Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Eric Topol writes about the new wave of COVID-19 decimating Europe – and the level of denial required to pretend that the U.S. or any other region can escape it without taking steps to protect public health. And Zak Vescera talks to public health
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Marco Ranaldi and Branko Milanovic study the relationship between inequality of inputs and inequality of outcomes – finding in particular that countries with relatively equal sources of income reliably produce comparatively fair income levels as well. And they also note that it’s possible
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Rochelle Baker interviews David Suzuki about the lessons from the coronavirus pandemic which we should apply equally to the threat of a climate breakdown. And Mike Layton writes that we need a Green New Deal as our recovery program once the pause on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Meghna Charkabarti interviews Branko Milanovic about the destructive amount of inequality embedded in capitalism as it’s currently structured. Connor Kilpatrick and Bhaskar Sunkara argue that the corporate class has only tolerated an acceptable distribution of income and wealth when it’s been accompanied by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Yanis Varoufakis writes that the tendency of capitalism toward stagnation signals the need for greater public input into economic decisions. And Branko Milanovic discusses how the attitude that politics should be governed by greed has undermined the trust between citizens and governments necessary
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Aditya Chakrabortty discusses the belated recognition among the world’s most privileged few that they can’t but their way out of the fundamental issues facing humankind. And Branko Milanovic highlights the Davos set’s lip service to combating inequality as long as it does
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alex Himelfarb warns about the dangers of participating in Donald Trump’s race to the bottom for public revenues – and the importance of highlighting the value of collective funding for social priorities: Sure, our tax revenues as a share of the overall economy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Larry Elliott writes about the fragility of the political and economic structures which the world’s most privileged people are seeking to entrench in Davos. And Branko Milanovic discusses the importance of intra-country inequality which is getting worse around the globe. – Laurie
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Elizabeth Kolbert comments on the psychology of inequality, and particularly how the current trend in which a disproportionate share of gains goes to a small number of wealthy individuals produces no ultimate winners: As the relative-income model predicted, those who’d learned that they
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Owen Jones discusses UK Labour’s true social democratic platform as a model for progressive parties around the globe. And Simon Wren-Lewis points out that contrary to the spin of opponents and uninformed presumptions of much of the media, Labour’s plan is entirely
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Branko Milanovic reviews Mike Lofgren’s The Deep State, and highlights how entrenched wealth and power have hijacked our public institutions for their own benefit: The deep state includes the old-fashioned military-industrial complex, top of Wall Street and Silicon valley, think tanks and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dan Levin writes that Christy Clark and her B.C. Libs have turned British Columbia into a haven for capital to run wild without any social responsibility or public benefit: Like many places, British Columbia set up a system of tax incentives to lure
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Branko Milanovic offers his take on how the U.S.’ version of liberalism paved the way for Donald Trump and his ilk both by buying into corporatist assumptions about success, and by treating electoralism as the basis for political organization: In economics, liberalism
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Branko Milanovic highlights the futility of pretending that market mechanisms will produce anything other than profit-oriented outcomes – and the observation represents an obvious reason not to put public services in corporate hands. And David Sloan Wilson (in introducing an interview with Sigrun
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – John Quiggin argues that public services and corporate control don’t mix – no matter how desperately the people seeking to exploit public money try to pretend otherwise: Market-oriented reforms, particularly in the provision of human services like health, education and public safety,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.
– Branko Milanovic examines whether the U.S.’ tax system is actually progressive all the way to the top of the income spectrum – and finds that there’s not enough data about the treatment of the extremely wealthy to be sure. And Robert Cribb and Marco Chown Oved discuss the latest Panama Papers revelations showing the large-scale stashing of Canadian assets in the Bahamas.
– Laura Wright reports that Canada’s federal government has approved secret surveillance technology which leaves the public in the dark as to which of its communications are subject to eavesdropping.
– Meanwhile, the federal government is rather less interested in the public safety concerns involved in documenting the fires on the First Nations reserves within its jurisdiction – having abandoned that task in 2010.
