Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Brian Bethune interviews Joseph Stiglitz about his longstanding recognition that an international economic system biased toward capital could lay the groundwork for Trump-style demagoguery. – Kristin Annable reports on the Manitoba PCs’ steps toward for-profit health care as an alternative to properly funding
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Rupert Neate reports on the latest numbers showing the world’s 500 richest people adding a full trillion dollars to their wealth in 2017. And Will Fitzgibbon and Dean Starkman highlight how offshore tax avoidance schemes are sucking prosperity out of the rest
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jessica Corbett charts the U.S.’ unacceptable (and worsening) inequality. Robert Reich discusses how the Republicans’ tax scam represents a triumph for oligarchy. And Ben Steverman notes that the bill passed this month is ripe for abuse – and already being exploited to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Marco Chown Oved, Toby Heaps and Michael Yow discuss the long-term transition away from meaningful corporate tax contributions to Canada’s public purse: For every dollar corporations pay to the Canadian government in income tax, people pay $3.50. The proportion of the public budget
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – PressProgress points out Statistics Canada’s latest numbers on Canada’s extreme wealth disparity – with 60% of the population owning only 10% of the wealth while a lucky few amass gigantic fortunes. – Jordan Brennan discusses how a lack of labour conflict has led
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Robert Reich reminds us that sustainable economic growth is the product of bottom-up development, not a top-down trickle of wealth: What’s the real formula for growth? Better access to education, healthcare, and transportation, all of which make workers more productive. These more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Bruenig proposes a social wealth fund as a fix for the U.S.’ burgeoning inequality and income insecurity: We seem stuck in the same policy equilibrium we have been in for decades, with conservatives denying that there is a problem and pushing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Doug Henwood interviews Brooke Harrington about the role of offshoring in hiding and concentrating wealth: (W)hat does it say about the state of capitalism that these immense fortunes are sequestered; not so much engaged with expansion of the system but are being kept
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses how Justin Trudeau, Bill Morneau and the federal Libs are focused mostly on further privileging the rich: There’s lots of lamenting about the way the rich keep getting richer while ordinary folk struggle to keep their heads above water. Along
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Peter Goodman examines how a basic income could relieve against some of the most harmful effects of capitalist economics. And Sarah O’Connor discusses the plight of towns which have been left behind by economic change. – Meanwhile, Matt Bruenig offers a reminder that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Laurie MacFarlane points out how increases in land values have resulted in massive and unearned disparities in wealth. – Kevin Page, Claudette Bradshaw, Geoff Nelson and Tim Aubrey write that a national housing strategy needs to focus on the availability of both affordable
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dani Rodrik writes that politicians looking to provide an alternative to toxic populism will need to offer some other challenge to a system biased in favour of the wealthy and powerful: (P)oliticians who want to steal the demagogues’ thunder have to tread a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Steve Burgess points out that we shouldn’t be the least bit surprise by the latest news of politically-connected billionaires managing to tilt the tax system in their favour. Ed Broadbent calls for a much-needed end to tax policy that favours the wealthy in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Gabriel Zucman discusses how the wealthy currently avoid paying their fair share of taxes – and how to stop them by properly attributing income and ensuring registers of wealth. And Micah White is optimistic that the public response to the Paradise Papers
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Abacus Data has polled the Canadian public on climate change, and found far more appetite for meaningful action than we generally hear from the political class (and particularly right-wing parties): Twenty years ago, when the world’s leaders were debating the Kyoto Accord,
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Canadians React To The Paradise Papers
If you aren’t yet outraged over recent revelations, check your pulse to make sure you are still amongst the living. Happily, signs of life are plentiful among Toronto Star readers: Liberal Party fundraisers held family millions in offshore trust, Nov. 6 Coverage of the Paradise Papers’ celebrity tax evaders has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Thomas Frank asks how we’ve allowed billionaires to escape any responsibility for the maintenance of civilization by moving their wealth offshore: I know that what the billionaires and the celebrities have done is legal. They merely took advantage of the system. It’s the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The Star’s editorial board argues that the Paradise Papers prove the need for a crackdown on offshore tax avoidance. Zach Dubinsky and Harvey Cashore report on one nine-figure scheme cooked up by BMO. And Oxfam offers its list of suggestions to end
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that widespread precarity in work is keeping wages down even as unemployment stays relatively low: (W)age pressures and inflation might remain persistently low even with a low unemployment rate due to the seemingly inexorable rise of precarious work. Marx’s reserve
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Wanda Wyporska writes that increasing inequality is the main factor behind public distrust and discontent with our politics: Rising inequality is not inevitable, it is largely a result of the political and economic decisions taken by governments. This is clear from the
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