juxtaposes the boom in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Mitchell Anderson discusses Canada’s woeful excuse for negotiations with the oil sector – particularly compared to the lasting social benefits secured by Norway in making the best of similar reserves: Digging through the numbers, it seems Norway is considerably more skilled at negotiation.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Nafeez Ahmed writes about the dangers of combining growing inequality and increased resource extraction: By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Mitchell Anderson compares the results of corporate-friendly Thatcherism to the alternative of public resource ownership and development in the interest of citizens – and finds far better results arising from the latter: Thirty-five years after she swept to power as British prime
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – In keeping with the theme of this week’s column, the Star-Phoenix questions the Wall government’s choice to neglect existing school infrastructure. And Lana Payne’s message about how leaders react in a crisis also looks to be closely intertwined with the need to plan
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses the link between perpetually-increasing inequality and the loss of social trust: Unfortunately, however, trust is becoming yet another casualty of our country’s staggering inequality: As the gap between Americans widens, the bonds that hold society together weaken. So, too, as more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Robert Reich laments the indecency of gross inequality (and the economic policies designed to exacerbate it): (F)or more than three decades we’ve been going backwards. It’s far more difficult today for a child from a poor family to become a middle-class or wealthy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Reconciliation fail
Shorter Joe Oliver: We Conservatives are so committed to building trust and relationships with First Nations, we feel we can safely ignore a report saying we’re failing miserably on all fronts and instead claim all the necessary work is done. So who wants to partner up with us?
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jim Stanford counters the myth of labour shortages by pointing out Canada’s significant – and growing – number of potential workers who lack a job. And Janet French reports on how PCS’ job cuts have affected both the workers who were laid off,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, asking whether growth and stable employment are part of the deal when the Saskatchewan Party offers massive handouts to the resource sector – and if so, how to handle the fact that PCS is pocketing tax incentives while slashing jobs. For further reading…– The Wall government’s own press release
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that Canada needs far more investment in infrastructure – rather than the austerity that’s constantly being prescribed by the Cons: The fiscal policy choice we face is often miscast as one between austerity to deal with public debt and short-term
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On legacies
Peter MacKinnon’s report (PDF) on the possibilities for a Saskatchewan heritage fund is well worth a read. And I’ll readily agree with the central premise that it’s well worth setting up such a fund to turn one-time resource revenues into long-term benefits. But it is worth noting that MacKinnon’s proposed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On shortsighted assumptions
Time for a true or false pop quiz. Is the following a self-evident statement of economic fact? “A capital asset which is not currently being exploited has a value of zero for all purposes.” I only ask because that seems to be the fundamental assumption behind Andrew Leach’s cost-benefit analysis
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot writes that corporate control over a political system may be a huge factor in limiting public participation – even as it makes a substantial counterweight all the more important: The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – David Green asks whether decades of corporate insistence on “flexible” labour markets (i.e. ones which offer no stability for workers) have resulted in the improved wages promised at the outset: Increased wages are how we share the benefits of economic growth among a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Don Braid comments on Alberta’s complete lack of credibility when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental issues. And Andrew Leach nicely sums up the PC/Con position in trying to put a happy face on growing emissions: Suppose you run
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