– Ross Belot writes that there’s no point in approving and building new pipelines at the moment other than political posturing. And the CP reports on the connection between air pollution from tar sands developments and the health of residents of the area.
– Finally, Adnan Al-Daini is encouraged by Sweden’s move toward a repair-not-replace mindset, and suggests the idea should spread further:
Continue readingIf more countries followed the Swedish example, think of the impact that would have globally on our CO2 emissions. Manufacturing goods is energy intensive. The website “Fix it-Don’t replace it” gives the example of the iphone6 where 85% of its lifecycle’s carbon footprint is from manufacturing it, not using it and another 3% from shipping it.
Climate change is with us already and such measures are needed as a matter of urgency. Such a proposal should not be a party political issue. Good quality jobs would be created in the country where the appliance is used. It would save the consumer money, and it is good for the environment.
Could we do something similar in Britain? Does this have to be a political issue and parties have to have it in their manifestos before it could happen? I don’t see where disagreement between parties could arise.
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
– Paul Wells argues that climate change and First Nations reconciliation – two of the issues which the Libs have tried to turn into signature priorities – look set to turn into areas of weakness as Justin Trudeau continues his party’s tradition of dithering. And Martin Lukacs writes that Trudeau’s handling of continuing injustice facing First Nations has involved an awful lot of flash but virtually no action:
The extractivist worldview—bent on treating everything as a commodity—that lay behind Stephen Harper’s resource agenda just as powerfully shapes Trudeau’s. In fact, the Liberals’ attempt to wrap themselves in the UN Declaration without embracing its central right may constitute a new, more subtle form of extraction: the extraction from Indigenous territory of consent itself.
Liberal moves to extract and manufacture consent and support for outdated policies are evident elsewhere: restoring funding to the Assembly of First Nations, a government-dependent organization that has since plumped frequently for them; appointing an Indigenous Justice Minister, even though Indigenous critics argue she has sided with the government agenda throughout her political career; and agreeing to call an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women, but with a mandate far short of what impacted families wanted. As the weight of reality presses against Trudeau’s rhetoric, the ability to generate consent is crumbling.
Reconciliation is a powerful hope, an uplifting prospect, a deeply desired new relationship that Trudeau has compellingly invoked. But if reconciliation does not include the restitution of land, the recognition of real self-government, the reigning in of abusive police, the remediation of rivers and forests, it will remain a vacant notion, a cynical ploy to preserve a status quo in need not of tinkering but transformation. It will be Canada’s latest in beads and trinkets, a cheap simulation of justice.
– Guy Caron discusses the CRA’s role in Canada’s two-tier tax system. Stephen Punwasi comments on the connection between Canada’s willingness to facilitate tax avoidance, and the real estate bubbles driving housing prices far beyond what working-class Canadians can afford. And Marc Lee then highlights the connection between soaring urban real estate prices and increased inequality.
– David Ball notes that many municipalities are retaking control over their own services after learning that the promises of efficiency through privatization are entirely illusory.
– Richard Orange points out Sweden’s intriguing idea of reducing taxes on repair services to discourage people from throwing out consumer goods. But I’d wonder whether that step alone would make a dent if it isn’t paired with a concerted effort at training potential repair workers for a job which the corporate sector would prefer to eliminate.
– Finally, Paul Mason makes the case for economics to be based on real-world observations of human behaviour, rather than insular mathematical models whose assumptions about market efficiency bear no relationship to reality. And Branko Milanovic discusses the need to measure and reduce inequality as part of a global development strategy.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the connection between unionization and secure employment income – and the importance of encouraging the former if people otherwise face no real hope of achieving the latter.For further reading…- Again, Jake Rosenfeld, Patrick Denice and Jen…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week.- Branko Milanovic points out how the commodification of our interactions may create an incentive for short-term exploitation:Commodification of what was hitherto a non-commercial resource makes each of us do m…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Stephen Hawking discusses the crucial distinction between seeing money as a means of pursuing worthy ends versus treating it a goal in and of itself – and notes that we should be wary of political choices bas…
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