Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Melissa Benn discusses how private schools entrench a class divide within a generation – and argues that they should be eliminated in favour of an inclusive education system: (W)e urgently need to renew the conversation about the private-public divide, and move beyond the
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frank Rich writes that the lack of a meaningful response to the 2008 financial crisis has understandably undermined public confidence in the U.S.’ future: Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Brian Nolan examines the relationship between inequality and median incomes in developed countries, and concludes that there’s little basis to view inequality as an inevitable outcome of international forces: Globalisation and technological change are often portrayed as exogenous forces sweeping across the rich
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lana Payne writes that there’s no reason to turn Donald Trump’s giveaway to the rich into an excuse for similarly destructive policies in Canada: If tax policy levers need adjusting, there is a more effective and sophisticated approach that can be taken,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The Globe and Mail’s editorial board rightly recognizes that attempts to challenge federal carbon pricing on constitutional grounds represent nothing but a politically-motivated waste of money. Ross Belot laments the Trudeau Libs’ decision to respond by watering down already-insufficient plans while making it
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Equality Trust makes its submission to a UK study of social mobility by pointing out the need for increased equality as the first step: To genuinely improve social mobility in the UK, the over-arching policy priority has to be for a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – George Monbiot discusses the dark money behind much of the political turmoil in the UK and elsewhere, while questioning why the secretive and self-interested funding of astroturf groups should receive favourable tax treatment: A mere two millennia after Roman politicians paid mobs
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Paul Krugman highlights how work requirements and other barriers to social benefits serve only to needlessly increase poverty without improving employment rates. And Patricia Cohen writes about the growing gap between soaring profits and eroding wage gains in the U.S., while Irina Ivanova
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Ed Finn offers a reminder that Canada’s social safety net is leading to the perpetuation of poverty despite ample resources to end it. And Niall McCarthy discusses the worsening state of financial inequality across the developed world. – Hadrian Metrins-Kirkwood points out that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Ed Finn writes that we shouldn’t believe claims that Canada lacks money for social benefits when Lib and Con governments have deliberately chosen not to bring in the revenue needed to fund them: Canadian governments back in the 1960s and ‘70s never
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – James Galbraith reminds us of the danger extreme inequality poses to any social bonds – and the need for political action to counteract the current momentum toward further concentration of wealth: Controlling inequality—like controlling blood pressure—is good for your economic health. Economies with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Room with a View
I’ll be appearing on The View Up Here in about 20 minutes to discuss and expand on the column linked here. For those interested in a bit of light reading and browsing as we discuss how Canada has failed to live up to its self-image as a generous and compassionate
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Wawmeesh Hamilton discusses the lack of basic upkeep of desperately-needed First Nations homes, as the federal government looks to transfer responsibility without providing funding. Jamie Grierson notes that the UK’s lack of resources for supportive housing results in survivors of domestic abuse
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Jay Shambaugh, Ryan Nunn, and Lauren Bauer discuss the need for U.S. law and policy to adapt to protect independent workers who have been excluded from normal employment rights: Armed with up-to-date, accurate data, policymakers and regulators can work to keep regulations relevant
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Claire Connelly calls out the perennial right-wing spin that there’s always money available for corporations or the security state, but that anything which would actually help people is invariably unaffordable. And Jim Pugh discusses how Republicans are looking to punish and impoverish
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Shaun Richman reviews David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs – including the inevitable inference that there needs to be some means for people to be supported without having to seek out useless work: Much of the “bullshitization” of white-collar work is purely accidental, but Graeber
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – J.W. Mason reviews Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists with a reminder that the decades-long push to subjugate popular democracy to corporate interests is nothing new – and that we know well the consequences: In the early twentieth century, there were many people who saw
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Ryan highlights the disgrace of social programs designed to strip away basic supports when they’re needed most: Poverty has long been put down to mythical causes, be it a quirk of society – as if inequality is built into the earth –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Frances Ryan rightly calls out the anti-choice right for having no interest in the well-being of children once they’re born: (S)mall-state ideology can make it devastatingly difficult for a low-income parent to look after a child. Look at the controversial “two-child” limit
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Dru Oja Jay points out the connections between improved public services, decreased inequality and meaningful action to fight climate change. – Adam Corlett challenges spin from the UK Conservatives intended to mislead voters about the relative tax contributions of the wealthy as opposed
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