|
|
By Greg Fingas, on April 19, 2013, at 11:01 am Assorted content for your Friday reading.
- Julian Beltrame writes about the reality that Canada has multiple workers available to fill every job – with an assist from Erin Weir: The case for job shortages in Canada became thinner Tuesday with the most recent data showing vacancies actually fell to 200,000 at the start of the year, meaning there were 6.5 unemployed workers chasing each opening.…“This is a striking low job vacancy number and it really casts doubt on this idea that we have a labour shortage,” said Erin Weir, a labour economist with the United Steelworkers union.
(Read more…) think most of this idea of labour shortages is based on anecdotes from the business community. They might have a different definition of a labour shortage. Employers might believe that if they can’t get the employees they want at the wages they are prepared to offer — that’s a . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on April 7, 2013, at 1:07 pm Assorted content for your Sunday reading.
- Stephen Maher points out why we shouldn’t believe the Cons for a second when they claim to care about cracking down on offshore tax evasion: The top level of Canadian society is a small club, and it includes politicians. The people who run the country are on excellent terms with the business people who squirrel away money in offshore tax havens.
Shea’s meaningless tough talk was prompted by a CBC report that said Saskatchewan lawyer Tony Merchant has $1.7 million in a Cook Islands bank. Merchant’s wife, Pana, was appointed to the . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on March 30, 2013, at 12:32 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Paul Krugman discusses how a myopic focus on slashing taxes and services figures to cheat future generations out of desperately-needed social structure: You don’t have to be a civil engineer to realize that America needs more and better infrastructure, but the latest “report card” from the American Society of Civil Engineers — with its tally of deficient dams, bridges, and more, and its overall grade of D+ — still makes startling and depressing reading. And right now — with vast numbers of unemployed construction workers and vast amounts of cash sitting . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on March 2, 2013, at 4:32 pm This and that to end your Saturday.
- Bill Curry breaks the news of the Cons’ next round of public service slashing – with Canada Revenue Agency employees whose work far more than pays for itself once more looming as one of the main targets of a government determined to ease the way for tax evasion and avoidance.
- Jodie Sinnema reports on the Parkland Institute’s ideas for a more progressive tax system in Alberta. And it’s particularly worth noting that Albertans themselves recognize the value of fair taxes even as their government continues to insist on the need to
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on February 23, 2013, at 10:47 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Chrystia Freeland points out why productivity doesn’t provide an accurate picture of economic development if it merely results in increased inequality rather than shared benefits: Productivity and innovation, the focus of policy makers and business leaders, no longer guarantee widely shared prosperity. “Digital technologies are different in that they allow people with skills to replicate their talents to serve billions,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. “There is really a drastic winner-take-all effect because every industry is becoming like the software industry.” Classical economic theory isn’t entirely wrong. The danger isn’t — as it was . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 21, 2013, at 6:35 pm It’s now the official rule of thumb for Canadian journalists: if the Harper Cons aren’t attacking you for having the nerve to point out their falsehoods, then you’re not doing your job.
By Greg Fingas, on January 21, 2013, at 9:01 am Assorted content to start your week.
- Dennis Gruending writes about the importance of Edgar Schmidt’s whistleblowing against unconstitutional legislation: Schmidt says that he has over a period of years raised concerns about what he considers the department’s flawed practices. He has done that through various official channels, up to the deputy minister level — in both Liberal and Conservative governments. He says he has never received a satisfactory response and that he has gone to court as a matter of last resort.
Schmidt says the consequences of the department’s failure to act appropriately are serious. The state should be
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on January 17, 2013, at 10:19 am This and that for your Thursday reading.
- Murray Dobbin writes about the significance of Idle No More as a shift away from the presumption that First Nations’ interests are represented solely by elected officials: There are some fascinating similarities between the Idle No More phenomenon and the Occupy movement. Both reflect a political dualism: they are focused on the lack of democracy, justice and equality for ordinary people and they are implicitly (and with Idle No More explicitly) telling conventional movement organizations that are supposed to speak for them that they have failed. And it should come as no
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on December 1, 2012, at 9:06 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Chrystia Freeland discusses the developing view that inequality can serve to stifle growth and development, while more equitable tax systems and social supports can encourage them:Set aside any moral or polit… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on November 23, 2012, at 9:18 am Assorted content to end your week.- Christopher Curtis and Stephen Maher break the news that the Cons have falsified donation records, claiming donations to their Laurier-Sainte-Marie riding association from individuals who deny ever making contributio… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on November 17, 2012, at 12:04 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Bill Curry reports on the Cons’ latest public-sector slashing. But there hasn’t yet been much discussion of the most alarming number: upwards of 30% of the Cons’ cuts are coming from the Canada Revenue Agency… . . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on October 27, 2012, at 12:11 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Stephen Maher follows up on this week’s Supreme Court ruling on Etobicoke Centre by pointing out where we should be most worried about our electoral system: Fraudulent voting is far from the biggest problem facing our democracy. Disengagement is.
Voting rates are declining steadily, particularly among young people, which means politicians see little point in discussing youth issues.
MPs are going to be looking at changes to the Elections Act after this fiasco, and they ought to tighten up the process. But I hope they won’t require mandatory picture identification, as the Republicans
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on October 7, 2012, at 11:29 am This and that for your Sunday reading.
- Murray Mandryk and Bruce Johnstone both thoroughly slam Gerry Ritz and the Cons for their food-safety negligence. But Johnstone hints at the larger issue: Ritz, for all his faults, is not the cause of this latest debacle. He’s merely a symptom of a bigger problem with the Harper government: specifically, it’s (sic) ideological fixation on smaller government, it’s (sic) blind faith in self-regulation and its tendency to micromanage every aspect of government policy.
