Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Kevin McKean discusses how inequality undermines the goal of ensuring a healthy population. Matt Bruenig examines new data showing that the concentration of wealth in the U.S. is getting more extreme by the year. Steven Pearlstein writes about new polling showing that the U.S. public strongly favours higher taxes on corporations in the name of funding social supports - even as Donald Trump and the Republicans push for the exact opposite. And Robert Reich argues as to why the wealthy should be expected to pay more in the U.S.:

The rich aren’t overtaxed. The wealthiest 1 percent in the U.S. pay the lowest taxes as a percent of their income and total wealth of the top 1 percent in any major country – and far lower than they paid in the U.S. during the first three decades after World War II, when the American economy grew faster than it’s been growing since the Reagan tax cuts.

But we do have a deficit in public investment – especially in education and infrastructure. And we do have a national debt that topped $20 trillion this year and is expected to grow by an additional $10 trillion over the next decade.

What’s the answer? Raise taxes on big corporations and the wealthy. That’s what rational politicians would do if they weren’t in the pockets of big corporations and the wealthy.

- Meanwhile, Jerry Dias makes the case to close corporate tax loopholes so everybody pays their fair share for the public services Canadians value. But Nassim Khadem offers a warning from Australia about the use of public money to advertise a supposed crackdown which may have far less effect than promised.

- Sheila Block and Michal Rozworski refute some of the Ontario business lobby's fearmongering about a more fair minimum wage and other improved working conditions. And Martin Regg Cohn points out how the province has been complicit in allowing businesses to evade employment standards and put workers at risk.

- David Roberts discusses the effect of renewable energy mandates, and finds that they've proven effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while more than paying for themselves.  

- Finally, Tom Parkin writes that Jason Kenney is offering Albertans nothing but snake oil in his bid to take over the province.