Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Elaine Godfrey writes about Iowa’s disastrous COVID-19 spread as a prime example of what happens when a government chooses to do nothing about a collective action problem. David Climenhaga compares Australia’s successful strategy of containment and clear direction to Alberta’s calamitous reliance on
Continue readingTag: wealth tax
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Thomson Reuters reports on the latest UN research showing that planned fossil fuel production far exceeds what we can afford if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. And the Canadian Press reports on a study by the Institute for Climate Choices documenting
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Lauren Dobson-Hughes discusses how we’re paying the price for the failure of governments to protect their citizens from the collective action problem of a pandemic. And Shawn Moen points out how COVID-19 has exposed many people to multiple underlying crises which need
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Umair Haque discusses the U.S.’ extreme aversion to public goods (based primarily on a desire to exclude large numbers of people from normalized society) – and the role that ideology has played in its failure as a state. – Erika Beauchesne reminds
Continue readingAlex's Blog: Don’t Panic: Debt Can Build a Better World
This is an updated version of an article that first appeared in Alberta Views (December issue). COVID-19, this microscopic bug, seems to have upended just about everything. History provides no perfect analogy for what has turned out to be a global health, social and economic catastrophe. Not since the Depression
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Eric Dolan reports on new research showing the connection between a sense of entitlement and a refusal to take basic steps to protect public health in a pandemic. And Francine Kapun reports on the Peel region’s move to fine employers who don’t put
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman offer another look (PDF) at the growth of income and wealth inequality in the U.S. Andrew Jackson and Toby Sanger examine (PDF) the case for an annual net wealth tax to reduce its severity in Canada. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Justin McElroy writes about the fatigue and unfamiliarity we’re feeling in addressing a new wave of COVID-19 – along with the importance of working through those challenges in order to protect everybody’s health. Bruce Arther discusses how reopening unsafely in the name
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Resource Movement offers a handy primer on wealth taxes (and the value of applying them). – Jean-Benoit Legault reports on new research showing that pregnant Inuit women are exposed to significantly more contaminants than their counterparts elsewhere. – David Climenhaga discusses how generations
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Richard Warnica discusses the end of a summer in which we’ve been far too lax about limiting the foreseeable effects of COVID-19. Aaron Wherry writes that the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic will hurt all the more since we’ve learned – but
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Alex Himelfarb, Andrew Jackson and Brian Topp write about the need for a tax system which collects a fair share from the wealthiest in order to fund the recovery and renewal we should be demanding. And Ben Steverman reports on Raj Chetty’s work
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Crawford Kilian writes about the $47 trillion heist of wealth from the U.S.’ working class to its wealthiest elites. And Umair Haque discusses how Donald Trump is a foreseeable consequence of the U.S.’ structural inequalities, rather than an anomaly within its political system.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Patrick Brethour discusses houw the effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been anything but fairly or equally distributed. And Katherine Scott highlights how the effect has been to undo decades of already-slow progress in improving the conditions of single mothers. – Don
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Alex Hemingway and Michal Rozworski both study both how Canada’s wealthiest few have enriched themselves through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, and discuss how more fair taxes would ensure they don’t exploit a public health emergency to even further entrench their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Kim Siever writes about the consistent choice of right-wing governments to use anti-tax rhetoric to goose corporate profits at the expense of the public. Jeff Rubin rightly questions why Canada’s tax system is set up to favour passive and inherited wealth over productive
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – German Lopez surveys the growing body of research showing how masks help to slow the spread of COVID-19. John Michael McGrath points out the importance of focusing on making school settings safe, rather than prioritizing restaurants and bars. And Hannah Jackson reports
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Sylvia Fuller and Yue Qian weigh in on how working mothers are bearing the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic (and a policy response which has included no effort to ensure the availability of child care). – Peter Weber discusses how Sweden’s insistence
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Lee Stevens writes that the coronavirus pandemic has exposed longstanding weaknesses in our social safety net which have caused large amounts of avoidable poverty: A generation ago, our income support and social service programs were working (albeit not perfect) since it was possible
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Eric Levitz points out how the damage COVID-19 has caused to the U.S.’ economy arises largely out of underlying ailments, including its dependence on discretionary spending by people with extreme wealth. And Robert Reich highlights how Donald Trump’s racist demagoguery has distracted
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – James Galbraith offers a reality check to anybody counting on an immediate U.S. economic bounceback in the midst of an ongoing pandemic: (P)eople do distinguish between needs and wants. Americans need to eat, but they mostly don’t need to eat out. They
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