This and that for your Thursday reading. – Peter Whoriskey examines how inequality is becoming increasingly pronounced among U.S. seniors. And Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson discuss how inequality contributes to entrenching social divisions: The toll which inequality exacts from the vast majority of society is one of the most important limitations on
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – I’ll start in on my own review of the NDP’s election campaign over the next few days, focusing on what I see as being the crucial decisions as the campaign played out. But for those looking for some of what’s been written already,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Mariana Mazzucato argues that we need to change our conversation and our policy choices on public investment in Canada’s economy: As in many other countries, the conversation about government and public investment in Canada has for decades distorted and underplayed the role
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Assorted content to end your week. – Larry Bartels highlights how class plays a particularly large role in U.S. politics, as opinions about the role of government are particularly polarized based on income. And Paul Krugman notes that as a consequence, any demand to “stop class warfare” in favour of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Matthew O’Brien is the latest to pick up on the connection between pre-transfer income equality, redistribution and sustainable economic growth: Redistribution overall helps, and at least doesn’t harm, growth spells. That’s because the positive effects of less inequality add to or offset the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Alison and PressProgress both discuss how Brad Butt’s attempt to defend voter suppression is based on what even he had to concede was nothing short of legislative fraud. And Stephen Maher notes that the Cons’ unilateral rewrite of election rules figures to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Murray Dobbin points to the oil sector’s utter domination of Canada’s federal political scene. And Dr. Dawg sums up the problem: Briefly, the Harperium has now taken to grossly misusing the state apparatus to spy upon and intimidate citizens who dare to disagree
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Assorted content to end your week. – Gordon Hoekstra reports on a study by British Columbia determining that Canada lacks any hope of containing the types of oil spills which will become inevitable if the Cons’ pipe-and-ship plans come to fruition. But once again, the Cons’ response is to make
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – David Atkins comments on the ever-growing disconnect between the interests of a few making a killing on Wall Street and the lives of people stuck in the real economy: (T)the entirety of supply-side economic thinking is based on the idea that inflating
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Linda McQuaig discusses Stephen Harper’s class war: Canadians don’t like Harper’s anti-worker agenda — when they notice it. That’s why there’s been such a public outcry since the temporary foreign worker program was exposed as a mechanism by which the Harper government has
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – We shouldn’t be surprised that the corporate sector is reacting with contrived outrage to the Cons’ tinkering with a severely flawed temporary foreign worker program. But Jim Stanford points out what it would take to actually move labour standards upward rather than
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This and that for your Tuesday reading. – George Monbiot reminds us that the mere fact that neoliberal economic theory has failed by any rational measure doesn’t mean there won’t still be plenty of well-funded efforts to promote it at the expense of social interests: The policies that made the
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This and that for your Sunday reading. – Murray Dobbin connects a pattern of economic trends which has seen more and more wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people to the elimination of public discussion about work life: The neo-liberal revolution of the 1980s proposed unfettered capitalism
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Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – The Economist adds a noteworthy voice to the chorus calling for greater tax enforcement to ensure the corporate elite pays its fair share: Characterising this steady financing as short-term lending is “the ultimate example of form over substance” and undermines a fundamental tenet
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michael Lewis writes a fascinating piece on Barack Obama’s life as president. And I’d think it’s particularly noteworthy to consider Obama’s self-discipline both as a model for self-improvement in theory, and as a risk factor in opening up a perception gap between
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Alice interviews Allan Gregg about his sharp criticism of anti-evidence politics, and finds some optimism on Gregg’s part that clear falsehoods will eventually be treated with due disdain: Q. So, one of your early mentors, [US pollster] Richard Wirthlin, he’s arguing that values
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dr. Dawg tears into the National Post’s gratuitous union-bashing: (W)hen it comes to unions, a careless disregard for facts seems to affect journos like a disease. They fall back on their prejudices, cutting and pasting their ready-made anti-union copy in their sleep.… Unions
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Lana Payne criticizes two forms of cash hoarding: both the assets sitting idle in corporate coffers, and the money that’s been funneled offshore by wealthy individuals: By the end of each episode (of “Hoarders”)…the audience finds out if the featured hoarders have been
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Dave Coles comments on Brad Wall’s attempts to erase a century’s worth of gains when it comes to labour rights, but recognizes that we instead have an opportunity to again lead the way toward social progress: During this moment of relative prosperity
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