Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Dani Rodrik discusses the evolution of work, and notes that future development and sharing of wealth may need to follow a different model than the one that's applied in the past:

(T)he post-industrial economy opened up a new chasm in the labor market, between those with stable, high-paid, and fulfilling services jobs and those with fleeting, low-paid, and unsatisfying jobs. Two factors determined the share of each type of job – and thus the extent of inequality produced by the post-industrial transition: the education and skill level of the workforce, and the degree of institutionalization of labor markets in services (in addition to manufacturing).

Inequality, exclusion, and duality became more marked in countries where skills were poorly distributed and many services approximated the textbook “ideal” of spot markets. The United States, where many workers are forced to hold multiple jobs in order to make an adequate living, remains the canonical example of this model.

The vast majority of workers still live in low- and middle-income countries and have yet to go through these transformations. There are two reasons to believe that their future path will (or need) not unfold in quite the same way.

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(T)here is both good and bad news for the future of work in developing countries. Thanks to social policy and labor rights, workers can become full stakeholders in the economy much earlier in the process of development. At the same time, the traditional engine of economic development – industrialization – is likely to operate at much lower capacity. The resulting combination of high public expectations and low income-producing capacity will be a major challenge for developing economies everywhere.

- Erin Anderssen weighs in on the desperate need for an effective national child care system.

- Andrew Coyne makes the case for public financial disclosure to be carried out by an independent body, rather than being limited to whatever format, timing and spin best suits the government of the day. And the CP reports on the ugly aftermath of the Cons' end-of-term patronage binge.

- Finally, Andrew Mitrovica explains why we shouldn't expect the Libs to fix what's glaringly wrong with Bill C-51 - even if we have every reason to demand it:

(I)f Trudeau truly wanted to use simple, clear language to offer Canadians some long-overdue information about the fate of this ghastly law, all he had to do was add five words to the [throne] speech, bringing the total up to 1,755: The Government will repeal C-51. Why didn’t he?

If the Liberals intended to repeal C-51, they would have said so. If they’d intended to repeal large parts of the law, they would have sent some signals by now. If they haven’t, common sense suggests it’s because Trudeau has chosen to leave C-51 largely intact.
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Terrorism cannot be bombed or legislated out of existence. Bill C-51 and laws like it offer the gullible only the illusion of security. And they do so at a terrible cost to free societies. C-51 includes extremely dangerous language criminalizing the “promotion” of terrorism and the spread of terrorist “propaganda” — legal catch-alls that can’t help but erode the right to free speech.

It vastly expands the power of security services to make arrests without warrants, on suspicion. It targets things like interference with “critical infrastructure” (code for protesters messing with pipelines), gives CSIS the power to “disrupt” suspected terrorist plots without waiting around for the cops, and allows it to petition a judge for permission to violate the Charter of Rights.

This isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. The tired strategy of granting security services more powers in the immediate wake of the latest terrorist attack has been tried time and again, and has failed time and again.