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…
himelfarb
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…
BIG CHANGE
Big change is hard though of course big change is just what’s needed. The experts warn and our leaders confirm that we are in the midst of a climate emergency,…
Thoughtful Thursday: something to think about (from Jane Fritz blog)
Thoughtful Thursday: something to think about
Investing in Care, Not Profit
Central to building the care economy is reversing our dependence on for profit delivery. Here is a position paper by a number of colleagues and I on addressing the tragedy…
What would a transformational budget look like?
Reactions to this week’s federal budget have been all over the map. Is it too much, too little? Is this the shock the country needs or a missed opportunity to…
The Case for Deficits and Higher Taxes
Rather than wringing our hands about if and when the federal government plans to balance the budget or about the lack of a fiscal anchor to discipline federal spending, we…
A Cure for Deficit and Tax Phobia
It started as a FB post, morphed into this blog, and who knows what’s next: the case for an approach to public finance that enables the level of ambition these…
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…
Review of Hugh Segal’s Bootstraps Need Boots
Hugh Segal has written an engaging personal and political memoir and plea for basic income. Here’s my review in Alberta Views.
How to Pay for a Just and Green Recovery
Some colleagues and I published this piece on how to pay for “building back better”. The Broadbent Institute published this longer version here.
After the Pandemic
First Policy Response has brought together diverse views (including my own) on how the pandemic recession differs from previous recessions and what we need to do to get through this…
Austerity and the Decline of the Collective
(Notes for Second Annual Arnold Amber Memorial Lecture, Toronto, May 29, 2019) I am honoured to be celebrating the life and values of Arnold Amber. Celebrating social justice and human…
We Need an Antidote to Complacency and Resentmento
When life becomes a zero sum game, when competition is seen as the sole basis for organizing society, when targeting social benefits that should be universal shows folk that some…
We Can’t Make Things Better Without More Tax Revenue
Here’s my latest, in CCPA’s Monitor on reconnecting taxes and the common good. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/reconnecting-taxes-and-common-good
EXPANDING THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION
The other day, CNN ran a focus group on what some American voters were now thinking about their president. The comments were almost universally critical including among Trump voters. But…