The past few Canadian election cycles have seen plenty of discussion of the realities of tax-free savings accounts. And for the most part, their critics have been proven right: a scheme pitched at enabling savings by lower-income individuals has instead served mostly as a means of redirecting more free money
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – George Monbiot contrasts the message of neoliberalism as freedom against the reality that it imposes severe corporate control on anybody short of the billionaire class: (N)eoliberal theology, as well as seeking to roll back the state, insists that collective bargaining and other forms
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Olivia Loveridge-Greene comments on new research showing how many workers may be forced to keep working into their 70s or beyond in order to be able to stay afloat. And Don Pittis explains why tax-free savings accounts and other giveaways to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Olivia Loveridge-Greene comments on new research showing how many workers may be forced to keep working into their 70s or beyond in order to be able to stay afloat. And Don Pittis explains why tax-free savings accounts and other giveaways to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Broadbent Institute details Rhys Kesselman’s research on how the Cons’ expanded TFSAs are nothing but a giveaway to the wealthy. And Dean Beeby reports on their withholding of EI supplements from the families who most need them – paired with a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Will McMartin highlights the fact that constant corporate tax slashing has done nothing other than hand ever-larger piles of money to businesses who have no idea what to do with it. But Josh Wingrove reports that Justin Trudeau is looking for excuses
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Barrie McKenna takes a look at how the Cons are pushing serious liabilities onto future generations in order to hand out short-term tax baubles within a supposedly-balanced budget, while Jennifer Robson highlights the complete lack of policy merit behind those giveaways. And Ian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Mariana Mazzucato writes about the creative state – and the need to accept that a strategy designed to fund the economy that doesn’t yet exist will necessarily need to include some projects which don’t turn out as planned: Like any other investor,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: The definition of privilege
Connor Kilpatrick is right to observe that while we should be willing to take note of privilege in many forms, we should be especially concerned with organizing to counter the grossly outsized influence of the very few at the top whose whims are typically allowed to override the common good.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Carol Graham discusses the high financial and personal costs of poverty: Reported stress levels are higher on average in the U.S. than in Latin America. Importantly, the gap between the levels of the rich and poor is also much greater, with the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Armine Yalnizyan counters the Cons’ spin on tax-free savings accounts. And Rob Carrick points out that raising the limit on TFSAs would forfeit billions of desperately-needed dollars to benefit only the wealthiest few in Canada: TFSAs are Swiss army knives – a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson link inequality and climate change as massive problems which are generated by political choices (and thus amenable to correction through the political system): Rising inequality is no more natural than global warming. And just as with global
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lee-Anne Goodman reports on studies from both the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PDF) and the Broadbent Institute (PDF) showing that enlarged tax-free savings accounts stand to blow a massive hole in the federal budget while exacerbating inequality. And PressProgress documents and refutes the pitiful
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Ed Broadbent laments Canada’s failure to meet its commitment to end child poverty – and notes that the Harper Cons in particular are headed in exactly the wrong direction: This child poverty rate is a national disgrace. It jumped from 15.8 per cent
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Brian and Karen Foster question why steadily improving productivity has led to increasing stratification rather than better lives for a large number of people: (W)ith all the optimism, why hasn’t technological progress actually opened up a world where we all work, and we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On middle ground
Tim Harper’s column today is certainly worth a read in exposing the implausibility of the Cons’ “economic stability” theme. But I’ll point out that he completely buys the Cons’ equally flawed spin as to who stands to benefit from the major planks they’ve hinted at in their 2015 platform: The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot discusses the effect of inegalitarian and austerian policies imposed by the UK Conservatives: (T)he neoliberal programme has closed down political choice. If the market, as the doctrine insists, is the only valid determinant of how societies evolve, and the market
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