Sacrificial Citizenship
A thug accosts Jack Benny. Thug: Now, come on—your money or your life. Thug: Look, bud. I said, “Your money or your life.” Jack Benny: I’m thinking it over! —The…
himelfarb
The Good Life: we have the vision – what’s lacking is the will
When the 2007-2008 financial crisis hit, a loud chorus of pundits and politicians, for what turned out to be the briefest moment, came to see that we had got it…
Neoliberalism made Trump possible
Excerpt from Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge A good deal of punditry has gone around in circles on the question of how someone like Donald Trump could become president…
The Power of Mr. X: Breaking Free of Neoliberalism
Against my better judgment, I was browsing twitter which I have been reluctant to do ever since it became Nazi-infested x. In any case, I came across an exchange between…
Am I optimistic and if so how is that even possible?
At the end of a recent interview I was asked how is it possible, given all the crises I talk about and all the social discord, that I still claim…
Check this out
Check this out from Lorimer. it contains my favourite portrait shot. https://formaclorimerbooks.ca/product/breaking-free-of-neoliberalism-canadas-challenge/
So this is happening
https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/breaking-free-of-neoliberalism-canadas-challenge-what-it-will-take-to-deal-with-american-decline-inequality-and-the-climate-crisis/9781459419476.html
Crack-Up Capitalism, Quinn Slobodian: A Review
In this engrossing historical account, Quinn Slobodian lays out how a few very rich men—yes pretty much men—and the neoliberal intellectuals upon whose ideas they fed, imagined and sometimes built…
A World Built On Sand: It’s Time For A War Against Insecurity
In these times of political polarization and social fragmentation, there is something that unites us, that almost all of us experience in common – insecurity, insecurity in the face of…
DEMOCRACY
Throughout the globe we are witnessing democracy under threat. Political scientists who for decades assumed that “the arc of the universe” inevitably bent towards more democracy, are now documenting its…
How to kill a zombie or the strange persistence of neoliberalism
Here’s a recent piece I wrote on the many deaths of neoliberalism. https://monitormag.ca/articles/how-to-kill-a-zombie-or-the-strange-persistence-of-neoliberalism/
What Does a Prudent Budget Look Like in these Uncertain Times?
I have been trying to sort out why I so dislike the recent federal budget. The loudest critics, the Conference Board, bank economists, much of the mainstream media have complained…
Fault Lines
I was honoured to chair the Council Of Canadian Academies panel on misinformation. Our report, Fault Lines, is available here. https://cca-reports.ca/reports/the-socioeconomic-impacts-of-health-and-science-misinformation/
There are no economic laws
In just the last few months we have had a number of elections in which we reelected incumbents who had performed, at best, somewhere within the zone of mediocrity. We…
The Politics of Inflation
If democracy is always a battle for who decides, the powerful few or the many, inflation is the current battleground. And what we are getting is what we have been…
Canada needs proportional representation
Here are both sides of the debate on electoral reform, the right one (written by me) and the one opposed. Electoral reform is not a side issue: it goes to…
Inflation: austerity is not the solution, it’s the problem
SURELY WE HAVE ENOUGH TO worry about without renewed warnings about runaway inflation. But even amid all our various crises, inflation continues to make its way into the headlines: “Canada’s…
Interregnum: finding hope and solidarity in times of crisis and division
Notes for a CCPA (national) planning session, April 25, 2022. I chair or sit on a number of boards all of which have been going through exercises much like this…
“Hope and Enlightenment in Dark Times”
https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/alla-gutnikovas-speech-from-court-friday-8-april-2022/ Alla Gutnikova’s speech from the Russian court as she is to be sentenced for standing for peace, for our shared humanity, for hope, for art, for our emancipation.
MAKING BIG CHANGE
I recently posted a piece I did for CCPA’s The Monitor recommending five readings on big change. Here I will try to distill some of what I gleaned about what…