Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David Moscrop discusses the need for a more meaningful definition of “progress” which doesn’t hand-wave away the long-term harms and risks created by the single-minded pursuit of immediate gains in top-end wealth. – Rajeev Syal reports that the UK Cons pushed through public-sector
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Bandy Lee discusses the need to treat inequality as a social disease which calls for immediate treatment: Residents of countries with higher income inequality have worse health, not just of the poor but of the rich (Subramanian and Kawachi, 2006). Greater income inequality
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Joel French discusses the need to move beyond merely preserving the public institutions Alberta has now, and to start building the new ones which will be needed in the future. – But Eric Levitz observes that the U.S. is instead taking deliberate
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Assorted content to end your week. – Livia Gershon discusses why relative equality plays a far greater role in people’s well-being than absolute income in developed countries. And Stefanie Stantcheva writes about the cultural roots of the U.S.’ relative acceptance of extreme inequality (though it’s worth noting that even in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Rick Smith writes about the Filthy Five loopholes taking the most money out of Canada’s public coffers for the least benefit to anybody but the wealthy. And Ed Finn reminds us to follow the money in figuring out who stands to gain from
Continue readingMichal Rozworski: The problems with progressive free trade and a divided labour movement
…And we’re back to regularly-scheduled programming. Apologies for the podcasting hiatus to (now really faithful) listeners; I hope to be back to regular episodes once again. I’m restarting the show this week with two great guests. First up, I speak with Angella MacEwen about the on-going NAFTA re-negotiations and whether
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Anna Coote discusses some of the potential problems with a universal basic income on its own – particularly to the extent it takes momentum away from the prospect of universal basic services. – Scott Sinclair examines how little has changed – and how
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Wanda Wyporska discusses why we can’t expect a group of cloistered elites to do anything to solve the changeable dimensions of inequality. – Jonathan Ford and Gill Plimmer write that the UK is beginning to learn its lesson about the dangers of privatizing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Larry Elliott writes about the fragility of the political and economic structures which the world’s most privileged people are seeking to entrench in Davos. And Branko Milanovic discusses the importance of intra-country inequality which is getting worse around the globe. – Laurie
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Andrew Sheng discusses the role of oversimplified assumptions about economic development in exacerbating wealth and income inequality: The American era has been very comfortable with the timeless, universal model of the free market. Inconvenient problems such as inequality are market failures, which the
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: On suspended animation
It would be nice to be able to share Michael Geist’s view that the latest TPP by another name represents a substantial improvement over the original. But to my mind, the real story of the CPTPP is how little it changes. In principle, I’d have hoped to see a group
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 readingThe Disaffected Lib: Well That’s Not Very Polite
In the pages of the world press Justin Trudeau has suddenly gone from pretty boy to bad boy. Our prime minister has made waves by purportedly sabotaging the Trans Pacific Partnership talks at the APEC summit. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has sabotaged a pact to salvage a multibillion-dollar, 11-nation
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Naomi Klein offers her take on why we need to talk about climate change when its effects are most visible: (E)very time we act as if an unprecedented weather event is hitting us out of the blue, as some sort of Act of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – David MacDonald studies the federal government’s loopholes and giveaways targeted toward those who already have the most – noting that there would be plenty of revenue to fund the programs we’re told are unaffordable if that preferential treatment was ended. And Felicity Lawrence
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dalia Marin argues that in order to avoid corporate dominance over citizens and workers around the globe, we should be developing international competition policies and systems to combat the concentration of wealth: Two forces in today’s digital economy are driving the global decline
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Guess What? The TPP May Not Be Dead After All.
The Japanese government is proposing a revival of the Trans Pacific Partnership only without the United States. An idea has emerged that the Trans-Pacific Partnership can take effect among at least five nations including Japan, Australia and New Zealand, instead of 12, sources involved in the negotiations said. The idea
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Trade Justice reports on Justin Trudeau’s role in pushing for an international corporate giveaway through a new Trans-Pacific Partnership – even as the country whose capital class largely shaped it before has no interest in participating. And James Munson reports that Justin
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