Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses how Canadian workers are feeling the pain of decades of policy designed to suppress wages – and notes there’s plenty more all parties should be doing to change that reality. And Doug Saunders points out what we should want our
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Ian Welsh discusses how our problems with poverty and inequality arise out of artificial scarcity: We either already have excess capacity or we have the ability to create more than people need of all necessities. This includes housing, food and clothing. We still
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Labour Day reading. – Keith Doucette reports on Hassan Yussuff’s efforts to highlight the continued importance of the labour movement in ensuring a more fair society for everybody. And Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel study the disconnect between growing productivity and stagnant wages, reaching the conclusion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Althia Raj, Karl Nerenberg, Tim Harper, Jennifer Ditchburn and Kristy Kirkup, Lee Berthiaume and Jason Fekete, PressProgress and CTV News all point out some of the more noteworthy aspects of Nigel Wright’s testimony in Mike Duffy’s trial (along with the large amount of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Christos Tsiolkas talks to Yanis Varoufakis about the Troika’s appalling contempt for Greek democracy. And Barbara Ehrenreich laments the fact that only well-off people are given any meaningful opportunity to speak about poverty and deprivation – though that should highlight the need for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Barry Eidlin argues that Canada’s comparatively stronger trade unions have led to a far more equal distribution of income than exists in the U.S., and discusses what we need to do to reinforce that tendency: In a recent article and forthcoming book, I
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Anna Leventhal warns against the danger that even the best-intentioned of charity drives might be seen as replacing the need for social supports: Now campaigns are ubiquitous, and range from book tours to pet surgeries to basic subsistence for marginalized people in crisis.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Friday reading. – Matthew Melmed examines how poverty early in life is both disturbingly widespread, and likely to severely affect a child’s future prospects. – Lawrence Mishel and Alyssa Davis track the extreme gap in wage growth for CEOs as opposed to workers. Robert Skidelsky argues
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Adrian Morrow reports on Al Gore’s explanation as to how the fight against climate change can be economically as well as environmentally beneficial, while CTV points out a new Nanos poll showing that Canadians largely agree with the view that cleaner technology
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Myth of STEM Degrees: STEM as the Canary in the Coal Mine
What follow is a guest blog post from Glenn Burley: – If Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and professional fields like medicine, law, and dentistry are the so-called golden ticket to a good job in today’s labour market, what does that say about the current and future health of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – The Star’s editorial board writes that five years after police committed serious human rights violations at Toronto’s G20 summit, nobody seems to have learned any lessons from the abuses. And David Lavallee tells his story of being interrogated for a “precursor to terrorist
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Jeff Spross argues that in addition to ensuring that employees are fairly paid for the overtime hours they work, we should also be pushing to ensure people aren’t required to work as much to begin with. And Angella MacEwen points out that
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Michel Husson and Stephanie Treillet write that reduced work hours could do wonders for the quality of life for both workers who currently have jobs, and those seeking them: The question is not so much if working hours will decrease, but how. The
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Sean McElwee examines new evidence of the deliberate choice of past U.S. governments dating back to Ronald Reagan to completely discount the policy preferences of anybody but the rich: In a new book, political scientists James Druckman and Lawrence Jacobs examine data
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On minimal solutions
Shorter Corporatists to Fleece the Irrelevant Beggars trying to avoid a living wage for Alberta: Has anybody pointed out that if we ensure that the hungry have food, some of them might gain weight? That’s why we consider it more responsible to force-feed them diet pills.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Toby Sanger takes a look at Canada’s balance sheets and finds that both households and governments are piling up debt while the corporate sector hoards cash: (A)ll the recent handwringing over rising household and debt levels ignores one critical point: any one person’s
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Eric Morath points out that a job (or even multiple jobs) can’t be taken as an assurance that a person can avoid relying on income supports and other social programs. PressProgress offers some important takeaways from the Canadian Labour Congress’ study of the
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Workers Link $15 Minimum Wage to Decent Work
Wednesday April 15th is a global day of action on a $15 minimum wage and decent work. Actions are happening across the U.S., and in BC, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Both in the US and in Canada, workers are making links between decent wages and other employment standards. The Ontario
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – PressProgress exposes the Cons’ utter detachment from the realities facing Canadian workers. And Kevin Page, Stephen Tapp and Gary Mason all expose their balanced-budget legislation as being at best a distraction tactic, and at worst an incentive for governments to do exactly what
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Joe Gunn argues that it’s long past time for Canada to live up to its climate commitments. And Carol Linnitt writes that further delay will do nothing but damage to our economy and our democracy as well as our planet: Taking meaningful
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