- And Lana Payne reminds us why we should know better than to think there’s any merit to anti-regulatory
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on September 24, 2012, at 9:31 am 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 of American tax policy, huffed Mr Levin. When an HP executive tried to insist the manoeuvre did not constitute profit repatriation, the senator wielded an internal HP document in which it was discussed—in the repatriation-strategy section. The Senate investigators said they suspected other companies were doing the same thing but
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on September 22, 2012, at 11:03 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Business Insider reports on a new study from the U.S.’ Congressional Research Service showing that in addition to exacerbating inequality, top-heavy tax cuts rank somewhere between useless and downright harmful when it comes to overall economic growth: According to a new study by the Congressional Research Service (non-partisan), there’s no evidence that tax cuts spur growth.
In fact, although correlation is not causation, when you compare economic growth in periods with declining tax rates versus periods with high tax rates, there seems to be evidence that tax cuts might hurt growth.
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on September 15, 2012, at 11:24 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Jon Wisman and Aaron Pacitti put a price tag on the upward redistribution of wealth in the U.S.: Between 1983 and 2007, total inflation-adjusted wealth in the U.S. increased by $27 trillion. If divided equally, every man woman and child would be almost $90,000 richer.
But of course it wasn’t divided equally. Almost half of the $27 trillion (49 percent) was claimed by the richest one percent — $11.7 million more for each of their households. The top 10 percent grabbed almost $29 trillion, or 106 percent of the
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 22, 2012, at 10:00 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- On the anniversary of Jack Layton’s death, Tim Harper points out how far the NDP has come in just a year, while Brian Topp highlights where the party still needs to go: (W)hat to do about the federal government’s crisis of relevance? Recent Liberal and Conservative governments have worked together on a common agenda to make Canada’s national government largely irrelevant to the daily lives of most Canadians. Today’s federal government is a Parliament, it is a public service, it is an army and police force, and it is a largely unconditional bank
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 18, 2012, at 12:06 pm Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Toby Sanger discusses how wealthy Canadians – especially in the financial sector – are making more and more use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying their fair share: The latest Statistics Canada figures show 24% of Canadian direct investment overseas in 2011 went to the top twelve tax havens, up from 10% in 1987. In fact, tax havens of the Barbados, Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg and Bermuda were five of the top eight national destinations of total Canadian investment abroad, with the US, UK and Australia the only countries not considered tax
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 15, 2012, at 11:01 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Tobi Cohen picks up on the possibility of a provincial NDP in Quebec, and notes that the federal party is considering what can be done before the next election after that set for September: NDP national director Chantale Vallerand told Postmedia News talks are preliminary. “There’s been so many things thrown at us in the past year that we’ve been busy making sure that we were on top of everything at the federal level so we didn’t have any time, resources or energy to devote at a provincial level,” she noted.
“Having said
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on August 11, 2012, at 11:17 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada’s trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out, that fact only confirms that the Cons’ election fraud seems to have been rather deliberately planned to escape detection.
- Meanwhile, Delacourt also laments the effect of “churnalism” in which the media serves largely as a conduit for government or business talking points: Harper has not held a news
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 22, 2012, at 4:33 pm Assorted content to end your weekend.
- Yes, the usual caveats about trying to predict future commodity prices apply. But Stephen Maher’s warning about the effect of rising fuel and food prices is still worth keeping in mind: That shift doesn’t mean that North Americans are about to take meaningful steps to reduce the amount of carbon we put in the atmosphere, because politicians know that anything they might do to reduce carbon emission will hit consumers in the pocketbook.
Over the long run, though, if the scientists are right, we will have more extreme weather, food prices will go
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
By Greg Fingas, on July 18, 2012, at 9:40 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Michael Harris continues to highlight some of the fundamental problems with the Cons’ view of politics, this time identifying Stephen Harper as being afflicted with “master of the universe syndrome”: When you control all the levers of power, when you have no scruples, when you are surrounded by nutters who will do anything you say without thinking, when you conceive of language as disconnected from objective reality, when you believe biz bull and Beatle songs are enough to bamboozle the Great Unwashed, it’s understandable in certain personality types that the conviction begins to
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on May 2, 2012, at 9:32 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Michael Harris sums up the first year of a Harper majority by pointing out the overwhelming need for change from the government we’re stuck with now: The curtain has been well and truly whipped away from the PM’s self-promoting deceptions and he is revealed for what he is: a power-tripper on a mission to give Canada an extreme makeover that only the super-rich and the semi-comatose could endorse. And he is doing it with virtually no debate, creating something of a new phenomenon in Canadian politics; sole-source public policy. …This is not “strong,
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on April 28, 2012, at 11:45 am Assorted content for your weekend reading.
- Paul Krugman writes a long-overdue obituary for the confidence fairy who was supposed to turn needless austerity into growth contrary to all economic evidence: So, about that doctrine: appeals to the wonders of confidence are something Herbert Hoover would have found completely familiar — and faith in the confidence fairy has worked out about as well for modern Europe as it did for Hoover’s America. All around Europe’s periphery, from Spain to Latvia, austerity policies have produced Depression-level slumps and Depression-level unemployment; the confidence fairy is nowhere to be seen, not even in
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
By Greg Fingas, on April 25, 2012, at 9:46 am Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.
- Jared Bernstein discusses the effect of raising taxes on the highest-income households, featuring this in particular: Growth and jobs. History shows that higher taxes are compatible with economic growth and job creation: job creation and GDP growth were significantly stronger following the Clinton tax increases than following the Bush tax cuts. Further, the Congressional Budget office (CBO) concludes that letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire on schedule would strengthen long-term economic growth, on balance, if policymakers used the revenue saved to reduce deficits. In other words, any negative impact on economic growth from
. . . → Read More: Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
|
|
