This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Jeff Guo reports on Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson’s research showing how the U.S. went from standing out internationally for its relatively equal distribution of wealth, to being equally exceptional in it…
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Accidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Noah Zon points out that while it’s impossible to avoid rhetoric about eliminating “red tape” for businesses, we’ve seen gratuitous barriers put in place to prevent people from accessing needed public support:It…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Neil MacDonald discusses the unfairness in allowing a wealthy class of individuals to set up its own rules, while Jeffrey Sachs notes that the U.S. and U.K. are among the worst offenders in allowing for systema…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: In The Service Of Truth
There are many truths today that, thanks to the almost reflexive, visceral response of an often vitriolic social media, few dare to speak. Most recently, linking the terrible fires in Fort McMurray with climate change has been one of them. Is it insens…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Aditya Chakrabortty comments on how massive amounts of wealth are both being siphoned out of our social systems, and used to buy the politicians who facilitate those transfers:(A)t root, the Panama Pap…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Corey Hogan makes the case for Rachel Notley’s NDP to develop a progressive fix to Alberta’s fiscal mess:No matter what you decide to do, you’re going to take a political hit with somebody. Credibility will be…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- CBC and the Star have both started reporting on the Panama Papers – offering a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of international tax avoidance. And the Star also recognizes why we shouldn’t let grey-area tax…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Duncan Cameron discusses how deficit hysteria has overshadowed the far more important issues raised by the Trudeau Libs’ inaugural budget:Ottawa deficit spending is not big enough to stimulate an econo…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- James Ayre points out Radoslaw Stefanski’s study as to how cutting off fossil fuel subsidies subsidies (among other public policy preferences) would go a long way toward helping a transition toward clean, r…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Emily Badger discusses a new study showing just how much more expensive it is to be poor:(T)he problem isn’t simply that the poor aren’t savvy about sales or bulk buying. They’re more likely to use th…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- John Clarke discusses the challenges facing social movements trying to resist austerity and push for action on poverty in the face of mushy-middle governments who lack any commitment to those principle…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Scott Santens discusses how a basic income could help to foster social cohesion. And Jared Bernstein confirms the seemingly obvious point that properly-funded social programs work wonders in reducing poverty. – …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On common values
There’s reason to be wary about the Libs’ handling of the Senate, as Thomas Walkom writes in his latest column. But it’s also worth noting that contrary to Walkom’s conflation of the two, there are important differences between selecting prospective Se…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the kindness and compassion underlying our welcoming of Syrian refugees deserves a far larger place in a wide range of public policy decisions.For further reading…- Zack Beauchamp summarizes the exclusionary rhetoric that’s propelled Don…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Ronald Inglehart discusses the political roots of inequality – and the likelihood that the forces that have allowed it to fester for decades will eventually be reversed:New political alignments, in sho…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Duncan Cameron offers his take on the Paris climate change conference. Martin Lukacs notes that while the agreement reached there may not accomplish anywhere near what we need, the building climate movement sho…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- David MacDonald offers some alternative suggestions that can do far more to reduce inequality and boost Canada’s economy than the Libs’ upper-class tax shuffle. And Karl Nerenberg reminds us that the most import…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- George Monbiot discusses the inherent conflict between consumption and conservation:We can persuade ourselves that we are living on thin air, floating through a weightless economy, as gullible futurologists pr…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Seth Klein discusses the need to deal with climate change with the same sense of urgency and common purpose we’ve historically associated with major wars: Canada’s experience in WWI and WWII serves to remind us that our society has managed a dramatic
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom takes a broad look at the problems with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, while noting that the Trudeau Libs don’t seem inclined to address them at all. Deirdre Fulton sees the final text as being worse than anybody suspected based even on the
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