Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jack Goldstone and Peter Turchin offer an introduction to what they anticipate will be the Turbulent Twenties, while noting the need for the U.S. to develop a new social contract to shift from its current path. – Meanwhile, Hadley Freeman rightly challenges the
Continue readingTag: Immigration
Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Steven Greenhouse writes that COVID-19 may produce a wave of unionization as workers see how little they’re valued, and how cavalierly they lives are put at risk. And Ed Yong follows up on the plight of coronavirus “long-haulers” who have faced a constantly-changing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday evening. – Crawford Kilian examines the UN’s advice on how to keep school safe from COVID-19, while the Saskatchewan Medical Association and Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians (PDF) both urge the Saskatchewan Party start paying attention to what’s needed to keep people safe. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Amanda Follett Hosgood reports on the environmental damage being done to Wet’suwet’en territory as (pointless) pipeline construction is again being given precedence over environmental protection. And Reuters reports that Zurich has become the latest insurer to decide it doesn’t see TransMountain as an
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Iglika Ivanova examines who has lost jobs to COVID-19, and who needs public support to be able to return to the workforce. Tara Deschamps reports on an RBC study showing women’s participation in the workforce has been set back three decades by
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Mark Smolinski writes that wearing a mask to limit the spread of COVID-19 is best characterized as a sign of mutual respect. (But sadly, that goes a long way toward explaining the anti-mask movement among adherents to political movements built on exclusion and
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 Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Simon Enoch studies how P3 projects result only in public money subsidizing private profits. And a new report from the Canadian Labour Congress warns about the dangerous consequences of privatizing public goods and services. – Amanda Follett Hosgood examines how the authority
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – George Monbiot writes that the UK Cons are using their own botched Brexit as an excuse to set up a disaster capitalist’s paradise. – Canadians for Tax Fairness discusses how the Libs’ inclination to attach draconian penalties to their pandemic income benefit signals
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Sheila Smith examines how private equity is hollowing out the real economy in the name of profit-taking. And Klaus Schwab suggests a “Great Reset” – though his preference for a continued capitalist model misses many of the most important opportunities for a more
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Duncan Cameron writes that while the COVID-19 pandemic has been catastrophic, we shouldn’t pretend that it’s at all surprising – or that the necessary responses are in doubt: Though it has taken the world by surprise, the COVID-19 pandemic is a white
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Eric Doherty, and Eric Galbraith and Ross Otto, respectively write that the response to the coronavirus shows how it’s possible to imagine and implement needed changes along the lines of a Green New Deal. And Heather Mallick theorizes that it can also
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: The Baby Boosters
According to the Worldometer (the world population clock), at 12:22 p.m. today the planet’s population of Homo sapiens was 7,769,974,138 with a net gain (births over deaths) of 114,862 so far this morning. You might think this was more than enough of us, given that we are multiplying on the
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: On Immigration
Canada welcomed the highest number of new immigrants in more than a century last year, opening its doors to 341,180 people from 175 different countries. That annual total, which exceeded Ottawa’s target of 330,000, was topped only twice before — in 1913, when 401,000 new immigrants arrived in the country,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Gary Younge writes about the need to respond to a bleak reality with the dedication to imagine and create something better. And Vickie Cammack and Donna Thomson highlight how the response to a climate breakdown includes mobilizing our capacity to care for
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On rejected applications
Let’s see what Scott Moe is demanding from the federal government now… On the immigration file, one goal is to “assert provincial control over the [Saskatchewan Immigrant Nominee Program] (SINP).” Interesting. Now, there’s certainly reason to question Moe’s governance in a lot of areas. But surely he wouldn’t be so
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses how decades of laissez-faire economics and deference to the rich have undermined any effective democratic decision-making. Bruce Boghosian observes that structural change is needed to avoid a tendency toward the concentration of wealth and concurrent rise of inequality. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Daniel Tencer reports on Ray Dalio’s recognition that the economic system which made him a multi-billionaire is broken. And Harvey Cashore, Chelsea Gomez and Gillian Findlay report on the Liberal-connected tycoons who lobbied against any steps to stop the offshoring of wealth. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – David Leonhardt discusses how the U.S.’ tax system has become definitively regressive, featuring this chart as to how the wealthiest few now pay a smaller share of their income than anybody else. – Ann Pettifor highlights how society suffers when rentier capitalism is
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Ryan Nunn, Jimmy O’Donnell and Jay Shambaugh study how the U.S.’ labour movement has been ground down by corporate-controlled governments – and how workers in all kinds of workplaces are worse off as a result. And Robin Tress cautions against allowing businesses
Continue reading